ABSTRACT
In 1892, Walter Crane issued his Claims of Decorative Art, where he argued that art cannot successfully survive in a society where there are uneven allocations of wealth, so it was for socialism to empower artists and designers to draw together both utility and aesthetics in their works. Crane’s socialist leanings are also evident in his book Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New wherein he draws distinctions between supposed appeal of English mediaeval life and the horrible contemporary living conditions. In obedience to the rule of the great God Trade, too, whole districts of our fair country are blighted and blackened, and whole populations are condemned to mechanical and monotonous toil to support the international race for the precarious world-market. Social conditions are the outcome of economic conditions. In all ages it has been mainly the system under which property is held—the ownership of the means of production and exchange—which has decided the forms of social life.
