Arts & Crafts Architecture

The Arts and Crafts movement flowered in the 1870s and 1880s; at its heart was a search for a return to simplicity, quiet beauty and honesty of construction. This text gives an account of the lives, theories and work of the architects of this movement. For about three decades at the turn of the century, Arts and Crafts architecture and the theories behind it caught the attention of the Western world as the Gothic revival was set on a new and vigorous course by the ideas of Pugin, Ruskin and Morris. Looking back to an idealized medieval world in which the artist was also a craftsman, they opposed the inhumanity of the Industrial Revolution and showed the way to a new future in which the Gothic spirit could serve people's needs. A whole generation of architects, artists and craftsmen was inspired by their ideals of truth to tradition, to materials and to function to create an architecture of freedom and originality.