The underlying principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement have an interesting parallel in the modern times as more and more people are becoming dissatisfied with the products of the overtly technological age and are instead seeking meaning through the crafts and craftsmanship of the past.
A great many of these artisans were looking back upon the idealized forms of the medieval age, reintroducing the highly decorative forms of the gothic to their contemporaries in their artwork, objects and architecture. Other influential individuals in this period included Augustus Pugin and John Ruskin. “Not only art but also everyday objects, buildings, décor, everything lacked a face, and it was the realization of its lack in this particular respect which began to make the period so cruelly conscious of its anonymity.”1 In everything they did, crafters working under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement placed value in art created by hand for limited edition prints such as the highly scrolled first page of “The Nature of Gothic,” designed and printed by William Morris. The Aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement The start of the Arts and Crafts Movement around 1860 isgenerally attributed to William Morris in response to the ever-encroaching identical sameness of the machine-made objects churned out of the factories that had supplanted the cottage industries of the past.
