New Furniture from The Workshop of Gustave Stickley
Item
Title
New Furniture from The Workshop of Gustave Stickley
Creator
Gustave Stickley Company
Date
1900
Credit line
Private Collection
Description
The decision to issue a catalog of furniture in 1900 was a departure for Stickley, as no catalogs of his work are known prior to this. Typically, Stickley’s firms advertised with photographs of their products that featured the model number and name of the model, but never bound these together and offered a catalog that demonstrated the full range of their wares. Although notice of this catalog did not appear in the press until October 1900, Stickley likely prepared this catalog well before then and used as it a means to market this new line when he exhibited it at the Grand Rapids Furniture Exposition in July 1900.
Often framed as a radical departure from his earlier work, New Furniture from the Workshops of Gustave Stickley was simply a means for Stickley to market this new line. Indeed, when read against the factory inventories he undertook at the beginning of each year, the catalog is as revealing in what it suppressed as it is in what it revealed. Stickley continued to produce substantial quantities of revival-style furniture–many of which predated the dissolution of his partnership with Elgin A. Simonds in 1898–through at least 1903.
Often framed as a radical departure from his earlier work, New Furniture from the Workshops of Gustave Stickley was simply a means for Stickley to market this new line. Indeed, when read against the factory inventories he undertook at the beginning of each year, the catalog is as revealing in what it suppressed as it is in what it revealed. Stickley continued to produce substantial quantities of revival-style furniture–many of which predated the dissolution of his partnership with Elgin A. Simonds in 1898–through at least 1903.