The requested URL /search?s=Gustav+Stickley was not found on this server.Vintage Metal Wood Rattan Eames Style Chair AS ISTree BookcaseCorner BookshelvesTree Book ShelvesTree ShelvingCreative BookshelvesBook Shelves IdeasBookshelf ProjectsDiy Corner ShelvesShelves In BedroomForwardThis is a cool concept.. I think I'd like mine a bit more rough and rustic, but the leather chair works so well! on March 07, 2010 at 5:46 AM Pat Hughes’ two grown children give him a hard time about his fondness for Stickley furniture and its mission-style home decor. The Holland resident likes to read about Stickley, loves to talk about Stickley and has furnished nearly his entire home in Stickley. Featuring Mike Danial, corporate historian at L. & J.G. Stickley Inc. What: Danial will discuss Stickley company history and stories. Attendees can bring their pieces or photos to be evaluated by Danial. When: 7 p.m. Saturday and 10:30 a.m. March 13 Where: Custom Design Furniture, 2875 Lake
Eastbrook Blvd. SE, Grand Rapids Tickets: Free, but seating is limited. To register or for more info: Call the store at 575-9004.Though some of the world-renowned furniture makers’ antiques fetch a fortune at auctions — and collectors include celebrities such as Barbara Streisand, Richard Gere and Steven Spielberg — Hughes is not a stickler about whether he owns old or new pieces. “If it’s a style of decor people want to enjoy, it shouldn’t be limited to the top 5 percent of the population,” he said. “It’s a good company that makes good furniture.” Hughes and the furniture maker go back to his childhood, growing up in Fayetteville, N.Y., near the L. & J.G. Stickley Inc. factory there. “I used get kicked out of there when I was a little kid,” he said. “My brother and I would just run around the place back in the ’60s, and I used to watch the guys make furniture.” He owns a few antique pieces: a footstool and rocking chair that were his grandmother’s, and a couch, chair and ottoman set his mother bought in 1962.
“I grew up jumping around on this stuff, and we still use it every day,” Hughes said. “And it meant something to my mom, who’s not around anymore. So I’m not getting rid of it.” Bee Ruble, of Northeast Grand Rapids, owns a pair of 1915 Gustav Stickley bookcases and a Gustav Stickley music stand. Ruble, 80, bought one of the bookcases for $50 in 1989 from a Chicago hospital where she had worked since 1948. She was given its twin when a former colleague, who bought that one, died. “I really love them, not only because I love antiques but because they’re associated with the hospital,” Ruble said. “I have a lot of good memories from there.” The bookcases once were in the hospital’s school of nursing offices, she said, and were valued years ago at about $3,000 each. The music stand — a table, actually — was in a hallway outside patient rooms. Its condition is a bit rough, Ruble said. “In those days, all the doctors and nurses smoked,” she said.
“When they were going into a patient’s room, they would set their cigarettes on it, so there are some burn marks.” Hughes’ and Ruble’s stories are the kinds Mike Danial loves to hear. “The best stories are the ones where there’s a personal heritage,” he said. Danial, corporate historian at Stickley, will be at Custom Design Furniture in Grand Rapids on Saturday and March 14 to share his expertise with craftspeople, history buffs and veteran and novice furniture collectors on the history of Stickley furniture and the mission arts-and-crafts movement. He has a bunch of his own stories, which include finding old furniture, catalogs and drawings in the basement of the New York Stickley factory. Danial also talks about the condition of the factory when the Audi family took the helm of the business in 1974. “A lot of the machinery was miswired, and we would get shocks if we touched a light fixture while a machine was running,” he recalled. “Or how the old elevator would fail while you were on it.
