Arts and Crafts Movement

Even more than fine arts, traditional crafts underwent most fundamental changes through industrialization in the 19th century. Manual production of artisan goods was replaced by automated production, which made it possible to produce innumerable identical copies of the same model. Obstacles regarding time and material were made up by technology, as costs and efforts for the production of the individual item could be minimized.
This transformation from arts and crafts to mechanical production was highly welcomed by a great part of society in the context of a general belief in progress. For instance by prince Albert von Sachsen-Coburg, who celebrated this development at the first world exhibition in London in 1851. However, it were mostly artists who expressed criticism. They mourned the alienation of arts and crafts through the machine, the lack of originality, as products were reduced to mere imitations, and the debasement of the artist, who was supposed to submit to technology.
The most radical and forceful critic of industrialization was the English William Morris (1834-96), who had been influenced by the theories of John Ruskin (1819-1900). Morris, who was skilled in all fields of art, was the driving force in the artisan reform that was pursued by a number of schools all over Europe in the late 19th century. Together with Edward Burne-Jones (1833-98), a friend from his discontinued theology studies, he asked for a return to an artists' association that followed a medieval model. On the basis of this philosophy, he founded the company "Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.", which was just called "Morris & Co." as of 1875. Through working collectively, the artists tried to save arts and crafts from the then present state of alienation and to create "pristine" works, as this was regarded the source of real beauty. Their works were characterized by functionality, simplicity and a high quality. The program's biggest problem was the price, an issue that the convinced socialist Morris was quite concerned with. He sought to find a solution by making simpler pieces that were not made after medieval models but after the ideas of English regionalists.