C. R. Ashbee

Charles Robert Ashbee (17 May 1863 - 23 May 1942) was a British architect and designer who was a prime mover of the 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. Ashbee was defined by one source as "designer, architect, entrepreneur, and social reformer". His disciplines included metalwork, textile design, furniture, jewellery and other objects in the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts genres. Ashbee was born in 1863 in Isleworth, the son of businessman and erotic bibliophile Henry Spencer Ashbee. His German-born Jewish mother Elizabeth Jenny Lavi (1842-1919) developed suffragette views, and his well-educated sisters, Frances Mary (1866-1926), Agnes Jenny (1869-1926) and Elsa (1873-1944) were progressive as well. His parents had married in Elizabeth's hometown of Hamburg, Germany on 27 June 1862. Ashbee went to Wellington College and read History at King's College, Cambridge, from 1883 to 1886, and studied under the architect George Frederick Bodley.