Arts & Crafts, Craftsman
or Mission Style Antiques

Arts & Crafts Movement Resource Directory.
stermitz@tango.org

About the Directory

Introduction to Mission Style Antiques

This was not limited to the higher echelon of home buyer. Through the dissemination of style magazines such as The Craftsman and the Ladies Home Journal the middle class was introduced to the Craftsman Style.

Introduction: Mission Antiques
Origins of Mission or Craftsman Style
Mission Style Furniture (ca: 1905-1915)
Other Decorative Items

The Continental Arts & Crafts Movement was highly influential in the second half of the 19th Century. From the erotic plant forms of the French Art Nouveau and German Jugendstil to the Celtic stylization of the English, this movement was self-consciously redefining all the arts, with a special influence on popular, that is to say hand-crafted, household arts.

Arts & Crafts is the generic term for this artistic movement. Art Nouveau refers specifically to the French movement. Jugendstil to the German form, Secession in Austria, Style Moderne in Russia, Gaudi in Spain, Glasgow School and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland.

Utopian artist colonies were often funded by wealthy "socialists" or Victorian philanthropists dedicated to countering the dehuminizing aspects of the machine age.

The writings of John Ruskin and William Morris were taken to heart by American designers notably Gustav Stickley. If Stickley wasn't the first American designer in the Arts & Crafts mode he certainly did more than any other except possibly Elbert Hubbard to create and popularize this new style which he dubbed "Craftsman".

Bold, angular, with all the style (and strength) of a "Locomotive Crate" Stickley's designs were a radical departure from Victorian frou-frou. Seeking a "native" American style, Stickly's designs are reminiscent of the rustic furniture of the (Spanish) American South West with its exposed joinery and rectilinear lines, thence perhaps the term "mission style." But Stickley's designs are more dirctly attributable to the British Arts & Crafts movement, and researchers have been able to trace this lineage both in design similarities and in Stickley's own accounts of his travels.

Stickley and his many imitators designed furniture to last "many generations," using massive oak boards, exaggerated mortise and tenon construction, with the tenons often pegged for extra strength or passing right through the mortise as a design element. A rustic if not weatherbeaten appearance was also valued and the designers of mission furniture applied secret finishing formulas such as ammonia fumes to "age" the oak.

At the turn of the century Stickley embarked on his own furniture making venture designing and building in this radical new style. While other mission furniture manufacturers such as Gustav's brothers L&JG Stickley, Stickley Brothers "Quaint", Roycroft, Limbert, J.R. Young, etc, all have created fine furniture in the mission style, it is to Gustav that modern collectors turn first. Not only are his furniture designs among the most bold, they have a balance (if not massive grace!) that is not matched as frequently by the other designers. That plus Gustav's role as primary design maven and proselytizer for the Arts & Crafts philosophy make him the key figure of this era.

His business over extended, his designs costly to manufacture, changing public tastes and the sobriety induced by WWI led to Gustav Stickley"s bankruptcy and a general decline in the popularity of the mission style. Today, the firm of L&JG Stickley, still in business (ownership is not in the family) has revived the best of the period designs which can be found in certain fine furniture stores.

Independant woodworkers and craftspeople love to work in the mission style as they are able to show off their joinery skills.

All the household and industrial arts were influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement. These include pottery, textiles, metal work, printing and book binding.

Pottery

The turn of the century was the high point for American Art Pottery. Unless you get to a museum or a fancy antique dealer, you have little opportunity to experience the best of this truly creative period. Even coffe table books or magazine pictures do poor justice to the rich variation of color of a Grueby or a Weller vase, but view them in person on a dark oak mission table and you begin to appreciate why some of these little items fetch thousands of dollars at auction.

My favorite is a small pottery firm in Boston whimsically named Saturday Evening Girls that was started to help immigrants learn trade skills. George Ohr, the "mad potter of Biloxi" traded grotesque and tortured pots to local housewives while storing up an attic full of his pottery, which no one would pay for.

This is not my specialty so I hesitate to comment further.

Metal Work

Hand forged Metal work was used as hardware in houses and on furniture. In particular you see copper wares that artistically show the hammer's dents and light fixtures with warm yellow mica shades. Liberty and Company in England applied celtic themes to silver tea pots. Tiffany made rusticated bronze or copper desk accessories. Dirk van Erp hammered copper mortar shells into bulbous lamp bases and then patinated them into rich browns and reds. Roycroft sold thousands of copper book ends and silver on copper appliqued vases.

Textiles

Home crafts were part of the Craftsman philosophy and if the men were given instruction on metal or wood work, women's crafts of sewing and textile design were fostered by style magazines and pattern books. The naturalistic themes of the Art Nouveau were often put onto small tapestries or coarse linens. These were draped on end tables or buffets as if decorating an altar. Applique and decorative stichery were common. True American Arts & Crafts designs are less sinuous or erotic than the Nouveau. Instead they are more squared off and you frequently see certain stylized motifs such as a rose, a pine cone or a poppy flower.

Book Binding and Typesetting

There was a strong revival of the art of paper making, book binding and typesetting. It is a shame that few of the Arts & Crafts type faces are available today.

Music and Dance

From the shocking Ragtime One Step to the scandalous Waltz to the unmentionable Tango, the period immediately following the turn of the century brought the popularization of dance to the urban middle class.

These were not standardized dances judged by international "Sport Dance" authorities. These were popular dances, percolating in from folk forms (Musettes waltzes and mazurkas in France) or New World African communities (Cakewalks and rags) or port city brothels (Argentine Tango).

By 1915 Vernon and Irene Castle had brought the lively Brazilian Maxixe and the American One Step to France, and returned with a sanitized Argentine Tango. The Foxtrot, with many rhythmic variations became popular just after WWI, and there were one or two novelty "Animal Dance" crazes per year.

This period was the beginning of the American Blues tradition, and of course Jazz. Some early ragtime feels more bluesy, other pieces more Jazzy.

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