Arts and Crafts architecture: how to identify it

what it is

Arts and Crafts architecture uses local materials and traditional building methods in place of applied, factory-made ornament. Houses usually have steep roofs, tall chimneys, wide porches and asymmetrical plans, with walls of brick, stone, rough plaster or timber. Construction is left visible: exposed beams, pegged wooden joints and hand-forged metal hinges and latches. Interiors were designed as a whole, with furniture, fabrics, tiles and wallpaper by the same designers or workshops.

In England, Red House in Bexleyheath (1859), designed by Philip Webb for William Morris, has red brick walls and a steep tiled roof. Standen in West Sussex (1892-1894), also by Webb, is furnished with Morris carpets, fabrics and wallpapers. In Scotland, Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art (1897-1909) adapted the movement's ideas to a large public building. In the United States, Greene and Greene's Gamble House in Pasadena (1908-1909) has exposed timber joinery inside and out. Compared with Victorian houses of the same years, Arts and Crafts houses have plainer exteriors and little machine-made trim.

how to spot one

Exposed rafter tails The ends of the rafters, the sloping beams that support a roof, left visible under the roof edge instead of being boxed in. They are common on Craftsman bungalows of the early 1900s. Shingle siding Wood shingles, small overlapping pieces of split or sawn wood, covering the outer walls as well as the roof. It defines the Shingle Style, especially on New England coastal houses. Prominent chimney A large chimney built on an exterior wall, often of patterned brick or grouped into clusters of stacks (shafts above the roof). It is common on Tudor Revival and Queen Anne houses.

Also look for

Deep eave overhang Half-timbering Knee brace

history

The movement grew in Britain from the writings of John Ruskin, whose The Stones of Venice (1851-1853) criticized industrial production, and from the work of William Morris (1834-1896), whose firm began selling furniture, textiles and wallpaper in 1861. Five young architects, including William Lethaby, founded the Art Workers' Guild in 1884. The name dates from 1887, when the bookbinder T. J. Cobden-Sanderson used it for the new Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which held its first show in 1888.

The first American Arts and Crafts Exhibition opened in Boston in 1897. Gustav Stickley's magazine The Craftsman, first published in 1901, and the Roycroft community in East Aurora, New York, promoted the style in the United States, and Greene and Greene built bungalows and larger houses in California. In Europe, the Wiener Werkstätte (1903) and the Deutscher Werkbund (1907) took up its principles while accepting industrial production. In Britain the Exhibition Society's 1912 show lost money, and by about 1920 the movement had been replaced by modernist design that worked with industry rather than against it.

where to find it

Red House near London and the Cotswolds in England, Pasadena's Greene and Greene houses, and Craftsman-era neighborhoods everywhere.

architects

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Victor Horta

easy to confuse with

Gamble House, an example of Craftsman / Bungalow

Craftsman / Bungalow Low, broad bungalows with deep porches on thick tapered piers, visible rafter ends, and angled roof braces.

Robie House, an example of Prairie School

Prairie School Long horizontal lines: broad low roofs, deep overhangs, and continuous bands of windows hugging the ground.

Liberty London, an example of Tudor Revival

Tudor Revival Storybook medieval English: decorative dark timber over stucco, steep gables, and massive patterned chimneys.