The Arts and Crafts Movement began primarily as a search for authentic and meaningful styles for the 19th century and as a reaction to the eclectic historicism of the Victorian era and to 'soulless' machine-made production aided by the Industrial Revolution. Considering the machine to be the root cause of all evils, the protagonists of this movement turned away from the use of machines and towards handcraft, which tended to concentrate their productions in the hands of sensitive but well-heeled patrons. Though the spontaneous personality of the designer became more central than the historical 'style' of a design, certain tendencies stood out: reformist neo-gothic influences, rustic and 'cottagey' surfaces, repeating designs, vertical and elongated forms. In order to express the beauty inherent in craft, some products were deliberately left slightly unfinished, resulting in a certain rustic and robust effect. There were also sentimental Socialist undertones to this movement, in that another primary aim was for craftspeople to derive satisfaction from what they did. This satisfaction, the proponents of this movement felt, was totally denied in the industrialized processes inherent in compartmentalised machine production.

In fact the proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement were against the principle of a division of labour, which in some cases could be independent of the presence or absence of machines. They were in favour of the idea of the master craftsman, creating all the parts of an item of furniture, for instance, and also taking a part in its assembly and finishing, with some possible help by apprentices. This was in contrast to a shop where everything would be oriented towards the fastest production possible, with one person or team doing all the legs of a piece of furniture, another doing all the panels, another assembling the parts and yet another doing the paint and varnish or other finishing work, all according to a plan laid out by a furniture designer who would never actually work on the item during its creation. The movement sought to reunite what had been ripped asunder in the nature of human work, having the designer work with his hands at every step of creation.