GUSTAV STICKLEY AND THE CRAFTSMAN MAGAZINE

Gustav Stickley is best known as the manufacturer of simple, straight-lined Mission Style furniture. Original Mission furniture, signed at Stickley's factory, is rare and expensive today.

Stickley also published a magazine, The Craftsman, from 1901-1916, which served as a promotional vehicle for Stickley's own version of the central ideas of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Here are Stickley's own words, from a book published in 1909:

THE CRAFTSMAN IDEA OF THE KIND OF HOME ENVIRONMENT THAT WOULD RESULT FROM MORE NATURAL STANDARDS OF LIFE AND WORK

In this book we have endeavored to set forth as fully as possible the several parts which, taken together, go to make up the Craftsman idea of the kind of home environment that tends to result in wholesome living. We have shown the gradual growth of this idea, from the making of the first pieces of Craftsman furniture to the completed house which has in it all the elements of a permanently satisfying home. But we have left until the last the question of the right setting for such a home and the conditions under which the life that is lived in it could form the foundation for the fullest individual and social development.

The Root of Reform Lies In The Home

There is no question now as to the reality of the worldwide movement in the direction of better things. We see everywhere efforts to reform social, political and industrial conditions; the desire to bring about better opportunities for all and to find some way of adjusting economic conditions so that the heartbreaking inequalities of our modem civilized life shall in some measure be done away with.

But while we take the greatest interest in all efforts toward reform in any direction, we remain firm in the conviction that the root of all reform lies in the individual and that the life of the individual is shaped mainly by home surroundings and influences and by the kind of education that goes to make real men and women instead of grist for the commercial mill.

Luxury Leads to Degeneration

That the influence of the home is of the first importance in the shaping of character is a fact too well understood and too generally admitted to be offered here as a new idea. One need only turn to the pages of history to find abundant proof of the unerring action of Nature's law, for without exception the people whose lives are lived simply and wholesomely, in the open, and who have in a high degree the sense of the sacredness of the home, are the people who have made the greatest strides in the development of the race. When luxury enters in and a thousand artificial requirements come to be regarded as real needs, the nation is on the brink of degeneration. So often has the story repeated itself that he who runs may read its deep significance.

In our own country, to which has fallen the heritage of all the older civilizations, the course has been swift, for we are yet close to the memory of the primitive pioneer days when the nation was building, and we have still the crudity as weft as the vigor of youth. But so rapid and easy has been our development and so great our prosperity that even now we are in some respects very nearly in the same state as the older peoples who have passed the zenith of their power and are beginning to decline.

In our own case, however, the saving grace lies in the fact that our taste for luxury and artificiality is not as yet deeply ingrained. We are intensely commercial, fond of all the good things of life, proud of our ability to "get there," and we yield the palm to none in the matter of owning anything that money can buy. But, fortunately, our pioneer days are not ended even now and we still have a goodly number of men and women who are helping to develop the country and make history merely by living simple natural lives close to the soil and full of the interest and pleasure which come from kinship with Nature and the kind of work that calls forth all their resources in the way of self-reliance and the power of initiative.

Even in the rush and hurry of life in our busy cities we remember well the quality given to the growing nation by such men and women a generation or two ago and, in spite of the chaotic conditions brought about by our passion for money-getting, extravagance and show, we have still reason to believe that the dominant characteristics of the pioneer yet shape what are the salient qualities in American life.

To Bring Back the Vigorous Constructive Spirit

To preserve these characteristics and to bring back to individual life and work the vigorous constructive spirit which during the last half-century has its activities in commercial and industrial expansion, is, in a nut-shell, the Craftsman idea.

We need to straighten out our standards and to get rid of a lot of rubbish that we have accumulated along with our wealth and commercial supremacy. It is not that we are too energetic, but that in many ways we have wasted and misused our energy precisely as we have wasted and misused so many of our wonderful natural resources. All we really need is a change in our point of view toward life and a keener perception regarding the things that count and the things which merely burden us.

