This is the final post in a three post entry on the Grove Park Inn’s Vanity Chair. The first post can be read here, and the second post can be read here.
With a thorough understanding of how the chair was originally constructed and repaired I was able to restore the chair’s frame to a structurally-sound condition by repairing and restoring the original spiral grooved dowel joinery. The mortise and tenon joinery used to house the chair back’s vertical slats required no repair or restoration.
How Was the Vanity Chair Built?
 Xray of Chair Back |
 Back Leg Xray |
This is the second post, in a series of three that shares what I learned about factory built arts and crafts furniture while restoring a Vanity Chair from Asheville, North Carolina’s Grove Park Inn. The first post can be read here.
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As an admirer of all things Arts and Crafts, I enjoy visiting Asheville, North Carolina’s Grove Park Inn, often attending the annual Arts and Crafts Conference that takes place at the inn. During my many visits to the inn I’ve come to love its furniture collection, especially the original furniture still used in the main inn’s rooms. For me, this furniture is a great example of pieces produced in factories during the Arts and Crafts era.
I thought walking into the Charles Rohlfs’ exhibit a few weeks ago was like walking into a cathedral of fine Arts and Crafts furniture—and yet walking in to the Stickley exhibit actually out-did that experience. You could stop at the first display at this exhibit and walk away very satisfied…but don’t. The further you walk into this exhibit, the better it gets.
There are many unique things about Charles’ work. For starters, on the surface his furniture does not appear to be from the Arts and Crafts era, however, he is considered one of its great designers because of his “his highly-individualistic, sophisticated design vocabulary as well as his use of quarter sawn white oak fully-expressed joinery and relatively direct approach to forms.” Now I’m not sure what “fully expressed joinery” is; but I can tell you from a furnituremaker’s perspective his work is interesting because he didn’t always employ traditional joinery-this exhibit reflects some of his work that utilized dowel construction and screws.
The joint I found the most interesting in this exhibit was the 3-part mitered joint employed where the three stretchers met in the center of the Trefoil table base. Of particular interest was how Charles reinforced this joint, he used a round block of wood glued (?) to the bottom of the joint. By the way, that reference is a good example of how you can spot the woodworkers at a furniture exhibit. They’ll be the patrons on their hands and knees looking underneath the furniture, as I had to do to spot that round reinforcement block!
Perhaps the neatest trait one can take from Charles Rohlfs is hope. Hope in that Charles did what a lot of weekend woodworkers would like to do. A self taught woodworker and furnituremaker, he won local, national, and international acclaim for his furniture, and competed with the giants of the furniture industry of his day. Not too shappy for a guy who only produced approximately 500 pieces over a ten year career.
The Charles Rohlfs’ exhibit runs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 23, 2011 in The Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery located on the first floor.
But if you miss the exhibit, there is an excellent accompanying book.
Several weeks ago I called Bruce Johnson to get some advice on an Arts and Crafts finishing-project. Our conversations often wonder about the Arts and Crafts landscape, and at some point this conversation got around to his post Having a Drink with Gus which had recently been posted in the Little Journey’s section of his website.
Somehow the conversation wondered by the topic of where Gustav Stickley was interned and visiting his grave site. We both admitted not knowing the city or state where Gus was resting. Now, I’m not claiming a nefarious plot, but upon further reflection, hearing Bruce say he didn’t know something about the Arts and Crafts world, makes me wonder if I had been bamboozled into doing the research. Well, it doesn’t take much to interest me in learning something new about the Arts and Crafts movement, so no harm, no foul…and off I went.
Not much research was required. A few Google queries and a new ancestry.com account and here’s what I got.
Gus is interned at Oakwood Cemetery, on the south side of section B, located at 940 Comstock AVE in Syracuse, NY. His grave site is accessed by entering the cemetery from the Comstock avenue entrance, taking a quick left turn, and than staying to the right at the first and second forks you come to. Immediately after veering right on the second fork in the road, park and proceed up the incline. You will soon come to a bench with “Stickley” engraved on the front edge of the seat.
In front of the bench are four graves with modest ground-markers. Gus’ is off to the right and flanked by those of his wife Eda, and two of his daughters Hazel and Mildred.
On Ancestry.com I discovered the text of Gus’ obituary from the Syracuse Herald Journal published on April 21, 1942.
GUSTAVE STICKLEY, FURNITURE MANUFACTURER, DIES AT 85
Funeral services will be conducted at 2 p.m. Wednesday for Gustave Stickley, 85, furniture manufacturer, publisher, and operator of the first electric street-car line in America, who died Monday afternoon at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Ben Wiles, 438 Columbus Avenue, after a three-month illness.
The Rev. Dr. Ray Freeman Jenney of Park Central Presbyterian Church will officiate at services in the Fairchild & Meech funeral home. Burial will be in Morningside Cemetery. Friends may call at the funeral home from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday.
Born in Osceola, Wis., March 9, 1857, Mr. Stickley moved to Brant, Pa., in his youth and then to Binghamton, where he entered the furniture business and operated the pioneer electric street-car line.
During the administration of Gov. Roswell P. Flower of New York State, he handled manufacturing operations in Auburn Prison, after which he came to Syracuse. He returned to the furniture business here and originated Craftsman furniture and a new school of decorative art.
Mr. Stickley was the founder, publisher and editor for many years of the Craftsman Magazine, which had nationwide circulation.
He is survived by six children, Mrs. Wiles, Miss Hazel Stickley, Gustave Stickley, Jr., and Mrs. Mildred Cruess of Rochester, Mrs. George Flaccus of Shrewsbury, N. J., and Mrs. Wallace VanArx of Freehold, N. J.; a brother, Leopold Stickley; a sister, Miss Emma Stickley of Stillwater, Minn.; 12 grandchildren, and two great-granchildren.”
So there you have it, if you’re ever in Syracuse and want to pay your respects, you now know where to go.
In the coming months it going to be hard to not get your Arts and Crafts fix! There are two major exhibits coming soon.
On August 7th the Washington State Historical Society will open The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest exhibit which will showcase significant buildings and interiors, furniture, glass, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, fine art, graphics and book arts, and photography with more than 100 objects drawn from public and private collections. The exhibit will run through November 28th at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma, Washington.
In September the Dallas Museum of Art will premiere Gustav Stickely and the American Arts & Crafts Movement. To quote their website: “The exhibit will provide new insights into the artistic, commercial, and social context of Stickley’s entry into the Arts and Crafts realm, the ideological development of his enterprise and the formation of the Craftsman home and lifestyle. It will also illuminate the vibrant identify of the “Craftsman” that Stickley developed and furthered through the recation and promotion of his furniture and household goods. A major highlight of the exhibition is the re-creation of a dining room arranged and furnished by Stickley that was originally designed for his 1903 Arts and Crafts Exhibition in Syracuse, New York.” This is a traveling exhibit that will open at the Newark Museum of Art on September 15th, and remain there through January 2, 2011. Next, the exhibit opens at the Dallas Museum of Art on February 13, 2011, and makes its final stop at the San Diego Museum of Art beginning June 18, 2011.
