Craftsman Style

クラフツマン様式 / 1870s–1920s / Style / Furniture and Interiors

A style of architecture, interior design and decorative arts that prevailed in the United States from about 1870 to about 1925. It follows the English Arts and Crafts movement in rejecting historical styles for plain simplicity, but its carriers included social reformers, educators and women's organisations as well as architects. It appears most often in modest houses such as bungalows, where materials are treated simply and left visible.

Craftsman Style — Gustav Stickley (United Crafts), armchair, 1901, Art Institute of Chicago — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 · © Sailko — Gustav Stickley (United Crafts), armchair, 1901, Art Institute of Chicago — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 · CC BY 3.0 · © Sailko

Craftsman Style — Greene and Greene, dining room furniture suite, 1908, Indianapolis Museum of Art — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Greene and Greene, dining room furniture suite, 1908, Indianapolis Museum of Art — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Craftsman Style — Craftsman-style bungalow, 1915, Marshfield, Wisconsin — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Craftsman-style bungalow, 1915, Marshfield, Wisconsin — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual cues

Beams and brackets stay exposed rather than being boxed in
No capitals, scrolls or other parts borrowed from historical styles
It works at the scale of a modest house such as a bungalow, not a mansion
Wood and stone are left unpainted, so surfaces are made of grain and natural colour

Best used for

Fitting out a house or a shop where quality has to come from exposed structure rather than added ornament
Grounding a craft focused brand in an American lineage rather than an English one

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Dictionary entry

Type: Set headings in a face with heavy vertical stems, kept modest in size. No decorative rules and no display flourishes.
Composition: Emphasise the horizontal and arrange elements low and wide. Order comes from how the members line up, not from symmetry.
Material: Use wood, stone and tile unpainted, and leave joints visible. Keep colour close to the material itself and hold saturation down.
Caution: Staging simplicity as a decorative effect merely swaps one borrowed historical style for another.
Further study: how Ruskin and Morris were reread in the United States / where the bungalow as a house type came from / how far it diverges in period and region from the English Arts and Crafts movement

Related entries

Arts and Crafts (アーツ・アンド・クラフツ)Shared effects: Nostalgia.Compare Craftsman Style and Arts and Crafts
Prairie School (プレーリー・スクール)Shared effects: Calm / Trust.Compare Craftsman Style and Prairie School

Often confused with

Prairie School (プレーリー・スクール)compare

Cite this entry

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