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

We are making room for new holiday merchandise in the Museum Shop by holding our largest clearance sale in years. This is your chance to scoop up some favorites at up to 50% off! Sale items include tiles, books, gifts, pottery, note cards, baseball caps, teddy bears, copperware, and much more. Stop in soon because the early bird gets the biggest selection!

This sale runs through September 30 and is in-store only and not in our web shop. Items will return to full-price on October 1. Don’t miss your chance!

Museum Shop Clearance Sale Has Favorites at 50% off! is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

If you were among the more than 70 guests who attended Jonathan Clancy’s lecture here at Craftsman Farms on Saturday, April 4, you may be interested in knowing more about the topic of American Art Pottery. Dr. Clancy, lecturer in American Fine & Decorative Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, will be giving a seminar at the upcoming American Art Pottery Association’s convention later this month. He is co-author with Dr. Eidelberg of Beauty in Common Things, American Arts and Crafts Pottery from the Two Red Roses Foundation and he will give an overview of the Foundation’s collection, its significant pieces, and research discoveries.

Clancy’s seminar is one of three to be offered at the AAPA’s 29^th annual convention in Philadelphia on April 22 – 26, 2009. The convention will be headquartered at the Sheraton Bucks County Hotel in Langhorne, Pennsylvania (located near I-95 and Route 1) and will feature tours, seminars, and educational exhibits.

The keynote presentation at the annual reception and banquet on the evening of April 22^nd will be given by Dr. Martin Eidelberg, Professor Emeritus of Art History at Rutgers University and noted author on American ceramics and glass. His topic will be Arts and Crafts Pottery: What’s In A Name?

Suzanne Perrault, tile expert, author, Craftsman Auctions partner, and Antiques Roadshow appraiser, will lead a seminar on collecting, discussing why it doesn’t have to be big, expensive, or a superstar to be worthy of collecting. Unusual and noteworthy objects can come in unassuming packages.

Prominent contemporary potters Paul Katrich (Katrich Studios), Scott Draves (Door Pottery), Eric Olsen (Common Ground Pottery), and Chris Powell (Chris Powell Pottery) will share insights about their work and the future of art pottery.

The convention will also include an art pottery auction, featuring several hundred lots of vintage and contemporary art pottery, to be held Friday, April 24^th at 5:00 p.m. at the Radisson Hotel Philadelphia Northeast, with a preview at 3:30 p.m. The auction will be conducted by Greg Belhorn of Belhorn Auction Services, LLC.

The country’s greatest two-day pottery show and sale, featuring more than fifty pottery dealers will be held at the headquarters hotel on Saturday, April 25^th and Sunday, April 26^th. A special exhibit will accompany the show and will feature American Arts & Crafts pottery from the Two Red Roses Foundation collection. Registered members are offered a private viewing and sale on Saturday from 11:00 a.m. – 12 noon followed by the general public from noon – 5:00 p.m. Saturday, and from 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $6.00 per person for non-convention registered members and the general public. Activities scheduled as part of the show include hourly prizes and “Booth Chats” on both days, plus a pottery ID table on Sunday.

The 2009 convention also features two tours. On Wednesday, April 22 we will welcome the group for a special behind-the-scenes tour of the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms. This event is already sold out.

The Thursday, April 23^rd bus tour will include a private viewing of the Gordon collection of Rookwood pottery at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After lunch at the museum, attendees will have free time to explore the museum, featuring separate special exhibits on Cezanne, Matisse, and 20^th century Japanese crafts, or walk to nearby Fairmount Park and enjoy landmarks such as the Fairmount Waterworks and Boathouse Row.

Various convention attendance packages and day rates are available. All events are open to the public. For more information, visit AAPA. For more information contact our good friend, Arnie Small, President of American Art Pottery Association at PotsInACNJ@aol.com

Want To Learn More About Art Pottery? is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

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

We’re back in the master bedroom for this week’s featured piece.

#632 Dressing Table
Dimensions: 54″ W x 57″ H x 22″ D
Materials: Oak with brass hardware
Date: Ca. 1902 – 1903
Mark: Red joiner’s compass with Stickley in rectangle, on the back.
Designer: Attributed to LaMont Warner
Anonymous gift to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

Stickley first cataloged bedroom furniture in early 1901, but it was not until the middle of 1902 that his firm produced a bedroom piece specifically intended to be used by a woman – a dressing table of this design. His furniture – especially the furniture made in 1902 – is often thought of as “masculine,” though this dressing table shows the firm attempting to enter the realm of the “feminine.” In that sense it may not be completely successful. The applied pewter, iron, or copper candlesticks bracketing the mirror in the cataloged versions are an attractive decorative touch, but the boxy case is essentially an elongated reworking of a “genderless” Stickley writing table made the same year.

This dressing table, however, is important as an example of Stickley’s evident intent that year to expand his product line. With the introduction of this dressing table, the firm’s customers could now buy a complete bedroom suite of Stickley furniture. This included a bedstead; night table (cataloged as a “somno”); wardrobe; man’s chest of drawers; woman’s chest of drawers; cheval mirror; wash stand; and, by mid-1902, a dressing table for the woman of the house. The decision to extend his line of products is perhaps best understood as a business decision meant to increase sales. But it was equally an aesthetic choice. In 1902, Stickley and his designers began to work toward the visually unified Craftsman interiors that would blossom under the pencil of Harvey Ellis when he arrived in the Craftsman Workshops design studio the following year.

You can see other featured pieces from past weeks or come see us in person!

The Collection: Master Bedroom 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

Don’t forget about our upcoming Fall Harvest Family Day! The day will include square dancing, hayrides, pumpkin painting, butter churning, apple cider pressing, rug hooking demonstrations, quilt making demonstrations, potato printing, simple crafts for younger kids, 1910 carnival-style games like clothes pin in the milk bottle, and a general store featuring old fashioned candy, cider, doughnuts, and a mum sale.

The Fall Harvest Family Day is partially funded by a generous grant from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation.

Fall Family Day Is Next Weekend! 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