A Brief History of the Arts & Crafts Movement
 

The Arts and Crafts movement began in the late 1800's as a design aesthetic interested in handmade utilitarian items produced by well trained craftsmen.

It was a reaction against the Industrial Age tenet
that any machine-made product, however hideous and overly designed, was desirable simply because a machine produced it quickly and efficiently.

At the same time, Arts & Crafts touted the simplicity and honesty of design origins, denying the florid excesses of the Victorian Age.
   

A founding member and major proponent of this aesthetic was the  English designer, William Morris. Along with Pre-Raphaelite painter, Edward Burne-Jones, Morris spearheaded the movement that offered an alternative to the pretentious, heavy and overly
decorative Victorian style that was popular at the time.

Morris's firm produced designs for textiles, rugs and carpet. wallpaper and furniture. (The classic Morris Chair is still seen today in modern interpretations)

Morris & Company created designs for hand tufted carpets as well as for the Wilton and axminster carpet factories of the British midlands.

Designs were  based on natural motifs such as plants, flowers, birds and animals. Patterns were drawn and scaled not for realism, but stylized and
simplified to be graphic representations of nature.

One of the influences on the Arts & Crafts movement was Jacobean decorative design from the early 17th Century, which featured  large-scale, brightly colored  non-realistic flora patterns. (The Jacobean period is named for King James,  Queen Elizabeth I's successor, who reigned from 1603 to 1649). 

In Arts & Crafts, flowers and leaves are simplified, outlined and flattened, flowing  in serpentine patterns, and ornamented by the occasional bird or tiger.

Arts & Crafts designs are often symmetrical and one-
directional, presaging  the subsequent Art Nouveau
period.

The most well known Arts & Crafts practitioners in England, in addition to Morris, were Charles Vovsey, Arthur Macmurdo and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Mackintosh's  long career bridged  both the Arts and Crafts period and the ensuing period of Art Nouveau.    

Although the Arts & Crafts  movement was short lived, it continues to be influential. It was re-interpreted a few decades later in the American Arts & Crafts movement, also known as the Mission Style.

In the U. S., the Arts & Crafts movement was best expressed  by Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style homes, stained glass windows and spare  textiles and rug designs. Today, Stickley Furniture is most closely associated with  American Arts & Crafts Mission design.

The American Arts & Crafts movement is also exemplified by Charles Eastlake's Craftsmen Cottage architecture on the East Coast and the California Bungalow style popularized by the West Coast architectural firm of Greene & Greene.

-- Arthur Douglas Thayer

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