The Legacy of America’s Classic Furniture Makers
In the years following the American Civil War, a period of rapid technological advancement changed the world, with the development of the internal combustion engine and the commercialization of electricity giving rise to what is commonly referred to as the “Second Industrial Revolution.” While historians generally agree that the changes wrought by industrial innovation in the last 30 years of the 18th century led to dramatic improvements in the general quality of life, there were many who worried that the mass production of goods necessarily emphasized quantity over quality, with a marked decline in craftsmanship. In response, the Arts and Crafts movement arose, first in England and then in the United States, emphasizing handmade and handcrafted goods with simple and functional design. Perhaps the most well-known practitioners of the movement in the United States were the Stickley brothers.
The oldest of five brothers, Gustav Stickley was born Gustavus Stoeckel in Osceola, Wisconsin, in 1858, one of eleven children of German immigrants. As a teenager, he moved with his family to Pennsylvania, where he worked in an uncle’s chair business, fueling a lifelong passion for furniture and furniture design.
In 1883, at the age of 25, he opened his first furniture company with brothers Albert and Charles, but the enterprise shut down five years later. Over the next 15 years, he divided his time between the Auburn State Prison, where he oversaw furniture operations, and various modestly successful partnerships in the furniture business.
In 1900, Stickley met and worked with designers Henry Wilkinson and LaMont Warner, developing a experimental furniture pieces that would eventually be representative of the Arts and Crafts style.
The Stickley Style—Simple, Strong and Functional
Early in his business life, Stickley adopted his unique trademark, which displayed the Flemish phrases “Als Ik Kan,” translated as “as I can” or “to the best of my ability,” inscribed in a joiner’s compass. Stickley echoed the Craftsman principles of simplicity of design, honesty in construction and truth in materials. His designs emphasized plain surfaces without adornment. Nails and screws were typically avoided…instead, the furniture was held together with mortise and tenon joints, highlighting the structural qualities of the wood.
Stickley also eschewed any type of finish that would cover up the natural grain of the wood. To obtain the trademark chestnut brown finish on his furniture, he fumed the wood in tents with ammonium hydroxide (water and ammonia), a process which also helped emphasize the wood’s grain pattern. Because of the unique ways that white oak reacts with ammonium hydroxide, most classic Stickley furniture was constructed of quarter-sawn white oak.
Original Stickley pieces remain highly collectible. A Stickley sideboard from around the turn of the 20th century sold for more than $500,000 at auction in 1999.
