Oak Saw Horses, Gustav Stickley, The Craftsman Workshop, c. 1910

During the six years they lived at Craftsman Farms, the Stickley family hosted weddings, dances, parties and other occasions with many guests; the girls’ threw lively dances often inviting friends from out of town, Stickley’s daughters had their weddings on the property, among other events and gatherings.  Now, we have a new clue as to how these soirées took place.

In 1971, Arts and Crafts scholar, Robert Judson Clark interviewed Barbara Wiles, Gustav Stickley’s daughter.  Barbara told him her father had the factory make a collapsible table to be used during social events or any time a large number of people were dining in the log house.  The tabletops were likely oak planks, butted together like a typical Craftsman tabletop, but they were supported on elegant Craftsman saw horses.  During a visit to Craftsman Farms at around the same time, Clark found a pair of those saw horses still present, and acquired them from the Farnys, who owned the Farms at the time.  They supported his desk for the next twenty years before he sold them to distinguished Stickley scholar, David Cathers, who for the past twenty-one years used them to support his desk.  Now, wanting to share these unique pieces with others, Cathers had new supports made for his desk and he and his wife Susan kindly donated the pair to the Farms.

The saw horses represent a form traditionally reserved for the carpenter’s workshop; a straight long bar supported by four canted legs joined by an “H” stretcher.  Here, Stickley has cleverly adapted this common form into beautiful and unique pieces of furniture for his home.  The tenons on each saw horse come through the legs at an unusual angle to compensate for the slant of the A-frame and the keys are elongated and visible, emphasizing its structural qualities.  They are held together at the top with metal fasteners, presumably so they could be readily disassembled and put away until they were needed next, and are finished in a mellow medium brown.  They are unique examples of Craftsman furniture made specifically for Craftsman Farms, and according to experts, are the only known Craftsman saw horses in existence.

Now, once again residing where they did 100 years ago, these saw horses offer some additional insight into the Stickley family’s social life at Craftsman Farms, how they lived and entertained,  and the many parties, dinners, dances, and weddings that the family hosted while they lived here.

The saw horses will be on view at The Stickley Museum in the future.  Please watch for the announcement.

A Glimpse of Social Life at Craftsman Farms is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

"Mr. Stickley's Lighting" Exhibition at the 25th Annual Arts & Crafts Conference.

At this year’s Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference, the Stickley Museum introduced the 5th installment in our “Mr. Stickley” exhibition series: “Mr. Stickley’s Lighting.” The series continues to examine different aspects of Gustav Stickley’s career, and this year’s focus on lighting is one of the most popular!

We began with an exhibition in the Great Hall of the Grove Park Inn for the duration of the conference. Although space limitations meant the exhibition was not comprehensive, it included a wide variety of examples of Stickley’s lighting in the form of lamps, lanterns, sconces, and candlesticks, using a variety of different materials including wood, pottery, hammered copper, brass, and iron. Lampshades made of wicker, split bamboo, silk, linen, and glass also helped to fully illustrate Stickley’s approach to lighting design.

On Saturday night of the conference, trustees Mark Weaver and Pete Mars led a small group discussion that was attended by 67 people! The discussion related Stickley’s lighting designs to its historical and cultural context – lighting in American homes in the early part of the 20th century and the psychological and esthetic impact of interior electric lighting at that time. Of course, you can’t talk about early electricity without mentioning Thomas Edison, the man who brought us the electric light bulb. Interestingly both his labs in Menlo Park and his home in Llewellyn Park were reasonably close to Stickley’s Craftsman Farms.

Twilight Tour

We continued to explore Mr. Stickley’s lighting with “An Electric Evening” on Sunday, March 4.  The evening began with the return of Pete Mars’ Twilight Tour. This tour gave participants a glimpse of evening life during the time the Stickleys were in residence at the Log House. Pete further explored the development of electric lighting within the context of Craftsman Farms, and illuminated the features of the Log House design that shine most beautifully in the evening light. Anyone who has had the chance to visit the Log House knows that, although quite dimly lit, the soft glow created by the amber glass and copper lanterns does give one a distinct feeling of warmth and calm.

Mark Weaver lectures on Mr. Stickley's Lighting during "An Electric Evening."

