Great Book of Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture, Revised & Expanded Second Edition

Authentic and Fully Detailed Plans for 61 Classic Pieces

Robert W. Lang

• Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781607659174
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Technical & Manufacturing Trades
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Providing complete shop drawings for 61 classic Stickley furniture pieces, master cabinetmaker Robert W. Lang measured original Craftsman antiques to create these detailed plans. With full perspective views, elevations, sections, details, and cutting lists for each Shaker furniture project, this new paperback collection showcases the heart of the Craftsman aesthetic.

Chapter 1

The Story of Craftsman Furniture

One hundred years ago, society as a whole, and the design community in particular, stood at a crossroads. The world was rapidly changing as new technologies were developed. The notion of what makes a house a home was questioned then, as it should be questioned now. The places where we spend our time and the objects with which we surround ourselves have a significant influence on our comfort, peace of mind, and well-being. Craftsman design fills the need for usefulness and the desire for beauty in a way that expresses the inherent character of the natural materials, and the character and values of the designer, maker and owner. It is a welcome respite from designs whose purpose is to prove the wealth of the owner or to present “newness” only for the sake of following the latest trend.

Good furniture design simply makes sense; furniture should serve its purpose as well as possible, be constructed to endure, and use materials that please the eye and hand. It should bring a sense of calm and comfort to its environment, not disturb or detract from it. Craftsman design expresses integrity and quality in a quiet, dignified manner. It does not shout, but it cannot be ignored. It serves its purpose while providing pleasure to the senses. Good design comes, as Gustav Stickley said, “from the bottom up.” It is based on solid fundamentals, expressed in a straightforward manner.

In 1902, Gustav chose a joiner’s compass as his logo with the Flemish phrase “Als ik kan” (To the best of my ability) inscribed within the compass and his signature underneath. Gustav Stickley’s shopmark and label offered a guarantee of authenticity, and his personal guarantee of quality.

As Stickley put it:

“In the beginning there was no thought of creating a new style, only a recognition of the fact that we should have in our homes something better suited to our needs and more expressive of our character as a people than Imitations of the traditional styles, and a conviction that the best way to get something better was to go directly back to plain principles of construction and apply them to the making of simple, strong, comfortable furniture that would meet adequately everything that could be required of it.” ⁽¹⁾

It is this expression of character that separates Craftsman furniture from other styles, and the values attached to that expression are the foundation of its appeal. This appeal also comes from the bottom up—it matches a desire for things that make sense, that present themselves in an honest way and use the beauty of nature without exploitation. Like the furniture itself, the values and ideals behind the furniture have a timeless appeal to the best aspects of human nature.

Though Gustav Stickley is certainly the main character, the story of American Arts & Crafts furniture also features Gustav’s four brothers, particularly his youngest brother, Leopold, who was to become Gustav’s biggest competitor. The five brothers were independent and strong-willed men, all successful in the furniture business but unsuccessful at working with each other.

Their father abandoned the family when the boys were quite young; as they came of age, the three oldest went to work at the chair factory in Brandt, Pennsylvania, owned by their uncle, Jacob Schlaeger. In 1884, in Binghamton, New York, Gustav, Albert, and Charles formed the Stickley Brothers Company, which sold (and after 1886, manufactured) furniture. Leopold and John George joined the growing company around 1888.

Gustav left the family business later that same year, and in partnership with Elgin A. Simonds, started a similar business named Stickley & Simonds. Although the partnership lasted only a few years, it was revived in Syracuse, New York, in 1894. During the years in between, Gustav held positions with a streetcar company in Binghamton and later was director of manufacturing at the New York State Prison in Auburn, New York.

