Mar. 13 Arts and Crafts Architects

At exactly the same time the new skyscrapers were developed in Chicago, a diverse group of architects were working at a very different scale, reforming domestic architecture. The Arts and Crafts movement was a truly international design movement and involved furniture, textiles, and painting, as well as buildings. Several authors were major figures in the Arts and Crafts movement, such as William Morris. Like Pugin, Morris looked back with admiration to the pre-industrial past. In the architecture of his own home, the Red House in Bexleyheath, England, designed in 1859 by Philip Webb, he illustrated his interest in medieval architecture. His ideas were particularly influential in the decorative arts. His firm Morris, Marshall and Faulkner designed wallpapers, stained glass, carpets, furnishings, and books and advocated simplified, well-crafted models. A devoted socialist (see his book New from Nowhere, 1890), Morris believed that labour could be made more enjoyable and that well designed objects should be within the reach of all people. In architecture, we see Morris' influence in places like Bedford Park, where houses were designed in the so-called Queen Anne style or the English Domestic Revival.

John Ruskin was another extremely influential writer, both in the principles he tried to establish and the "styles" he recommended. In terms of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic, Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) was particularly important. His "lamp of truth" prohibited the use of machines for handiwork.

A Scottish architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, was interested in "total design": houses, fabrics, furniture, even clothing. This philosophy was best expressed in his design for the Glasgow School of Art in 1896, an important centre for the teaching of Arts and Crafts ideals. In the Hill House in Helensburgh, Scotland, 1902-03, Mackintosh illustrated his ideas for the reform of the home.

North American architects were less interested in the political implications of the Arts and Crafts movement. Frank Lloyd Wright, however, would have agreed with the British architects that the way to reform society was through the redesign of the home. In his so-called "prairie houses," he exploded the old model of the house comprised of separate, boxy rooms. Unlike Morris, Wright embraced machine technology. Our example is the Robie House, in Chicago, of 1908.

Charles and Henry Greene's Gamble House in Pasadena, California, of 1908, is an Arts and Crafts style "bungalow." Designed like a piece of furniture, the Gamble house has exquisite wooden interiors, showing the influence of Japanese architecture. What is important here, however, is the appearance, rather than the fact, of being handcrafted.

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