What was the Arts & Crafts Movement?
The Arts & Crafts Movement was the most important and influential art movement to emerge from England in the last 250 years.
Young London-based architects were at the forefront of the Movement. They founded the Art Workers’ Guild in 1884 to break down barriers between architects, artists, designers and makers. The term ‘Arts and Crafts’ was first used at the suggestion of the bookbinder T J Cobden-Sanderson for its offshoot, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, set up in 1888. It involved designers and makers but also manufacturers.
In simplest terms the Arts & Crafts Movement was an art movement based on clean lines and functional forms, truth to materials and the use of nature as the source for all pattern. It was a reaction against the Victorian fashion for inventive sham and over-elaborate design.
It is very difficult to define as a style unlike, for example, Art Nouveau or Art Deco.
