Furniture of the American Arts and Crafts Movement: Furniture Made by Gustav Stickley, L. & J.G. Stickley, and the Roycroft Shop

From the Introduction:
This book is like a snapshot, meant to capture with clarity the relevant known facts about its subject at a specific moment in time. It presents a picture observed from a particular vantage point, and can only begin to record the entire reality of its subject, because the subject is too big and far too complex, and much of it remains hidden from view. And as with any photograph, a subject will change through time. The photographer may rethink his shot, but the image is fixed.

The original edition of this book was written in the late 1970s and published in 1981. Before that, factual information about Arts and Crafts furniture was hard to come by. Many collectors had become knowledgeable about the furniture, but its history remained sketchy. No systematic study tracing its roots and the course of its stylistic evolution had yet been published. The dates of its various marks and signatures remained largely undeciphered. This book first came into being because I hoped to learn those things.

In the past fifteen years, appreciation for the American Arts and Crafts movement has blossomed, and the lives and works of its leading figures brought into sharper focus. Today, much more is known. Most of the catalogs issued by Gustav Stickley, L. & J. G. Stickley, and the Roycroft Shop have been reprinted and widely distributed. The number of public and private collections has greatly increased. Many museums have presented ambitious Arts and Crafts exhibitions, new studies of the movement have been published (compare the length of the bibliography in this edition with the original), and a lively quarterly reaches a deeply engaged audience. Arts and Crafts symposiums are held around the country each year. Craftsman Farms, for seven years the home of Gustav Stickley and his family, is now a National Historic Landmark. Plans are underway to open a museum in the L. & J. G. Stickley Fayetteville factory. East Aurora is now home to the Roycroft Arts Museum (open by appointment): the Foundation for the Study of the Arts and Crafts Movement at Roycroft; the Elbert Hubbard-Roycroft Museum; the renewed Roycroft Inn and a reinvigorated Roycroft campus. Many Arts and Crafts objects have achieved iconic status, and modern reissues of these forms are readily available. THE CRAFTSMAN will soon be published on CD-ROM.

Against this background, I felt the need to revise and update FURNITURE OF THE AMERICAN ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT. It had been out of print for about ten years, parts of it had been superseded by new knowledge, and I had uncovered more history to add to the record.

Many pieces of Gustav Stickley, L. & J. G. Stickley and Roycroft furniture, known in 1981 only through early photographs, have surfaced, and studying these examples has broadened my knowledge of the furniture and affected some of my conclusions. My preference for Gustav Stickley