A Closer Look at the Arts and

Crafts Movement In Architecture

 In England and then America in the late 19th
century, a middle class revolution occurred
against Victorian values, industrialization and
the mass production of low-quality products.
 Originally a British movement whose roots can
be traced back to the early 1800's, the social
and moral preachings of people such as John
Ruskin and William Morris in the late 1800's
influenced the burgeoning what would be
known as the Arts and Crafts Movement.
 The Arts and Crafts Movement
 The Arts and Crafts movement initially developed in
England during the latter half of the 19th century.
Subsequently this style was taken up by American
designers, with somewhat different results. In the
United States, the Arts and Crafts style was also
known as Mission style.
 This movement, which challenged the tastes of the
Victorian era, was inspired by the social reform
concerns of thinkers such as Walter Crane and John
Ruskin, together with the ideals of reformer and
designer, William Morris.
 Medieval Guilds provided a model for the ideal craft
production system.
 Aesthetic ideas were also borrowed from Medieval
European and Islamic sources. Japanese ideas were also
incorporated early Arts and Crafts forms.
 The forms of Arts and Crafts style were typically
rectilinear and angular, with stylized decorative motifs
remeniscent of medieval and Islamic design.
 In addition to William Morris, Charles Voysey was
another important innovator in this style. One designer of
this period, Owen Jones, published a book entitled The
Grammar of Ornament, which was a sourcebook of historic
decorative design elements, largely taken from medieval
and Islamic sources.
 This work in turn inspired the use of such historic sources
by other designers.
 Page from “The
Grammar of
Ornament”by
Owen Jones
 The philosophy behind the Arts and Crafts
Movement was recognition that technology, or
industrialization, did not equate to a higher
quality of life for individuals.
 The Arts and Crafts Movement believed that
the degradation of social values, which was
evident through poor working conditions,
poverty and the exploitation of workers, was
caused by wide-spread industrialization.
 By 1880, the Arts and Crafts Movement became the
symbol for the "liberal middle class“
 The movement strove to make art affordable to all
people, create better working conditions, and
influence a climate where artists who ranged from
architects to those involved in the fine arts, were free
to be creative.
 In the new society which the Arts and Crafts
Movement hoped to influence, artists could design
and create each piece of work from start to finish.
 Pieces would be hand-made and of the best quality.
 Their notions of good design were linked to their
notions of a good society.
 This was a vision of a society in which the worker
was not brutalized by the working conditions
found in factories, but rather could take pride in
his craftsmanship and skill.
 The rise of a consumer class coincided with the
rise of manufactured consumer goods.
 In this period, manufactured goods were often
poor in design and quality.
 Ruskin, Morris, and others proposed that it would
be better for all if individual craftsmanship could
be revived-- the worker could then produce
beautiful objects that exhibited the result of fine
craftsmanship, as opposed to the shoddy products
of mass production.
 Thus the goal was to create design that
was... " for the people and by the people,
and a source of pleasure to the maker and
the user."
 Workers could produce beautiful objects
that would enhance the lives of ordinary
people, and at the same time provide decent
employment for the craftsman.
 Child
labour in a
textile mill
19th century
 Because of its strive for universal accessibility
to art, the movement was considered to be
closely allied with socialism in its dictate that
"honest craftsmanship is good for both the
craftsman and the inhabitant of a 'reformed'
home" (Anscombe, pg. 56).
 The Arts and Crafts Movement focused on
personal aesthetics and the individual.
 In these aesthetic values, the movement
believed that society produced the art and
architecture in which it deserves.
 However,in time the English Arts and Crafts
movement came to stress craftsmanship at the
expense of mass market pricing.
 The result was exquisitely made and decorated
pieces that could only be afforded by the very
wealthy.
 Thus the idea of art for the people was lost, and only
relatively few craftsman could be employed making
these fine pieces.
 This evolved English Arts and Crafts style came to be
known as "Aesthetic Style."
 It shared some characteristics with the
French/Belgian Art Nouveau movement.