Following the tour, Mark Weaver’s “Mr. Stickley’s Lighting” lecture shed some additional light on Stickley’s approach to developing his domestic lighting fixtures. For example, Stickley used lampshades as both the means to achieve a desired lighting effect and as a prominent design feature in a room. He favored Japanese wicker shades of split bamboo or willow lined with heavy Habutai silk in soft rich shades of red, green, dull yellow, or orange.  Domestic light came from a variety of fuel sources. As seen in the Log House, electricity, oil, candles, and denatured alcohol – or ethanol – were all used in lighting at the time.

For further reading, the exhibition catalogue – “Mr. Stickley’s Lighting” – is available for purchase on our website.

And be sure to check out this great video with clips from Pete’s tour!  Many thanks to David Lowden for the video.

Twilight Tour of The Stickley Museum led by Pete Mars.

It’s Electric! is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

You are invited to our Annual GPI Kick-Off Party!  Come to the 25^th Annual Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference a day early and kick off the weekend with an evening of casual fun and entertainment in the Homespun Shops of Biltmore Industries, just steps from GPI.

Join us on Thursday, February 16 for the festivities.  Begin the evening at our welcome table in the Estes-Winn Memorial Automobile Museum (open just for us!), enjoy local beers and wines during cocktail hour, and choose one of two seatings to indulge in a dinner menu that embraces the regional fare.

Author, historian, and art-potter, Rodney Leftwich, will speak on the pottery tradition of Western North Carolina.

But that’s not all! The North Carolina, bluegrass string-band Country Farm, is sure to liven things up even more with toe-tapping performances throughout the evening.

We’ll cap off this enjoyable evening with a fascinating lecture by our featured speaker, well-known author, historian and art potter Rodney Leftwich.  A native of Western North Carolina, Rodney Leftwich is a full-time potter, deeply inspired by the history of North Carolina pottery.  He exhibits his work at GPI each year, has written numerous articles and essays on art pottery, and has personally researched and collected works by the region’s early potters.  His talk, The Pottery Tradition of Western North Carolina, will cover a range of topics including the utilitarian origins of art pottery in the Asheville area, and the works of Walter B. Stephen and Oscar Bachelder.

Your all-inclusive party ticket includes: museum and gallery visit, cocktails, live music, pottery lecture by Rodney Leftwich, dinner and dessert. Tickets are $140 each.

Download the Reservation Form here or check our website for more information.  Advanced reservations are required! So don’t wait!

North Carolina bluegrass string-band, Country Farm, will perform at this year's GPI Kick-Off Party!

Don’t Miss this Pull-Out-the-Stops Good Time! is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

Did you think everything gets quiet here when winter comes and we are only open on weekends?  You’d be surprised! Yes, of course we are still open for group tours and scout programs — but the Log House has been bustling with activity all week.  Volunteers are busily decorating for our annual Holiday Open House, taking place on the first two weekends in December.   During this event, the Log House will be decked out for the holidays in period style and with a focus on Stickley’s own ideas.  Utilizing holiday greens, pinecones, and the home’s forest palette, the decorations will bring nature indoors and spotlight the Arts and Crafts movement’s emphasis on finding beauty in simplicity and in simple materials.

For Stickley, a rich family life was a key part of his Arts and Crafts ideas, and this event addresses his values by providing a peek into Christmas preparations that would have been typical for a family like the Stickleys, including blending Victorian traditions — like making treat-bearing cornucopia and giving handmade gifts–with more modern trends. One vignette imagines Mrs. Stickley preparing to wrap a kimono, a fashionable gift–as was anything related to Japanese culture–for ladies at the time. The Christmas tree itself is a blend of Victorian and modern times, as it is wrapped with a short string of electric lights, which were the latest thing and quite expensive, but in a nod to custom, the tree also includes candles, which were traditional and still the most popular method for lighting a Christmas tree.

While celebrating the holidays, the Holiday Open House is also meant to provide respite during a hectic time of the year. On the porch of the Log House visitors will be invited to relax and enjoy hot cider and cookies, perhaps take a minute to work on a jigsaw puzzle or send holiday greeting to a friend.

 Join us for the Holiday Open House December 3-4 and 10-11 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Or come for a sneak peek at the holiday décor during our annual trunk show, which opens at 11 a.m. on Black Friday, November 25.

What’s Behind the Closed Doors? is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

Oil lamp as it appeared in "the Craftsman" magazine 100 years ago.

One of the rare objects on view right now is the Grueby oil lamp that we believe was original to the Log House. The oil lamp must have been a favorite of Gustav Stickley. It appears in several times in The Craftsman magazine photos of the Log House (see one photo above), and is shown in more than one location. The vase base was donated to the Stickley Museum in 2007 by Stickley great-granddaughter Barbara Fuldner, but it has not been on view until now.

