- By 1851, England was confident
as the dominant world power
with a massive manufacturing boom.
The future was bright, with a wealth
of new machines and technologies.
Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert
decided to build an exhibition for the world
to witness the wonders of Victorian England.
The Great Exhibition was housed
inside the Crystal Palace,
a massive structure of steel and glass
dominating the landscape.
Inside there were 10 miles of objects and exhibitors.
There were over 15,000 contributors
exhibiting products from all of England's colonies.
There were hydraulic presses, adding machines,
printing presses, and textile machines.
The public marveled at the inventions and excess
with pride in Britain's dominance and power.
The Great Exhibition was an enormous success.
By the time it closed, over 6 million people had visited.
But some of those 6 million weren't that thrilled.
William Morris and several friends
visited the Great Exhibition and were revolted.
The excess and ornamentation, the mass-produced products,
low quality of craftsmanship, and dehumanizing nature
of industrial manufacturing disgusted them.
First, Morris looked at the Gothic style
and its return to medieval values,
but soon deemed it too ornate
and simply a decoration.
Over the next 20 years, he worked with
a talented group of artists and designers
to define a style that was honest,
humble, handcrafted, and made with pride.
When several items were exhibited in London
at the new gallery, the public had grown tired
of Victorian excess and Gothic ornament
and was looking for something new.
Enthusiastic reviews praised the new gallery exhibition
as being full of things which seem to have been done
because the designer enjoyed doing them.
But of course, others called the products eccentric.
By the 1880s, Morris's firm, Morris and Company,
expanded the appeal of the arts and crafts movement
to a younger generation.
It appealed to their need for something new
and rejection of industrialization.
To set themselves apart from their parents and grandparents,
and to own something unique.
Around the same period, English architect and designer
Arthur H. Mackmurdo, created the Century Guild
for craftsmen, which quickly spawned similar groups
promoting arts and crafts ideals.
These men celebrated the concept
that there was no meaningful difference
between the fine and applied arts.
A painting and a table were both works of art.
Morris and Company also revived the art of hand-printing,
hand-made paper and championing the idea of quality
over quantity in bookmaking.
While the group endorsed high quality
and value to the common man, from the beginning,
there was a disagreement about its practicality
in the modern world.
The products and work that the designers and artists
created in the movement could not be mass-produced.
And if they were, that defeated the goal
of a retreat from the industrial economy.
Critics proposed that the arts and crafts movement
wanted to turn the clock back,
which was impossible.
Even the harshest critics of the new movement
who called the products as the work of a few for the few,
agreed that the arts and crafts movement
represented rejection of a type of design that was,
"a marketable affair," controlled by the salesman
and the advertiser, and at the mercy
of every passing fashion.
If you read any contemporary design magazine or blog,
you'll find the same statement applied to design today.