American Craftsman

Architectural style

American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. Its immediate ancestors in American architecture are the Shingle style, which began the move away from Victorian ornamentation toward simpler forms, and the Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright. "Craftsman" was appropriated from furniture maker Gustav Stickley, whose magazine The Craftsman was first published in 1901. The architectural style was most widely used in small to medium sized Southern California single family homes from about 1905, so the smaller scale Craftsman style became known alternatively as "California bungalow". The style remained popular into the 1930s and has continued with revival and restoration projects.

The American Craftsman style was a 20th century American offshoot of the British Arts and Crafts movement, which began as early as the 1860s. A successor of other 19th century movements, such as the Gothic Revival and the Aesthetic Movement, Members of the Arts and Crafts movement also balked at Victorian eclecticism, which cluttered rooms with mismatched, faux historic goods to convey a sense of worldliness. The movement emphasized handwork over mass production. In some ways, it was just as much of a social movement as it was an aesthetic one, emphasizing the plight of the industrial worker and equating moral rectitude with the ability to create beautiful but simple things. These social currents can especially be seen in the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris, both highly influential thinkers for the movement. In addition, adherents sought to elevate the status of art forms that had previously been seen as a mere trade and not fine art. In architecture, reacting to both Victorian architectural opulence and increasingly common mass produced housing, the style incorporated a visibly sturdy structure of clean lines and natural materials. The movement's name American Craftsman came from the popular magazine, The Craftsman, founded in October 1901 by philosopher, designer, furniture maker, and editor Gustav Stickley. The magazine featured original house and furniture designs by Harvey Ellis, the Greene and Greene company, and others. The designs, while influenced by the ideals of the British movement, found inspiration in specifically American antecedents such as Shaker furniture and the Mission Revival Style, and the Anglo Japanese style. Emphasis on the originality of the artist/craftsman led to the later design concepts of the 1930s Art Deco movement. The architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright, himself a member of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, was inspired by the style to become an innovator in the Prairie School of architecture and design,