Philadelphia Art Museum curator David Barquist highlights the Arts and Crafts movement by focusing on Philadelphia artists who sought to correct what they saw as the poor quality of factory production by embracing the British Arts and Crafts movement's principles of handwork, simplicity in design, and what they called “truth to materials.”

The Arts and Crafts movement in Philadelphia began with the 1876 Centennial Exposition in the city and the founding that year of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, where many of the artists taught or were trained. Despite their shared interest in Arts and Crafts principles, the artists created individual responses that were shaped in part by the size and organization of their workshops. 

Distinctive in the Philadelphia area were several rural craft communities in outlying counties that celebrated handcraftsmanship yet were made possible by urban wealth. Following World War I, Arts and Crafts artists shifted from workshops to individual studio practices, while European Modernism inspired stylistic and technological change.

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