In British terms (it is different in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales), the Arts & Crafts movement combined a return to vernacular sources of inspiration and an appreciation for traditional methods of manufacture, but this was far from exclusive.

The designers and craftsmen active during the late 1880s, right through to the late 1920s, took pride in their local identities. It was only with hindsight, now questioned, that they were seen a pure progenitors of the modern movement that dominates the later twentieth century.

On the more traditional wing of the movement were the Cotswold-based designers such as Ashbee, Gimson and the Barnsleys. But Voysey and Baillie Scott, for example, were far more interested in the results than method. And Benson, the pioneer designer of electric lighting, embraced enthusiastically the opportunities offered by machine production.

In Scotland, the towering fin de siècle figure is the internationally-renowned Charles Rennie Mackintosh.