The Arts and Crafts movement, flourishing in Britain between 1880 and 1920, rejected mass production in favour of creativity and individualism. Opulent, fussy decoration was ditched for craftmanship, honest design, traditional building techniques and ordinary materials such as stone and tiles. External features were often built with traditional, local materials and designed to clearly express their structural function. Its adherents – artists, architects, designers, writers, craftsmen and philanthropists – were united by a common set of aesthetics, that sought to reassert the importance of design and craftsmanship in all the arts in the face of increasing industrialization, which they felt was sacrificing quality in the pursuit of quantity.
Architecture
The architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement was its most radical and influential aspect, and architects such as Webb, Voysey, M. H. Baillie Scott (1865-1945), Norman Shaw (1831-1912) and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, developed principles which not only influenced 19th century architecture but would later become the touchstones of twentieth-century architects. These included the belief that design should be dictated by function, that vernacular styles of architecture and local materials should be respected, that new buildings should integrate with the surrounding landscape, and that freedom from historicist styles was essential. The result was a number of buildings – especially houses for the middle class – that architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner called ‘fresher and more aesthetically adventurous than anything done at the same time abroad’. These architectural canons fed the growing Garden City movement in Britain in the early twentieth century, which brought together on a large scale Arts and Crafts design and Morris’s social reform ideals. The Garden City movement was based on the theories of Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928), as put forward in his highly influential book, Tomorrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform, 1898 (later revised as Garden Cities of Tomorrow in 1902). Howard’s social policies advocated the creation of small, economically self-sufficient cities throughout the country, with the aim of halting urban sprawl and overcrowding. Numerous such cities were built, with varying degrees of success, and the ordinary home became the focal point of progressive architects throughout the country.
