A Carefully Crafted Eden
July 2007
SIMPLICITY STILL SELLS
David Rago fell hard for American Arts and Crafts more than 30 years ago. Today he publishes
Style 1900, a magazine dedicated to those designs, and runs a regional auction house in Lambertville, N.J., that specializes in Arts and Crafts pieces. “There’s an integrity and simplicity with Arts and Crafts materials,” Rago says. “It’s inclusive, and everybody could be a part of it.”
That, of course, was the whole idea.
The Arts and Crafts movement began in England in the middle of the 19th century, fired by the writings of British reformers John Ruskin and William Morris, who railed against the technology of the Industrial Age and the opulence of Victorian style. A half-century later, the works of Ruskin and Morris informed that of Gustav Stickley, a 40-year-old American furniture maker who held a fundamental belief that manual labor should be part of a well-lived life.
Although the initial popularity of Arts and Crafts was short-lived in America, the movement enjoyed a strong revival in the last quarter of the 20th century. A 1902 Stickley sideboard that cost Barbra Streisand $362,000 in 1988 sold at Christie’s 11 years later for $596,500, a record for Arts and Crafts furniture. At the same auction, the Craftsman Farms Foundation spent $142,500 to retrieve a pair of oak cabinets, also owned by Streisand, that Stickley had made for his dining room at Craftsman Farms.
Today the Arts and Crafts designs of Stickley and his contemporaries—among them his four brothers—continue to inspire reverence among Arts and Crafts collectors. Rago’s auction house holds twice-yearly Arts and Crafts auctions at which top pieces still command top dollar. His auction in March grossed $4 million, highlighted by the sale of a handmade Frederick Hurten Rhead vase for $516,000, believed to be a record price for American art pottery. —C.H.
David Rago fell hard for American Arts and Crafts more than 30 years ago. Today he publishes
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Morris chair, c. 1901–05, oak and leather |
That, of course, was the whole idea.
The Arts and Crafts movement began in England in the middle of the 19th century, fired by the writings of British reformers John Ruskin and William Morris, who railed against the technology of the Industrial Age and the opulence of Victorian style. A half-century later, the works of Ruskin and Morris informed that of Gustav Stickley, a 40-year-old American furniture maker who held a fundamental belief that manual labor should be part of a well-lived life.
Although the initial popularity of Arts and Crafts was short-lived in America, the movement enjoyed a strong revival in the last quarter of the 20th century. A 1902 Stickley sideboard that cost Barbra Streisand $362,000 in 1988 sold at Christie’s 11 years later for $596,500, a record for Arts and Crafts furniture. At the same auction, the Craftsman Farms Foundation spent $142,500 to retrieve a pair of oak cabinets, also owned by Streisand, that Stickley had made for his dining room at Craftsman Farms.
Today the Arts and Crafts designs of Stickley and his contemporaries—among them his four brothers—continue to inspire reverence among Arts and Crafts collectors. Rago’s auction house holds twice-yearly Arts and Crafts auctions at which top pieces still command top dollar. His auction in March grossed $4 million, highlighted by the sale of a handmade Frederick Hurten Rhead vase for $516,000, believed to be a record price for American art pottery. —C.H.
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