Gustav Stickley
Encyclopedia
Gustav Stickley was a manufacturer of furniture and the leading proselytizer for the American Arts and Crafts movement
, an extension of the British Arts and Crafts movement.
. The eldest surviving son, Stickley experienced the rigors of life upon a small Midwestern farm, forgoing his formal education in 1870 to continue work in his father’s field of stonemasonry and help support his struggling family. By early 1876, Stickley’s mother and siblings moved to Brandt, Pennsylvania, where Gustav worked in his uncle’s chair factory – his first formal training in the furniture industry. His industrious nature led him and his brothers Charles and Albert to form Stickley Brothers & Company in 1883, the same year in which he married Eda Ann Simmons. Within five years, the company was dissolved and Stickley’s ambitions led him to partner with Elgin Simonds, a salesman in the furniture trade, to form the firm of Stickley & Simonds in Binghamton, New York. During the 1890s, Stickley divided his efforts between his new enterprise and, with his brother Leopold, served as a foreman of furniture operations at the Auburn State Prison. In 1898 he orchestrated the removal of his business partner and formed the Gustave* Stickley Company (*he dropped the use of the "e" in 1903).
In the summer of 1900 he worked with Henry Wilkinson and, possibly, LaMont A. Warner (soon his first staff designer) to create his first Arts and Crafts works in an experimental line called the New Furniture. In 1901 he changed the name of his firm to the United Crafts, issued a new catalogue written by Syracuse professor Irene Sargent, and began to offer middle class consumers a host of progressive furniture designs in ammonia-fumed quartersawn white oak, as well as other mostly native woods. In October 1901, Stickley published the first issue of The Craftsman magazine, an important vehicle for promoting Arts and Crafts philosophy as well as the products of his factory within the context of articles, reviews, and advertisements for a range of products of interest to the homemaker.
Stickley's new furniture reflected his ideals of simplicity, honesty in construction, and truth to materials. Unadorned, plain surfaces were enlivening by the careful application of colorants so as not to obscure the grain of the wood and mortise and tenon joinery was exposed to emphasize the structural qualities of the works. Hammered metal hardware, in armor-bright polished iron or patinated copper emphasized the handmade qualities of furniture which was fabricated using both handworking techniques and modern woodworking machinery within Stickley's Eastwood, New York, factory (now a part of Syracuse, New York
). Dyed leather, canvas, terry cloth and other upholstery materials complemented the designs.
His firm's work, both nostalgic in its evocation of handicraft and the pre-industrial era and proto-modern in its functional simplicity, was popularly referred to as being in the Mission style
, though Stickley despised the term as misleading. In 1903 he changed the name of his company again, to the Craftsman Workshops, and began a concerted effort to market his works — by then including furniture as well as textiles, lighting, and metalwork — as Craftsman products. Ultimately, over 100 retailers across the United States represented the Craftsman Workshops.
In 1902, the later world renowned scupltor Jerome Connor
was hired to head up Stickley's metal work department. In May 1903 Stickley hired Rochester architect Harvey Ellis
. Although Ellis died only a few months later, in January 1904, he had an immediate and profound effect upon design of The Craftsman magazine, its architectural offerings, and the furnishings Stickley was producing, reinforcing the connections between Stickley's work and that of English and Glaswegian designers. During this year Stickley's furniture evolved from solid, monumental forms to lighter shapes, relieved by arches, tapering legs, and — in an new experimental line — inlay as decoration. Within a year the inlay designs would be all but dropped from production save special orders, but the broader emphasis on less massive forms would remain. In keeping with this new emphasis, Stickley also began offering furniture in willow to complement the heavier oak designs. Furthering the development of his concept of the Craftsman home, in late 1903 he announced the formation of the Craftsman Home Builders Club to provide architectural plans from The Craftsman to its subscribers. The homes were offered in a number of archetypes familiar to American public — the farmhouse, town house, cottage, and bungalow, among others. Natural materials and soft colors predominated and interiors were invariably prescribed to include simplified moldings, stained wood, and characteristic features such as built-in cabinets and fireplaces with inglenooks for seating. Although these homes were only rarely innovative in terms of progressive style, designs reflected current approaches to open floor plans, economy of function, and use of novel materials for walls, roofs, and surface treatments.
