A member of the Arts and Crafts Movement, architect and philanthropist, Ashbee had established the Guild as an educational and productive enterprise, producing silverwork, woodwork and bookbinding.
His guildsmen were his works of art, whom he tried to fashion in as many ways as possible following the model he had devised. Life together first at Essex House, in the East End of London, and then in the Cotswolds, in Chipping Campden, was an integral part of his conception of craftsmanship, where working in the workshop was supplemented with excursions, the putting up of theatre plays, and physical activities.
His brief time in Egypt was spent as a teacher of English at the Sultanyiia College, where he was not in charge of any artistic teaching, but during which he wrote extensively in his memoirs about his ideas to reform craftsmanship and his observations of the country.
It relates not just to bodily distinctions or to formal precept. Taking place in a completely different setting, with Ashbee working as a teacher of English under the supervision of the department of Public Instruction in Egypt, and as civic adviser in Jerusalem, the relationship between craft and masculinity in his work outside of Britain seems less self-evident. Instead of an all-male guild, his audience during these years was varied, and consisted mostly of middle-class Egyptian male students training to be teachers, and of young craftsmen in Palestine.
Issues of age, class, race and gender were deeply imbedded in this newly redeployed attempt for Ashbee to implement his theories, arguably representing his last chance to do so. In both Egypt and Palestine he was given a number of important responsibilities, from teaching to heritage preservation and urban renewal in Jerusalem.
