The Arts and Crafts movement that inspired Stoneywell

Growing from a desire to revive the skill of craftsmanship, the Arts and Crafts philosophy aimed to restore simplicity and honesty to how buildings and furnishings were made. The Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction against industrialisation and mass production in the Victorian era.

 

Although it was at its height between about 1895 and 1915, its origins lie a little earlier with the great thinkers John Ruskin and William Morris, who railed against what they felt were the evils of mass industrialisation and machine production.

 

Their philosophies of good craftsmanship and pride in one’s work were embraced by people like Ernest Gimson, Sidney and Ernest Barnsley, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Edwin Lutyens.

 

Such architects used local materials and designed their buildings down to the last detail, sometimes including the furniture, which they might even make themselves.