Across Europe, the Arts and Crafts Movement saw a revival of traditional techniques and materials and the creation of new forms that were both ageless and innovative.
Arts and Crafts ideals developed in a number of regions, including Russia, Scandinavia, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In a period of political and social turmoil, the decorative arts were an area in which ideas of national identity, social organisation and life in an industrial society could be explored.
However, the level to which Arts and Crafts practices, in particular attitudes to industrial manufacture, were fully accepted or merely adapted was very varied. In the less industrialised regions of Europe nationalism was a more compelling factor.
As in Britain and America, the homes designed and built by artists and architects for their own use were proof of the idea that the home, as well as life within it, could become a work of art. These houses drew on national and local traditions, celebrated individual expression and provided an ideal of domesticity.