Vintage View: Arts & Crafts movement

BEFORE Art Deco mesmerised a generation of collectors in the 1970s and ’80s, the design period of Arts & Crafts was the last style group that purist antique dealers would acknowledge as properly antique.

Even then, it was tagged on to the tale of high Victorian. This was a movement stirred up by a group of talented idealists, artists, and intellectuals in the 1860s in Britain, continental Europe, and America. It was to peter out as a popular design style just before the First World War, although some adherents and design houses continued to champion its principals for decades.

The word ‘honest’ is often used about Arts & Crafts pieces as they were made to replicate practical hand-made furniture without extraneous details, or fussy lines. There’s no more ancient and quietly regal a wood than oak. Arts & Crafts furniture restored oak above the parlour fancies of satinwood and mahogany to King of the forest.