Stickley moved his headquarters to New York City
in 1905 and by 1907 began to acquire property to establish a boarding school for boys in Morris Plains, New Jersey
(what is now Parsippany, New Jersey). Craftsman Farms
was designed to include vegetable gardens, orchards, dairy cows and chickens.The main house there is constructed from chestnut
logs and stone found on the property. As he wrote in The Craftsman:
Although the main house at Craftsman Farms was initially conceived of as a clubhouse for students, lack of interest in the school prompted Stickley to live there with his family instead. The planned school never became a reality. By 1913, changing tastes and the financial strain of his new twelve-story Craftsman Building in Manhattan, conceived as a department store, began to take their toll; in 1915 he filed for bankruptcy
, stopping publication of The Craftsman in December 1916 and selling Craftsman Farms in 1917.
Gustav Stickley died on April 21, 1942.
paid $363,000 for a Stickley sideboard from Craftsman Farms; magazines such as Style 1900 and American Bungalow cater to those interested in the Arts and Crafts movement
. A major touring exhibition organized by the Dallas Museum of Art
, Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement, opened at the Newark Museum
on September 15, 2010. The exhibition remained at the Dallas Museum of Art until May 8, 2011.
Gustav's brothers Leopold Stickley|Leopold (Lee), Albert Stickley|Albert, Charles Stickley|Charles and John George Stickley also produced Arts and Crafts furniture. Although no longer held by the Stickley family, the successor firm to the L. & J.G. Stickley Company continues to operate in Manlius, New York, producing furniture in a variety of styles, including reproductions of Arts and Crafts designs. The Stickley-Audi Company operates a museum featuring the work of the Stickley brothers near its factory site.http://www.stickleymuseum.com/
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
, an extension of the British Arts and Crafts movement.
Biography
One of eleven children of German émigrés Leopold and Barbara Schlager Stoeckel, Gustav Stickley was born Gustavus Stoeckel on March 9, 1858, in Osceola, WisconsinOsceola, Wisconsin
Osceola is a village in Polk County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 2,421 at the 2000 census. The village is located mostly within the Town of Osceola.The downtown features Cascade Falls, a waterfall with a crest, located on Osceola Creek....
. The eldest surviving son, Stickley experienced the rigors of life upon a small Midwestern farm, forgoing his formal education in 1870 to continue work in his father’s field of stonemasonry and help support his struggling family. By early 1876, Stickley’s mother and siblings moved to Brandt, Pennsylvania, where Gustav worked in his uncle’s chair factory – his first formal training in the furniture industry. His industrious nature led him and his brothers Charles and Albert to form Stickley Brothers & Company in 1883, the same year in which he married Eda Ann Simmons. Within five years, the company was dissolved and Stickley’s ambitions led him to partner with Elgin Simonds, a salesman in the furniture trade, to form the firm of Stickley & Simonds in Binghamton, New York. During the 1890s, Stickley divided his efforts between his new enterprise and, with his brother Leopold, served as a foreman of furniture operations at the Auburn State Prison. In 1898 he orchestrated the removal of his business partner and formed the Gustave* Stickley Company (*he dropped the use of the "e" in 1903).
In the summer of 1900 he worked with Henry Wilkinson and, possibly, LaMont A. Warner (soon his first staff designer) to create his first Arts and Crafts works in an experimental line called the New Furniture. In 1901 he changed the name of his firm to the United Crafts, issued a new catalogue written by Syracuse professor Irene Sargent, and began to offer middle class consumers a host of progressive furniture designs in ammonia-fumed quartersawn white oak, as well as other mostly native woods. In October 1901, Stickley published the first issue of The Craftsman magazine, an important vehicle for promoting Arts and Crafts philosophy as well as the products of his factory within the context of articles, reviews, and advertisements for a range of products of interest to the homemaker.
