The arts and crafts movement was both a design philosophy and a way of life. William Morris is considered to be the movement's founding father and his influence is still with us today.

It was the overly ornate, styles shown at The Great Exhibition of 1851 that sparked a reaction among designers of the time. They detested the mass production of the Industrial Revolution and instead set up medieval style guilds which involved both the artists and the craftspeople in the whole process of production.

Simple honest furniture - often in oak, sometimes in mahogany or wallnut - with minimal decoration are the hallmarks of Arts & Crafts pieces. Hand-beaten metalware, studio style pottery and glass, and jewellery with semi precious stones took many hours to produce.

Leading British designers including CFA Voysey. CR Ashbee and the Guild of Handcraft, Archibald Knox, Ernest Grimson and Edward Barnsley of the Cotswold School, John Paul Cooper and Bernard Instone (who worked together in Westerham), Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott, John Pearson and the Newlyn School.

Manufacturers included Liberty, Heal & Son, Shapland & Petter of Barnstable, and Wylie & Lockhead of Glasgow. Parallel movements are found internationally.

Perhaps inevitably - and ironically for a socialist movement - designers found that the cost of producing their pieces meant that they were only afforded by the elite, and competition from factory produced versions led to the demise of these small workshops.