About Arts and Crafts

The Arts and Crafts Movement lasted from the 1880s to the 1920s, with its peak happening between 1890 and 1905. The Movement developed as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and its mass production of low-quality and unremarkable products.

The Industrial Revolution began in the mid 1700s and lasted until around the 1920s. It was marked by a switch from a primarily farm-based lifestyle to a factory-working, city-living lifestyle, as well as mass production of goods using materials like iron and steel, new energy sources like coal and petroleum, new machinery, and (at least theoretically) less human input. Craftsmen now did not hold their tools in their hands; they instead oversaw a machine that would do the hard work for them.

In 1879, British textile businessman William Morris published a book called “The Art of the People”. It criticized the quality and the societal impact of the goods made from mass-producers, and sparked the Arts and Crafts Movement. The aims of the movement were simple: Preserve and emphasize the natural qualities of the materials, make pieces by hand, and make them well. Arts and Crafts-era pieces can take on many forms, from the spare, slick style of Stickley’s furniture to the painterly strokes of Morris’ embroidery and McLaughlin’s ceramic paintings.

As with many things today, the items painstaking wrought by artisans at the turn of the century were not cheap. In spite of being a movement “for the people”, many were priced out of buying the pieces of these artisans.