We’re in the living room today, looking at the inlaid piano, although there is also a Stickley piano upstairs in the girls’ bedroom.

Inlaid Piano
Dimensions: 62 1/2″ W x 57″ H x 29″ D
Materials: Oak with inlays of pewter, oak and tinted woods
Works: Serial number 37370. Works manufactured by the Everett Piano Company, Boston
Inlay panels and marquetry band: Made by the firm of George H. Jones, New York City
Date: ca. 1905 – 1906
Unmarked
Designer: Harvey Ellis
Gift by Paul Fiore to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

Apparently the first piano built by Stickley’s firm was the one photographed for the October 1903 issue of The Craftsman. Certainly designed by Harvey Ellis, it had an elegant rectilinear case of dark fumed oak. The flat surface above the keyboard had a central music rack flanked by inlaid rectangular panels.

These decorative panels consisted of a stylized plant stem rising through an oval motif and terminating in a bright spot of color, a “blossom.” The blossom was placed within a small rectangle bisected by a line of string inlay that formed a larger rectangle; this is a visually satisfying unifying motif, with the two inlaid rectangles repeating the shape of the panels they are set into. The surface below the keyboard was a gridded panel. Its horizontal and vertical lines were echoed in the laths of the music rack as well as in the rectangular decorative channels cut into the front and sides of the case. At the top of the case, there was a shaped and beveled cornice surmounting a line of applied dentil molding.

Stickley took this first piano home to his Columbus Avenue house, and later, when the family left Syracuse to move to New Jersey, it went into the girls’ bedroom at Craftsman Farms. It was inherited by his second daughter, Mildred, and remains with her descendants. This piano has eighty-five keys and two pedals, and its work are by Carl Rhönisch, a German firm that also manufactured works for pianos designed by M. H. Baillie Scott. A replica of this piano case, made in 2003 by Mitchell Andrus is now in the girls’ bedroom.

The piano originally in the log house living room is now lost, though it was similar to other Craftsman pianos now known. They have eighty-eight keys, three pedals, and works made either by Vose & Son, Boston, or, like the present example, by the Everett Piano Company. The cases of these pianos are slightly different from the first piano. Instead of a separate music rack, for instance, they have a gridded panel above the keyboard, and their feet are made of heavier, more substantial boards. These minimum variations aside, the cases remained essentially unchanged for the remaining ten or so years that inlaid Craftsman pianos were made. Including the piano now at Craftsman Farms, there are perhaps six examples of this rare model known today.

Though The Craftsman magazine often published Craftsman interiors that included the firm’s pianos, Stickley’s catalogs rarely showed them. A drawing of a Craftsman piano appeared in the booklet “Chips from the Craftsman Workshops” (1907), and photographs were published in the catalogs “Some Chips from the Craftsman Workshops” (1909) and “Craftsman Furnishings for the Home (1912). The promotional copy in these two catalogs sheds light on the rarity of Craftsman pianos today. According to the 1909 catalog: “We have one of the pianos on exhibition in our New York showrooms and one in Boston, and will gladly furnish by mail any particulars concerning them.” This is evidence that the firm made samples for retail display and did not keep pianos in stock. The 1912 catalog offered the piano without inlay, saying, “we find that many people do not wish to buy a piano as expensive as our original design, and others would prefer the piano case simpler, without the decorative inlay in wood.” The price of the piano without inlay was $450 and the inlaid version – its price not given in either catalog – would have sold for more. $450 amounted to a considerable outlay in an era when many middle class families were living on incomes of about $1,000 to $1,500 a year. With or without inlay, the handsome Craftsman piano was evidently too high-priced for Stickley’s middle-class customers and it is likely that few were made.

The Collection: Living 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

Welcome back to the virtual tour of some of the pieces in Stickley’s historic home! Did you see the last post on the library table in the living room? Today’s focus is on the chest of drawers in the master bedroom of the Log House.

#614 Chest of Drawers
Dimensions: 45″ W x 61 1/4″ H x 21 1/2″ D
Materials: Oak with copper hardware
Date: Ca. 1902 – 1903
Mark: Red joiner’s compass decal with “Stickley” in rectangle
Design: Attributed to LaMont Warner
Anonymous gift to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

Stickley’s firm first offered a bedroom chest with frame-and-panel cabinet doors over stacked drawers in the catalog “Things Wrought by the United Crafts,” issued in January 1902. Though its design varied from the design of the chest of drawers now in the log house master bedroom, its dimensions were the same, it was cataloged as a #614 chest of drawers, and it too was offered with wrought iron or copper hardware. It was made with “Red Scented Cedar Drawer Bottoms,” a feature both pleasant and functional. Its $70.00 price tag made it one of the most expensive items offered in that early catalog.

Later in 1902 Stickley issued a set of “retail plates” which included a photograph of the #614 chest that had evolved from the earlier version. This second and final iteration did not have cedar-bottomed drawers, but its cabinets – perfect for storing top hats – were lined with that wood. It was given a projecting, bevel-edged cornice that emphatically capped the vertical case and cast shadows across the wooden surface as light conditions changed. The beauty of this rectilinear cabinet was further enhanced by its rich, brown-toned quarter sawn oak planks and by the light-catching pyramidal wood screws that fasten the hammered copper hardware to the drawer and door fronts. The #614 chest of drawers at Craftsman Farms has great presence. It is a large-scale, dramatically proportioned piece of furniture with the characteristic mass and rectilinearity of Stickley’s 1902 furniture production, the year his designers were working at their peak.

You can visit our blog’s archives for all previous posts on The Collection. Watch this space for more featured pieces from our collection!

The Collection: The Master Bedroom is a post from The Stickley Museum At Craftsman Farms

I discovered this great collection of photos of the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms on Scott’s blog. Great pictures of a Craftsman Farms daytrip!

For more pictures, or to add your own, visit our Flickr pool!

Stickley Museum Photos 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

If you can’t make it to New Jersey to visit our museum and historic site in person, you can view photos and read about the pieces in our collection. This first piece is one of two beds upstairs in the Log House in what would have been Stickley’s daughters’ bedroom.

Inlaid bed
Dimensions: 57 1/2″ W x 38 1/2″ H (headboard) x 79″ D
Materials: Oak with inlays of copper and tinted woods
Inlays: Made by the firm of George H. Jones, New York City
Date: Ca. 1910 – 1911
Mark: Red joiner’s compass with Gustav Stickley signature, on inside of headboard.
Designer: Unknown
Anonymous gift to The Craftsman Farms Foundation.

The two beds made for the girls’ bedroom are chiefly important – from a design standpoint – as essential parts of this room’s decorative ensemble. Like the chests of drawers (visit our main site for more information on the other furniture in the girls’ room), they are made of oak washed with gray tones and their headboards and footboards are inlaid with the same copper motifs set in turquoise blue grounds.

And as further evidence of the great care with which this furniture was designed, the elevated, shaped “lift” motif of the headboards and footboards is the “solid” that echoes the “void” formed by the sawn-out aprons at the bottoms of the chests of drawers. The Craftsman magazine had been advocating unified, harmoniously colored interior design since 1902 and creating it with great assurance since Harvey Ellis’s brief tenure in 1903. Throughout the log house at Craftsman Farms – and particularly in the girls’ bedroom – Stickley’s designers faithfully followed those precepts.

As in Stickley’s time, there are now two of these inlaid beds in the girls’ bedroom. One is original and the other a replica made in 2003 by Steve and Mary Ann Voorhees.

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

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