In the late-1890s, Gustav Stickley and his brothers Albert and Charles were all successful furniture manufacturers. Albert had taken the Stickley Brothers name and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Charles stayed in Binghamton, operating as Stickley and Brandt with brother-in-law Schuyler Brandt. Younger brother John George worked as a sales representative for Albert. Leopold left the family business about a year after Gustav and worked for him both at Stickley & Simonds and at Gustav’s independent operation in Syracuse. The three companies became four in 1902 when Leopold formed the L. & J. G. Stickley Company near Syracuse, New York, with John George as his partner.

The three companies operating in the late-1890s were quite similar in size and in the type of furniture that was manufactured—mainly chairs in a variety of styles, including reproductions and adaptations of antique styles. In 1899, Gustav ended his partnership with Simonds and began to develop the furniture designs that became known as Craftsman. Gustav Stickley’s efforts went far beyond the manufacture of furniture, he became a publisher and advocate for the Arts & Crafts movement, and had a tremendous effect on American culture, creating a new style that became popular because it spoke to and met the needs of a society in transition.

Across the Atlantic, the Art Nouveau movement in Europe and the Arts and Crafts movement in England were gaining popularity and significantly influencing American design and architecture. Both movements grew from a common root—a reaction to what had happened to the traditions of design and craftsmanship with the industrial age, and the introduction of factory methods for the production of furniture and other objects. The conditions of workers in the factories, and the effects on society of factory-made goods, were important elements of both design movements.

Both Gustav and Albert traveled to Europe in the final years of the nineteenth century, and as thriving manufacturers in an industry dependent on serving the changing tastes of the buying public, they were well aware of trends in style and design. The latter half of the nineteenth century had seen a transition to modern manufacturing methods, but most designs of that time were reiterations of designs from earlier periods, adapted to machine-made techniques. The Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts designs were among the few new designs in furniture in the previous 50 years.

These trips were essentially scouting missions, searches for the latest trends. Both brothers were greatly influenced by what they saw in Europe and England. Albert returned to America ready to hop on the English Arts and Crafts bandwagon, while Gustav returned ready to hitch up his own horses and drive the American Arts & Crafts movement in a new direction.

Albert established a warehouse in England in the hopes of establishing an export business, and hired T.A. Conti to design and produce inlays, and David Robertson Smith to design furniture. Conti was working in Grand Rapids in 1900, and Smith came to Michigan in 1902. The inlay designs produced by Stickley Brothers and the Quaint line of furniture were apparently the work of Conti and Smith. There is little evidence of Albert being involved in design work beyond the role of owner of the company—he was astute enough to recognize trends in design and style, and wise enough to hire competent designers, but he was not the creative force that his brother Gustav was.

After dissolving his partnership with Simonds, and touring Europe and England, Gustav returned to Syracuse and worked at developing his new designs. His new furniture was first marketed by the Tobey Company of Chicago, a distributor of furniture produced by others, as well as a manufacturer. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, Gustav began marketing his own work. His new designs and the style he developed became popular, and his company became successful—as did those of his brothers and numerous other competitors.

The first decade of the twentieth century belonged to Gustav Stickley. The Craftsman magazine was launched in October 1901, and within a few years Gustav expanded his reach into architecture and home construction. Furniture remained the backbone of the business, but Gustav expanded operations to also produce linens, rugs, and metalwork, including lamps, hardware, and accessories. This continued expansion eventually became his financial undoing. Following all of his interests, and developing enterprises devoted to each of them, Gustav created an operation that was too complex for one person to manage.

When Gustav Stickley first began his experiments with Arts & Crafts furniture, he tried many variations before settling on the designs that went into production. These early pieces were not the squared-off designs associated with him today, but featured curves and decorative carvings based on plant forms. He soon decided it was better to start with a structural idea rather than with an ornamental one. That philosophy is at the core of Stickley’s designs: an eloquent expression of a purely functional item, with the structural elements themselves becoming the ornamentation.

Stickley’s furniture as it was presented in the first issue of The Craftsman magazine.

