Gustav Stickley

A display of original "mission oak" dining room furniture at Mission San Juan Capistrano in Southern California.

Gustav Stickley (March 9, 1858 – April 21, 1942) was a furniture maker and architect as well as the leading spokesperson for the American Craftsman movement, a descendant of the British Arts and Crafts movement.

Biography

Stickley was born in Osceola, Wisconsin in 1858 (original name Stoeckel). In 1901, Stickley founded The Craftsman, a periodical which began by expounding the philosophy of the English Arts & Crafts movement but which matured into the voice of the American movement. He worked with architect Harvey Ellis to design house plans for the magazine, which published 221 such plans over the next fifteen years. He also established the Craftsman Home Builders Club in 1903 to spread his ideas about domestic organic architecture.

These ideas had an enormous influence on Frank Lloyd Wright. Stickley believed that:

• A house ought to be constructed in harmony with its landscape, with special attention paid to selecting local materials;
• An open floor plan would encourage family interaction and eliminate unnecessary barriers;
• Built-in bookcases and benches were practical and ensured that the house would not be completely reliant on furniture from outside;
• Artificial light should be kept to a minimum, so large groupings of windows were necessary to bring in light.

Between 1900 and 1916 a style of furniture featuring "...a severely plain and rectilinear style which was visually enriched only by expressed structural features and the warm tones of the wood..." gained popularity in the U.S. This furniture, referred to as "mission oak", was an "...American manifestation of the Arts and Crafts movement..."^[1]

Stickley began making furniture in the mission oak style with the founding of the Craftsman Workshops in Eastwood, New York (now a part of Syracuse, New York) in 1904. His furniture was all handmade rather than machine made, crafted to be simple and useful; it was primarily built from native American tiger oak, joinery was exposed, upholstery was carried out with natural materials (canvas and leather), wood could be varnished but never painted, and there were no unnecessary lines. Furniture was fumed with ammonia to give a dark finish, no nails were used only wooden pegs and beaten copper and iron hardware with bronze touches was employed.

He moved his headquarters to New York City in 1905 and planned to establish a boarding school for boys in Morris Plains, New Jersey (what is now Parsippany, New Jersey). Craftsman Farms was designed to be self-sufficient, with vegetable gardens, orchards, dairy cows and chickens. The main house there is constructed from chestnut logs and stone found on the property, and exemplifies Stickley's building philosophy. 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.^[2]

Although the main house at Craftsman Farms was initially conceived of as a clubhouse for students, financial troubles forced Stickley to live there with his family instead. The planned boarding school never became a reality. Stickley was a poor businessman and the American public began to reject his simple furniture in favor of revival styles; in 1915 he filed for bankruptcy, stopping publication of The Craftsman in 1916 and selling Craftsman Farms in 1917.

Gustav Stickley died on April 21, 1942.^[3]

Influences

Stickley visited California in 1904 and was taken with the grand simplicity of the old Spanish missions and their harmony with their surroundings. Thenceforward the Mission and Spanish Colonial style became part of the Craftsman ideal, although "Mission" and "Craftsman" were never synonymous terms (as many today erroneously believe). Many Craftsman homes did show a strong California-Spanish-mission and hacienda influence (borrowing, for instance, the pergola), but the important thing was that the house be in harmony with its environment. Stickley felt that the California Mission adobe house "proves to be the most genuine expression of American feeling in domestic architecture that has yet appeared."^[4]

He wrote in The Craftsman:

In a country with the contour and coloring of Southern California there can be no style of architecture so harmonious as that founded directly upon the old Mission buildings, and no material that blends so beautifully with the colors about it as some modification of the old adobe or sun-dried brick, covered with creamy plaster.^[4]

Legacy

In recent years, Stickley style has become popular once more. In 1988, Barbra Streisand paid $363,000 for a Stickley sideboard from Craftsman Farms; magazines such as Style 1900^[5] and American Bungalow^[6] cater to those interested in the Arts and Crafts movement.

Gustav's brothers Leopold (Lee), Albert, Charles and John George Stickley were also important figures in the Arts and Crafts movement.

References

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.

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
• 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