Residences, viewed by the Arts & Crafts practitioners as a bulwark against the harsh conditions of industrialization, a regenerative spiritual haven, and the locus of the traditional family unit, became the building type most associated with the movement (a rather interesting occurrence, as most people associate "Arts & Crafts" with hand-made objects). Its steep roofs, L-shaped asymmetrical plan, and overhanging eaves recall the Gothic style, with the brick introducing a simple, pedestrian touch, which contribute to its general recognition as the first Arts & Crafts building. In 1859 Morris had commissioned Webb to design a house for his family in London, named appropriately "Red House" due to the deep color of its brick. In 1861, Morris founded the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., along with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Philip Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner, and Peter Paul Marshall, which specialized in wallpaper designs featuring natural imagery. Morris also moved in the same circles as the painter Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, all of whom were fascinated by medieval art and nature. A young and well-heeled devotee of Ruskin's commentary was William Morris, an apprentice to the Gothic-Revival architect George Edmund Street. The chief criticism of the manufactured objects on display was the riot of unnecessary ornament with little concern for utility.
The spark for the Arts & Crafts movement was the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair, held in London. For both Ruskin and Pugin, there was a strong association between the morality of a nation and the form of its architecture, and the Gothic for them symbolized the peak of human development. They contrasted its vices with the Gothic era before the Renaissance, which they viewed as an idyllic time period of piety and high moral standards as well as a healthful, green environment. Cities likewise became doused regularly with pollution from a bevy of new factories.Ĭritics such as the writer John Ruskin and architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin railed against these problems of industrialization. Industrialization moved large numbers of working-class laborers into cities that were ill-prepared to deal with an influx of newcomers, crowding them into miserable ramshackle housing and subjecting them to dangerous, harsh jobs with long hours and low pay. It was first and foremost a response to social changes initiated by the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain and whose ill effects were first evident there. The Arts & Crafts movement grew out of several related strands of thought during the mid-19 th century.
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