Gustav Stickley

Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) founded his own design company, Craftsman Workshops, with his brother in upstate New York in 1898. The company was highly successful through the 1920s and eventually became a national enterprise with retail stores in New York, Boston, and Washington, DC. Although influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement and Continental Art Nouveau, Stickley advocated the creation of a distinctive American style that would integrate furnishings, architecture, handicrafts, and principles of harmonious living; he believed that well-designed furnishings could help 'make life better and truer by its perfect simplicity.' This book is a critical study of Stickley's life and enterprise. . One of the central aims of this book is to identify the creative individuals - artists, craftsmen, architects, writers, editors, and illustrators - who worked with Stickley and to give them the recognition they deserve; biographies of 17 collaborators are collected in an appendix. The book also includes a chronology of Stickley's life and career, a visual chronology of the evolution of the fall-front desk, and a complete bibliography.