This being the case, it would seem obvious that the place to begin a readjustment is in the home, for it is only natural that the relief from friction which would follow the ordering of our lives along more simple and reasonable lines would not only assure greater comfort, and therefore greater efficiency, to the workers of the nation, but would give the children a chance to grow up under conditions which would be conducive to a higher degree of mental, moral and physical efficiency.

Simplifying the Work of Home Life

Therefore we regard it as at least a step in the direction of bringing about better conditions when we try to plan and build houses which will simplify the work of home life and add to its wholesome joy and comfort.

We have already made it plain to our readers that we do not believe in large houses with many rooms elaborately decorated and furnished, for the reason that these seem so essentially an outcome of the artificial conditions that lay such harassing burdens upon modern life and form such a serious menace to our ethical standards. Breeding as it does the spirit of extravagance and of discontent, which in the end destroys all the sweetness of home life, the desire for luxury and show not only burdens beyond his strength the man who is ambitious to provide for his wife and children surroundings which are as good as the best, but taxes to the utmost the woman who is trying to keep up the appearances which she believes should belong to her station in life. Worst of all, it starts the children with standards which, in nine cases out of ten, utterly preclude the possibility of their beginning life on their own account in a simple and sensible way.

Boys who are brought up in such homes are taught, by the silent influence of their early surroundings, to take it for granted that they must not marry until they are able to keep up an establishment of equal pretensions, and girls also take it as a matter of course that marriage must mean something quite as luxurious as the home of their childhood or it is not a paying investment for their youth and beauty.

Everyone who thinks at all deplores the kind of life that marks a man's face with the haggard lines of anxiety and makes him sharp and often unscrupulous in business, with no ambition beyond large profits and a rapid rise in the business world. Also we all realize regretfully the extravagance and uselessness of many of our women and admit that one of the gravest evils of our times is the light touch-and-go attitude toward marriage, which breaks up so many homes and makes the divorce courts in America a byword to the world. But when we think into it a little more deeply, we have to acknowledge that such conditions are the logical outcome of our standards of living and that these standards are always shaped in the home.

Honesty, Simplicity and Usefulness

That is why we have from the first planned houses that are based on the big fundamental principles of honesty, simplicity and usefulness, the kind of houses that children will rejoice all their lives to remember as "home," and that give a sense of peace and comfort to the tired men who go back to them when the day's work is done.

Because we believe that the healthiest and happiest life is that which maintains the closest relationship with out-of-doors, we have planned our houses with outdoor living rooms, dining rooms and sleeping rooms, and many windows to let in plenty of air and sunlight.

The most cursory examination of the floor plans given in this book will show that we have put into practical effect our conviction that a house, whatever its dimensions, should have plenty of free space unencumbered by unnecessary partitions or overmuch furniture. Therefore we have made the general living rooms as large as possible and not too much separated one from the other.

It seems to us much more friendly, homelike and comfortable to have one big living room into which one steps directly from the entrance door, or from a small vestibule if the climate demands such a protection, and to have this living room the place where all the business and pleasure of the common family life may be carried on. And we like it to have pleasant nooks and corners which give a comfortable sense of semi-privacy and yet are not in any way shut off from the larger life of the room. Such an arrangement has always seemed to us symbolic of the ideal conditions of social life.

The big hospitable fireplace is almost a necessity, for the hearthstone is always the center of true home life, and the very spirit of home seems to be lacking when a register or radiator tries ineffectually to take the place of a glowing grate or a crackling leaping fire of logs.

Simpler Living

Then too we believe that the staircase, instead of being hidden away in a small hall or treated as a necessary evil, should be made one of the most beautiful and prominent features of the room, because it forms a link between the social part of the house and the upper regions which belong to the inner and individual part of the family life.

Equally symbolic is our purpose in making the dining room either almost or wholly a part of the living room, for to us it is a constant expression of the fine spirit of hospitality to have the dining room, in a way, open to all comers. Furthermore, such an arrangement is a strong and subtle influence in the direction of simpler living because entertainment under such conditions naturally grows less elaborate and more friendly, less alien to the regular life of the family and less a matter of social formality.

