Arts & Crafts & W.B. Brown topics for free program

On Tuesday, Sept. 14, at 6:30 p.m. a free program on America’s Arts & Craft Movement and Bluffton’s successful artisan W. B. Brown will be presented by Charles A. Shepard III, Director of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.
The program will be presented at the Arts Commerce & Visitors Centre, which was designed by Fort Wayne architect Ron Dick to be reminiscent of the arts and crafts movement period..
The American Arts and Crafts Movement is a domestic style in architecture, interior and landscape design, applied arts and the decorative arts. It’s influence on lifestyle philosophy began in the last years of the 19th century and as a comprehensive design and art movement it remained popular into the 1930s. However, it has continued with numerous revivals and restoration projects through present times, having won hearts and tastes of generations.
The Arts Commerce & Visitors Centre has one of the original Brown chandeliers gracing the centre’s window overlooking the Wabash River. It was originally in the First Bank of Berne.
Brown’s Bluffton company made lamps, furnishings and home interior decor from 1906 to 1923. Dr. Michael and Jill Clark researched the Brown legacy on their visits to Wells County in the early 2000’s. The simple, refined aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts era were meant to ennoble middle class homes, often bungalow styled. The restrained and harmonious beauty of the style continues to appeal to today’s designers.
Shepard’s program is offered free of charge through the outreach endeavor of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art and is hosted in Bluffton by the Creative Arts Council.