A Summary of The Arts & Crafts Movement
Researched and compiled by Ralph Jones.

Hello Friends,

I have written this condensed history of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and I would like to start with one of the founders.

• John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)

John Ruskin, the greatest Victorian bar Victoria, was an artist, scientist, poet, environmentalist, philosopher, and importantly here, the pre-eminent art critic of his time.
He provided the impetus that gained respectability for the PRE-Raphaelites. Ruskin’s letter to The Times in 1851, supporting the much-derided Pre-Raphaelites for their naturalism and truth to nature, marked a turning point in their perception by the public. In a second letter, he wrote that the Pre-Raphaelites might "lay the foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for 300 years."

This is now known as the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Ruskin met with the Pre-Raphaelites, he encouraged them in their ideal, acting as a tutor, mentor, and generous supporter to Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt, as well as later artists in a similar spirit such as John Brett and John William Inchbold. He was a long time friend of the children's illustrator Kate Greenaway, and also of the bird painter H. S. Marks.

Ruskin taught Pre-Raphaelite style drawing at the Working Men's College in London for some years, enlisting Rossetti to teach figure and water color painting, and afterwards Ford Madox Brown to fill the same position. Afterwards, he left London, becoming Slade Professor of Art at Oxford ( where there is still an art college named after him) and then removing to the Lake District where he helped to start the Environmental Movement.

There is a Ruskin Museum in Sheffield which has some of his sketches on permanent display.

• William Morris (1834-96)

William Morris was born in Walthamstow, Essex, on March 24, 1836. The son of a wealthy businessman, he enjoyed a comfortable childhood before going to Marlborough and Exeter, Oxford.

He originally intended to take holy order, but his reading of the social criticism of Caryle, Kingsley and Ruskin led him to reconsider the Church and devote his life to art.

After leaving Oxford, Morris was briefly articled to G.E. Street, the Gothic Revival architect, but he soon left, having determined to become a painter. His admiration for the Pre-Raphaelites led him to be introduced to Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose influence can be seen on Morris's only surviving painting La Belle Iseult.

In the 1860s Morris decided that his creative future lay in the field of the decorative arts. His career as a designer began when he decorated the Red House, Bexleyheath, which had been built for him by Philip Webb.

The success of this venture led to the formation of MORRIS, MARSHALL, FAULKNER & CO. in 1861. The firm, (later renamed Morris and Co.) is particularly well-known for its stained glass, examples of which can be seen in churches throughout Britain.
Morris produced some 150 designs which are often characterized by their delightful foliage patterns.
Among Morris's many other works were Icelandic and classical translations, Sigurd the Volsung, The Pilgrims of Hope, and the series of prose romances which include A Dream of John Ball, News from Nowhere, and The Well at the World's End.
In politics Morris entered national politics in 1876 as treasurer of the Eastern Question Association. This was a post he was to occupy in two further radical organizations: the National Liberal League and the Radical Union.

Morris's view of the value of mass production and the evils of industrialization were shared by many of the founders of the modern movement, even though his solution shunned the technology which in many ways defined Modernism. Morris envisioned a "socialist" world where artist and craftsman worked in harmony using simple methods to produce basic goods. In contrast, the Modern movement attempted to reform the system by creating good (even progressively social) designs by using technology, rather than abiding with bad and cheap copies of historical designs.

Paradoxically, Morris' furniture was crafted in a manner that made it available only to the very rich. In another twist of fate, his designs were eventually adapted by the commercial establishment who ignored his social credo and creative format. His ideas did help spawn the Arts and Crafts style 1900-1920 and laid the foundation for later work in the modern movement.

He soon became disillusioned with the Liberals and in 1883 joined the socialist Democratic Federation. After disagreements with the Federation's leader, H. M. Hyndman, he formed the Socialist League, and later the Hammersmith Socialist Society,
During the 1880s he was probably the most active propagandist for the socialist cause, giving hundreds of lectures and speeches throughout the country.

