ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical geographies of craft societies that grew through the 20th century in the UK, forming to serve the collective needs of craft practitioners and the burgeoning craft movement. The historical geographies of craft organisations reveal much about the spatial and social formation of the creative economy. An interest in regional craft networks links to geographical writing that looks beyond the creative city and creative cluster literatures, to find the other geographies that bind together the creative economy. It was a place where two people's vision, and wealth, brought a specific sort of modernity to the British rural countryside a modernity inspired by international currents of thinking around progressive education, social improvement and aesthetics. While much contemporary research around making cultures explores the current practices, there remains a critical need to understand past expressions of creative industries.
