Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

The Arts & Crafts movement thrived from the late 19th Century to the beginning of the First World War. The movement encouraged individualism in design as well as execution. The Art and Crafts Movement enjoyed varying levels of popularity in Britain, continental Europe and the United States, and manifested itself in architecture, furniture, bookbinding, pottery, and textile, as well as numerous other crafts. The Victorian style of heavily ornamented interiors displaying many pieces of furniture, collections of small ornamental objects, and surfaces covered with fringed cloths prevailed in middle-class homes in England and America during the latter half of the 19th century. Instead simplicity, good crafts man ship and good design came in and the Arts and Crafts movement was born. The Industrial Revolution separated humans from their own creativity and individualism; the worker was a cog in the wheel of progress, living in an environment of shoddy machine-made goods, based more on ostentation than function. The Arts and Craft movement reestablished ties between beautiful work and the worker, returning to honesty in design not to be found in mass produced items. In both Britain and America the movement relied on the talen