Stickley’s strength as a designer was his sense of proportion. Simple furniture is not simple to design, and with decorative elements nonexistent or kept to a minimum, a successful design must make the most of those elements that do exist, show the materials to their best advantage, and be balanced. While the scale of many pieces often appears monumental when viewed in isolation, the overall scale of the furniture is often on the small side, which keeps the furniture from overwhelming its environment.

At first glance, Craftsman furniture is intriguing because it is so well proportioned and makes such good use of the material. But a quick glance is never enough. It invites a closer look, to examine the exposed joints, to take a good look at the details. This furniture makes friends with its user. Chairs invite you to sit and relax, and once seated you discover interesting details you might not have noticed before. Bookcases and china cabinets provide a safe and secure place to keep things, and by their nature let you know that what is inside is rather special.

Rather than being overpowering, this furniture invites the viewer to look closer and to use it for its intended purpose. Tables provide a welcome place for family and friends to gather, and desks give a sense of taking care of necessary business without being ostentatious. All of the elements are quite simple, but the way they are combined makes all the difference. The quality of the joinery and finish must be executed as flawlessly as possible for these designs to be successful.

Gustav Stickley, while an innovator in design, did not work single-handedly, and his work does show influences from designs that were seen in England prior to the introduction of his Craftsman furniture. Although Stickley’s daughter Barbara, maintained that Harvey Ellis was the only person to ever collaborate with or design furniture for Stickley⁽²⁾, a letter from the architect Claude Bragdon mentions another architect, Henry Wilkinson, working for Gustav designing furniture in 1900.⁽³⁾

After Gustav Stickley, the most influential designer of the period was Harvey Ellis. Gustav employed Ellis briefly before his untimely death in 1904. Ellis is usually described as an itinerant architect, and his addiction to alcohol caused his early death. Ellis and Stickley met in 1903, with Ellis going to work for Stickley in May or June of that year. At the beginning of the next year, Ellis was already dead, but Stickley’s 1904 catalog featured many Ellis designs, notably inlaid chairs and cabinets that never went into full production, a bedroom suite (Nos. 911, 912, 913, 914), the No. 700 series of bookcases, and china cabinets, servers, and delicate small drop-front desks. The addition of arched elements, subtle curves, and purely decorative elements added a touch of lightness and grace to Stickley’s previous work. These pieces are some of the best-proportioned and most elegant furniture ever made.

In addition to these furniture designs, Ellis also wrote articles, designed houses, and drew illustrations for The Craftsman magazine. It is generally reported that Ellis was hired for his skill and training as an architect. But Ellis’ talent for furniture design and the number of pieces attributed to him make it hard to believe Stickley was interested in his furniture designs only as an afterthought. Furniture production was always the largest part of Stickley’s business, and faced with the ever-increasing number of companies copying his work, Stickley needed new, fresh designs to stay ahead of the competition. Harvey Ellis strongly influenced Gustav Stickley’s furniture, and many of the pieces that are considered the “best” examples came from or were strongly influenced by Harvey Ellis.

The temptation to attribute designs for specific pieces to individuals is strong, and many writers have done so. But there simply isn’t enough evidence available to do that. Some design elements attributed to Harvey Ellis appeared before he came on the scene, while others appear in pieces that didn’t come into production until well after his death. It is likely that Ellis, and others employed by Stickley, supplied the themes for these pieces, while Stickley’s draftsmen worked out the details and possibly applied the themes and design elements to other pieces.

Harvey Ellis had a remarkable influence on Stickley’s designs, but this influence is often overstated. As Stickley’s daughter, Barbara, put it:

“Gustav took care of Harvey, but he also recognized Ellis’ design genius . . . (and) above anyone else at the United Crafts, Harvey understood Gustav’s ideas about furniture.” ⁽⁴⁾

Before settling in on his Craftsman designs, Stickley experimented with Art Nouveau designs, the best known of which are the tea tables based on stylized plant forms. There were also notable china cabinets that featured applied curves on the panels, a shape quite similar to the corbels that would appear on later pieces. Th...