The Studio Magazine was an illustrated fine arts and decorative arts magazine, founded in Britain in 1893, which exerted a major influence on the development of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements.[1]
The Studio promoted the work of "New Art" artists, designers and architects—it played a major part in introducing the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Charles Voysey to a wide audience—and it was especially influential in Europe[2].
From 1906 onwards Studio published an annual survey, The Studio Year-Book of Decorative Art, dedicated to the latest trends in architecture, interior design, furniture lighting, glassware, textiles, metalwork and ceramics.[3] These annuals championed Modernism in the 1920s and later the "Good Design" movement. In the later 20th century the annuals gave increasing prominence to architecture and interior design and in the mid-1960s it was retitled Decorative Art in Modern Interiors. The annual ceased publication in 1980[2].
The following passage in Nevile Shute's 1927 novel So Disdained captures the nature of the magazine and the influence it had on British people at the time:
"Lord Arner had in his library all the bound volumes of Studio since the beginning. When he was worried or upset over anything he used to go in there and sit down beside the fire, and turn these volumes over slowly. When he came to a picture that he liked he would sit staring at it for a long time without moving. He liked water-colour reproductions best, I think, and especially garden sketches, water colours of herbaceous borders, and paintings with delicate, bright colours. Sometimes he would pass the heavy volume across when he found a drawing that he particularly admired."
Copies of the magazine survive either as individual copies in their rather flimsy card covers, or as hardback bound volumes, usually containing four monthly issues. The Year-Books, especially those from the 1906-14 period, are particularly collectable, capturing as they do the design 'zeitgeist' of the era.
Frank Rutter was one of the contributors.[4]
The Stairway to Heaven lyrics, printed on the album sleeve of Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV album, were typeset in a font inspired by a part of an old issue of Studio magazine.[5]