Stickley's new furniture reflected his ideals of simplicity, honesty in construction, and truth to materials. Unadorned, plain surfaces were enlivening by the careful application of colorants so as not to obscure the grain of the wood and mortise and tenon joinery was exposed to emphasize the structural qualities of the works. Hammered metal hardware, in armor-bright polished iron or patinated copper emphasized the handmade qualities of furniture which was fabricated using both handworking techniques and modern woodworking machinery within Stickley's Eastwood, New York, factory (now a part of Syracuse, New York
Syracuse, New York
Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...
). Dyed leather, canvas, terry cloth and other upholstery materials complemented the designs.
His firm's work, both nostalgic in its evocation of handicraft and the pre-industrial era and proto-modern in its functional simplicity, was popularly referred to as being in the Mission style
Mission style
Mission style may refer to the following:*Mission Style Furniture*Mission Revival Style architecture*American Craftsman, an architectural and design movement*Mission School, an art movement of the late 20th century...
, though Stickley despised the term as misleading. In 1903 he changed the name of his company again, to the Craftsman Workshops, and began a concerted effort to market his works — by then including furniture as well as textiles, lighting, and metalwork — as Craftsman products. Ultimately, over 100 retailers across the United States represented the Craftsman Workshops.
In 1902, the later world renowned scupltor Jerome Connor
Jerome Connor
Jerome Connor was an Irish sculptor.-Life:...
was hired to head up Stickley's metal work department. In May 1903 Stickley hired Rochester architect Harvey Ellis
Harvey Ellis
Harvey Ellis was an architect, perspective renderer and painter. He worked in Rochester, New York; Utica, New York; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Joseph, Missouri; St...
. Although Ellis died only a few months later, in January 1904, he had an immediate and profound effect upon design of The Craftsman magazine, its architectural offerings, and the furnishings Stickley was producing, reinforcing the connections between Stickley's work and that of English and Glaswegian designers. During this year Stickley's furniture evolved from solid, monumental forms to lighter shapes, relieved by arches, tapering legs, and — in an new experimental line — inlay as decoration. Within a year the inlay designs would be all but dropped from production save special orders, but the broader emphasis on less massive forms would remain. In keeping with this new emphasis, Stickley also began offering furniture in willow to complement the heavier oak designs. Furthering the development of his concept of the Craftsman home, in late 1903 he announced the formation of the Craftsman Home Builders Club to provide architectural plans from The Craftsman to its subscribers. The homes were offered in a number of archetypes familiar to American public — the farmhouse, town house, cottage, and bungalow, among others. Natural materials and soft colors predominated and interiors were invariably prescribed to include simplified moldings, stained wood, and characteristic features such as built-in cabinets and fireplaces with inglenooks for seating. Although these homes were only rarely innovative in terms of progressive style, designs reflected current approaches to open floor plans, economy of function, and use of novel materials for walls, roofs, and surface treatments.
Stickley moved his headquarters to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1905 and by 1907 began to acquire property to establish a boarding school for boys in Morris Plains, New Jersey
Morris Plains, New Jersey
Morris Plains, billing itself "the Community of Caring," is a Borough in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 5,236....
(what is now Parsippany, New Jersey). Craftsman Farms
Craftsman Farms
Craftsman Farms was founded in 1908 by noted turn-of-the-century designer Gustav Stickley as a farm and school for the Arts and Crafts movement. It remained in use until 1915 when it was sold to a family and became a private house....
was designed to include vegetable gardens, orchards, dairy cows and chickens.The main house there is constructed from chestnut
Chestnut
Chestnut , some species called chinkapin or chinquapin, is a genus of eight or nine species of deciduous trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce.-Species:The chestnut belongs to the...
logs and stone found on the property. As he wrote in The Craftsman:
There are elements of intrinsic beauty in the simplification of a house built on the log cabin idea. First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture....The quiet rhythmic monotone of the wall of logs fills one with the rustic peace of a secluded nook in the woods.
