Woodworker's Journal 1984-8-6, страница 31

cooperative community. In a few short years he had become something of a celebrity; an ideological hero with thousands of devout followers, and many more who imitated his style.

Although he sometimes used elm, mahogany, chestnut and ash, Stickley chose oak as the primary material for his furniture. He saw oak as the quintessential American wood — inexpensive and abundant — yet with superior structural strength and possessing a raw material beauty. His rectilinear designs reflected the Stickley belief that wood was not intended to be forced into unnatural shapes and forms. Oak was the wood that best fulfilled his commitment "to make pieces that are practical and comfortable, that would last a man's lifetime without being much the worse for wear, the kind of things one could take pride in handing down to one's grandchildren."

As articles in The Craftsman magazine pointed out, Gustav Stickley's concepts of design and order went far beyond furniture. He applied them to every aspect of life — even education — and his Craftsman Farms became something of a Utopian experiment in his ideology. Although his furniture designs did change (becoming less severe and incorporating copper and pewter inlays under the influence of designer Harvey Ellis), Stickley steadfastly heid to his belief in the ideal of the craftsman as a sort of "renaissance man."

The Craftsman magazine featured everything from guest essays to house plans, and over the years he boldly experimented with various ways to apply his ideology to 20th century life. One such aborted plan was to reorganize his factories under the medieval "guild" system. It proved to be a plan that, like many of his ideas, looked great in theory but simply did not work in practice.

Stickley's crowning achievement came in 1913 with the completion of the Craftsman building on 39th Street in New York City. The building was a center for displaying Stickley's designs and publishing his magazine. It included a lecture hall, library, business offices, Craftsman clubhouses, and even a Craftsman restaurant. Everything was made-to-order Stickley, right down to the food served in the restaurant, which was all grown on the Craftsman Farm.

Gustav Stickley was on top of the world in 1913, and he arrogantly refused to see the cracks developing in his empire. His stubbornness, and uncompromising commitment to the

Craftsman ideal were blinding him to the realities of competing in the business world. Indeed, in 1913 Stickley paid himself the ultimate compliment when he wrote, "most of my furniture was so carefully designed and well proportioned in the first place, that even with my vast experience I cannot improve upon it." With these fateful words Stickley signaled his professional demise.

The simple qualities that were the keys to the mass appeal of Stickley designs now worked against him. His furniture was easily copied and particularly suited to assembly line machine production. It was a supreme irony that the very Craftsman features that Stickley championed now made his designs the perfect subject for inexpensive reproductions. Stickley refused to alter his hands-on techniques, and a scant two years after his Craftsman building opened, he was forced to declare bankruptcy. As perhaps the final humiliation, in 1916 the bankrupt Stickley hired on as a consultant with the Simmons Mattress Company in his native Wisconsin. Not surprisingly, it was a short-lived arrangement.

Although Gustav Stickley died in relative obscurity in 1942, his Craftsman style had proved to be the cornerstone of the immensely popular American Mission style. Today, pieces imprinted with the traditional Stickley logo — a medieval joiner's compass and the Dutch expression "Als ik kan" (roughly translated: All I can) — command prices that often range into the tens of thousands of dollars. His furniture is considered one of the hottest items in the antique market.

It is in response to the intense interest in Stickley's work that we offer plans for one of his classic chair designs (see page 34). It features a leather cushion, perhaps with an eye toward comfort, while retaining Stickley's bold use of the mortise-and-tenon joint.

Oak lunch table showing pinned tenon construction.

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