Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts and Crafts Movement, art movement of the last half of the 19th century that strove to revitalize handicrafts and applied arts during an era of increasing mass production.

The movement coalesced in 1861, when the English designer William Morris founded the firm of Morris, Marshall, & Faulkner. Arguing that the true basis of art lay in the crafts, Morris and his followers attacked the sterility and ugliness of machine-made products; his firm promoted hand-made textiles, books, wallpaper, and furniture. Around him grew a circle of other artisans, notably the architects Philip Webb and C. F. A. Voysey (known for his “cottage” style), the cabinetmaker Ernest Gimson, the potter William De Morgan, and the designers Walter Crane and C. R. Ashbee. The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (founded 1888) and the magazines The Studio and Hobby Horse provided forums for the dissemination of the movement’s ideas.

In Scotland, Glasgow became a lively center of the movement in the 1890s, under the leadership of the brilliantly innovative architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In Vienna, the movement was the inspiration for the craft-oriented Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop). In the United States it led to the establishment of notable craft workshops and exhibition societies, while the mission style in furniture and architecture carried arts and crafts ideals up to the years of World War I.

The movement was the principal forerunner of the art nouveau style, and, in its emphasis on plain materials and surfaces, it was one of the dominant sources of 20th-century modernism.

See also Bookbinding; Furniture; Pottery.