The Arts and Crafts Movement was a collective term for associations of designers formed in Britain in the second half of the 19th century in reaction to the taste-flattening style imitations and mass-produced industrial goods of the time. Its purpose was to work for an artistically full-value residential environment and good utility goods for everyone, in connection with John Ruskin's and William Morris's socio-aesthetic program, including through collaboration between artists and manufacturers.
The leading figures of the Arts and Crafts Movement were C.R. Ashbee, M.H. Baillie Scott, A.H. Mackmurdo, and C.F.A. Voysey. The movement gained great significance and reached the continent around the turn of the century 1900, where it also came to influence the development of Art Nouveau.