The Arts & Crafts Interior

From a period-appropriate paint color scheme to Stickley furniture, the Arts & Crafts interior has many facets to it.

Walls in a period green complement antique Stickley furniture. Ed Addeo

The Arts & Crafts movement sees beauty where it really lives: that’s why there have been so many vernacular and regional expressions. Wherever you live, Arts & Crafts is there to speak to you. Its buildings may be stone or brick or shingled, depending on custom; its motifs may refer to the designs of the Navajo or to local fauna.

Under the Arts & Crafts umbrella you’ll find expressions as different as those of British architect C.F.A. Voysey, American Arts & Crafts pioneer Gustav Stickley, Pasadena’s Greene & Greene, and the Midwest Prairie Style of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Moravian tiles and Pugin-designed wallpaper in a 1908 Tudor. William Wright

Today’s houses and interiors are no less varied. What they have in common is an organic simplicity, at least by Victorian-period standards.

Still, they are fully decorated, proto-modern but not Modern. Woodwork and trim, wallpaper and paint, rugs and pillows and portières contribute to the cozy effect.

Highland Park design rug from today’s Stickley.

Patricia Poore is Editor-in-chief of Old House Journal and Arts & Crafts Homes, as well as editorial director at Active Interest Media’s Home Group, overseeing New Old House, Traditional Building, and special-interest publications.

Poore joined Old House Journal when it was a Brooklyn-brownstoner newsletter in the late 1970s. She became owner and publisher and, except for the years 2002–2013, has been its editor. Poore founded the magazines Old-House Interiors (1995–2013) and Early Homes (2004–2017); their content is now available online and folded into Old-House Journal’s wider coverage. Poore also created GARBAGE magazine (1989–1994), the first unaffiliated environmental consumer magazine.

Poore has participated, hands-on, in several restorations, including her own homes: a 1911 brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and a 1904 Tudor–Shingle Style house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she brought up her boys and their wonderful dogs.