Named after the London-based
Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society founded in 1888, the Arts
and Crafts movement began initially as an ideological reaction to the de-humanizing
effects of late 19th-century industrialization. Essential aims were to revive
a medieval guild system with high standards of craftsmanship, to instill a pride
of craft and to make truth to materials the basis of design. Early proponents
(John Ruskin, William Morris and C.F.A. Voysey) espoused joy of labor and a return
to simplified, honest forms. Stylized motifs,
refined surfaces and proto-Art Nouveau lines were admirably realized in the work
of Charles Robert Ashbee and Archibald Knox who eventually abandoned all stylistic imitations to forge a new design
vocabulary.