We were lucky we survived.” Danial also will show photos of found objects and present the stories behind them, including one of his own. He has in his office a circa 1900 Gustav Stickley “poppy” table — an end table with a top that looks like the flattened petals of a flower — found last year at a private U.S. hunting camp. A similar version sold at a December auction for $176,500. “They’re very rare, and they don’t show up very often,” Danial said. “It had probably been relegated to the camp when it was no longer stylish for someone’s home. It’s somewhat damaged, but it still has its original paper label.” When it comes to prices for authentic, classic Stickley pieces, “condition means everything,” Danial said. “These were not one-of-a-kind items,” he said. “This was 20th century factory production, so there are generally many of one design. Collectors pay the highest prices for items in the best condition.” Provenance means a lot, too, he said.
For example, a piece that can be proven to have been owned by Gustav Stickley himself would carry far more value than one for which the ownership was not part of its history. Also, “Certain designs are more coveted, and it is a matter of discovering which ones they are,” Danial said. “That’s why we have the roadshow.” Danial also speaks to the pivotal role Grand Rapids played in the Stickley legacy. The furniture makers’ pieces — known for their simple lines and durable construction and coveted by museums and collectors who have spent up to hundreds of thousands for pieces — have major Grand Rapids origins. The golden years of Grand Rapids’ reign as “Furniture City” corresponded with the height of the arts-and-crafts influence on furniture design: Albert Stickley manufactured mission furniture in Grand Rapids from 1883 to 1928 under the name Stickley Bros. Furniture Co. “The whole furniture industry had been moving to Grand Rapids,” Danial said.
“It was the proximity of raw materials, the factories, the transportation and lots of immigrant labor. Grand Rapids was a logical place to build your furniture.” Don Merrick thinks the city doesn’t boast enough about its Stickley roots. Merrick, who owns the Heartwood antique shop, 956 Cherry St. SE in Grand Rapids, said what surprises him most are comments from customers when they spot an old newspaper ad for Stickley that hangs on a wall in his store. “They think it’s a fake because they don’t know Stickley Bros. was in Grand Rapids,” he said. “It’s very strange to me.” Merrick said antique Stickley pieces occasionally can be found in West Michigan antiques stores, “but it’s very spotty.” “Certain things are out there because they’re common, like a foot stool or dining room chair,” said Merrick, who has an early Gustav Stickley office chair for sale in his store’s front window with a price tag of $1,600. “Most of the rare Stickely pieces have seen the light of day by now,” he said.
“Most of what’s on the market is coming out of existing collections. There might be something stuck away in a cottage somewhere, but that’s going to be pretty seldom.” A bittersweet find for Merrick several years ago came in the form of a telephone call from an antique mall in Lowell that had just taken a Stickley chair on consignment from an area couple. Merrick identified it as a 1912 Stickley Bros. “cube” chair worth about $2,500. He knew it originally was paired with a sofa, called an “even-armed settee,” that could fetch about $5,000. The response when he asked after the sofa: “You’re not going to want to hear this.” The couple couldn’t get the sofa through the doorway of their house, Merrick was told. So they had chopped it up and used it as fire wood. It’s stories like this that make today’s finds all the more significant. One of Danial’s most recent scores: a New York man who called him the day before he was to put an old trunk in his garage sale.
“He was hoping to get $100 for it, and he got $25,000,” Danial said. “It was five hours away, up in the Adirondack Mountains. I drove up the next day. The name “Stickley” usually refers to one style, but there once were four U.S. companies, owned by the five Stickley brothers: Gustav, Albert, Charles, Leopold and John George. Gustav Stickley often is acknowledged as the father of the American arts and crafts movement. He published a magazine, “The Craftsman,” that included house designs and owned a farm in Parsippany, N.J., that is open for public tours and events. Brothers Leopold and John George Stickley started their New York furniture company in 1904. Their first furniture line, Handcraft, debuted in 1905 at a trade show in Grand Rapids. Albert Stickley manufactured mission furniture in Grand Rapids from 1883 to 1928 under the name Stickley Bros. Furniture Co. Carl Forslund, founder of Forslund Furniture in Grand Rapids, used to work for Albert Stickley.