Volume 27, Number 8 · May 15, 1980
Designing Women
By Quentin Bell
Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914
by Anthea Callen
Pantheon, 240 pp., $10.95 (paper)
The Female School of Design, the first art school in Britain to offer art education to women, opened its doors in 1842. I had supposed that it did not do so until a year later; but Ms. Callen is sure that I am wrong and I am equally sure that she is right. We are both agreed, I am glad to say, that when those doors did open a very large number of women were waiting to get in. The schools for men were often ill-attended, the students were sometimes riotous and nearly always discontented, the teachers were divided into hostile factions, and the manufacturers, for whose benefit the schools were founded, were, to say the least, unhelpful. The establishment for women was in almost every way a success, it suffered only from an excess of popularity and was in consequence dreadfully overcrowded; but the standards of work were greatly superior to those of the male school.
Review, 1589 words
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