Not Cut Up Into Little Rooms

Take a house planned in this way, with a big living room made comfortable and homelike and beautiful with its great fireplace, open staircase, casement windows, built-in seats, cupboards, bookcases, sideboard and perhaps French doors opening out upon a porch which links the house with the garden; fill this room with soft rich restful color, based upon the mellow radiance of the wood tones and sparkling into the jeweled high lights given forth by copper, brass, or embroideries; then contrast it in your own mind with a house which is cut up into vestibule, hall, reception room, parlor, library, dining room and den, each one a separate room, each one overcrowded with furniture, pictures and bric-a-brac, and judge for yourself whether or not home surroundings have any power to influence the family life and the development of character.

If you will examine carefully the houses shown in this book, you will see that they all form varying expressions of the central idea we have just explained, although each one is modified to suit the individual taste and requirements of the owner. This is as it should be, for a house expresses character quite as vividly as does dress and the more intimate personal belongings, and no man or woman can step into a dwelling ready made and decorated according to some other person's tastes and preferences without feeling a sense of strangeness that must be overcome before the house can be called a real home.

Convenient Arrangement of the Kitchen

It will also be noticed in examining the plans of the Craftsman houses that we have paid particular attention to the convenient arrangement of the kitchen. In these days of difficulties with servants and of inadequate, inexperienced help, more and more women are, perforce, learning to depend upon themselves to keep the household machinery running smoothly. It is good that this should be so, for woman is above all things the home maker and our grandmothers were not far wrong when they taught their daughters that a woman who could not keep house, and do it well, was not making, of her life the success that could reasonably be expected of her, nor was she doing her whole duty by her family.

The idea that housekeeping means drudgery is partly due to our fussy, artificial, overcrowded way of living and partly to our elaborate houses and to inconvenient arrangements. We believe in having the kitchen small, so that extra steps may be avoided, and fitted with every kind of convenience and comfort; with plenty of shelves and cupboards, open plumbing, the hooded range which carries off all odors of cooking, the refrigerator which can be filled from the outside, in fact, everything that tends to save time, strength and worry. In these days the cook is an uncertain quantity always and maids come and go like the seasons, so the wise woman keeps herself fully equipped to take up the work of her own house at a moment's notice, by being in such close touch with it all the time that she never lays down the reins of personal government.

The Craftsman house is built for this kind of a woman and we claim that it is in itself an incentive to the daughters of the house to take a genuine and pleasurable interest in household work and affairs, so that they in their turn will be fairly equipped as home makers when the time comes for them to take up the more serious duties of life.

The Only Place To Live

We have set forth the principles that rule the planning of the Craftsman house and have hinted at the kind of life that would naturally result from such an environment. But now comes one of the most important elements of the whole question, the surroundings of the home. We need hardly say that a house of the kind we have described belongs either in the open country or in a small village or town, where the dwellings do not elbow or crowd one another any more than the people do. We have planned houses for country living because we firmly believe that the country is the only place to live in.

One With Nature

The city is all very well for business, for amusement and some formal entertainment, in fact for anything and everything that, by its nature, must be carried on outside of the home. But the home itself should be in some place where there is peace and quiet, plenty of room and the chance to establish a sense of intimate relationship with the hills and valleys, trees and brooks and all the things which tend to lessen the strain and worry of modem life by reminding us that after all we are one with Nature.

Sane and Constructive Daily Life

Also it is a fact that the type of mind which appreciates the value of having the right kind of a home, and recognizes the right of growing children to the most natural and wholesome surroundings, is almost sure to feel the need of life in the open, where all the conditions of daily life may so easily be made sane and constructive instead of artificial and disintegrating.

People who think enough about the influence of environment to put interest and care into the planning of a dwelling which shall express all that the word "home" means to them,are usually the people who like to have a personal acquaintance with every animal, tree and flower on the place. They appreciate the interest of planting things and seeing them grow, and enjoy to the fullest the exhilarating anxiety about crops that comes only to the man who planted them and means to use them to the best advantage.

Then again, such people feel that half the zest of life would be gone if they were to miss the fullness of joy that each returning spring brings to those who watch eagerly for the new green of the grass and the blossoming of the trees. They feel that no summer resort can offer pleasures equal to that which they find in watching the full flowering of the year; in seeing how their own agricultural experiments turn out, and in triumphing over each success and each addition to the beauty of the place that is their own.

Few of these people, too, would care to miss the sense of peace and fulfillment in autumn days, when the waning beauty of the year comes into such close kinship with the mellow ripeness of  a well-spent life that has borne full fruit.

And what child is there in the world who would spend the winter in the city when there are ice-covered brooks to skate on, the comfort of jolly evenings by the fire and the never-ending wonder of the snow? And all the year round there are the dumb creatures for whom we have no room or time in the city, the younger brothers of humanity who submit so humbly to man's dominion and look so placidly to him for protection and sustenance.

The Instinct For Home

Thank heaven, though, we are not so far away from our natural environment that it needs much to take us back to it. We have many evidences of the turning of the tide of. home life from the city toward the country. Even workers in the city are coming more and more to realize that it is quite possible to maintain their place in the business world and yet give their children a chance to grow up in the country.

Also the economic advantage of building a permanent home instead of paying rent year after year is gaining an ever-increasing recognition, so that in a few years the American people may cease to deserve the reproach of being a nation of flat-dwellers and sojourners in family hotels.

The instinct for home and for some tie that connects us with the land is stronger than any passing fashion, and although we have in our national life phases of artificiality that are demoralizing they affect only a small percentage of the whole people, and when their day is over they will be forgotten as completely as if they had never existed.

Psychologists talk learnedly of "Americanitis" as being almost a national malady, so widespread is our restlessness and feverish activity; but it is safe to predict that, with the growing taste for wholesome country life, it will not be more than a generation or two before our far-famed nervous tension is referred to with wonder as an evidence of past ignorance concerning the most important things of life.

The Impulse to Do Beautiful and Vital Creative Work

And when we have turned once more to natural living instead of setting up our puny affairs and feverish ambitions to oppose the quiet, irresistible course of Nature's law, we will not need to turn hungrily to books for stories of a bygone Golden Age, nor will we need to deplore the vanishing of art and beauty from our lives, for when the day comes that we have sufficient courage and perception to throw aside the innumerable petty superfluities that hamper us now at every turn and the honesty to realize what Nature holds for all who turn to her with a reverent spirit and an open mind, we will find that art is once more a part of our daily life and that the impulse to do beautiful and vital creative work is as natural as the impulse to breathe.

Handicrafts a Part Of Our Lives

Therefore it is not idle theorizing to prophesy that, when healthful and natural conditions are restored to our lives, handicrafts will once more become a part of them, because two powerful influences will be working in this direction as they have worked ever since the earliest dawn of civilization. One is the imperative need for self-expression in some form of creative work that always comes when the conditions of life are such as to allow full development and joyous vigor of body and mind. The other is that which closer relationship with Nature seems to bring; a craving for greater intimacy with the things we own and use.

Machine-made standards fall away of themselves as we get away from artificial conditions. It is as if wholesome living brought with it not only quickened perceptions but also a sense of personal affection for all the familiar surroundings of our daily life. It is from such feeling that we get the treasured heirlooms which are handed down from generation to generation because of their associations and what they represent.

Leisure For Doing Really Worthwhile Work

Naturally the primitive conditions of pioneer life in any nation include handicrafts as a matter of course, from the simple fact that people had to make for themselves what they needed or go without. We realize that in this age of invention and of labor-saving machinery it is neither possible nor desirable to return to such conditions, but we believe that it is quite possible for a higher form of handicrafts to exist under the most advanced modern conditions and that achievements as great as those of the old craftsmen who made famous the Medieval guilds are by no means out of the reach of modern workers when they once realize the possibilities that lie in this direction.

Our theory is that modern improvements and conveniences afford a most welcome and necessary relief from the routine drudgery of household and farm work by disposing quickly and easily of what might much better be done by machinery than by hand, and that therefore there should be sufficient leisure left for the enjoyment of life and for the doing of work that is really worth while, which are among the things most essential to all-round mental and moral development. Almost the greatest drawback to farm life as it is today is the lack of interest and of mental alertness.