Arts and Crafts movement

The Arts and Crafts movement was an international movement in the decorative and fine arts that began in the British Isles in the 1880s as a reaction against the decline in design and craftsmanship blamed on industrial mass production. It was inspired by the writings of Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin and given practical form by the designer William Morris, and it took its name from a term used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at an 1887 society meeting. In architecture, its practitioners rejected historical revival styles in favor of an honest British vernacular idiom, favoring solid well proportioned forms, wide porches, steep roofs, pointed window arches, brick fireplaces and visible wooden fittings that celebrated natural materials and handcraft over factory production. The movement had largely run its course in Britain by about 1920, though its ideas continued to spread across Europe and North America.