Art and Crafts Movement.

John Ruskin and William Morris were the main founders of the Arts and Crafts Movement 1860-1910. Ruskin admired the ornaments that were handmade and believed that they were the genuine articles which contained the real beauty of craftsmanship. William Morris was an educationist, theorist, writer and lecturer. Without him there wouldn't have been the important change.

William Morris’ main concern was to produce beautiful things. He disliked modern civilisation and his aim was to produce ‘harmony between various parts of a successful work’. Morris was influenced by the paintings of the Pre Raphaelites. Morris ordered manufacturers to simplify their designs and encouraged the merging of the designs. William Morris was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites as said earlier. He was mainly influenced by John Colliers Lady Godiva painting which was produced in 1897.

William Morris.

The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of British poets, painter and critics that were founded by William Holman Hunt, Dante Rossetti and John Millais. They were inspired by the theories of John Ruskin and their main aim was to reform art by abandoning what it considered to be the mechanist approach which was first adopted by the two great artists Michelangelo and Raphael, hence the name “Pre-Raphaelites.  Their main inspirations and principal themes were originally religious, however they also used subjects from literature and poetry particularly those of love and death.

Lady Godiva

The Art and Crafts Movement encouraged spiritual harmony, individualism, Hand-made goods rather than machine made equality, re-appraisal of design materials. The awareness about crafts spread all over Britain and expanded to America where another industrial revolution started and became stronger. The Movement also recommended Honesty, simplicity of lines, fidelity to function and National pride which was a very important factor for the movement at that time.

Another member and follower of the Art and Crafts movement was Charles Robert Ashbee. Ashbee was an English designer and business man and set up his Guild and School of handcrafts in 1888.The products of the century guild included: Textiles, Furniture and Metal work. The guild eliminated mechanical symmetry and weight that was found in Victorian decorative Art. Ashbee was inspired by the works of John Ruskin and William Morris.

During the time of the Arts and Crafts movement the Aesthetic movement emerged. The main factors of this movement were: Pure Beauty in art and design, arts for art’s sake and art without any moral social purpose.

All these movements inspired modern designers to use painting of floral designs and print them on either T-shirts or on mobile covers. A lot of fashion designers are inspired by these painting and designs nowadays and we can find different designers that used these inspirations to produce their works as we can see below.

T-Shirt Inspired by a William Morris Painting.

Iphone Case inspired by Morris' Painting