The Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction to the industrial revolution.

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Design Essay 1

Rowan Milne

Due to the industrial revolution in the 18th century, materials such as furniture etc were increasingly being mass-produced in order to meet demand. This led to a decrease in the amount of hand made products, as they would tend to be more expensive than the mass-produced goods. Eventually this resulted in fewer people having the individual artistic skills needed to produce these objects. However, although manufactured goods were cheap they lacked individuality and artistic value; this led to many people rejecting these items.

The Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction to the industrial revolution. There were many types of people involved in this movement, such as designers, architects, poets, authors and musicians. They wanted to reach out from the manufactured market and to re-instate a society, which involved individuality and the need for original design. One method of enforcing this movement was to produce more objects by craftsmen and avoid the use of machinery.

People involved in this movement were influenced and inspired by medieval designs and natural things such as birds and flowers. Many techniques from the past were also used to produce pieces of art, for e.g., stained glass window making, tapestry and weaving.

William Morris was one of the key designers involved in the arts and crafts movement. He believed in designing things as a whole, for e.g. designing and decorating a house altogether as one co-ordinated piece of art.

William Morris re-created and encouraged hand-produced industry in this machine age. He hand crafted variety of products, such as woven goods, hand-dyed textiles, wallpaper and furniture. These were things, which at this period in history were commonly mass-produced in a factory. However, although this encourages much enthusiasm it was not incredible successful due to the fact that his products were understandably expensive.

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William Morris’s designs were predominantly influenced by plant life and medieval history and legend. When Morris was young he lived in a mansion in Essex which was surrounded by 50 acres of land, exploring this vast garden allowed him to learn about plant life and become inspired.

Morris went to Oxford University and there he met a painter called Edward Burne-Jones. They became friends and together they took action against the social and artistic disadvantages of the time. After university Morris spent much time experimenting with different types of artistic expression. He tried architecture, painting and poetry.

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