It is now fully restored to its original appearance, thanks to later donations of a burner, font, brass lampshade supports, glass chimney, and a wicker lampshade. Sometimes called Japanese brown wicker and sometimes called Japanese split bamboo, lampshades such as this one were made in Japan and sold by Stickley. They are shown in Chips from the Craftsman Workshop from 1906. The shade is lined with Habutai silk, just as it was in Stickley’s day. This newer lining is stained with tea to give it the original appearance.

The brass font and Bradley & Hubbard duplex burner are real treasures. Stickley seemed to like these burners which feature two wicks. A talented craftsman made the brass shade-holder (the wire frame that sits on the burner and holds the shade in place) for us based on an original one found at Crab Tree Farm in Illinois.

Both this original oil lamp and the reproduction oil lamp are on view at this time and they make for an interesting comparison.

Oil lamp on table as it appears today

2007.02.01 Grueby Lamp Base
Grueby Faience Company oil lamp base believed to be original to Craftsman Farms.
c.1910
Gift of Barbara Fuldner

2011.17 Lampshade and Burner
Split bamboo shade, imported from Japan.
Bradley & Hubbard Duplex Burner
c. 1907
Gift of Bettina and Joe Gleason

Original Oil Lamp on View is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

What great news! Saturday’s gala raised over $100,000 for the day-to-day operations of the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms. Many thanks to photographer Mike Peters for these gala images of some of the wonderful people who made that success possible.

Catch the Spark Gala: Oh What a Night! is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

Dr. Jonathan Clancy will speak at our Forging Ahead Forum on Saturday, October 15 at Mountain Lakes Community Church. His talk, entitled Forging a Useable Past: Scholars, Scholarship, and the Arts and Crafts, will consider the potential for scholarship to inform the present as it illuminates the past. His presentation will include information about the Emerging Scholars Symposium. This annual conference, launched in 2011, is devoted to the work of up-and-coming scholars and is a collaboration between Sotheby’s Institute of Art and the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms. Clancy will discuss the objectives of the conference and its direction for 2012.

Dr. Jonathan Clancy is Director of the American Fine and Decorative Arts Program at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. His publications include The Beauty of Common Things: American Art Pottery from the Two Red Roses Foundation (2008), Warman’s Rookwood Pottery (2008), and numerous articles in journals such as Modern Craft, The Journal of Design History, and Style 1900. His recent work has spanned a variety of subjects including: John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark, Martin Johnson Heade’s early career, and Gustav Stickley’s metal wares. At present, he is directing a cataloging project for the paintings at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island.

Dr. Jonathan Clancy to Speak About Arts & Crafts Scholarship is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

The piano lamp is back in place, bringing a warm glow to the living room. It had been removed as part of a massive structural engineering project begun in January of 2011 but was returned to its rightful place today.

Member and friend Michael Lehr purchased it from someone who originally bought it 20-30 years ago in New Jersey. “It might be the one from The Farms, but I am not sure.”Michael says, “I knew when I purchased it, there were only two or three known examples. If I didn’t arrange for The Farms to have this one, they would probably never get one.” So he donated it to The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms nearly nine years ago.

The chandelier had been neglected over the decades and was missing its canopy and chain, and was also missing any lighting components (oil font). The patina was in poor condition with corrosion on copper as well as an overall dullness. The iron hooks and banding were rusty. The material used for the panels had been replaced with a paper material that did not allow any light through the cut-outs. There were not very many lengths of the small decorative chain hanging around the fixture. And of course, it was a bit out of shape and no longer really round. The chandelier was sent to Aurora Studios in the fall of 2002 for a complete restoration. The good news was that the patina could be restored. Often, original patinas are either long gone (sometimes polished) or irreversibly damaged. Dawn Hopkins and Michael Adams of Aurora Studios were able to remove the corrosion, enhance the original patina and restore the iron work. The main problem was the missing canopy. Because the fixture hung from around log, the curve appeared to be accommodated with what they referred to as a “can” with a more typical Gustav canopy attached to it. They visited the Farms and did some profile measurements to properly fit the canopy to the log and then fabricated a canopy with a similar “can” shape.

They had one rather fuzzy photograph of the original piano fixture for reference. Fortunately, there were other references to use to fabricate the proper chain the fixture hung from and the small decorative chain around the perimeter of the fixture. They replicated the original Gustav hardware that attaches the chain to the canopy and also made new panels of mica to finish the main body of the fixture.