Although the main house at Craftsman Farms was initially conceived of as a clubhouse for students, lack of interest in the school prompted Stickley to live there with his family instead. The planned school never became a reality. By 1913, changing tastes and the financial strain of his new twelve-story Craftsman Building in Manhattan, conceived as a department store, began to take their toll; in 1915 he filed for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, stopping publication of The Craftsman in December 1916 and selling Craftsman Farms in 1917.
Gustav Stickley died on April 21, 1942.
Legacy
In recent decades, Stickley and his work have become popularly recognized once again. It is particularly his early furniture, produced between 1901 and 1904 that is considered rare and ultra collectible. In 1988, Barbra StreisandBarbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
paid $363,000 for a Stickley sideboard from Craftsman Farms; magazines such as Style 1900 and American Bungalow cater to those interested in the Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
. A major touring exhibition organized by the Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art is a major art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, USA, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In 1984, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Arts District, Dallas, Texas...
, Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement, opened at the Newark Museum
Newark Museum
The Newark Museum is the largest museum in New Jersey, USA. It holds fine collections of American art, decorative arts, contemporary art, and arts of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the ancient world...
on September 15, 2010. The exhibition remained at the Dallas Museum of Art until May 8, 2011.
Gustav's brothers Leopold Stickley|Leopold (Lee), Albert Stickley|Albert, Charles Stickley|Charles and John George Stickley also produced Arts and Crafts furniture. Although no longer held by the Stickley family, the successor firm to the L. & J.G. Stickley Company continues to operate in Manlius, New York, producing furniture in a variety of styles, including reproductions of Arts and Crafts designs. The Stickley-Audi Company operates a museum featuring the work of the Stickley brothers near its factory site.http://www.stickleymuseum.com/
Further reading
- Cathers, David M. (1981). Furniture of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. The New American Library, Inc. ISBN 0453003974.
- Cathers, David M. (2003). Gustav Stickley. Phaidon Press. ISBN 0-7148-4030-0.
- Hewitt, Mark Alan. (2001). Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Farms: The Quest for an Arts and Crafts Utopia. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-0689-3.
- Smith, Mary Ann. (1992). Gustav Stickley: The Craftsman. Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-27210-9.
- Stubblebine, Ray. (2006). Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Homes: Plans, Drawing, Photographs. Gibbs Smith. ISBN 1586853711.
- Tucker, Kevin W. (2010). Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11802-5
External links
- The Arts and Crafts Antique Gallery - GustavStickley.com
- Biography from the Arts and Crafts movement website
- "Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman Home"
- The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms
- Stickley Furniture - San Francisco
- Findagrave: Gustav Stickley
- Craftsman Style
- The Craftsman Architects Drawings collection at Columbia University
- Gustav Stickley and the Morris chair
- The Craftsman (1901-1916).: Presented here is a full-text digital facsimile of The Craftsman (1901-1916). The monthly journal was dedicated to the products, ideals and philosophy of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Craftsman espoused the ideal of simple, functional design and the "necessity of producing good art as a means to improve public morals and further public happiness" (Foreword from v.2, no.3, 1902).
- Craftsman homes. Stickley, Gustav, 1858-1942. New York, New York: Craftsman Publishing Company, 1909.
- The Winterthur Library- Overview of the collection on Gustav Stickley.
- Hewn and Hammered dedicated to discussion of the American Arts & Crafts movement, and specifically Gustav Stickley's work
- Craftsman Homes Updates to the book Stickley's Craftsman Homes: Plans, Drawings, Photographs and further information related to Gustav Stickley and his Craftsman Homes
- Stickley Furniture Get information on Stickley Furniture
- Stickley-Audi Museum http://www.stickleymuseum.com/