The Story of Craftsman Home Plans

The model was the basic cottage house plan, with well-proportioned forms, steep roofs, deep porches, pointed arched windows, wood fittings and brick fireplaces and chimneys. The Arts and Crafts movement in architecture was a reaction against the ornate and artificial styles prevalent in the late nineteenth century. Followers of the movement promoted rural handicrafts and were often associated with socialism. Designers following Arts and Crafts principles often employed patterns drawn from local flora and fauna, and used strong colors and bold forms.

One of the hallmarks of the style was simplicity and integrity of form, often exposing the underlying construction without superfluous ornamentation as well as truth to structure, function, and materials which reflected a moral purpose in art. The Arts and Crafts movement is usually considered the child of artist William Morris and the art critic John Ruskin, who idealized the honesty of work, and considered machines to be the root cause of many social problems. Its basic tenets were traditional hand craftsmanship and truth to the materials employed in building. Craftsman home plans were the product of the Arts and Crafts movement, which flourished in America, England, and Canada in the last decades of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries as a reaction against the soulless machine production typical of the Industrial Revolution, and the frivolous embellishment which characterized Victorian architecture.