How to create beautiful Arts & Crafts inspired spaces.

In this article we will show you how to create an interior inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th Century. For those interested in the history of the movement, check out Arts & Crafts — The Era of Natural Beauty!

The Colours

Lets start with colours — mustard yellows, creams, terracotta's, olive greens, deep blues and vivid crimsons. The Arts & Crafts movement was all about the rich, velvety colours of the natural world. Many of these colours have been gaining in popularity again in recent years (“Spiced Honey”, a warm amber tone is Dulux’s colour of the year 2019 and “Cherished Gold”, a rich ochre colour only a couple of years ago in 2016!) meaning you can add a slightly more up to date look to your interior whilst still sticking to that gorgeous well known style of Arts & Crafts.

Wallpaper

Elegant wallpapers were key to the Arts & Crafts movement and are an effective way of embracing this style into your home — though without having to reduce yourself to using vegetable dyes and woodblocks to print out the design, nowadays there is a huge selection of reproduction wall papers which can easily be found online. When the Morris’s firm closed its doors in 1940, Sandersons purchased all the printing blocks from them, so you can be sure to find the one that’s right for you from here: https://www.stylelibrary.com/sanderson

Flooring

This period saw a rise in parquet flooring — geometric mosaics of thin wooden strips, the most popular of which being laid out in a “Herringbone” style. If you are lucky enough to own a house built in this period of time, you may find that the original flooring may be hidden under the carpets, either the more intricate parquet flooring or the more simple, yet just as beautiful, dark oak flooring. If so, embrace it! Get those carpets up and look at getting a professional in to sand it down and polish it. If you are not this lucky, never fear — there are plenty of ways of recreating this style of flooring with laminate or floor tiles.

Fireplaces and Tiles

In many of the houses of the period, the fireplace was king — it would dominate the room and be the focal point, much like the TV is nowadays! The fireplace would normally have a wide hearth and would be set in an inglenook or recess. The mantle piece would often be beautifully carved and it was normal to see tiles bordering the fireplace. The tiles would be similar to those seen in the concurrent Art Nouveau movement but often with brighter colours. These could be decorated with galleons and stylised flowers or be more simple geometric shapes. More cost effective reproductions can be bought from various retailers today but if you have the funds, then see if you can buy original — you will certainly notice the difference in how the tiles were crafted!

Stained Glass

Stained glass was hugely popular because of it’s grand, almost Medieval feel. Many Arts & Crafts houses will have been built with some kind of stained glass present and if you are looking to recreate the authentic look, then definitely try and implement it where possible! Similar to tiles, you can buy reproduction but if you can, we would always recommend buying the original — the craftsmanship just can’t be rivalled today.

Furniture

Now the heavy stuff (literally!) Furniture in this period was almost always made of solid wood, often with either the intricate detailing such as floral carving, or more simple angular pieces with an emphasis on vertical lines. Chairs would with have leather or rush seat pads, whilst it was common to see copper studs decorating tables and sideboards. Whatever the piece, you can be sure of the quality — the craftsmanship of Arts & Crafts furniture is incomparable to anything that came before it and is certainly of a higher calibre than much of the mass produced furniture from this century!

So now you know how to achieve the Arts & Crafts look, its time for the exciting bit, finding the items! From salvage yards to buying online, you need to be searching high and low to find those original pieces.

So now you know how to achieve the Arts & Crafts look, its time for the exciting bit, finding the items! From salvage yards to buying online, you need to be searching high and low to find those original pieces.

—————————————————

My name is James Broad, antique & curio enthusiast turned entrepreneur. I buy, restore & sell beautiful things for homes & commercial interiors. For more information, check out my About Me page; for products, have a look at my Inventory & for anything else, well, just click on the big CONTACT button.

Achieving the Natural Look.