 Ironically, by the end of the Arts and Crafts
Movement in the first quarter of the 20th
century, the products of the movement became
so expensive that only the wealthy could
afford them.
 William
Morris at
Age 23
 William
Morris
 The 18th Century Water House, Morris‟s
family home from 1848 to 1856, is now the
William Morris Gallery.
 A committed socialist and medievalist,
William Morris (1834 - 1896) was horrified by
increasing mass-production and mechanisation
in the arts and wished to reinstate the values of
traditional craftsmanship and simplicity of
design.
 His slogan was that art should be „by the
people, for the people‟.
 The firm‟s earliest commissions came from the
church. The projects took the form of stained
glass designs with a medieval theme.
 Whilst concentrating on
ecclesiastical stained
glass, the firm of Morris
also produced hand-
painted tiles, table glass
and furniture.
 Its furniture ranged
from simple, rush-seated
‘Sussex’ chairs to
spectacular, one-off
projects like the St
George cabinet, designed
by Philip Webb and
decorated by Morris
with scenes from the life
of the saint.
 DAISY
WALLPAPER
Designed by William
Morris, 1864.
 Morris designed two
wallpapers, Daisy and
Trellis, in the early
1860s when he was
living at Red House.
 Both designs were
registered in
February 1864 and
the wallpapers were
hand-printed for
Morris by Jeffrey &
Company of
Islington.
 WANDLE CHINTZ
Designed by William Morris,
1883-4.
 Like a number of Morris’s
chintz patterns of the 1880s,
Wandle is named after a
tributary of the river
Thames, the Wandle being
the stream which flowed past
the Morris & Company
workshops at Merton Abbey,
Surrey.
 MARIGOLD WALLPAPER
AND CHINTZ Designed by
William Morris, 1875.
 The Marigold pattern was one
of relatively few which Morris
used for both wallpapers and
printed textiles.
 As a wallpaper, the sinuous
vertical meander is especially
prominent, whereas the
pattern-structure is more
subtly suggested in a draped
textile (e.g. as curtain fabric).
 BROTHER RABBIT
CHINTZ Designed by
William Morris, 1882.
 The Brother Rabbit
pattern was inspired,
according to May
Morris, by the ‘Uncle
Remus’ stories which
her father was reading
to the family at their
Hammersmith home,
Kelmscott House.
 It was one of the first
textiles to be printed at
Merton Abbey, where
Morris & Co. moved its
workshop premises at
the end of 1881
 Wandle
printed
cotton
fabric
(1884),
designed by
William
Morris.
 William Morris Trellis
 Produced in 1864, Trellis
was William Morris' first
design for wallpaper. It is
believed to have been
inspired by the rose trellis in
the garden at Red House,
Bexleyheath, where Morris
spent the early years of his
married life.
 The house was designed by
his colleague and lifelong
friend, the architect Phillip
Webb who also drew these
stylised blue birds.
 William Morris Trellis
 Produced in 1864,
 Beth Russell has interpreted the design as an elegant square
needlepoint rug and it is offered in two colourways. It looks
well on the floor, on a wall, as a throw or table covering.
 The design,
doubled and
mirror-imaged,
is now available
as a one piece
rug.
 William
Morris
Tulip
 Tulip is from a pretty repeating pattern
showing rows of tulips curving to the left
interspersed with rows of slightly different
tulips curving in the opposite direction - all
surrounded by the traditional Morris heavy
foliage
 The fabric was block printed by Thomas
Wardle in 1875 in a variety of colourways and
proved a commercial success for Morris.
 William De Morgan Animals
 William De Morgan met William Morris in 1863 and
remained a friend for the rest of his life.
 A leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, De
Morgan was talented in many fields, particularly
stained glass and pottery.
Most of his needlepoint designs were taken from a
wide selection of six-inch ceramic tiles that he made
in his workshop in Chelsea in the 1870s.
 He later moved closer to Morris at Merton Abbey in
Surrey.
 De Morgan‟s tiles and highly glazed pottery are now
in the collections of museums all over the world.
 William De Morgan Animals
 William
De
Morgan
Animals
 Sussex rush-seated chair
designed and
made by Morris & Co
with Peacock and
Dragon woven wool
fabric.
 RED HOUSE
 Bexleyheath,
Kent.
 The Home Of
William
Morris

 The unique well

in the south
garden
 RED HOUSE
 Today the house
reflects the works
and influence of
Edward Burne-
Jones, Faulkner,
Rossetti, Webb,
Jane Burden (a
talented
embroiderer in her
own right) and
William Morris.
 Interior of Red
House
 The National Trust has secured the future of Red House, Bexleyheath,
South East London, which is of international significance in the
development of the Arts and Crafts movement.
 Commissioned by William Morris and designed by
Philip Webb, two of the founders of the Arts and
Crafts movement, the house is a landmark in the
history of domestic architecture and the garden
inspired Morris‟s early designs of wallpaper and
fabric.
 Completed in 1859, Morris lived there with his wife
Jane for five years.
 Red House was designed to express a set of social,
architectural and cultural values drawn from history.
 It was Webb‟s first private commission and with its
garden was planned as a single entity.
 Morris believed that the garden should „clothe‟ the
house linking it with the countryside which then
surrounded it.
 The house was constructed of warm red brick, under
a steep red-tiled roof, with an emphasis on natural
materials.
 The sense of space and light was a radical departure
from the high Victorian style of the day and much of
the interior was decorated by Morris and Webb with
Rossetti and Burne-Jones.
 The Red House, situated in the heart of Bexley,
designed for William Morris by his architect friend
Philip Webb in 1859, is a seminal Arts and Crafts
building.
 In 1904 the German Scholar Herman Muthesius
described Webb's building as, 'the first private house
of the new artistic culture, the first house to be
conceived as a whole inside and out, the very first
example in the history of the modern house'.
 It subsequently entered most of the written histories
of 'modern' architecture.
 The Residential Architecture of C. F. A. Voysey
 (1857-1941)
 Influenced by William Morris, Voysey's first designs were for
wallpaper & textiles.
 He sought a national style, a new domestic vernacular for
England.
 He adapted rural and vernacular elements to create his style -
often rendered in splatterdash stucco, characterized by
horizontal window elements and large continuous roof
surfaces.
 His work managed to be far more independent of the past that
his peers, free of much of the period architectural influences.
 Voysey also designed many of the interiors to his houses
including the furniture, fabrics, and decorative tiles and
metalwork.
 Moorcrag, " Gillhead, Cumbria 1898-1899
 Arts and Crafts Interior
 The term Mission style was also used to describe Arts and
Crafts Furniture and design in the United States.
 The use of this term reflects the influence of traditional
furnishings and interiors from the American Southwest, which
had many features in common with the earlier British Arts and
Crafts forms.
 Charles and Henry Greene were important Mission style
architects working in California.
 Southwestern style also incorporated Hispanic elements
associated with the early Mission and Spanish architecture,
and Native American design.
 The result was a blending of the arts and crafts rectilinear
forms with traditional Spanish colonial architecture and
furnishings.
 Mission Style interiors were often embellished with Native
American patterns, or actual Southwestern Native American
artifacts such as rugs, pottery, and baskets.
 The collecting of Southwestern artifacts became very popular
in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
 However in the United States, the Arts and Crafts ideal of
design for the masses was more fully realized, though at the
expense of the fine individualized craftsmanship typical of the
English style.
 In New York, Gustav Stickley was trying to serve a
burgeoning market of middle class consumers who wanted
affordable, decent looking furniture.
 By using factory methods to produce basic components, and
utilizing craftsmen to finish and assemble, he was able to
produce sturdy, serviceable furniture which was sold in vast
quantities, and still survives.
 The rectilinear, simpler American Arts and Crafts forms came
to dominate American architecture, interiors, and furnishings
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
 Today Stickley's furniture is prized by collectors, and the
Stickley Company still exists, producing reproductions of the
original Stickley designs.
 American Arts and Crafts or Mission Style
by G.Stickley
 „Mission Style Interior