Charles Robert Ashbee born 17 May 1863 (d. 1942)Charles Robert Ashbee was a designer and entrepreneur who was a prime mover of the English Arts and Crafts movement that took its craft ethic from the works of John Ruskin and its co-operative structure from the socialism of William Morris.
He was the son of businessman and erotic bibliophile Henry Spencer Ashbee. He received his education at Wellington College. After reading History at King's College (1883–86) and studying under the architect George Frederick Bodley, Ashbee set up his Guild and School of Handicraft in 1888, at first housed in temporary space in London and by 1890 with workshops at Essex House, Mile End Road, in the East End with a retail outlet that was more accessible to the Guild's patrons in Brook Street, Mayfair. In 1902 the works moved to Chipping Campden in the picturesque Cotswolds of Gloucestershire, where a sympathetic community provided local patrons, but where the market for craftsman-designed furniture and metalwork was saturated by 1905. The Guild was liquidated in 1907.[pictured: Writing cabinet c. 1902]
The Guild of Handicraft specialised in metalworking, producing jewellery and enamels as well as hand-wrought copper and wrought ironwork, and furniture. The School attached to the Guild taught crafts. Ashbee himself was willing to do complete house design, including interior furniture and decoration, as well as items such as fireplaces. The Guild operated as a co-operative.[pictured: Belt or cloak clasp 1902]
Later the Guild turned to book production after Morris's Kelmscott Press closed in 1897; Ashbee took on many of the Kelmscott printers and craftsmen and set up the Essex House Press. Between 1898 and 1910 the Essex House Press produced more than 70 titles.
The London County Council's introduction of the Polytechnic Institutes, which took on craftworkers at a minimal charge, was inspired by Ashbee's Guild and School, which it out-competed and drove out of business.
A widely-illustrated suite of furniture was made by the Guild for the Grand Duke of Hess at Darmstadt to designs of M. H. Baillie Scott.
He is thought to have been a member of the Order of Chaeronea founded in 1897 by George Ives.