• Phillip Webb (1831-1915)

Phillip Webb trained as an architect and became chief assistant to G.E.Street in Oxford in 1852. He met William Morris when the latter briefly joined Street's office in 1856. The two men became friends and worked in close co-operation. In 1859, Webb's first commission as an independent architect came from Morris for the Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent. Much of the furniture for the house was designed by Webb and he played a major role as a designer in the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company.

Webb was a leading figure in the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and through its weekly meetings he influenced the younger generation of Arts and Crafts architects. He visited Ernest Gimson and Sidney Barnsley in Gloustershire and tried unsuccessfully to find himself a cottage in the area.

This was a short insert of a man who was instrumental in encouraging the younger craftsmen on the A&C Movement.

• The Arts and Crafts movement along with the Art Nouveau began partly as a revolt against the social consequences of the industrial revolution and also against the proliferation of Victorian age mass produced furniture whose design and execution was controlled by machinist and industrialist rather than artist and craftsmen.

Later, the lofty goals that inspired the direction of the arts and crafts movement were sublimated as the movement became a style which was widely interpreted by the machinists and industrialists for mass consumption. Still, the ideas of the founders and the principles of good simple design were re-interpreted later by the Bauhaus school and others who laid the basis for Modern design.

• Charles Locke Eastlake (1836-1906)

The Eastlake style of furniture takes its name from this English architect, furniture designer and writer.
His book, Hints on Household Tastes, was published in London in 1868 and in Boston four years later. It produced a revolution in design and a revival of hand craftsmanship which became as the Arts and Crafts Movement. However, it was not only the custom designers who were inspired by Eastlake's ideas. The manufacturers of the machining made furniture which Eastlake deplored also copied the Eastlake style as it was illustrated in his book.

In “Hints on Household Tastes”, Eastlake encouraged "honesty" in construction and finishing. He called for hand crafted, solid wood furniture with rectangular joinery. He condemned the practice of using stains and varnishes to disguise inexpensive woods, calling instead for oiled, naturally colored finishes. Eastlake wrote, " The present system of French polishing, or literally varnishing furniture is destructive of all artistic effect in its appearance, because the surface of wood thus lacquered can never change its color, or acquire that rich hue which is one of the charm of old cabinet work." The use of rugged wood like oak and the elimination of stuck on decorations are also characteristic of Eastlake furniture. As mentioned above, Eastlake also inspire the manufacturers of machine made furniture to explore the decorative possibilities of their machines... imitating his hand work with such things as glued on moldings and machine reproduced architectural detail.

Eastlake's reforming ideas were particularly inspiring to William Morris, who in turn, became the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement in England. Sometimes called the "new Renaissance style", " neo-medieval", "plank construction", or " Art furniture" ( a term originated by Eastlake ), the Eastlake style was most popular in the 1870s and 80s and became a kind of catch all term meaning different things to different people. Eastlake himself commenting on his influence in the United States, said, " I find American tradesmen continually advertising what they are pleased to call Eastlake furniture, with production of which I have had nothing whatever to do, and for the taste of which I should be very sorry to be considered responsible."

Henry Hobson Richardson, an American architect, was one of the foremost proponents of the Eastlake style in the United States. The furniture he designed for the Woburn Public Library and the North Eastern Library in Massachusetts are very similar to pieces which appear in the illustrations to "Hints on Household Taste”.

• Mission Furniture

What became to be known as Mission style furniture, originated in the western United States in the mid-1890s and was manufactured, mainly in the east, until about 1915. It has been suggested that it all began when members of a church in San Francisco were unable to afford to buy furnishings for their church.
They decided to build their own, imitating the work of Indian craftsmen who built furniture for Spanish mission stations in Mexico and in the west and southwest parts of the U.S. A decorator sent models of the pieces made for the church to Joseph McHugh, a manufacturer in New York, who began to produce his own versions of this solid, simple furniture.

The furniture constructed by Joseph McHugh was constructed almost exclusively of weathered or fumed oak, and characterized by straight line, and mortise, tenon, and dowel joinery.
Mission furniture was an American outgrowth of the English Arts and Crafts movement. This movement emphasized hand-crafted pieces made of native materials with unpolished finishes.

• Gustav Stickley 1858-1942

Gustav Stickley created the first truly American furniture, known throughout the world as Craftsman. A hardworking, dedicated man, Stickley achieved success in the early 1900s as the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement in America.

In the 1880s, Charles, Albert and Gustav started Stickley Brothers, in Binghamton, New York. Albert left and established the Stickley Brothers Furniture Company with John George in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1891.

After a trip to England in 1897 Stickley was inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris to create a new line of handcrafted furniture based on honesty and simplicity. In 1898 he open United Crafts in Eastwood, New York where he introduced the Craftsman line which, by 1900, reflected an indigenous American Arts and Crafts philosophy.
His quarter sawn oak furniture incorperated overt structural details such as tenon and key construction, chamfered boards and exposed tenons. His rectilinear shapes were free of any excess ornamentation except for what occurred naturally in the construction,design and material.
This revealed not only the excellent craftsmanship that went into each piece, but also the beauty simplicity, and utility of the design.
Gustav occasionally decorated his table tops with Grubey tile and often used Grueby Vases in his displays.

Gustav Stickley's trip to the 1900 Paris Exhibition confirmed his bias against reproductions. While taking his philosophical inspiration from the Arts and Crafts European Movement, Stickley took his artistic inspiration to America. Stickley felt that art should be of and by the people, stemming from their everyday lives.
In October 1901, Stickley began publication of "The Craftsman". The first issue dedicated to William Morris, and the second issue dedicated to John Ruskin, clearly positioned the publication as the voice of the American Arts and Crafts movement.
Gustav used the Craftsman to promote his architectural ideas. A house was to be constructed in harmony with its landscape, with careful attention to the selection of building materials. His open floor plan invited family interaction and eliminated barriers wherever practical. He encouraged built in benches, bookcases, and sideboards to create a practical house, independent of total reliance upon furniture to make it useful and appealing.
Groupings of windows allowed ample light inside and appealing views of the outside. These architectural elements were beautifully expanded on by Frank Lloyd Wright in the following decades.

Continuing on with the history we find that upholstered pieces were covered with leather. And, while Mission style furniture was usually free of ornamentation, large nail heads, simple cut out patterns or hand-hammered copper appliqués were some times used for decoration. At the height of Mission furniture's popularity, from 1900 to about 1912, Stickley established the Craftsman workshop near Syracuse, New York; the Craftsman Building in New York City, which contained a home builder's exhibit, a library and a lecture hall. Elbert Hubbard, a competitor of Stickley, established a commune in East Aurora, New York, to build Mission furniture and to build the character of young people who came there to work. The English labeled their version of the Mission style as "quaint". That term is also used in various advertisements which appeared in American newspapers and magazines in early 1900s. Others called their conceptions "Gothic."

In 1902, John George left Stickley Brothers Furniture Company to open the Onondaga Shops with Leopold in Fayetteville, New York, incorporating four years later as L.& J.G.Stickley Inc. They made furniture that resembled Gustav's. They also made furniture that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Gustav now found himself in competition with his younger brothers. Leopold and John George were astute businessmen who rapidly expanded their business using designs borrowed from their brother. Gustav lacked his brothers business acumen. He encouraged builders and artisans to alter his plans to suit their needs, which put money in their pockets and not in his. He eventually declared bankruptcy.
L.& J.G. Stickley introduced their first furniture line at a 1905 trade show in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Their collection of "simple furniture built along mission lines" was very well received and helped set the standard in fine American woodwork for the entire furniture through the end of World War 1.

The modern era of the Stickley company began in 1974 when Alfred and Aminy Audi purchased L. & J. G. Stickley. Today the company employs over 650 artisans and craftspeople, from 25 in 1974. The audis have steadfastly maintained the company tradition of pride, integrity and deep respect for the Arts and Crafts heritages that made Stickley famous.
The Mission style has regained popularity in recent years. Although originally not mass produced for purchase by the general consumer--and never meant to be, it has been adapted and Incorporated into may current group. The Stickley Company, still manufactures Mission furniture. It can be blended with more contemporary pieces because of its square clean lines.

In 1922 Leopold Stickley announced the introduction of the Cherry Valley Collection;
a "line of period designs in popular finishes." These adaptations of traditional New England and Pennsylvania furnishings included trestle tables, corner cupboards, dressers and Windsor chairs fashioned from wild black cherry wood from the Adirondacks.

I am going to continue with the Arts and Crafts Movement arrived in America as a fresh change during the Progressive Era, a time when change was eminent. The prominent ideal of the movement, that lead its universal appeal, was its return to simple and pure style representative of American life.
The Arts and Crafts "honesty in materials, beauty that was an outgrowth of practical needs, unity between architecture and the allied arts and harmonious order in the environment."
The tradition based ideals were attractive to the pioneer and patriot in all Americans.

During the time period between 1890 and 1920, America was searching to establish for itself an identity all on levels, ranging from the family home to the rise of industrialization base. The Arts and Crafts Movement established a close relationship between architecture and every day life. This relationship had been sought out to create an architecture representative of the American way of life. This idea complimented the American architect's desire for establishment of an individual, unique style, thus breaking free of previous European models.
Regardless if the Arts and Crafts Movement originated in England, its methods and characteristics were augmented by the desires and needs of the American society at the time.

The Arts and Crafts Movement quickly found its home in the American west. Open, rustic style suited the landscape of the area and epitomized the ideals of the Frontier land. In American culture, the west symbolized unconquered wilderness.The location of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the west, appealed to the pioneer attitude of conquering the land and establishing a new life for one's family.
This ideal was ingrained in the country's culture as the "true" American dream. Many individuals followed this "dream" and aided in the development and popularity of the new American style that would help to define the west's uncharted land.

Continuing from yesterday we find that in addition, the west had become the center of machinery and industrialization, and thus the direction for the country embarking upon the new century. Many workers and their families journeyed westward in search of a new life in California and other locations, thus aiding in the emergence of the western middle class. The middle class soon became the target audience of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The desire for a new American style was found in the family home, the heart of domestic society. therefore, America established itself as the perfect candidate for the Arts and Crafts Movement.

• What is Roycroft

It was a handicraft community founded east of Aurora, New York about 1895 by Elbert Hubbard. Hubbard had been a very successful soap salesman for J.D. Larkin and CO. in Buffalo, but wasn't satisfied with his life. So in 1892, he sold his interest in the company and briefly enrolled at Harvard. Disenchanted, he quickly dropped out and set off on a walking tour of England. He briefly met William Morris and became enamored of Morris' Arts and Crafts Kelmscott Press.

After Hubbard returned to America, he tried to find a publisher for a series of biographical sketches he had written called "Little Journey's." When he was unsuccessful in his attempts to have someone else publish the works , he decided to print them himself. Thus the Roycroft Press was born.
Hubbard proved to be such a prolific and popular writer that fame and fortune soon followed. The print shop expanded and then visitors began coming to East Aurora to see this extraordinary man. Initially visitors were housed in the printworker's living quarters but, this soon proved inadequate. A hotel was built to house the ever increasing number of visitors. The inn had to be furnished so Hubbard had local craftsmen make a simple straight lined style of furniture. The furniture became popular with visitors who wished to buy pieces for their homes. A furiture manufacturing industry was then born. In addition, Roycroft craftspeople were skilled metal smiths, leathersmiths, and book binders.

The community flourished and was at its peak in 1910 with over 500 workers. By 1915, Hubbard and the Roycrofters (as workers were known ) had achieved great success. Not only had Elbert written the inspirational pamphlet, "A Message to Garcia", with an estimated printing of 40 million copies, but was also publishing monthly magazines, The Fra and The Philistine.This was all in addition to an almost constant nationwide lecture series and the monthly publication of additions to the original Little Journeys series that started it all.

Everything changed when Elbert and his wife,Alice were among the fatalities onboard the Lusitania. The Hubbards had been traveling to England to begin an lecture tour when they died. The Community's leadership fell to Elbert's son Bert. though Bert took the Roycrofters to wider sales distribution, changing American tastes led to slowly declining sales figures. Finally, in 1938 the Roycrofters closed the shop.

Today, items that were produced by the Roycrofters are highly sought after by collectors. In addition to the collectabilty of the items, examples of Roycroft bookbinding, metalsmithing, and furniture-making are sought simply because of their inherent beauty and craftsmanship.

• The Greene Brothers

Charles Sumner Greene was born October 12, 1868 to Lelia Ariana and Thomas Sumner Greene in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fifteen months later, on January 23, 1870, Henry Mather Greene was born. The family later moved to St. Louis where, as teenagers, Charles and Henry attended Calvin Woodward's Manual Training School of Washington University, which offered a revolutionary curriculum based on the education of the hand as well as the mind.

This early training was the primary source of the brother'focus on tools, materials and craftsmanship. In 1888 the brothers enrolled in the architectural program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. In 1891 both brothers completed their studies with certificates of partial course, the two year program followed by most MIT architecture students. They then apprenticed with several of the finest architectural firms in Boston, including those whose principals had been associates of the noted Henry Hobson Richardson.

In 1893 the Greene Brothers traveled west to Pasadena to visit their parents, who had moved from St. Louis the previous year and in the fall of 1894, they opened their architectural practice there. Also while there they were influenced by the oriental designs in furniture and Incorporated it into their furniture line.

Henry Mather Greene married Emeline Augusta Dart in 1899, and in a few years, Charles wed Alice Gordon White. Charles and Alice's four month honeymoon in England, Scotland, and Europe sparked Charles' interest in the English Arts and Crafts Movement.

Activity in the Greene and Greene office was at its peak during the years 1902-1910 with the primary focus on residential design. It was during this period that they created some of their finest work. 1903, Greene and Greene began to offer integrated design services for their clients providing design and construction supervision of furniture and other interior appointments. They completed approximately 150 projects during these prolific years.

After 1911 the practice began to decline because Greene and Greene designs demand higher fee and clients experienced frequent overruns. The situation became unacceptable to most clients and by 1916, the brothers personal interests diverged. Charles moved to Carmel to pursue other creative paths, while Henry continued the firm's work in Pasadena until the dissolution of the firm in 1922. Henry practiced independently after the separation and Charles too, worked on occasional commissions during the 1940's, most being additions and renovations for former clients.

The death of Henry's wife in 1935 affected him so deeply, that he eventually moved to the home of his son and daughter in law, where he continued to work on small projects, reuniting with Charles briefly on a commission. Charles managed to remain much more active in architecture during the Depression of the 1930s, but his interests soon shifted to passionate study of eastern philosophy, spiritualism and creative writing.
Henry passed on October 2 1954, in Pasadena, California and Charles died on June 11 1957 in Carmel by the Sea, California.

Charles and Henry Greene are widely considered to have brought high-art aesthetics and exquisite craftsmanship to the American Arts ans Crafts Movement in the early part of the 20th century. Their work continues to be exhibited worldwide and is included in decorative arts collections in museums in the United States and Europe. Greene and Greene designs strongly influenced California's architectural heritage, their work has had international significance as well, inspiring countless architects and designers around the world through legacy of extant structures, scholarly books and articles. They were recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1952 for contributing to a "new and native architecture" and are generally credited with fostering a new way of considering buildings and their furnishings as examples of artistic craft.

Popular architectural design magazines such as the Craftman, House Beautiful, The International Studio, Country Life in America, House and Garden, Good Housekeeping, and American Home and Garden begun featuring articles on Greene and Greene work in 1902, this acclaim helped spread their designs throughout the country. The rediscovery of their work by the architectural press in the 1950s created a new group of admirers who celebrated their distinctly American interpretation of the Arts and Crafts style as an antidote to the International style, which had gained popularity in Europe and elsewhere.

Today, the current generation of Greene and Greene aficionados tour the Greene and Greene residencies and other buildings in California with reverence, like pilgrams paying homage to honored monuments. The Gamble House, one of their masterpieces, receives 30,000 visitors a year from all over the world. Recently available public tours of the Thorsen and Blacker Houses drew thousands of visitors and raised awareness of both Greene and Greene residential Architecture and furniture design. Interior, architectural design, and architectural history journals such as Style 1900 and American Bungalow are now full of vendors offering reproductions of their furniture and decor.

• Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959)

Considered the most influential architect of his time, Frank Lloyd Wright designed about 1,000 structures, some 400 of which were built. He described his "organic architecture" as the one that " proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man and his time. Wright had to fight for acceptance of every new design. The famous American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was the son of William C. Wright and Anna Lloyd Jones in the United States in a small rural community of Richland Center, Wisconsin on June 8, 1867.

Wright's early influences were his clergyman father's playing of Bach and Beethoven and his mother's gift of geometric blocks. He entered the University of Wisconsin at 15 as a special student, studying engineering because the school had no course in architecture.
Wright left Madison in 1887 to work as a draftsman in Chicago.

In order to study architecture and learn the traditional, classical language, Wright, the country boy, had to go to Chicago. Wright worked for several architectural offices until he finally found a job with the most cultured architect in the Mid - West, Louis Sullivan, soon becoming Sullivan's chief assistant. That same year, in 1887, Wright carried out his first design, in a wooden version of the eclectic, Queen Ann Style, the Hillside Home School. His Charnley House of 1891 is a perfect amalgamation of these sources into his own version of Free Style Classification.

While working on key buildings for Sullivan and Adler, to pay his many debts. in 1892 Wright also started an illicit practice of architecture at night, bootlegging houses away from the office and sharpening his own eclectic mixture of Sillsbee, Queen Anne and Sullivan classicism. Sullivan disapproved and Wright set up his own office.

Just before his twenty - second birthday, in 1889, Wright married Catherine Lee Tobin, the Daughter of a wealthy businessman, and together with Sullivan and his other contacts she gave him the cultural background he lacked; she gave him social polish as well. They settled in the exclusive, Protestant neighborhood of OAK PARK, west of the seedy part of Chicago.

In their sensitive eclecticism, Frank and Catherine fitted perfectly the comfortable assumptions of middle class life. For twenty years he brought up a thriving family of six children upstairs, and ran a thriving architectural practice of twelve or so draughtsmen downstairs. He was very much the father of both families, giving each one their central hearth.

Frank Lloyd Wright's own house and studio, the Frank Lloyd Wright Residence, built 1889 - 1895 and later, became the laboratory for many of his experiments in domestic architecture. Here, in an idyllic American suburb, with giant oaks, sprawling lawns and no fences, Wright built some sixty rambling homes by the year 1900 (when he forged the "Prairie Style"). The Nathan Moore House, 1895, ( rebuilt 1923 after a fire) is one of the best of the period - although Wright was later to think it one of his worst.

As an independent architect, Wright became the leader of a style known as the Prairie school. Houses with low pitched roofs and extended lines that blend into the landscape typify his style of " organic architecture". In 1904 he designed the strong, functional Larkin Building in Buffalo, N. Y., and in 1906 the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.

After 1900 and his local success, Wright became immensely more ambitious and decided to take on the European avant - garde, whose work he must have known well through magazines. He fashioned a new form of horizontal streamlining - a word he claimes to have invented, and then helped form a group of architects, the "Chicago Eighteen," which soon evolved into the " New School of the Middle West." The Prairie House, such as the William E. Martin Residence, was the result of both efforts. Wright applied the same general principles of space and streamlining, used in his Prairie Houses, to public buildings. Even the " New Prairie Style" was conceived for domestic scale.

By the age of forty-one, in 1908, Wright had achieved extraordinary social and professional success. Yet a confusing doubt was beginning to grow, a malaise which had opposite causes not unconnected with the relation of modernism to Western traditional architecture. During this time he was struggling with the idea that was becoming uppermost in his mind, the " Cause of American Architecture." The idea formulated almost as Baptist sermon by his father:
Personally, again, I have met little more than the superficial snap-judgment-insult of the artistically informed. I am quite used to it, glad to owe it nothing in any final outcome. But, meanwhile, the "Cause" suffers delay!

By 1907 with the "Cause" failing as he was formulating it, his despair with America began to grow. He started to shock the Mid-Western moral majority by flaunting married women in his grand, open car. Like a Secessionist "artiste," he let his grow over the collar. He wore expensive clothes, flowing neck ties, riding beeches and Norfolk jacket- not the attire for the Oak Park commuter. He had reached the height of his Prairie School Style.

Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio at 951 Chicago Avenue. This extraordinary building in Oak Park, Illinois was the Wright family residence from 1889 to 1909. Wright began construction of this house in 1889 shortly after his marriage to Catherine Tobin, using $5000 borrowed from Louis Sullivan. The Wright family - Frank and Catherine, and their six children - lived here while he developed his architectural practice, creating what became the " Prairie Style" of architecture.

Originally, the room at the front of Wright's house on the second floor served as his drafting room, until the completion of the studio annex in 1898. In 1895, Wright added the two story polygon bay on the south side. In the first floor of this bay Wright built his inspired Dining Room, with the spectacular Dining Table and Chairs that perfectly express the spirit of the room, and his style. Windows of the dining room bay were later modified when the house to the south of the Wright Home was built, blocking the flow of light into the Bay.
The same year, Wright also added a two story extension to the east side of the house whose upstairs is the celebrated Children's playroom. This room receives light from rows of art glass windows along both the north and south walls, and from the overhead skylight, creating and etherial effect, not to be missed!

Wright's studio annex was completed in 1898, and is one of the most marvelous workspaces to be imagined! The reception area; the octagonal designed hanging lights in the drafting room; the presentation library; and much more.
Wright remodeled the main house into a rental unit in 1911, changing the layout significantly! A porch was added, and the main entrance was moved to the south side ( unseen in most photographs as that now leads directly to a neighboring house.)

Probably the reason Wright left his wife, Catherine and went off to Europe, was not simply to "gain freedom" from domestic banality, but also freedom from American provinciality. Of equal importance was the new woman in his life, who symbolized positive freedom - Mamah Borthwick Cheney - the wife of his then current client, Edwin H. Cheney.

Continuing with Frank Lloyd Wright we find that his running off to Europe with Mamah Cheney, leaving behind his six children by Catherine and the two Cheney children, and their respective spouses, called on his deepest conviction - a rather exaggerated " Truth Against the World"? Hie Free Style Classification coincided with Free Style ethics. This crisis produced a change in style, a change in philosophy. He started moving continuously, sometimes hiding from the law, and building only thirty four commissions in the next twenty - one years. the first thing he did was to retreat to his family homestead and build a fortress for Mrs. Cheney and himself, ( Taliesin - Welsh for "shining brow") a defensive bastion in the wilderness from which they could fight off the onslaught of big city morality. The "marrying" of building and hill became the first principle of organic architecture, a principal he was later to contradict.

Unfortunately Wright also had another principal of architecture - one door for all purposes - that was about the most tragic act that can befall anyone. A Barbados servant who they said, was under paid and driven mad by the unconventional lovers, had executed a revenge. He started a fire during lunch and stood by the only escape door, and then murdered, one by one, seven people, among them Mrs. Cheny and two of her children.
Wright himself was so overwhelmed that it took him ten years to recover his confidence and return to more stable existence. He remarried in 1922 to Marian Noel, who was his second wife.

Wright paid a tribute to Mrs. Cheney, his greatest love, the one who he had thrown away a normal career, by building her the simplest grave. Wright built Taaliesin Two on the asses of Taliiesin One and developed even further his defensive style. Tragedy followed tragedy. Taliesin Two was burned, and during the fire neighbors not only helped douse the flames, but helped themselves to some of Wright's Oriental art as well.

After Miriam Noel walked out on Wright, he met, quite by chance, the woman who was to rescue him from further self-destruction: Olgivanna Milanoff, an Eastern European aristocrat and something of a romantic herself. They met in Chicago in 1924, at a performance of the Petrograd ballet. Wright and Olginanna were married in 1928, his third marriage.

