Arts and Crafts Society, beyond Decoration

Around the mid-nineteenth century, the Englishmen John Ruskin and William Morris laid the foundations of a new way of conceiving design and craftsmanship. The innovative scope of their ideas was immense. The Arts and Crafts movement, which they had given birth to, radically changed the way of designing and creating everyday objects from that moment on. In 1861 the theories took concrete shape and William Morris founded a furniture and decoration company, with the aim of reviving craftsmanship. He surrounded himself with a group of artists, designers and producers who, with their proposals, influenced the generations that followed. The exhibition Beyond William Morris: British Arts and Crafts, 1890-1920 traces the salient moments of that revolution that shaped modern design. Visitors can admire drawings, wallpapers, textiles, furniture, ceramics, metalwork, jewelery and stained glass created by Morris and her daughter May, an embroidery designer and jeweller, by the English architects and designers Charles Francis Annesley Voysey and Charles Robert Ashbee, the works of artist and book illustrator Walter Crane and Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh.