Mission style furniture

Last updated
Gustav Stickley. Dropfront Desk, ca. 1903. Brooklyn Museum Gustav Stickley. Dropfront Desk, ca. 1903..jpg
Gustav Stickley. Dropfront Desk, ca. 1903. Brooklyn Museum

Mission furniture is a style of furniture that originated in the late 19th century. It traces its origins to a chair made by A.J. Forbes around 1894 for San Francisco's Swedenborgian Church. The term mission furniture was first popularized by Joseph P. McHugh of New York, a furniture manufacturer and retailer who copied these chairs and offered a line of stylistically related furnishings by 1898. The word mission references the Spanish missions throughout colonial California, though the design of most Mission Style furniture owed little to the original furnishings of these missions. The style became increasingly popular following the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. The style was popularly associated with the American Arts and Crafts movement. [1]

Contents

Design philosophy

Mission style is a design that emphasizes simple horizontal and vertical lines and flat panels that accentuate the grain of the wood (often oak, especially quartersawn white oak). People were looking for relief after the excesses of Victorian times and the influx of mass-produced furniture from the Industrial Revolution. [2] The furniture maker Gustav Stickley produced Arts and Crafts movement furniture often referred to as being in the Mission Style, though Stickley dismissed the term as misleading. This was plain oak furniture that was upright, solid, and suggestive of entirely handcrafted work, though in the case of Stickley and his competitors, was constructed within a factory by both machine and handworking techniques.

A Starr mission style piano (illustrated in 1906) The Indianapolis blue book of selected names of Indianapolis and suburban towns - containing the names and addresses of prominent residents, arranged alphabetically and numerically by streets, also (14591785189).jpg
A Starr mission style piano (illustrated in 1906)

Influential people and companies

Many designers and companies played an important role in the development of the design over the years. Gustav Stickley, L. & J.G. Stickley, Stickley Brothers, Charles Limbert, Grand Rapids Bookcase and Chair Company (Lifetime), The Shop of the Crafters and Ford Johnson.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arts and Crafts movement</span> Design movement (c. 1880–1920)

The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.

Craftsman may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decorative arts</span> Arts or crafts concerned with the design and manufacture of functional, beautiful objects

The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose aim is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. This includes most of the objects for the interiors of buildings, as well as interior design, but typically excludes architecture. Ceramic art, metalwork, furniture, jewellery, fashion, various forms of the textile arts and glassware are major groupings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gustav Stickley</span> American furniture designer

Gustav Stickley was an American furniture manufacturer, design leader, publisher, and a leading voice in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Stickley's design philosophy was a major influence on American Craftsman architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roycroft</span> United States historic place

Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists which formed part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. Elbert Hubbard founded the community in 1895, in the village of East Aurora, New York, near Buffalo. Participants were known as Roycrofters. The work and philosophy of the group, often referred to as the Roycroft movement, had a strong influence on the development of American architecture and design in the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taboret</span> Type of stool or cabinet

A taboret refers to two different pieces of furniture: a cabinet or a stool.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Morris chair</span> Early type of reclining chair

A Morris chair is an early type of reclining chair. The design was adapted by William Morris's firm, Morris & Company, from a prototype owned by Ephraim Colman in rural Sussex, England. It was first marketed around 1866.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American craft</span> Craft work produced by independent studio artists

American craft is craft work produced by independent studio artists working with traditional craft materials and processes. Examples include wood, glass, clay (ceramics), textiles, and metal (metalworking). Studio craft works tend to either serve or allude to a functional or utilitarian purpose, although they are just as often handled and exhibited in ways similar to visual art objects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Craftsman</span> Architectural style

American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. Its immediate ancestors in American architecture are the Shingle style, which began the move away from Victorian ornamentation toward simpler forms, and the Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quarter sawing</span> Woodworking process

Quarter sawing or quartersawing is a woodworking process that produces quarter-sawn or quarter-cut boards in the rip cutting of logs into lumber. The resulting lumber can also be called radially-sawn or simply quartered. There is widespread confusion between the terms rift sawn and quarter sawn with the terms defined both with opposite meanings and as synonyms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craftsman Farms</span> Historic house in New Jersey, United States

Craftsman Farms is a historic house located in Parsippany-Troy Hills, Morris County, New Jersey, United States. It was founded by noted early 20th century designer Gustav Stickley as a farm and school for the Arts and Crafts movement. It remained in use until 1915 when it was sold to a family and became a private house.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvey Ellis</span> American architect and artist

Harvey Ellis was an American architect, perspective renderer, painter and furniture designer. He worked in Rochester, New York; Utica, New York; St. Paul, Minnesota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Joseph, Missouri; St. Louis, Missouri and Syracuse, New York.

<i>The Craftsman</i> (magazine) 20th-century American magazine

The Craftsman was a magazine founded by the American furniture designer Gustav Stickley that championed the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Italian Baroque interior design refers to high-style furnishing and interior decorating carried out in Italy during the Baroque period, which lasted from the early 17th to the mid-18th century. In provincial areas, Baroque forms such as the clothes-press or armadio continued to be used into the 19th century.

Charles P. Limbert (1854–1923) was an American furniture designer. He is considered one of the most successful furniture leaders in the history of Grand Rapids and the Arts and Crafts movement in America. The furniture that bears his name is highly sought after and seriously collected to this day. His designs were mainly inspired by such diverse influences as English Arts and Crafts, Dutch folk furniture, Scottish architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the Vienna Secession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craftsman furniture</span>

Craftsman furniture refers to the Arts and Crafts Movement style furniture of Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Workshops.

Widdicomb Furniture Company was an American furniture company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cabinetry</span> Box-shaped piece of furniture with doors

A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood, coated steel, or synthetic materials. Commercial grade cabinets usually have a melamine-particleboard substrate and are covered in a high-pressure decorative laminate, commonly referred to as Wilsonart or Formica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ammonia fuming</span> Wood-finishing process

Ammonia fuming is a wood finishing process that darkens wood and brings out the grain pattern. It consists of exposing the wood to fumes from a strong aqueous solution of ammonium hydroxide which reacts with the tannins in the wood. The process works best on white oak because of the high tannin content of this wood. Fumed oak is also called fumigated oak or smoked oak. Other species may also be fumed, but usually will not darken as much as white oak. In America, the introduction of the process is usually associated with the furniture maker Gustav Stickley at the beginning of the 20th century, but fuming was known in Europe before this.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Art Nouveau furniture</span> Furniture style, 1890s to 1914

Furniture created in the Art Nouveau style was prominent from the beginning of the 1890s to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. It characteristically used forms based on nature, such as vines, flowers and water lilies, and featured curving and undulating lines, sometimes known as the whiplash line, both in the form and the decoration. Other common characteristics were asymmetry and polychromy, achieved by inlaying different colored woods.

References

  1. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute (1993). "The Distinction of Being Different" Joseph P. McHugh and the American Arts and Crafts Movement
  2. "Mission style | furniture | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2023-05-24.