Our museum shop is now open year-round on weekends from 11am to 4pm.  This month the shop is featuring a big sale on Christmas cards, ornaments, calendars, books and more.

We also have many new items including tiles, pottery, books, note cards, gifts, children’s toys, and more.  Beautiful signed and numbered block prints of Craftsman Farms by Yoshiko Yamamoto of the Arts & Crafts Press http://www.artsandcraftspress.com/default.asp have just arrived.

You can be among the first to own Modern Craft Styles by Charles Stickley.   The catalogue reprint of Charles Stickley’s mission furniture was just released is finally available to collectors.  This book includes the complete 117-page Stickley & Brandt Chair Company 1911 trade catalogue, plus a 16-page illustrated history of the company and its principals, Charles Stickley and Schuyler Coe Brandt.  Most Arts and Crafts aficionados know that Charles Stickley was Gustav Stickley’s younger brother and that he made mission furniture-but that is about it.  Until publication of this book, Charles Stickley was the Stickley brother we knew the least about. Even photographs of Charles Stickley were hard to come by.  Even less was known about Charles Stickley’s business partner (and brother-in-law), Schuyler Coe Brandt.   The unabridged 1911 trade catalogue is reprinted in its original size, 9”x12”.  The catalogue shows over 200 designs of Stickley & Brandt mission furniture, including settles, settees, armchairs, side chairs, rockers, footstools, library tables, desks, tabourettes, bookcases, dining room suites and bedroom suites.

And, as always, you can find other unique items when you shop online.

Museum Shop Now Open Year Round! is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

This week’s highlighted piece is the triangular Stickley cabinet in corner of the dining room. Have you seen all our featured pieces?

Corner Cabinets

Dimensions: 50 3/4″ W x 66 1/2″ H x 26 1/2″ D
Oak with copper hardware
Date: Circa 1910 – 1911
Mark:
Designer: Unknown
Acquired by the Craftsman Farms Foundation at Christie’s, New York, November 29, 1999, lots #417 and #418.

As the manufacturer of reproduction “period” chairs through the 1880s and 1890s Stickley would have been well aware that the corner cabinet was a common vernacular furniture form in late 18th and early 19th century America. Given his professed admiration for the design skills and craftsmanship of the artisans of that pre-industrial era, it is not surprising that when his firm began producing case pieces that he would want to construct a Craftsman version of that familiar form. He first cataloged a Craftsman corner cabinet in 1902, making it of massive oak planks and giving it glazed doors with wooden mitered mullions above a pair of solid oak cupboard doors enriched with iron or copper strap hinges. About the same time his firm created a variant of that design with diamond-paned leaded glass doors instead of wooden mullions. This diamond pattern is familiar to any one who has ever visited Craftsman Farms and noted the many log house windows that use this same motif.

In 1903, Stickley made a corner cabinet for the Arts and Crafts exhibition he held that year in the Craftsman Building, offering it for sale for the high price of $100. That tall, strap-hinged oak case piece is the most magnificent corner cabinet ever produced by his firm. Fortunately – for later generations – it did not sell, and Stickley took it home to his own dining room. It remains in his family today and has been shown in several recent museum exhibitions. His firm evidently manufactured other corner cabinets in later years, but after 1902 none were included in Craftsman furniture catalogs. In April 1906, however, The Craftsman magazine offered plans and building instructions for a corner cupboard in its monthly feature, “Home Training in Cabinet Work.” The short accompanying text noted that making this case piece was a complicated task for a novice: “This piece is the most difficult of any yet given in our Cabinet Work series. The fitting of the 45-degree angles must be carefully done. The glass mullions … demand careful work.”

Except for their triangular plan, the corner cabinets made for the log house dining room at Craftsman Farms are closely related to the standard china cabinets and bookcases the firm was then manufacturing. The top rails curve gently from back to front, an elongated iteration of the curve frequently seen on Craftsman case pieces made between 1901 and 1916. The glazed doors have straightforward, lap-jointed mullions and, as was true of all cataloged Craftsman china cabinets from 1907 on, the interior shelves are stationary. For his own home Stickley might have specified china cabinets with costlier, more labor-intensive mitered mullions and adjustable shelves. But instead of insisting on those subtle refinements he followed the dictates of what had become his standard factory practice. If there is a slight indulgence evident here, it is the shapely, non-standard hammered copper hardware echoing the hardware on the sideboard.

In late 1916 Stickley’s firm made perhaps its final corner cabinet. Combining vernacular, Gothic Revival, and Sheraton attributes, it was part of his ill-fated Chromewald line, and was finished with hand-rubbed blue and brown hues. Though not particularly well constructed, and a far cry from his earlier Arts and Crafts furniture, it is a delicately beautiful object and a fitting conclusion to his nearly fifteen year engagement with this three-sided cabinet form.

The Collection: The Dining Room is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

For this week’s virtual visit, we’ll be looking again at the Donegal carpet in the dining room. The original Donegal carpet is in the Craftsman Farms collection, but it’s just too fragile to be out on display. So the carpet we see in the Log House is a careful reproduction of the original.

Rug maker Del Martin made three exact reproduction carpets, after carefully researching the original.  Here are some photos of the reproductions in progress:

Hope you enjoyed our peek behind the scenes making the reproduction of the Donegal carpet! Don’t miss our other featured pieces from our collection!

The Collection: Behind The Scenes With The Donegal Carpet is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

It’s Tuesday again, and time to take a look at another piece in our collection! This carpet happens to be one of my favorites but don’t forget about all our other featured pieces.

Donegal carpet
Dimensions: 165″ x 114″
Wool
Date: Ca 1905 – 1910
Unsigned
Designer: Attributed to Morton’s Studio
Anonymous gift to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

Stickley evidently first made personal contact with the British carpet manufacturing firm, Alexander Morton & Company, when he was in London on a buying trip in January 1903. The subdued colors of these lush woolen carpets – chiefly greens, yellows, and blues – as well as their stylized floral and plant-form motifs certainly appealed to Stickley’s Arts and Crafts taste. The distinctive designs were created by Alexander Morton’s son James and nephew Gavin, as well as a distinguished roster of British freelancers, among them C. F. A. Voysey, the Silver Studio, Lindsay Butterfield, M. H. Baillie Scott, and numerous others. The carpets were hand-woven for Morton in Ireland.

In March and April 1903, Stickley showed two Donegal carpets at his Arts and Crafts exhibition in Syracuse and Rochester, New York, offering one for sale for $190. During the exhibition, Stickley’s firm announced that it was now importing these carpets, and it continued to do so throughout the following decade. Stickley illustrated a Donegal carpet in his first textile and needlework catalog (March 1905), offering a light weight rug at $12.50 a yard and a heavy weight rug for $16.50. These were costly carpets: a multi-hued Craftsman drugget rug pictured in that same catalog was priced at $2.50 a yard. Promotional copy in the 1912 Craftsman furnishings catalog reveals that the firm did not keep Donegals on hand: “The Donegal rugs which are made for us in Ireland are not carried in stock, but woven to order…. From four to six months are usually required to fill an order for Donegal rugs.” The catalog copy also makes clear the Donegal’s appeal: “These rugs … come in designs with broad effects and well-blended coloring that bring them into complete harmony with Craftsman … furnishings.”

By the time this 1912 catalog was published Stickley had already furnished the dining room at Craftsman Farms with two Donegal carpets and a Donegal runner, and one carpet remains in that space. The two carpets seem to be in the pattern Morton called “The Fintona,” a stylized plant-form design attributed to the Silver Studios. The carpets’ predominantly green, yellow, gold, and dusty rose tones complemented the green-brown woodwork and furniture and picked up the colors of the amber glass light fixtures, the window curtains and other Craftsman textiles used in this room. Stickley’s catalogs promised that Donegal carpets would be in “complete harmony” with Craftsman furnishing, and in the dining room at Craftsman Farms he made that promise a reality.

In November of 2006 rug maker Del Martin donated three exact reproduction carpets, after exhaustive research on the original carpet, and these rugs are now on display in the Log House. The original rug will be displayed when the museum is able to construct appropriate space in the future.

While the original carpet is in the Craftsman Farms collection, it’s too fragile to be displayed out on the floor, so the carpet we see in the Log House is a gorgeous reproduction.

The Collection: The Dining Room is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

We’ve been showing some of the pieces in our historic museum on our virtual tour. Visit our blog’s archives for all previous posts on The Collection. Today we’re talking about the sideboard in the dining room of The Log House.

Sideboard
Dimensions: 120 3/4 ” W x 70 3/4″ H x 24 1/2″ D
Materials: Oak and chestnut with copper hardware
Date: Circa 1910
Designer: Unknown
Anonymous gift to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

The sideboard in the dining room at Craftsman Farms is one of the largest and most impressive case pieces ever made by Stickley’s firm, and as far as is now known it is one of only four sideboards of this basic design to emerge from his factory. Stickley evidently made these sideboards only for his own use, for exhibition, or on special order. Some aspects of their designs – the quartered oak cabinet doors with elongated strap hinges and the angled open shelves at both ends of the case – were probably inspired by a sideboard designed earlier by the British architect M. H. Baillie Scott. In January 1900, a picture of that Baillie Scott work appeared on the cover of the American Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer, and Stickley and his designers would have routinely seen this trade magazine at his office.

A drawing of the first known Stickley sideboard of this design was published in the December 1902 issue of his Craftsman magazine, where it was shown in the dining room of his newly remodeled Syracuse home. That sideboard was 121″ long, 44″ high, and 25″ deep; its door and drawer handles and horizontal strap hinges were of hand-wrought iron—and it was made of Stickley’s favorite cabinet wood, quarter sawn oak. Its proportions were long and low. It had a central stack of drawers flanked by cabinet doors, and there were Baillie Scott-like open shelves at both ends. That sideboard stayed in the Stickley family until the late 1980s and is now in a private collection.

A few months later, in March and April 1903, Stickley held an Arts and Crafts exhibition at his Syracuse Craftsman Building, and one of the exhibition’s highlights was the model dining room installed on the building’s second floor. As the editor of The Craftsman, Irene Sargent, wrote in the magazine that May, “One of [the] features which called forth the most spontaneous admiration was the dining room furnished and arranged by the United Crafts…. The sideboard especially attracted the attention of the visitors, and was judged to be one of the best pieces as yet built in the workshops of the United Crafts.” This sideboard was almost identical to the one in Stickley’s Columbus Avenue home. It was offered for sale at the high price of $190, an amount equivalent to about $4000 in 2006; its present whereabouts are unknown.

In 1908 or 1909, Stickley’s firm built another, though slightly smaller, sideboard of this design for the home of Duncan and Flora Guiney of Yonkers, New York. Duncan Guiney was a merchant tailor whose Manhattan business was on West 34th Street near Fifth Avenue, about a block from Stickley’s retail store and offices at 29 and 41 West 34th Street. Very possibly the two men knew each other and it may have been because of this personal relationship that Guiney ordered a Stickley sideboard that exactly fit the length of the his dining room’s north wall. That sideboard remained in the house through several subsequent owners and is now in a private collection.

When Stickley came to furnish the vast Craftsman Farms dining room, he decided to adapt this handsome – as well as large and functional – sideboard design. Though the hardware is different, the Craftsman Farms sideboard clearly evolved from the earlier versions and like them is constructed of quarter-sawn oak. The most apparent difference is the useful and attractive attached plate rack that the preceding sideboards lacked. The plate rack is framed with oak members, matching the sideboard’s case, but the chamfered vertical boards spanning the width of the plate rack are chestnut, bringing this piece into harmony with the chestnut logs and chestnut furniture used throughout the downstairs of the house. Contemporary photographs show that Stickley decked out this plate rack with ceramic and wrought metal platters and serving pieces, as well as a discreet bell, which his wife Eda presumably pressed to summon family servants.

. Photographers Monika Broz and David Mielcarek also made use of the sideboard when they shot engagement photos for Clancy and David! You can see these pictures in their gallery.

The Collection: The Dining Room is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

We’re displaying some of the pieces in our historic house museum online. This is the second post in this series, the first one features the inlaid beds in the girls’ bedroom.

Library Table
Dimensions: 93 1/2″ W x 29 3/4″ H x 36 1/2″ D
Materials: Elm with copper hardware
Date: Ca. 1902 – 1903
Unmarked
Designer: Unknown
Anonymous gift to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

In 1904, Irene Sargent wrote an unsigned essay about the Syracuse Craftsman Building, where the Stickley firm had its offices, design studio, and metal and textile workshops. Her essay appeared in a promotional booklet, titled “What is Wrought in The Craftsman Workshops,” and included photographs of several of this building’s rooms. One of the photographs showed The Craftsman magazine’s “principal editorial room,” and Sargent described its furnishings, mentioning “simple bookcases and high-backed settles,” and then telling readers that “a large library table, with its accompanying armchairs, occupies much of the floor space, which is covered with a deep green Donegal rug.”

About six years later, Stickley took some of this furniture to Craftsman Farms. The editorial room bookcase, made of elm, a wood Stickley’s firm rarely used, went into the log house dining room, and is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The settle was placed in front of the fireplace at the north end of the living room; its present whereabouts are unknown, and a replica fills that space today. The Donegal rug pointed out by Sargent is probably also lost; it has not so far been possible to identify it from the photograph in “What is Wrought in The Craftsman Workshops.” But the one-of-a-kind “large library table,” stained green and, like the bookcase, made of elm, was placed in the log house living room and may be seen there today.

This big table – nearly eight feet long – has three drawers on either side, making it a functional “partners’ desk,” where more than one person can work at a time. Its massiveness, the oval copper handles on its drawers, and the resolutely straight-lined planks that it is made of are the hallmarks of furniture Stickley made in 1902 and early 1903. Yet there are 1901 Stickley traits here too. The long, curved corbels that brace the legs are similar to the corbels on the #2341 Morris chair at the south end of the living room. The rounded, shaped tenon ends that pierce the legs are very like those on the hexagonal library table, also at the south end of this room. But perhaps its color is what makes this table so noteworthy. Stained green, it originally stood on a green Donegal carpet in the Craftsman Building’s editorial room. At Craftsman Farms, a mostly green patterned Craftsman drugget rug was on the floor beneath it. And the large oil lamp that Stickley placed on the table’s top had a green-glazed Grueby base. Revealed structure and good proportion are key elements of Stickley’s visual vocabulary, but color and color harmony are every bit as important. It is worth noting that when the foundation took possession of the table it was a more typically “warm brown” Craftsman finish. During restoration of the table the hardware was removed and under it was the original green color, probably an aniline stain altered by exposure to the sun over a long time. The original hardware had been smaller, too. At some point Stickley replaced that hardware with larger escutcheons.

Visit our main site for more information about the rest of the living room and other pieces in the collection, or plan a visit to Craftsman Farms to see the collection for yourself!

The Collection: The Living Room is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms