The Arts & Crafts movement began as a protest. In late 19th-century Britain, factories were turning out jewelry by the thousands: stamped, polished, and identical. Critics John Ruskin and William Morris argued that machine-made goods had lost their soul. Their answer was to go back to the hand, the workshop, and the honest beauty of natural materials. What came out of that was some of the most personal jewelry ever made.

The makers

In England, C.R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft (founded 1888) put the movement’s ideals into practice. Liberty & Co. brought the look to a wider audience through its “Cymric” line, much of it designed by Archibald Knox.

In America the movement took hold in New England. The Boston Society of Arts and Crafts was founded in 1897, and Boston jewelers such as Frank Gardner Hale, Edward Oakes, and Josephine Hartwell Shaw produced some of the finest American work. In Chicago, Clara Barck Welles founded the Kalo Shop and stamped its pieces “Hand Wrought.” Women designers and metalsmiths were central to the movement, which was rare in the trade at the time.