Out of all Wright's various troubles, several important things emerged from his chronicle of disasters: first in Olgivanna, he found the romantic attachment that could help, not destroy him.

• NEW BEGINNINGS

Wright entered a long period of introspection, resulting in his mammoth work, "An Autobiography", which was to result in his new self-assessment as the struggling and sometimes persecuted architect. Out of this grew a new style expressed in several western houses, a new romantic manner evolved from California. Fallingwater Architectural Essay/Tour was built in this period of time.
While Wright was designing extravagant metaphors for millionaires trying to escape from the city, he was also trying to build inexpensive houses for the poor, in such a way as they might escape the city too.

During the depression, he(Wright)changed his style and image yet again,leaving "Wright the outcast romantic" for his new role as "Wright the grand, social visionary." In the late twenties he became as respectable as he had been at the turn of the century. He gave countless lectures at major universities,started his Taliesin Fellowship - a visionary social workshop in itself - and in his mid sixties adopted the persona of the quick -witted social sage. He wished to supply an impoverished America (an impoverished self for that matter) with an answer to Marxist revolution. This he called by the metaphor "Broadacre City." Although Wright believed in capitalism, he thought that the land, the means of production as social credit - capital itself - should be distributed, not concentrated into monopolies.

On January 17th 1938 Wright appeared on th cover of Time Magazine; later it would be a two cent stamp. After his early experience with the yellow press, and then his success as the respectable architect, in the thirties, he started to realize the emergent rules of a commercial society. From this date to his death in 1959 he spent as much time giving interviews and being a celebrity, as in designing buildings. n the age of media stars-radio, film, soon TV - Wright mastered them all, and instinctively helped create the system with which we are still settled: the "star system of architectural heros." By 1950 Wright's sure instinct for promotion had paid off professionally. But the media attention, the time, energy and personal involvement I demanded, executed their revenge. Most of the buildings produced in these years betray an excessive vulgarity, or over ruling ambition, which the young Wright would have called "grandomania", and most people today call kitch.

The Ennis-Brown house he built is now a condemned building due to the mud slides in California.

Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959, in Phoenix Arizona.

Respectfully,

Ralph Jones

http://hometown.aol.com/ralj7/index.htm

Good Morning Fred,
I don't know how you did it but I am forever grateful to you for summarizing my history on the Arts and Crafts Movement in the manner you did.I can't thank you enough for what you did and, now folks can print it out for their own topic in the world of History.

Respectfully yours,

Ralph Jones

Good morning Friends,
I would like to take this time to thank Fred Zwig for his effort in summarizing my rendition of the Arts and Crafts History and I printed out all 14 pages of it to save for posterity as well as a reference of others when they inquire about certain areas of the history.

I hope that you folks enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Respectfully,

Ralph Jones

Ralph,
Thanks for your kind words. Next week we can begin cleaning up the other history posts and I will remove the replies to this post and close it. If you need to edit it you can always open it an make your changes.

Fred

Good Morning Fred,
I thank you again for your assistance on this History by compiling them as one complete story. I feel that even though I have misspelled some words and placed some punctuation incorrectly I will leave it as it stands.

I agree that by going to page three and deleting all of those post would be a good idea but, would appreciate leaving this post as written for future references.

Respectfully,

Ralph Jones

quote:

A Summary of The Arts & Crafts Movement

quote:

Researched and compiled by Ralph Jones.

I like that history especially as it ties in with philosophy and social impact.

I hope you don't mind that I added it to site.

If you do just say so and I will remove it.

Hello Slipcaster,
I am honored that you found it worthy to place in your blog, I am also pleased that you found it interesting.

Respectfully,

Ralph Jones

I have a 1900's mission oak poker table with no signature on it. Would you happen to have some information? Thank You

The e-mail for the info on the poker table is glorkia@gmail.com

Hello Gloria,
Without a picture or some form of information on the table it would be hard to give you an answer.

Respectfully,

Ralph Jones