Designing Utopia: John Hargrave and the Kibbo Kift by Cathy Ross and Oliver Bennett

by Cathy Ross

This is the first detailed account of the remarkable British writer and artist John Hargrave (1894-1982), and his three creations The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, The Green Shirt Movement for Social Credit and The Social Credit Party of Great Britain. Combining art, politics and design to visually stunning effect, Hargarve and his followers created a maverick but uniquely English form of modernism. Emerging from the turbulence of the twentieth century, this colourful Utopian youth movement has strong resonances with the twenty-first-century world. The book draws on the extensive visual archive of the Kibbo Kift, held at the Museum of London.

Genres: Politics, Art

Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Hargrave and his organizations -- the Kibbo Kift, the Green Shirts, and the Social Credit Party -- are prime exemplars of my favorite kind of 20th Century strangeness and this book does justice to their stories. The detail here enlivens the stories and fits them, as much as possible, into the landscape of 1930s Britain. In brief, the Kibbo Kift were a kind of semi-pagan scouting organization that modeled themselves after Longfellow's "Hiawatha;" the Green Shirts were an activist street-level movement, perhaps slightly more right than left in their politics but who sometimes joined the Red Shirts in beating up the Black Shirts; and the Social Credit Party was based on a complex proposal to obliterate the bank-driven economy in favor of one based on "real value," derived from actual cost -- with gain distributions to all citizens.

What distinguishes all three groups here though is the power of Hargrave's visual imagination. The Kibbo Kift in particular embody the "primitive modernism" of his graphic designs, honed from illustrating children's books and other publications. DESIGNING UTOPIA is beautifully complemented by color plates and some of the images are astonishing.

This is a terrific example of a volume of rare history designed as an art book -- the perfect fit for its subject. Absolutely recommended.

[Angeliki Kapoglou · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book about John Hargrave, who started an offshoot of the scouts and a political party but in between found time to patent a navigator that was trialed by the UK defense and the used without his permission in the first Concorde.