There was one more delay in the Farms receiving the fixture. It languished at the studio for some time waiting for an original oil font to be found. Although there were many people looking for one, it did not materialize. The decision was made for the studio to fabricate a hammered wiring assembly that would mimic a font with the glass hurricane. At last, when the lamp was ready, Board member Dave Rudd picked it up from the studio and then drove more than four hours to personally assure its safe delivery to the Museum, where it was installed in the winter of 2009.

During the recent structural repairs on the staircase and foundation the lamp was removed and carefully stored in the collection room. After nine months it has now been reinstalled in its place of honor over the piano where it graces the living room with its cozy glow.

If you’d like to learn more about it, be sure to be here on Sunday, October 16, when Dawn Hopkins and Michael Adams will be here to answer questions and demonstrate their craft as part of Catch the Spark weekend.

Piano Lamp is Back in Place is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

A rare 1902 tall case clock which was original to the Log House is now on view in the Log House living room. This very same clock was pictured in historic photos of the Log House that were printed in The Craftsman magazine. After the Stickley family left Craftsman Farms, the clock was among the items purchased by the Farny family. It has been in their family ever since. Farny descendent, Peter Wood, has graciously loaned it to the Stickley Museum as part of the centennial celebration.

Very few of this model clocks were ever made and only a handful of them are known to exist today. This one still has a perfect original surface as well as the original fabric in its back door.

The clock is a cottagey design, with beautiful proportions and a gentle tapering case design. It is constructed of quarter sawn white oak and has a chamfered board back. In the soft light of the Log House living room, you can see the gentle waviness of the vintage glass in the front door.

Its brass clock face is positioned a bit lower than one would expect to allow the average person to look directly at the face (and admire its handsome copper numbers!) The numbers are held in place by copper wires that are attached to the number backs, threaded through the brass face, and bent in place behind the face.

The movement is a “Seth Thomas trapezoidal movement” (referring to the shape of the movements plates) and has a firm deliberate tick tock—loud enough to be heard throughout the living room. It chimes on the hour and half hour, with a deep beautiful resonating gong sound.

It’s a joy to see it standing where it stood 100 years ago!

Original Clock Returns to Craftsman Farms is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

The intriguing answers to today’s Facebook quiz can be found in Pete Mars’ essay “The Dear Old Farms: Gathering Ideas from an Ideal.” What modern conveniences did Stickley include in his construction of Craftsman Farms? Not what you’d expect!

The buildings at Craftsman Farms were unusually advanced and thoughtfully planned. In his essay, Mars states, “Due in part to the profusion of nearby estates and the proximity of Bell Laboratories, electricity came to Morris Plains in 1909, concurrent with the construction of the Farms. Buildings were constructed with municipal electricity, placing it decades ahead of the 90% of rural American farms that didn’t have municipal electricity until after the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.” The Log House had electric lighting throughout. Even the stables and cow barn had electricity.

Electric refrigerators were actually available for wealthy homeowners, but Stickley seemed to know they were not very reliable. Instead he chose to build a massive icebox that filled almost an entire kitchen wall. Mars writes, “Built into a hillside, the icebox benefitted from the coolness of the earth, making more efficient use of ice. Small icebox doors allowed access to staple items while a large 5” thick wood door opened to the walk-in icebox. Shoulder-height doors on the outside of the kitchen allowed ice to be delivered directly to the icebox without the mess of bringing it into the kitchen.” The icebox demonstrates Stickley’s thoughtful design and “green” approach to living.

Coal furnaces were common, and oil furnaces available, but Stickley came up with his own way of heating the Log House. Mars states, “He patented the Craftsman Fireplace, which had a network of chambers within the chimney to heat fresh outdoor air and circulate it into the home. Five Craftsman Fireplaces with large metal hoods were installed. While his heating system increased the heat output of the fireplaces, stoking five of them was undoubtedly labor intensive. Daughter Marion Stickley remembered, ‘In our home we had a man just to take care of the fireplaces.’ ”

What was the most surprising choice for Stickley’s 1911 home? He had a dishwasher! It may have been similar to the one shown here.

Want to know more about Stickley’s unusual laborsaving designs for Craftsman Farms? Pick up a copy of “Mr. Stickley’s Home: 1911” in the gift shop or our online bookstore. There are more surprises than you can imagine!

Stickley had a dishwasher? is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms