An Outline of Furniture-Making in this Country Showing the Place of Craftsman Furniture in the Evolution of an American Style

This book is meant to give a comprehensive idea of the elements that go to make up the typical Craftsman home.

Therefore at least one chapter must be devoted to Craftsman furniture, for in the making of this we first gave form to the idea of home building and furnishing which we have endeavored to set forth. For this reason, and because the furniture has so far remained the clearest concrete expression of the Craftsman idea, we are here illustrating a few of the most characteristic pieces that serve to show all the essential qualities of the style.

In order that the reader may understand clearly the reasons which led to the making of Craftsman furniture, and its place in the evolution of a distinctively American style that bids fair eventually to govern the great majority of our dwellings and household belongings, we will first briefly review the history of furniture making in this country. With the older styles, such as the English and the Dutch Colonial, we have little to do. They were importations from older civilizations, as were the Colonists themselves, and they expressed the life of the mother country rather than that of the new. When we first began to make furniture in this country, the cabinetmakers naturally followed their old traditions and made the kind of furniture which most appealed to them and which came within the scope of their experience, for, after the first primitive days of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England and the earliest settlers in the South, the life of the Colonists was modeled closely upon that of the old country and this life naturally found expression in their dwellings and household belongings. Therefore the Colonial style was so close to the prevailing style of the eighteenth century that it may be regarded as practically the same thing.

After the end of the Colonial period, and during the swift expansion that followed the Revolution, there was inevitably a return to the primitive. Importations from the old world were no longer popular and while the houses of the wealthy were still furnished with the graceful spindle-legged mahogany pieces of earlier days, most of the people were forced to content themselves with much plainer and more substantial belongings. Little chair factories sprang up here and there, especially in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts, and these supplied the great demand for the plain wooden chairs that we now cal! kitchen chairs, and the cane-seated chairs which were usually reserved for use in the best room. As the demand increased with the increasing population, the alert and resourceful New Englander began to invent machinery which would increase his output. As a consequence, the business of chair making made rapid growth, but the primitive beauty of the hand-made pieces was lost. The Windsor chairs, with their perfect proportions, subtle modeling and slender legs shaped with the turning lathe, became a thing of the past, for in the factories it was necessary from a business point of view to effect the utmost savings in material and also to consider the limitations of the machinery of that day. The object of the manufacturer naturally was to turn out the greatest possible quantity of goods with the least possible amount of labor and expense, and the result was so many modifications of the original form that the factory-made chairs soon become commonplace When machines were invented to take the place of hand turning and carving, it was inevitable that vulgarity should be added to the commonplaceness, be cause it i use bad lines with cheap ornamentation.

Side by side with these chair factories another furniture industry was springing up, mainly in the Middle West because that was the black walnut country and black walnut was the material most in demand for the more elaborate furniture. At the same time that the New Englander was evolving from the artisan who carried on his work with the aid of a little water mill. to a manufacturer who owned a chair factory run by machinery, a number of German cabinetmakers who had settled in Indiana and the neighboring states were accumulating, by means of industry and thrift, enough means to set up general furniture factories, which supplied the country with black walnut ’“parlor suits,” upholstered with haircloth, repps or plush, while the New Englander remained content to furnish it with dining room and kitchen chairs.

This period in our furniture corresponds with the architectural phase in this country which has aptly been termed the “reign of terror,” but we are in some measure consoled for the hideous bad taste of it all by the reflection that it w7 as contemporary with the early and mid-Victorian period in England, a term that everywhere stands for all that is ugly, artificial and commonplace in household art. It was succeeded by the first of the Grand Rapids furniture, which was in some measure a change for the better. Tempted by the success of the German furniture makers, the shrewd New England manufacturers, with their superior knowledge of machinery, managed to plant themselves in the Middle West and to distance their competitors. The center of these new manufacturing interests was then in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so that the new style of furniture which was produced came to be known as Grand Rapids furniture. It was plainer than the black walnut furniture and was fashioned more after the Colonial models, but the best features were speedily lost in the ornamentation with which it was overlaid, as well as in the modification and adaptation of the earlier forms by a new generation of designers, who had studied foreign furniture and so gained a smattering of the traditional styles which they proceeded to apply to the creation of “novelties.” About this time the large department stores sprang up and, as they very soon became the principal retailers, they naturally assumed control of the furniture that was made. The demand for novelties was unceasing and the designer was at the beck and call of the traveling salesman, who in his turn was compelled to supply a ceaseless stream of new attractions to the head of the furniture department,—whose business it was constantly to whet the public appetite for further novelties.

The greater part of the demand thus created was satisfied by the Grand Rapids f u ni i t u r e, but as wealth and culture increased, and people became more and more familiar with European homes and European luxuries, the new vogue for the “period” furniture sprang up among the richer class, and some of the factories turned their attention to endeavoring to duplicate the several styles of French and English furniture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These factories are still running, some of them being employed in turning out the closest imitation they can make of the “period” furniture and others in reproducing Colonial models.

While we were doing these things in America, Ruskin and Morris had been endeavoring to establish in England a return to handicrafts as a means of individual expression along the several lines of the fine and industrial arts. This gave rise over there to the Arts and Crafts movement, which was based chiefly upon the expression of untrammeled individualism. Much furniture was made, some of it good, but a great deal of it showing the eccentricities of personal fancy unlow rocker and drop-leaf sewing table with three drawers; the upper one having a sliding tray made of cedar with compartments for spools. modified by any settled standards. It was a move in the right direction because it meant a return to healthy individual effort and a revolt from the dead level established by the machines. But the Arts and Crafts workers have not succeeded in establishing another RUSH WRITI permanent style in English furniture for the reason that they have striven for a definite and intentional expression of art that was largely for art’s sake and had little to do with satisfying the plain needs of the people. Although the founders of the movement held and preached the doctrine that all vital art necessarily springs from the life of the people, it is nevertheless recognized even by their followers that in practice such expression as they advocate belongs to the artist alone and that the people care very little about it.

It was during this same period that the movement called L’Art Nouveau sprang up in France and for a time attained quite a vogue under the leadership of Bing. Belgium followed suit with a rather heavier and more pronounced interpretation of the distinctive features of this style and for a few years the plant forms and swirling lines that distinguished L’Art Nouveau productions were very popular. In Germany and Austria the art students and others of the more restless spirits who were constantly in revolt from the established styles determined to outdo the French and accordingly established government schools for the teaching of a definite style, which was called New Art or Secessionist and which contained some of the features of L’Art Nouveau and others that were borrowed from the English Arts and Crafts and also from ancient Egyptian forms of art. The French school has already failed in the efforts to establish a permanent style, and the indications are that the efforts of the German and Austrian Secessionists will prove equally futile, because in both cases the workers have merely attempted to do something different; to evolve a new thing by combining the features of the old. In other words, they began at the top instead of beginning at the bottom and allowing the style to develop naturally from the sure foundation of real utility. The leaders succeeded in making things that, whatever their relative merits, were a new departure; but this once made, it stood as a completed achievement that might be imitated, but could hardly be developed, as it lacked the beginnings of healthy growth.

But during the same period in this country things were on a different basis. Out of the chaos of ideals and standards which had naturally resulted from the rapid growth of the young nation, a vigorous and coherent national spirit was being developed, and amid the general turmoil and restlessness attendant upon swift progress and expansion, it became apparent that we were evolving a type of people distinct from all others,—a type essentially American. And the distinguishing characteristic of this type is the power to assimilate so swiftly the kind of culture which leads to the making of permanent standards of life and art that it is hardly to be compared with what might seem to be the corresponding class in other countries. Such Americans have fundamental intelligence and the power of discrimination, and the direct thinking that results from these qualities inevitably produces a certain openness of mind that responds very quickly to anything which seems to have a real and permanent value.

This quality was shown in the immediate recognition and welcome accorded to Craftsman furniture when we first introduced it ten years ago. Like the Arts and Crafts furniture in England, it represented a revolt from the machine-made thing. But there was this difference: The Arts and Crafts furniture was primarily intended to be an expression of individuality, and the Craftsman furniture was founded on a return to the sturdy and primitive forms that were meant for usefulness alone. In this country, where we have no monarchs and no aristocracy, the life of the plain people is the life of the nation; therefore, the art of the age must necessarily be the art of the people. Our phases of imitation and of vulgar desire for show are only a part of the crudity of youth. We have not yet outgrown them and will not for many years; but as we grow older and begin to stand on our own feet and to cherish our own standards of life and of work and therefore of art, we show an unmistakable tendency to get away from shams and to demand the real thing.

And to an American the real thing is something that he needs and understands. The showroom quality is all very well when it comes to proving how much money he has or to establishing a reputation for owning things that are just as good as his neighbor’s. But for use he wants the things that belong to him,—the things that are comfortable to live with; that represent a good investment of his money and have no nonsense about them. Furthermore the true American likes to know how things are done. His interest and sympathy are immediately aroused when he sees something that he really likes and knows to be a good thing, if he is able to feel that, if he wanted it and had the time, he could make one like it himself.

So strong is this national characteristic that it is hardly overstating the case to say that in America any style in architecture or furniture would have to possess the essential qualities of simplicity, durability, comfort and convenience and to be made in such a way that the details of its construction can be readily grasped, before it could hope to become permanent. We are not so many generations removed from our pioneer forefathers that we have grown entirely out of their way of getting at things. We may not always stop to think about them, but when we do our thought is apt to be fairly sound and direct. The prevalence of cheap, showy, machine-made things in our houses is due chiefly to the lack of thought that takes on trust the word of the dealers, and every year brings us more abundant proof that they do not in any way represent the real tastes and standards of the people. All machine-made imitations of furniture which belonged to another country and another age and represented the life of a totally different people, are alike to the average American. If he can get them cheap, he has at least the satisfaction of feeling that they make a pretty good outward show for the money; if they are expensive, there is something in being able to afford them and to know that his house has in it rooms which are fairly successful imitations of the rooms in French or English palaces two or three hundred years ago. But in all this there is no real thought and nothing that approaches it. It is only when a thing has the honest primitive quality that reveals just what it is, how it is made and what it is made for, that it comes home to us as something which possesses an individuality of its own. It is not an elaborate finished thing made by machinery with intricate processes which we cannot understand and about which we do not care in the least; it is something that we might make with our own hands. Therefore it is something that sets us to thinking and establishes a point of contact from which springs the essentially human qualities of interest and affection. Understanding just how it is made, we are in a position to appreciate exactly what the artisan has done and how well he has done it. From this understanding comes the personal interest in good work that alone gives the vital quality which we know as art.

Many people misunderstand the meaning of the word primitiveness, mistaking it for crudeness, but the word is used here to express the directness of a thing that is radical instead of derived. In our understanding of the term, the primitive form of construction is that which would naturally suggest itself to a workman as embodying the main essentials of a piece of furniture, of which the first is the straightforward provision for practical need. Also we hold that the structural idea should be made prominent because lines which clearly define their purpose appeal to the mind with the same force as does a clear concise statement of fact. This principle is the basis from which the Craftsman style of furniture has been developed. In the beginning there was no thought of creating a new style, only a recognition of the fact that we should have in our homes something better suited to our needs and more expressive of our character as a people than imitations of the traditional styles, and a conviction that the best way to get something better was to go directly back to plain principles of construction and apply them to the making of simple, strong, comfortable furniture that would meet adequately everything that could be required of it.

Because Craftsman furniture expresses so clearly the fundamental sturdiness and directness of the true American point of view, it follows that in no other country and under no other conditions could it have been produced at the present day. The history of art shows us that a new form of expression never develops from the top and that nothing permanent is ever built upon tradition. When a style is found to be original and vital it is a certainty that it has sprung from the needs of the plain people and that it is based upon the simplest and most direct principles of construction. This is always the beginning and a style that has in it sufficient vitality to endure, will grow naturally as one worker after another feels that he has something further to express. In making Craftsman furniture we went back to the beginning. seeking the inspiration of the same law of direct answer to need that animated the craftsmen of an earlier day, for it was suggested by the primitive human necessity of the common folk. It is absolutely plain and unornamented, the severity of the style marking a point of departure from which we believe that a rational development of the decorative idea will ultimately take place.