ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT

Although the Arts and Crafts movement dominated England between the years 1860 and
1915, its effects were felt around the world, especially in Western Europe and the United
States, well into the 1920s. Artwork associated with the Arts and Crafts movement is
characterized by a handcrafted aesthetic that embodied the principles of its English
founders: C.R.Ashbee, W.R. Lethaby, and William Morris, among others. The
philosophy these men advocated centered on their belief that the Industrial Revolution
had produced substandard goods with little artistic merit. In response to this situation,
they sought to reintroduce handmade products to the arts and to elevate the craftsman to a
more prominent position in the design professions. In refocusing the production of art
away from machines and toward individual designers, Arts and Crafts leaders hoped to
reform society by changing the way art was created, patronized, and appreciated in
English society.
The Arts and Crafts movement promoted the idea of truth in architecture, meaning that
a building should clearly express its structure, function, and material. An uncluttered
exterior and interior, without applied decoration to obscure the structure, was considered
the ideal, partly because the aesthetic was easily achieved without machines. This idea of
truth and clarity in architecture contrasted sharply with the Victorian aesthetic currently
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in vogue in England in which elaborate and ornate decora-tions, usually multicolored and
machine-made, dominated architectural design. Ashbee, Lethaby, and Morris believed
that Victorian interiors hid truth and clarity from the viewer by obscuring the forms and
shapes of a building. To this end, the simpler aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts returned
truth to architecture and contrasted with the “false” art created by the machine.
The idea of a simple aesthetic had regional, national, and historic overtones. Leaders
of the Arts and Crafts movement argued that the corrupted state of artistic production
resulted from the negative influence of industrialization on Western, particularly English,
society. Therefore, artistic production could be reformed by reviving methods of art and
craft that predated the industrial era. As viewed by the Arts and Crafts founders, the
period that best exemplified the preferred mode of artistic production was the age of
English medieval architecture. Not only did English medieval architecture fully embody
the Arts and Crafts ideal of a simple and truthful aesthetic, but buildings of the style were
local and easily available for study. Most important, the forms of English medieval
structures were already synonymous with the English architectural identity, and therefore
reviving English medieval art and craft promoted the English national identity through
architectural form. In using English medieval models, Ashbee, Lethaby, and Morris made
direct connections between the past and the present and between the historic and the
modern to make the Arts and Crafts aesthetic pertain directly to England.
The use of English medieval models also embodied the vision of craftsmen working
for a truthful aesthetic, which Arts and Crafts leaders strenuously advocated. In general,
English medieval structures had been constructed by laborers who worked with hand
tools to build a collective monument from honest artistic labor. Ashbee, Lethaby, and
Morris argued that because the work of these craftsmen was not mass-produced, it had
not been corrupted by the machine. Therefore, English medieval models served as
examples of how the individual craftsman could enhance the design of an aesthetic
masterpiece by ensuring that every part of the design received individual attention and
that every form was designed and created by hand. Ashbee, Lethaby, and Morris
envisioned groups of craftsmen, metalworkers, stonecutters, and carpenters working
together toward a finished product that combined a variety of different media. Inspired by
these medieval models, Arts and Crafts leaders believed that artistic production could
separate itself from the mechanized methods of the Victorian age to create a detailed and
truthful expression of its time and place.
Attention to detail resulted in an idea that was fundamental to the Arts and Crafts
movement: that of a total work of art. The Arts and Crafts aesthetic was not limited to
any one particular medium; in fact, Ashbee, Lethaby, and Morris argued that all arts
should be used to create a complete effect such that the whole became more than the sum
of its parts. Every aspect of an Arts and Crafts interior or structure, whether it was art or
architecture, was considered relevant to the design, and in this way the entire
environment was subject to consideration by a designer or a design team. To this end,
many Arts and Crafts workers began to experiment with processes that machines had
performed for decades, and crafts such as fabric dyeing and printing experienced a
renaissance as new methods were investigated and new objects produced.
Because the Arts and Crafts movement is a movement largely of ideas, it is difficult to
single out particular designers or works, or to identify particular forms as characteristic of
the Arts and Crafts style. In terms of architecture, Philip Webb’s Red House, in Upton,
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Kent, commissioned by Morris in 1859, serves as one outstanding example of Arts and
Crafts architecture in England. Taking its name from its red brick construction, the design
of the Red House avoided all decoration that recalled a direct model and instead followed
the functional needs of Morris and his family. Murals, wall hangings, tapestries, and
wallpapers together created a homey and medieval ambience through natural motifs that
included animals, birds, flowers, and trees, all of which were native to the area or to
England. Designed and crafted by Morris, his wife Jane, Philip Webb, and Morris’s
friend Dante Gabriel Rosetti, the Red House expressed a relaxed and informal medieval
atmosphere where different artistic media conveyed a total aesthetic.
Arts and Crafts architecture relied on historic local and regional influences
to ensure that each house would wholly be a product of its place. Looking
back to earlier examples of Scottish domestic architecture, Charles Rennie
Mackintosh intended his 1903 Hill House, in Helensburgh,
Dunbartonshire, Scotland, to connect with the Scottish medieval past
through a re-use of medieval and local forms. Like that at the Red House,
Hill House’s facade is plain, with limited applied ornament.
