William Morris, an architect and designer whose passion fueled the Arts and Crafts Movement, rejected forces that would separate art from everyday life and dedicated himself to fighting ugliness in all its forms. He decreed that if craftsmen-artists-designers take direct responsibility for their creations it would thus restore a pride in work that had been violated by the anonymous production line.

Morris and Company was founded in 1861 and fabricated tastefully superior handcrafted furnishings for the mass consumer. Morris’s workshops and guilds, inspired by medieval models, were training grounds for the total artist, working with all mediums and forms from architecture to typography.

Arts and Crafts ran the gamut from its most characteristic primitive Gothic to asymmetrical floral designs, the Shaker-inspired simplicity of the American designer Gustav Stickley, the elegant ornamentalism of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and the early geometric stylings of Frank Lloyd Wright. Morris encouraged the movement to return to simple figures, colors, and ornamental backgrounds. It was his emphasis on “decorative honesty,” that proved of lasting significance.

Other names: John Ruskin

Quotes by Ruskin | Morris | Frank Lloyd Wright

Adapted from: Graphic Style: From Victorian to Post-Modern.
Chwast, Seymour/Heller, Steven. Harry N Abrams, Inc., 1988.