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