Craftsman architecture in the United States was a direct result of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Great Britain in the mid-nineteenth century. Art critic John Ruskin and his disciple William Morris inspired an organized movement in Great Britain dedicated to handicraft production, fine workmanship, and artistic integrity, with the condemnation of industrial capitalism, manufactured production, mechanized men, and falsified architecture. Through guilds, workshops, schools, and publications their ideals, including house designs and decorating plans, spread throughout Europe and to the United States as the Arts and Crafts Movement.

 

      The Craftsman home in the United States was shaped by William Morris's concept, "The House Beautiful," which believed houses should be simple, tidy and natural with a large garden. He advocated for uncluttered houses with only useful and beautiful objects including; bookcases, witting tables, moveable chairs, wood cupboards, wood floors, brick and tile fireplaces, all of which should be made by a craftsman. He firmly believed that people should "have nothing in their houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." Morris's ideals were spread in the United States through magazines, newspapers, American Arts and Crafts societies, and American furnishers, including Gustav Stickley.

 

     American magazines brought the concept of the Craftsman home to the American middle class. In 1901, the furniture manufacture Gustav Stickley created The Craftsman, a magazine which interpreted the Arts and Crafts Movement to the American public at large. In 1903 he began to print illustrated interior and exterior designs for Craftsman homes, which advertised handcraft wood furnishings from his shop. The style spread in popularity and other magazines including House Beautiful, founded in 1896, and the Ladies Home Journal, featured room and house designs influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement. Soon the Craftsman home became associated with the growing middle class.

 

     

 

  

  The Craftsman home developed differently in California than the rest of the country due, to its history, natural landscapes, and fast growing middle class in the late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth centuries. California was a symbol of anti-modernism, and the Easterners and Southerners who came to California were drawn to its romantic history of rancheros, haciendas, and Spanish missions that had nourished the concept of a simple and rustic California lifestyle. The idea that California was a retreat from the excess of progress made it deeply perceptive to the message of William Morris.

 

    Charles Fletcher Lummis, a Harvard drop-out who walked from Ohio to California in 1885, embraced Morris's ideals while also admiring California's Native American, Spanish, and Mexican history. He believed in preserving California's history and became the first President of the California Landmarks Club, the first preservation society in California. Lummis publicly advocated for simplicity of living and the Craftsman ideals of William Morris. His friend Charles Keeler referred to him as "William Morris turned into a Mexican Indian."

 

    Californian, poet, and naturalist Charles Keeler is the father of the California Craftsman style. A good friend of John Muir, Keeler sought a simple rustic life joined with nature which would become the foundation for the California Craftsman style. Keeler was a follower of the Arts and Crafts Movement and organized the Ruskin Club in the 1890s to "show the necessity of art in the home-in homemaking, in home decoration, and for the general spirit of our daily life." In his 1902 publication, The Simple Home, he advocated for functionalism of style that associated beauty with need, a concept taken directly from William Morris. In the preface of The Simple Home, Keeler asserts that "a simpler, a truer, a more vital art expression is now taking place in California."

 

    Keeler's goal was to create a California Craftsman architectural style that was distinctive from the rest of the country. He suggested use of California native redwood trees and river stones for building materials and the use of natural paint colors and native California plants for gardens, allowing the home to blend in with the natural landscape. Due to the warm California climate and outdoor lifestyle Keeler also suggested houses have "deep, recessed verandas, windows with deep reveals, and open rooms roofed over and with sides protected by screens upon which vines may be trained." Keeler had taken the Craftsman style and molded it to the California lifestyle. The Simple Home was read by many California architects who then designed houses that promoted the Craftsman style and fit into the myth of California so well. Many drew upon oter influences but all catered toward the nostalgia of California. California Craftsman influences included English Tudor, Swiss Chalet, Japanese Temple, and Spanish Mission.

 

    The strong Japanese influences on the California Craftsman style became popular in the late nineteenth century. George Turner Marsh, a native from Australia, opened America's first shop devoted exclusively to Japanese Art at San Francisco's Palace Hotel in 1876. Turner designed a Japanese garden and several traditional Japanese structures  for the California Midwinter International Exposition. The area survives today as the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, the oldest of its kind. The exposition influenced regional home building as is made apparent by the Japanese qualities of California Craftsman houses.