ABSTRACT
This chapter considers three sets of experiment. First, there was the colony of arts and crafts established in the Cotswolds by C. R. Ashbee. Second, there were the communities formed by Eric Gill for the promotion of art and religious values; and, finally, there was the Dartington community, brainchild of its sponsors, Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, and the most holistic experiment of the three. Mass production was the enemy of the people, and, especially, of art and culture; indeed, art and culture had been redefined to serve the needs of capitalism, and greater virtues had been lost in the process. Community experiments were thus designed to rediscover these lost virtues. For John Ruskin, the machine was the enemy of art, divorcing individuals from craft-based production and creating a new, and inferior, aesthetic. The belief, central to the Arts and Crafts Movement as a whole, was that beauty could more finely be achieved through the hand than through artificial means.
