"It's a well-known fact that looking at (or preferably, living with) fruits of the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements makes one a better person."
-Matters of Taste
Career
Voysey's designs in the field of applied art included furniture, wallpapers, fabrics, carpets, tiles, metalwork, ceramics and graphic design. Voysey's development as a furniture designer corresponded to his development as an architect, and by 1895 he had evolved a definitive personal style. His furniture conformed, with a few exceptions, to this style until 1910, when he began to introduce greater elaboration, including Gothic motifs, into his designs. The simple elegance of Voysey's furniture from the period 1895–1910 was achieved by relying on the innate beauty of high quality materials, especially unpolished oak, and by eschewing complicated decoration in favour of a careful balance of the vertical and horizontal elements in a design.
Voysey was influenced by the work of William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau, and was concerned with form and function rather than ornamental complexities. He felt that "simplicity in decoration is one of the essential qualities without which no true richness is possible" and often worked in a limited colour palette, "emphasizing outline, eliminating shading, and minimizing detail."