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Peach and the Arts & Crafts Movement


Dryad stand at the Franco-British exhibition 1908
Peach first became interested in the Arts & Crafts Movement from about 1901. He was inspired by the writings of Lethaby and the two men became close friends when they finally met in 1914. His early enthusiasm for German design – he had spent a summer in Freiberg as a boy and spoke the language – was soon shared by others. An exhibition of German Decorative Art at Munich in 1908 was a critical success. Many British commentators felt that Germany had adapted the ideas of the English Arts & Crafts Movement for mass production to ensure their commercial success.
 
Peach and Fletcher organised exhibitions of German printing and Viennese leatherwork in Leicester in 1914. The following year they were also involved in setting up the Design and Industries Association (DIA) together with Lethaby, the designers, Ambrose Heal and Harold Stabler, and the architect Cecil Brewer. The DIA put together a display of mass-produced objects at the 1916 Arts and Crafts Exhibition. It included stoneware jars by Crosse and Blackwell, Wedgwood pottery, and colourful machine-printed cottons produced by the Bolton firm of Charles Sixsmith for export to West Africa. Their aim was, ‘to improve the quality and fitness of goods on sale to the general public’. Early DIA pamphlets were printed in Leicester by the firm of Charles Stevens under the Peach’s direction. He and Fletcher were the driving forces behind an influential DIA exhibition, ‘Design and Workmanship in Printing’ held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1915. They used examples of Leicester work including a ‘before and after’ case study of printing for Stead and Simpson. The firm, which was owned by Peach’s friend, Percy Gee, worked with art students to adopt a system of well-lettered window tickets, a standardized design for shoe boxes, and improved shop windows and interiors. Improving one shop front was realistic and achievable but Peach hoped that each small improvement would inspire another one.