| Arts and Crafts is more than a style of furniture, it is an enduring furniture style that honors the tradition of fine craftsmanship and attention to detail.
This book gives you a fresh look at the history and influences that resulted in beautiful, functional pieces designed to enhance the interiors of classic Arts and Crafts homes. From William Morris and the roots of the movement, through Gustav Stickley, the Prairie School and including contemporary pieces, Arts and Crafts Furniture celebrates classic furniture and the craftsmen who made it.
Written by a well-known maker of Craftsman-style furniture and a woodworking journalist, this book will enlighten you about the design and construction of both historical and contemporary Craftsman furniture.
Arts and Crafts Furniture brings you:
- Nearly 500 color photos of examples of the Arts and Crafts style.
- A comprehensive look at the design and construction of furniture from classic to modern—covering the entire movement: American, British, Continental.
- Information not only about the obvious personalities but also about other significant designers and makers, including contemporary individuals and firms making this type of furniture.
- An extensive list of Arts and Crafts resources and a full bibliography.
Unlike the great furniture designs of the past, Arts and Crafts does not have a set of visual signatures that are easily identified. The designers of the Arts and Crafts movement, whether working in the United Kingdom, Europe or North America, shared design principles and philosophies, yet the created furniture that is widely diverse in style. This book, the first to look at the entire range of Arts and Crafts furniture, shows that Arts and Crafts style is much more than Stickley and Mission. And while the historical Arts and Crafts movement ended in the early 20th century, since its revival in the 1970s, it is very much alive today and practiced by contemporary craftsmen.
Dedicated to the integrated beauty of the whole house, the Arts and Crafts movement produced practical art of all kinds, but this book focuses on its most enduring legacy: the furniture. In the superb examples shown here, some of them in private collections and never before photographed, the true beauty and diversity of this unique furniture sings.
The movement had outposts in many parts of the Western hemisphere, but it can be grouped into schools sharing a philosophy or aesthetic. This book looks at each school to help the reader both perceive the common themes and to identify the furniture by its hallmarks. A key principle of the Arts and Crafts movement is a respect for hand-craftsmanship. The authors, both accomplished furniture makers in their own right, bring the unique perspective of design by construction and illuminate how the details of exposed joinery and choice of wood and finish demonstrate artistry in this work.
For the first time, this diverse and rich style is celebrated. For all those who love the Arts and Crafts style, this book will be an eye-opening look at both its diversity and the on-going tradition of craftsmanship.
From the Introduction
In 1972, Robert Judson Clark, a professor of art at Princeton University, curated an exhibition and edited an accompanying catalog that shook the Arts and Crafts movement from a 60-year slumber. In its salad days - roughly 1888 to 1910 - the Arts and Crafts movement was a vibrant artistic, social, and philosophical phenomenon of international scope. But when the end of the era arrived, it was sudden and seemingly irreversible.
The Arts and Crafts movement was forward-looking in many ways - vitally concerned with the welfare of workers and with the integration of all forms of art - but it also yearned for a return to a preindustrial age of careful handcraftsmanship.
With the rise of the Bauhaus-bred International Style in architecture and design, which envisioned a future brightened by technology and an art stripped of all evidence of the past, the Arts and Crafts movement was brushed aside and made to seem utterly irrelevant. For many years, it was.
Since the Princeton show, however, hundreds of books and thousands of articles and essays have been written on Arts and Crafts topics; scores of exhibitions have been held; the value of Arts and Crafts furniture and other objects has increased enormously; and a revival of the style - and the lifestyle - has blossomed among craftsmen in a range of media.
The timing of this resurgence of interest in the Arts and Crafts movement is telling - it coincides with a wider revitalization of crafts in the United States. Only a small fraction of contemporary crafts are made in the Arts and Crafts style, but the revival as a whole - which rose out of the disaffection with established career paths and lifestyles in the 1960s and 1970s - is in many ways an exact parallel with the Arts and Crafts era, the original back-to-the-land movement.
In another echo of the original movement, major American furniture manufacturers have again embraced the style as they did during the Arts and Crafts movement's first flourishing. Today you can find Stickleyesque furniture in every department store and Sunday supplement. Despite the wide exposure, Arts and Crafts furniture remains largely misunderstood in the United States. For many, Stickley and his powerful, reductivist furniture stand for the whole broad movement.
But the Arts and Crafts movement refuses to be boiled down to one or two - or ten - signature pieces. The Arts and Crafts furniture produced in Vienna, Glasgow, and Pasadena was as different as strudel, haggis, and tacos. Our main purpose in writing this book is to present the entire spectrum of Arts and Crafts furniture so that we might better understand the movement's diversity and its originality.
About the Authors
Kevin Rodel, one of the foremost makers of hand-crafted Arts and Crafts furniture, has been making custom furniture in Maine since 1978. He has been operating his own custom furniture business since 1986. His work has been featured in woodworking magazines and books on Arts and Crafts interiors. Kevin Rodel has contributed articles on Arts and Crafts style and techniques to Fine Woodworking and Home Furniture. He teaches part time at The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine.
Jonathan Binzen is a writer and photographer specializing in furniture and architecture. A former senior editor at Fine Woodworking magazine, he writes for such publications as This Old House and American Craft. After studying literature, art, and architecture as an undergraduate at Harvard, he worked as a cabinetmaker and a teacher of woodworking. He lives with his wife and two daughters in New Milford, Connecticut.
Table of Contents
Introduction—1. Furniture of the Arts and Crafts Movement; 2. William Morris: The Roots of Arts and Crafts 3. Arts and Crafts in the Country: Gimson, the Barnsleys, and the Cotswolds Vernacular; 4. English Architects and Designers; 5. Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style; 6. Continental Europe; 7. Gustav Stickley and His Brothers; 8. Handmade in a Factory: Mass Production in Grand Rapids; 9. The Prairie School; 10. Utopian Communities: American Furniture and Social Reform; 11. American Innovators; 12. The Revival of Arts and Crafts Furniture; Bibliography; Resources; Photo Credits; Index. |
