Arts and Crafts Movement

Victoria and Albert museum

2005 BCE

In 2005, the Victoria and Albert museum hosted the exhibition 'International Arts and Crafts'.

Displaced by modernism

1930 BCE

Products were to be manufactured by individuals or small groups rather than on a mass production line. Ornamental objects, floral fabrics, book making, weaving, jewelry, enameling, metalwork and ceramics, were all influenced by the Art and Crafts movement. The Arts and Crafts Movement supported economic and social reforms as away of attacking the industrialized age. Its influence was felt in Europe until it was displaced by modernism in the 1930s and continued among craft makers long afterwards.

Work of a savage

1899 BCE

The work could be highly decorated but was often extremely plain. The roughness and simplicity of some work was shocking. One reviewer in 1899 referred to an Arts and Crafts piece as looking 'like the work of a savage'.

Charles Voysey

1895 BCE

Charles Voysey was an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a simple Arts and Crafts style, but he is renowned as the architect of a number of notable country houses. An Unexpected Arts and Crafts Gem – Perrycroft. The house was the first commissioned the renown Arts and Craft’s architect, CFA Vosey received for a house.

Arts and Crafts exhibition society

1887 BCE

The movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts exhibition society, founded in 1887. It promoted embroidery, fabrics, upholstery and furniture. The Guild of Handicraft (1888) was another association set up during this time.

Began in Britain

1880 BCE

The Arts and Crafts Movement began in Britain around 1880 and quickly spread to America, Europe and Japan. Inspired by the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris, it advocated a revival of traditional handicrafts, a return to a simpler way of life and an improvement in the design of ordinary domestic objects. Traditional craftsmanship using simple forms and often used medieval, romantic or folks styles of decoration.

Walter Crane

1874 BCE

Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children’s book creator of his generation. Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. In 1865 he began to collaborate with Edmund Evans on toy books of nursery rhymes and fairy tales.

William Morris

1873 BCE

William Morris was an artist, designer, printer, typographer, bookbinder, craftsman, poet, writer and champion of socialist ideals. He was best known for his wallpaper and textiles designs. His work was inspired by the art of the Middle Ages and nature. He believed that industrially manufactured items lacked the honesty of traditional craft work. In 1873, he created 'Tulip and Willow' which was a drawing for block-painted fabric.

Philosophy behind Arts and Crafts Movement

1765 BCE

The philosophy behind the Arts and Crafts movement believed that the industrial revolution had made man less creative as ‘his’ craft skills had been removed from the manufacturing process. One aim of the movement was to put ‘man’ back in to the design and manufacturing process, Craft skills and good honest design would again be central to the manufacturing process. The Arts and Crafts movement influenced other art movements such as the Modernism, movements that believed in simplicity of design.

Industrial Revolution

1765 BCE

The Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution. The development of the steam engine by James Watt in 1765 led to the mechanization of industry, agriculture and transportation and changed the life of the working man in Britain. They feared that the industrialization was destroying the environment in which traditional skills and crafts could prosper, as machine production had taken the pride, skill and design out of the quality of goods being manufactured.

Sir William Armstrong's home becomes the first to use electric light

Jan 17, 1881

The mansion created at Cragside in Rothbury (Northumberland) by the Scottish architect Richard Norman Shaw was designed to incorporate every modern convenience. Built for the engineering magnate Sir William Armstrong, it was called 'the palace of a modern magician'. Swan's new electric lamps were powered by water from a local stream through a dynamo-electric generator.