The Guild of St George is a charitable Education Trust, based in England but with a world-wide membership, which tries to uphold the values and put into practice the ideas of its founder, John Ruskin (1819-1900).
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Ruskin, a Victorian polymath, established the Guild in the 1870s. Founded as "St George's Company" in 1871, it adopted its current name and constitution in 1878.[1] Ruskin, the most influential art critic of his day, had turned increasingly to social concerns from the 1850s. His highly influential critique of Victorian political economy, Unto This Last, was serialised in 1860, and published with an additional preface in book-form in 1862. In lectures, letters and other published writings, he used his considerable rhetorical skills to denounce modern, industrial capitalism, and the theorists and politicians who served it. He considered that the ugliness, pollution and poverty it caused were undermining the nation. His deeply-felt moral conviction that human society and the natural environment had been corrupted and ruptured motivated him to seek practical means of redemption, reform and reconstruction.
Through the Guild, which married medieval (i.e. pre-industrial) values and a progressive belief in social improvement, Ruskin hoped to establish communities to challenge the profit-motive driving modern industry, and to provide alternatives to mass production. His utopian ideal was to stimulate greater happiness and improved health by promoting sound and responsible personal conduct, and by reconnecting society with the ennobling beauty of nature. By means of his "Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain," Fors Clavigera (1871-1884), he sought to recruit "Companions" (the name he gave to members of the Guild) to join him in an effort to establish “a National Store instead of [capitalism’s] National Debt".[2] As the Guild’s Master, Ruskin endowed it with a tithe, or personal donation, of £7000. He set about acquiring land which could be cultivated sustainably, as far as possible using traditional methods (hand-labour, wind and water-power), and assembling an educational collection of beautiful and precious books, art-works and other objects.
In principle, Ruskin worked out different grades of “Companion” for his hierarchical Guild. He also wrote codes of practice, described styles of dress and even designed the Guild’s own coins.[3] He also wished to establish St George’s Schools, and published various volumes to aid its teaching (his Bibliotheca Pastorum or Shepherd’s Library), but the schools, like the dress and coins, never materialised, partly because Ruskin’s mental health steadily but inexorably declined.[4] In reality, the Guild has only ever operated on a modest scale, its activities being suggestive rather than transformational.[5]
Land was purchased in Totley, near Sheffield, but this co-operative farming scheme met with only limited success, and was fraught with difficulties. However, donations from wealthy and committed Companions eventually placed more promising parcels of land and property in the Guild’s care: woodland in the Wyre Forest, near Bewdley, Worcestershire;[6] houses at Barmouth, in Gwynedd, north-west Wales; land at Cloughton, in North Yorkshire; and a number of arts and crafts-style homes in Westmill , Hertfordshire.[7]
Ruskin also wished to see traditional rural handicrafts revived. St George’s Mill was established at Laxey, on the Isle of Man, producing cloth goods.[8] Furthermore, Ruskin encouraged independent, but allied, efforts in spinning and weaving at Langdale, in other parts of the Lake District and elsewhere, producing linen and other goods exhibited by the Home Arts and Industries Association and similar organisations.[9]
In Sheffield, in 1875, Ruskin established a museum for the working men of that city and surrounding areas (and particularly for Sheffield’s iron workers whom he much admired). Originally situated in Walkley and curated by Henry Swan, St. George’s Museum housed the increasingly bountiful collection of artworks (pencil sketches, architectural drawings, watercolours, copies of Old Masters and so on), minerals, geological specimens, casts of sculpture, manuscripts (most of them medieval in origin), books (many of them rare) and a multitude of other beautiful and precious items.[10] Through the Museum, Ruskin aimed to bring to the working man many of the sights and experiences otherwise confined to the wealthy who could afford to travel through Europe. (The original Museum has been recreated “virtually” online.)[11] In 1890, the Museum relocated to Meersbrook Park. After a relatively brief period out of public sight at Reading University, the collection returned to Sheffield in 1985.
Since 2001, the Guild’s collection has been on display at the Ruskin Gallery in Sheffield’s Millennium Galleries.[12] The Guild strives to maintain Ruskin’s principles and achieve his aims in the twenty-first century. It is funding a nine-year cycle of Triennial Exhibitions there. The Guild still manages and lets its properties at Westmill in line with Ruskin’s notions of care and justice (charging fair rents and diligently maintaining the properties). One hundred acres of ancient woodland and two smallholdings near Bewdley are sympathetically cultivated. A converted barn, called the “Ruskin Studio”, acts as a base for the Wyre Community Land Trust, which engages with a wide range of local projects, promoting rural crafts and skills, hosting events and receiving educational visits. The Guild funded the national Campaign for Drawing; arts and crafts and rural economy are fostered; scholarships and awards across a wide variety of areas are granted; and symposia are held to discuss issues of contemporary concern and debate.
The Guild is run by a Board of Directors, a secretary, and a Master who meet three times a year (as of 2010, the Master is Clive Wilmer ). Every autumn, Companions attend an AGM, which hosts the Ruskin Lecture which is usually published, like its own journal, The Companion, by the Guild itself.