A Complex Fate: Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman Movement

The full-length biography of the outspoken leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement

During an intense period of technological innovation early in this century, a movement dedicated to simple living began to take shape. An unknown cabinetmaker, Gustav Stickley, became the most vocal spokesperson in America for this quirky revolution in aesthetics known as the Arts and Crafts Movement. This book traces Stickley's wide-ranging artistic career that sought to integrate social theory, political commitment, and aesthetic design. Stickley believed utility, simplicity, and beauty—exemplified in high quality craftsmanship—were the keys to an ideal life, and thousands of Americans bought both the product and the notion. Stickley's is a story of a movement that exerted tremendous influence on furniture, pottery, metalwork, jewelry, bookbinding, leatherwork, and architecture. But his story is also one of classic collision, when the ideals of a simple life clash with those of a complex fate.

• Includes rare photographs of Stickley's works
• Features Stickley's own renderings for his early designs

BARRY SANDERS (HOMETOWN?) is Professor of English and the History of Ideas at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. He is the author of A is for Ox and co-author of ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind and The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature.

BARRY SANDERS is Professor of English and the History of Ideas at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He is most recently the author of Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History and A Is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word.