The Arts and Crafts Lifestyle and Design

A grand tour of grand estates shows the classic lines, exquisite craftsmanship, timeless beauty, and sublime color that exemplified the revolutionary Arts and Crafts movement at the dawn of the twentieth century. Its impact on home furnishings of the day is fully detailed in this gloriously illustrated volume-a timely release in view of the current huge revival in popularity of the movement's artistic ideas and standards, including today's trend toward clean, uncluttered interiors. In radical reaction to strict Victorian dictates and grandiose home interiors, visionary designers, led by William Morris, urged a return to the simpler vernacular traditions and emphasis on craftsmanship that had been submerged by the industrial age. The movement spread from England and became international in scope, challenging mass production by substituting simple elegance, originality, and superior quality in all areas of home design. This book takes readers on a room-by-room inspection of the movement's foremost examples, visiting such signature estates as the Gamble House in Pasadena, California, and Standen in East Grinstead, West Sussex, England. Diverse domestic spaces are explored through outstanding original photography and compelling text, revealing how a room's function determined the selection and placement of furniture, textiles, wallpaper, ceramics, and other objects. Profiling the works of Morris, Green and Green, Edwin Lutyens, Gustav Stickley, C.F.A. Voysey, Philip Webb, and Frank Lloyd Wright, among others, this handsome volume explores the individual interpretations that gave the style its enduring substance.