Notes 1. Stickley is quoted in John Crosby Freeman, The Forgotten Rebel: Gustav Stickley and His Craftsman Mission Furniture (Watkins Glen, New York: Century House, 1966), p. 18.
2. Throughout this paper, I am using Alan Trachtenberg's definition of culture to generally mean a "way of life", including the full range of what society thinks and produces, as opposed to a loftier definition based on forms of artistic expression. See Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), p. 143.
3. I looked at three separate periods of The Craftsman spanning October 1904-September 1905, October 1909-March 1911, and October 1915-September 1916. The magazine was published from October 1901-December 1916.
4. Trachtenberg provides a good summary of women's role during this time period in The Incoporation of America, pp. 146-47.
5. Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), p. 48. See also Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1983), pp. 16,101. Cowan effectively argues that women took on a new form of production after the Industrial Revolution: "the household continued to be the locale in which meals, clean laundry, healthy children, and well-fed adults were 'produced'." While the nature of the work changed, new technologies eliminated drudgery, but not the time-consuming labor of housework. As people got accustomed to higher levels of cleanliness, work was made easier, but increased in volume. I would argue that the question of women's production is not whether or not it has value, but that its perceived value in the time period I am discussing was very low.
6. Michael Kimmel, "Men's Responses to Feminism at the Turn of the Century," Gender & Society 1:3 (September 1987), p. 270.
7. Trachtenberg explains this prevailing attitude in The Incorporation of America,
pp. 141-42.
8. Kimmel quotes D. Pugh, Sons of Liberty: The Masculine Mind in Nineteenth Century America (1983), in "Men's Responses to Feminism," p. 271.
9. Kimmel quotes Ernest Thompson Seton (cited in D. Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and their Forerunners, 1870-1920, 1983), in "Men's Responses to Feminism," p. 271.
10. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 138. See also Margaret Marsh, "From Separation to Togetherness: The Social Construction of Domestic Space in American Suburbs, 1840-1915," The Journal of American History 76:2 (September 1989), pp. 506-27. Marsh argues that, initially, life in the city was preferred by women for its cultural opportunities, and suburban life was preferred by men.
11. Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969; originally published 1850), pp. xiv-xx.
12. Stickley, "Ornament: Its Use and Its Abuse," The Craftsman 7 (October 1904-March 1905), p. 581.
13. Mary Ann Smith, Gustav Stickley: The Craftsman (Syracuse University Press, 1983), pp. 9-10. See also David M. Cathers, Furniture of the American Arts and Crafts Movement: Stickley and Roycraft Mission Oak (New York: New American Library, 1981), pp. 19-21.
14. Stickley, "Ornament: Its Use and Its Abuse," p. 584. I believe this is a reference to women trying to refine men, a prevalent attitude discussed earlier.
15. Stickley, "Ornament: Its Use and Its Abuse," pp. 587-88.
16. Sarah Burns, Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 90-91. Wilde's femininity was decried for its connection with homosexuality; see pp. 95-100.
17. All quotes are from Stickley, "The `Latest Cry' in Furniture for French Women," The Craftsman 18 (April-September 1910), p. 702.
18. A homemaker was to take care not to be too ostentatious in her choices. Also see advice given by Orison Swett Marden, Woman and Home (1915), and Mabel Tuke Priestman, Art and Economy in Home Decoration (1910), in Cheryl Robertson, "House and Home in the Arts and Crafts Era: Reforms for Simpler Living," in Wendy Kaplan, ed., "The Art that is Life": The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1987), p. 337. For an assessment of the unprecedented rise of American consumerism from 1890 to 1930, see William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).
19. Gustav Stickley, More Craftsman Homes: Floor Plans and Illustrations for 78 Mission Style Dwellings (New York: Dover Publications, 1982; originally published 1912), p. 5. For information on "scientific methods of housekeeping," see Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1913).
20. Elizabeth Banks, "The Educated American Drudge," The North American Review 179:574 (September 1904), p. 436.
21. Elizabeth A. Ward, "Denatured Drudgery, A Wise Study of House Work," The Craftsman 29 (October 1915-March 1916), p. 392.
22. See "The Kind of Fabrics and Needlework that Harmonize with and Complete the Craftsman Decorative Scheme," in Stickley, Craftsman Homes (New York: The Craftsman Publishing Company, 1909), pp. 165-168.
23. Sarah Burns refers to Marshall's color theories in Inventing the Modern Artist, pp. 142-43.
24. See "Mrs. Dunlap Hopkins, Founder of the New York School of Applied Design for Women," The Craftsman 18 (Apri[-September 1910), pp. 362-63.
25. Feminist Ida Husted Harper recommended smaller families so that women would be able to spend more time with their husbands and to pursue their interests in social service, art, or culture outside the home. See Clifford Edward Clark, Jr., The American Family Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 169-70.
26. Stickley, Craftsman Homes, pp. 169-70.
27. Caption under a picture of a Morris chair in Stickley, Craftsman Homes, p. 157.
28. Christine Terhune Herrick, "Man, the Victim," Munsey's Magazine 27 (September 1902), pp. 889-91.
29. Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America, p. 150.
30. For information on changing family life, see "The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of the Modern Family," in Mark Hutter, The Changing Family: Comparative Perspectives (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, second edition, 1988), pp. 28-47, and "The Family Under Threat?", in John Harriss, ed., The Family: A Social History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 40-47.
31. "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne" is the inscription (from Chaucer) on one of the five fireplaces in the Stickley home at Craftsman Farms, in Morris Plains, New Jersey.
32. For a look at the significance of the fireplace in American life, see Katherine Anne & Marie Roberts, "Hearth and Soul: The Fireplace in American Culture," Ph.D. thesis (University of Minnesota, 1990).
33. Stickley advertised children's furnishings in "Our Home Department," The Craftsman 8 (April-September 1905), pp. 699-704.
34. Marsh, "From Separation to Togetherness," pp. 519-520.
35. The irony of the affordable American bungalow (which was actually based on the residences of the British military and diplomatic personnel in India) was that it originated as a summer or weekend retreat, a playhouse for the rich that subsumed productive farmland. Many of these consumer class citizens often bought their rustic, "handmade" furnishings through mail-order catalogs. Gwendolyn Wright sees the ultimate failure of Stickley's empire as an unrealistic expectation that lasting social harmony could be achieved through good residential design, even if a large number of people wished it were so. She faults him for a program of social and architectural reform that was too simplistic. His houses were not economical to build; she calls them "an illusion of simplicity and economy." To Wright, the leaders of the Arts and Crafts Movement ultimately could not live up to the promise that it was possible for anyone to own a good quality, economical house; Stickley's houses probably would have cost twice what he estimated to build them.Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 139-141, 269.