WoodCentral.com
by Ellis Walentine
News and Views from
business in midstream and set out to reinvent American furniture. Society was at the end of 20 or more years of dramatic changes, and a lot of those changes left us with cheap stuff that wasn’t very good. What if we go back to square one and make tables and chairs that fit their purpose, use material nicely, and require a degree of craftsmanship to produce? In a lot of ways, it was reactionary for its time. Given that A&C was a reaction to the industrialization of furniture making, was it mostly made in a factory/mass-production setting or by single craftsmen? The A&C movement started in England with Morris and Ruskin. The English had a grimmer history with industrialization than we had here in the US. Stickley’s work was definitely factory production. At his peak, Stickley had around 300 employees. According to the factory records, the original idea was to organize it as more of a cooperative guild. Gus was a socialist, in the early-20th-Century meaning of the term. Not long after Stickley introduced his line in 1901, there were about 150 factories knocking him off. Stickley ’s own brothers were among the imitators. Beyond these, there were a ton of interesting little shops that made neat stuff. Most of us know about Greene & Greene, but there were others. I've been exploring the Byrdcliffe colony, which made very few pieces, but had great It is only appropriate that Bob Lang designs. participated in the WoodCentral.com Stickley was also big in the “chat” sitting in a Morris Chair. do-it-yourself (DIY) area. His magazine, The Craftsman, had lots of furniture projects, which weren’t the same as the factory production models, but similar. It also had other types of crafts like metalwork, etc. The Craftsman is available online, and it’s a worthwhile read. Was there an oriental influence in A&C furniture? It seems to me that Greene & Greene incorporated more Asian elements than Stickley. At the time, Japanese art and design was a big deal. Japan had been a mystery until after the 1860s. It was a big influence on everyone in the period, but especially on the Greenes. What was the likelihood that one could build this furniture at home back then? There were local millwork shops where you could go and buy parts. In the Popular Mechanics book Mission Furniture: How to Make It, almost every project starts with “Get the following parts milled . . .” It’s pretty approachable, after you have the basic stock milled, but one machine I would recommend is a hollow chisel mortiser. For the through joinery, there is a lot of handwork to get the fit “just so.” So, it is a myth that the average homeowner in 1905 had an adequate tool kit and skill set to make this stuff? Guys in 1910 didn’t have tablesaws at home, but I think there was