The impact of the IR blog 1.4

How did the IR impact everyday life? Include ideas about economics, societal structures, transportation and enviromental (in approx. 200 words)

The IR impacted society is many differen't ways. Firstly, it began to change societal structures in that new thinkers such as William Morris were shooting for a utopian society where all classes would be equal to one another. An example of this thought being put into action is with the recreation of the guild workshop. In this atmosphere, all creators in the design process are given equal bragging rights to the creation of a work of art.

Secondly, the introduction of mass production techniques offered reasonably good quality and fine looking pieces of art to more social classes. Where before a person of lower middle class may not be able to afford a designer chair, he now could because of the chair now being mass produced, it still echoed the designers style without being hand built (hand built = costly) and carrying the one of kind price tag it would have in the past.

Thirdly, transportation. Children of the Industial Revolution waved goodbye to horse and buggies slowly but surely as the first airplane took flight in 1903 and the first automobile (the Model T Ford) hit assembly lines in 1908. Earlier on in the century, the steamboat started regular services in 1807 making it easier for individuals and products to make their way around the world or even their own city in a faster and more modernized way.

While most saw the introduction of mass production techniques in a good way for the mechanized simplicity it created, artists and crafters noticed the down side. Firstly the fact that one-of-a-kind products would become nonexistant and craftsmen obsolete. Also, their work could easily be ripped off and sold for cheaper to a number of markets which made sophisticated and complicated works of art seem not so unique. Not only that but with the introduction of machines and factories, also came a mass introduction of pollution not only in chemical gases from factories, but also in waste from excess materials and the burning of supplies from trading and buying overseas. Famous designers such as Charles Voysey refused to stand for the loss of the society in which they were raised in, and thus born the Arts and Crafts Movement.