Deciding on the setting for the next chapter of your life should be a joy. Yet, seeing clearly what would suit you best might call for a kind of thinking that is more self-oriented than we are accustomed to using. The skill building and the work ethic that brought you to the question, with so many answers in reach, needs to take a break as you give yourself the room to consider your own desires and goals. That’s the purpose of this journal – to help set the agenda and pose the questions that lead to your own best choice among the 55 plus Woodstock communities.
Of all the design inspirations that we might have considered for Cooks Farm, the active adult community in Woodstock, the Craftsman style emerged quite naturally. The beauty of the Craftsman style comes from materials and workmanship. This is why beam-ends appear under the eaves of the roof on a Craftsman home, and why the tongue-and-groove joining is often celebrated rather than hidden in a piece of Stickley furniture.
The Story Behind the Design
It is a design tradition with beauty and benefits so evident that the Craftsman style requires no explanation. Still, it is distinctive among the Woodstock homes for sale, and there is an interesting story behind it.
Craftsman is the short name for the Arts and Crafts style of home design, furniture, and décor. It began in England very early in the 20th century as a reaction against the elaborate, showy, cluttered excesses of the Victorian style. In fact, Arts and Crafts was an artistic movement, and many of its proponents were philosophers and economists, and not only artists and designers. Not only was the Victorian style fussy and complicated, but its gingerbread and knick-knacks could also be manufactured, rather than built, with human skill. Some call Craftsman a reaction against the excesses of the Industrial Revolution.
Nowhere Better than on the Farm
Though the artistic movement began in England, there are only a couple of manor houses there that exhibit the Craftsman style. It took root and found its most frequent expression in America, where far more homes were being built. Several cities in particular became hotbeds of the Craftsman style, including Kansas City and some of the suburbs of Chicago. Two of its greatest designers, Greene & Greene, were from St. Louis, and yet their masterpiece is the Gamble House in Pasadena.
Despite the influence that the Craftsman design tradition had in certain cities, nowhere is the style so widely and beautifully expressed as in the farm homes that arose with the prosperity of the 20th century and the mechanization of the family farm. The simplicity bespeaks both elegance and integrity. It harmonizes with a life of calm acceptance and harmony with nature.
Is it any wonder we continued that harmony when Cooks Farm was designed? We concluded that the Craftsman style simply could not be beat. Let’s talk it over. Just call us at 404-594-3101 or visit southwyckhomes.com/cooks-farm.