Art Workshop In 1851, Cuypers started an architectural firm in Roermond and was appointed city architect of Roermond. A year later, he founded a workshop for church art with F. Stoltzenberg: 'Cuypers and Stoltzenberg'. He did this out of idealism. Using the medieval building sheds as an example, he wanted to return to artisanal production. For Cuypers, this was a reaction to the disadvantages, which the development of industrial production and the rise of the commercial construction company brought with it. With an intensive collaboration between the architectural firm and the art workshop, Cuypers wanted to counterbalance standardization, mechanization and serial production. To this end, he was also inspired by the work and writings of the English architect and theorist A.W.N. Pugin. The building shed and the guild were not only the answer to industrialization, but also to what he saw as the social disintegration of his time. The rise of movements such as liberalism, socialism and capitalism were, in his view, the cause of that disintegration. He saw the construction shed and the guild as the cornerstone of society; a corporate society in which everyone had a place according to talent and ability and the church acted as spiritual leader. In the art workshop in Roermond, the traditional craft elements of the building were designed and manufactured: ironwork, stained glass windows, sculpture, murals, fabrics and furniture. Consequently, this art workshop has a colossal production of church furniture and sculptures to its credit. In addition, craftsmen, artists and architects were trained at the art workshop. There was a great shortage of all these disciplines at that time.