A fresh look at the Arts and Crafts Movement, charting its origins in reformist ideals, its engagement with commercial culture, and its ultimate place in everyday households.

In its spread from Britain to the United States, the Arts and Crafts Movement evolved from its roots in individual craftsmanship to a mainstream trend increasingly adapted for mass production by American retailers. Inspired by John Ruskin in Britain in the 1840s in response to what he saw as the corrosive forces of industrialization, the movement was profoundly transformed as its tenets of simple design, honest use of materials, and social value of handmade goods were widely adopted and commodified by companies like Sears, Roebuck and Co. Hardcover, 256 pages.