Casket

Cranbrook has in its collection three of Jessie Bayes's works, acquired by George Booth between 1920 and 1929. Henry Scripps Booth had already received an illuminated manuscript, “Hymns to the Elements,” by Bayes from his father when George Booth gave his son this casket.

George and Ellen Booth devoted their energy and patronage to organizations that embodied the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement. One of the hallmarks of the transatlantic movement was to support living, working artists.

Jessie Bayes (1878-1970)

The British artist Jessie Bayes was known for her work in woodcarving, painting, calligraphy, gesso and gilding, stained glass, and, most famously, illuminated manuscripts. Bayes focused on patient and laborious attention to detail, combining jewel-like colors with gilding and rich iconography from Scandinavian, Celtic, or French history. Her work has been described as ethereal, magical, and, in her family biography (The Bayes Saga, 1970), an “expression of things felt and seen.”

Bayes often wrote the texts she illuminated, which were dominated by themes of romance and mysticism and strove to beautify everyday life and “wed the physical and spiritual.” She felt that the “idea of colour symbolizing love should be above all precious to an illuminator, since, in illuminating, colour can reach its intensest height of purity and radiance.”

Jessie Bayes was raised in an artistic family, and her earliest training came from her father Alfred, an etcher and book illustrator. She went on to take evening classes at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts, which grew directly out of the Arts & Crafts Movement of William Morris and John Ruskin. There, Bayes learned to gild on wood, a process seen on the Thornlea coffer. Bayes was also heavily influenced by her employment with Sydney Cockerell, an engraver and former librarian for William Morris who had been responsible for completing the Kelmscott Press publications after Morris’s death.

Bayes exhibited widely with the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, and at the Royal Academy and the Baillie Gallery in London, alongside artists like Walter Crane, Arthur Nevill Kirk, and Omar Ramsden. In 1922, Bayes exhibited some of her illuminated books, as well as paintings on vellum, fans, and panels, at the Art Center in New York. Bayes gradually expanded her repertoire to include painted and gilded decoration on furniture as well as interior design and stained-glass work.

Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (founded 1906)

Founded on June 26, 1906, the Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts provided an environment where artists, craftsmen, architects, and designers could share ideas and coordinate activities to raise the level of American craftsmanship. Out of their showroom, works by major craftsmen active in Europe and America were exhibited and sold. George Booth was not only one of the founders of the Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts, but also its first president.

The Society’s showroom operated from 1916, when it opened a new building on Watson Street in Detroit, until 1958, when the mission of the Society shifted toward design education (the Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts had been established in 1926). George Booth worked closely with the Society’s Secretary Helen Plumb sourcing objects for display and sale in the showroom; George Booth also filled his home, Cranbrook House, with items he purchased or commissioned for the showroom. Beyond George Booth, Ellen and the entire Booth family patronized the Society’s showroom for gifts and furnishings for their respective homes. The Booth family continued support of the Society well into the second half of the 20th century, as it reincorporated as the Center for Creative Studies - College of Art and Design (1975 to 2001) and later the College for Creative Studies (2001-present).

Kevin Adkisson
Curator
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
November 2021