New Perspectives on the Workshop of Gustave Stickley

Armchair

John and Joseph W. Meeks

1850 (ca.)

Throughout the nineteenth century, revival styles eschewed the purity of prior movements in favor of the aesthetic possibilities they offered. This Meeks armchair is no different, for although the carving on the back is entirely drawn from Gothic sources, the turning of the legs is much more indebted to seventeenth-century precedents. This chair is used to illustrate that while designers approached the Gothic arch in many different ways, its presence was ubiquitous by the time Stickley began to explore its decorative potential in 1900.