The exterior
consisted of smooth stucco with low, protective eaves; deep windows and
porches; and buttresses that were borrowed from nearby examples of the medieval country church. Inside, Hill House embodied the
same idea of a total work of art in its consideration of all aspects of the space. Dark wood
shaped in simple and linear forms decorated the walls, while the beams supporting the
upper stories were left open to view. Handcrafted furniture and plain, white walls created
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a cozy effect, while the lighting filtered through wooden screens and lampshades to warm
the room. Mackintosh’s appreciation for the materials and his honest expression of the
structure through planar forms made Hill House fully represent the goals of the Arts and
Crafts movement.
The Arts and Crafts movement had greater impact on craft than on architecture, as
craftsmen were encouraged to incorporate many different artistic media into a single
product. Many Arts and Crafts designers worked in groups or partnerships, with each
partner specializing in a different process, such as printing or metalwork. Morris’s firm,
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, founded by Morris in 1861, serves as an
excellent example of this diversity, as the firm could produce wallpaper, furniture,
murals, stained glass, carvings, metalwork, and tapestries. The inclusion of different
artistic media not only added to the overall effect of the Arts and Crafts interior but also
recalled the idea of a medieval system in which different artists worked together, each
providing an essential and necessary component that enhanced the overall product.
The Arts and Crafts ideology and aesthetic was not limited to English and Scottish
designers. The reform efforts of Ashbee, Lethaby, Morris, and Mackintosh resonated
with designers of other nations, many of whom struggled with the issue of artistic
national identity, the impact of the machine on society, and the economic effect of
mechanized art. Each nation, however, tended to isolate and incorporate different aspects
of the ideology of the Arts and Crafts movement as they related to each nation’s context.
In the United States, for example, Morris’s ideas were complemented by the efforts of
Gustav Stickley, who promoted an agenda similar to Morris’s through his magazine, The Craftsman .
For Stickley, a return to a handcrafted aesthetic not only promoted art and social reform
but also educated the public and provided many with the means to earn their own living.
Unlike the English Arts and Crafts leaders, Stickley was less concerned with evoking a
medieval atmosphere in his designs, especially because the medieval did not have a
connection to the American past. Instead, Stickley argued that the simple Arts and Crafts
aesthetic could enhance the social conditions of the worker. As a result Stickley chose to
harness the power of the machine in favor of the worker rather than at the worker’s
expense. Ultimately, Stickley’s more famous designs, such as the 1903 Morris chair,
were produced by his own workers using machine technology.
Outside of Stickley’s magazine and furniture empire, other American designers
worked to apply Arts and Crafts principles to American design. One team of designers,
Charles Sumner Greene and his brother, Henry Mather Greene, experimented with native
materials in the design of the 1908 David B.Gamble House in Pasadena, California.
Aesthetically, the Gamble House explored craftsmanship through a new venue that
merged nature with handcraft, such that the Gamble House expressed its total work of art
through a strong connection between building and landscape. In contrast to the Greene
Brothers’ design is the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who used machines to create a
similar effect. The Robie House (1908) in Chicago is an example of Wright’s efforts to
use simple forms and low-hanging eaves to evoke a sense of movement between parts.
Like most other Arts and Crafts designers, Wright carefully considered the appearance of
the interior, using rich materials and patterns to create a sumptuous yet planar aesthetic.
Although Wright’s interiors relied on machines for their production, his interest in
promoting a unified interior and the straightforward use of natural materials resembled
ideas from the English Arts and Crafts leaders.
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Like American designers, European designers placed more and less emphasis on
different aspects of the Arts and Crafts ideology. In Belgium and France, the Art
Nouveau movement, spearheaded by Samuel Bing, Victor Horta, and Hector Guimard,
sought to strike a new balance between modernity and handcraft through an emphasis on
naturalistic forms. In Barcelona, Spain, Antoni Gaudí explored regional identity through
the native materials he used to create an imaginative and unique architectural style.
Likewise, in Austria, the Vienna Secession movement, under the leadership of Otto
Wagner, advocated an artistic break from the past and experimented with simple forms
and planar volumes. All the products—art, architecture, and crafts—produced by French,
Belgian, Spanish, and Viennese designers in these movements borrowed from the Arts
and Crafts ideology, even if their work resulted in vastly different forms.
By 1914 the Arts and Crafts movement had faded from the architectural scene, and
new ideas moved into its place, taking English, American, and Western European
designers into the machine aesthetic and the International Style. Scholars recognized that
the Arts and Crafts movement had important links with the Modern movement, which
had first promoted the idea that architecture could reform society. Some designers, such
as Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, had direct connections with Arts and Crafts
ideology and partook in the Arts and Crafts revolution of form, helping to refocus artistic
production from its classical roots to its modern agenda. Without the simplicity of the
Arts and Crafts movement and its emphasis on social reform, the Modern movement
would have lacked a certain strength and vigor. The Arts and Crafts movement represents
an important precursor to subsequent movements and the development of new forms for
architectural production.