The Girls' Bedroom

Unlike most of the second floor, which does not appear to have been photographed during Stickley's time at Craftsman Farms, the Girls' Bedroom was both photographed and described in Natalie Curtis's November 1911 article on the Log House that appeared in The Craftsman.  While the photograph is very useful, it is also puzzling: some things that we might expect to see–like a dresser, pillows on the bed, and the lantern–are missing.  It is helpful to remember that while the image depicts, in a general way, how the room was laid out, it does not reflect how the room was used or lived in (let alone which daughters actually slept in the room).  

This bedroom in particular, needed to straddle a difficult gulf: balancing the immediate needs of the family whose occupation of the house was imminent, and still retaining the flexibility to work as a room in the Club House that Stickley envisioned the building would become.  We know from the Curtis article–and confirmed through analysis of the room–that the walls were covered in a gray grasscloth, and that the room had a "peculiar charm because of its woodwork of dark gumwood, which is perhaps as beautiful as any produced by Craftsman design."    Whether the room lacked traditional notions of femininity because of Stickley's ideas of the modern woman, or whether this was a function of its eventual role as a room in a less-gendered clubhouse, it was framed by Curtis as a progressive triumph that heralded the modern woman, and positioned both Stickley and The Craftsman in a favorable light.  As Curtis noted: "Unlike those bedrooms in which "daintiness" is expressed by weakness, tawdry trimmings, flippancy and ruffles, this room has both delicacy and strength and is thus appropriate to the ideal of the modern woman."