"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." —William Morris
The Arts and Crafts Movement was a dominant influence in visual and decorative arts and architecture in the decades leading up to and after the turn of the last century. Growing out of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Aesthetic movements in England, it offered an artistic and philosophical reaction to the florid, overdecorated, and industrialized designs of the high-Victorian era.
William Morris’s pronouncements on beauty, utility, nature, and the joy of hand-craftsmanship guided the movement’s artists. Rejecting machine work as deadening to workers and mass-produced commercial goods as aesthetically inferior, Morris revived many craft arts such as tapestry and book-making. Across the Atlantic, the Arts and Crafts philosophy challenged the opulence and crassness of America’s Gilded Age. Morris’s principles were interpreted in the Craftsman, Roycroft, and Mission styles, among others, and influenced a new generation of creators.
Bonita Billman, who teaches art history at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, explores the rich flowering and legacy of a movement whose influence is still felt.
The Arts and Crafts Movement in England (9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.)
- 9:30 to 11 a.m. William Morris and the movement’s origins
- 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Morris’s influence on his successors including Asbhee, Voysey, and Webb
12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Lunch (Participants provide their own lunch)
The American Arts and Crafts Movement (1:30 to 4:15 p.m.)
- 1:30 to 3 p.m. Gustav Stickley, Greene and Greene, the Bungalow Style, Frank Lloyd Wright
- 3:15 to 4:15 p.m. Roycroft and Byrdcliffe, Maria Longworth Nichols and the rise of American art pottery
Smithsonian Connections
View an online exhibition of the work of seminal California architects Charles and Henry Greene.
