Gustav Stickley

Gustav Stickley (March 9, 1858 – April 15, 1942) was an American furniture manufacturer, design leader, publisher, and a leading voice in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Stickley's design philosophy was a major influence on American Craftsman architecture.

Early life

One of eleven children of German émigrés Leopold and Barbara Schlager Stoeckel, Gustav Stickley was born Gustavus Stoeckel on March 9, 1858, in Osceola, Wisconsin. The eldest surviving son, Stickley experienced the rigors of life growing up on a small Midwestern farm, forgoing his formal education in 1870 to continue work in his father’s field of stonemasonry and help support his struggling family. By early 1876, Stickley’s mother and siblings moved to Brandt, Pennsylvania, where Gustav worked in his uncle’s chair factory – his first formal training in the furniture industry.

Early career

With his brothers Charles and Albert, Gustav formed Stickley Brothers & Company in 1883, the same year he married Eda Ann Simmons. Within five years, the company was dissolved and Stickley’s ambitions led him to partner with Elgin Simonds, a salesman in the furniture trade, to form the firm Stickley & Simonds in Binghamton, New York. During the 1890s, Stickley divided his efforts between his new enterprise and the Auburn State Prison. At the prison he and his brother Leopold served as a foremen of furniture operations. In 1898, he orchestrated the removal of his business partner and formed the Gustave Stickley Company (he dropped the use of the "e" from his first name in 1903).

In the summer of 1900, he worked with Henry Wilkinson and, possibly, LaMont A. Warner (soon his first staff designer) to create his first Arts and Crafts works in an experimental line called the New Furniture. In 1901, he changed the name of his firm to the United Crafts, issued a new catalogue written by Syracuse University professor Irene Sargent, and began to offer middle class consumers a host of progressive furniture designs in ammonia-fumed quartersawn white oak, as well as other mostly native woods.

The Craftsman

In October 1901, Stickley published the first issue of '' The Craftsman'' magazine, an important vehicle for promoting Arts and Crafts philosophy as well as the products of his factory within the context of articles, reviews, and advertisements for a range of products of interest to the homemaker. Lead articles in the first two issues paid tribute to two influencers of Stickley and Sargent's design philosophies: William Morris and John Ruskin.

Nearly all of the first three issues of ''The Craftsman'' were written by Sargent, who thereafter wrote each issue's lead article, acted as the managing editor and designed the magazine's layouts.Zipf, Catherine W. ''Professional Pursuits: Women and the American Arts and Crafts Movement''. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007, pp. 143–48. The magazine also featured articles by libertarian socialists.

Furniture design

Stickley's new furniture reflected his ideals of simplicity, honesty in construction, and truth to materials. Unadorned, plain surfaces were enlivened by the careful application of colorants so as not to obscure the grain of the wood and mortise and tenon joinery was exposed to emphasize the structural qualities of the works. Hammered metal hardware, in armor-bright polished iron or patinated copper emphasized the handmade qualities of furniture which was fabricated using both handworking techniques and modern woodworking machinery within Stickley's Eastwood, New York, factory (now a part of Syracuse, New York). Dyed leather, canvas, terry cloth and other upholstery materials complemented the designs.

Those ideals – simplicity, honesty, truth – were reflected in his trademark, which includes the Flemish phrase ''Als Ik Kan'' inside a joiner's compass. The phrase is generally translated 'to the best of my ability.'

His firm's work, both nostalgic in its evocation of handicraft and the pre-industrial era and proto-modern in its functional simplicity, was popularly referred to as being in the Mission style, though Stickley despised the term as misleading. In 1903 he changed the name of his company again, to the Craftsman Workshops, and began a concerted effort to market his works – by then including furniture as well as textiles, lighting, and metalwork – as Craftsman products. Ultimately, over 100 retailers across the United States represented the Craftsman Workshops.

In 1902, the later world-renowned sculptor Jerome Connor was hired to head up Stickley's metal work department. Architect E. G. W. Dietrich contributed his design and accompanying essay titled “The Cottage Quality” to the February and April 1903 editions of ''The Craftsman'' magazine. Then in May 1903, the magazine published the first “Craftsman House” designed by Dietrich in cooperation with Stickley.  The article featured a house design and drawings by Dietrich including an exterior view, floor plans, and detailed interior views showcasing Stickley furniture. In May 1903 Stickley hired Rochester architect Harvey Ellis. Although Ellis died only a few months later, in January 1904, he had an immediate and profound effect upon design of ''The Craftsman'' magazine, its architectural offerings, and the furnishings Stickley was producing, reinforcing the connections between Stickley's work and that of English and Glaswegian designers. During this year Stickley's furniture evolved from solid, monumental forms to lighter shapes, relieved by arches, tapering legs, and – in a new experimental line – inlay as decoration. Within a year the inlay designs would be all but dropped from production save special orders, but the broader emphasis on less massive forms would remain. In keeping with this new emphasis, Stickley also began offering furniture in willow to complement the heavier oak designs. Furthering the development of his concept of the Craftsman home, in late 1903 he announced the formation of the Craftsman Home Builders Club to provide architectural plans from ''The Craftsman'' to its subscribers. The homes were offered in a number of archetypes familiar to American public – the farmhouse, town house, cottage, and bungalow, among others. Natural materials and soft colors predominated and interiors were invariably prescribed to include simplified moldings, stained wood, and characteristic features such as built-in cabinets and fireplaces with inglenooks for seating. Although these homes were only rarely innovative in terms of progressive style, designs reflected current approaches to open floor plans, economy of function, and use of novel materials for walls, roofs, and surface treatments.

Craftsman Farms

Stickley moved his headquarters to New York City in 1905 and by 1907 began to acquire property to establish a boarding school for boys in Morris Plains, New Jersey

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