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Month: July 2022

Stickley Furniture: Still Made in the USA

Ennis Lifestyles / By
Stickley living room furniture, made in the USA

Stickley Furniture: Still Made in the USA

Last entry we discussed the timeless heritage designs that are still being produced by the Stickley Furniture Company, one of our partners in providing exceptional quality here at Ennis Fine Furniture. The company, then owned by the Stickley family, underwent a restructuring in the 1980s when the Audi family stepped in and took over for the next generation of Stickley craftsmen. Still proudly made in the USA, Stickley Furniture Co. continues to promote the Arts and Crafts movement as a distinctly American tradition, limiting the size of its workforce to help preserve, manage and fiercely defend every one of its disciplines on craft; a work culture so passionate it proudly embodies their motto of “to the best of my ability” in every piece it produces. These traditional practices have helped keep Stickley true to its mission statement, but it hasn’t kept the company from expanding its collections and keeping its design profile fresh.

Take the Park Slope Collection. This expansive range began as an update of the classics found in the more traditional Stickley Mission Collection, but it soon morphed into a juxtaposition of modernization and craftsmanship. At first glance, the curves and repeating lines are reminiscent of the Pasadena Bungalow series; the oak spindles take your eye up and down the back of the chairs, bedposts, or settles, giving off a tall, regal appearance. Instead of harking back to the subtle warmth of a more natural wood stain, Stickley has opted to showcase many of the Park Slope pieces in a vivid black sheen. This modern retelling allows for the oak grain to be brooding and dark for times when natural shadows dominate in the room, while also letting it shear off in bright, brilliant refractions when shone in some overhead illumination. The modernization of the Mission look has simplified curves in some places, dramatized negative space in others, and overall has streamlined the movement into an almost minimalist feel. It gives the appearance of a design that’s been beautifully distilled, reduced to only the essential parts needed to pull your eye in from the sensory overload of modern life.

So, if you’re on the lookout for American-made furniture–pieces of exceptional quality and craftsmanship–then it is definitely in your best interest to see what the Stickley brand, motto, and life are all about. Take a trip down to an Ennis showroom, cast your eyes onto one of these inviting designer chairs and let them linger peacefully for a bit, tracing the black-lacquered hemispheres and polished dramatic angles of the Park Slope Collection until you’re ready to plop down in one and experience the greatest feat Gustav Stickley and Co. ever pulled off: making an art form out of simply sitting down.

Proudly made in USA. Made by Stickley.

Ennis Lifestyles / By
Stickley Furniture, living room set, made in the USA

Proudly made in USA. Made by Stickley.

To many Americans (and certainly other folks around the world), “Made in the USA” was a phrase once so ubiquitous that it became synonymous with quality of the highest order. For a time, it was the standard for the world. While the emphasis on peerless craftsmanship may still be true, finding this pride adorned on products of any kind today is sadly becoming a more and more difficult task. As this continues to happen, it undoubtedly rarifies the process of things being distinctly American-made. As a citizen of this great land, one cannot help but feel both connected to this sense of pride during our celebrations of Independence, and equally distanced from this notion as many of our homegrown manufacturers, services providers, and other bastions of the industry have more recently sought residency overseas.

That is why Ennis Fine Furniture takes immense pride in being able to offer a long-lasting partnership with one of America’s oldest and most revered furniture makers still operating within the US today: Stickley Furniture Co. What began as the Gustave Stickley Company in 1898, Gustav Stickley and his brothers created a legacy of fine craftsmanship galvanized by a motto in their native Flemish, “Als Ik Kan”: to the best of my ability. Stickley used this principle as the root of their philosophy, while also adding an honest simplicity to his work, favoring pragmatic design and quality of materials over the ornate details and gaudy finishings of the then-popular Victorian and Queen Anne styles. His modernization of the craftsman style made his designs emblematic of the Arts & Crafts movement, so much so that it continues to be popular to this day. For over 120 years, Stickley has continued to be the source for top quality, American-made productions of Mission and Arts & Crafts furniture.

The Mission Collection, first reissued during the company’s restructuring in the late 1980s, has buoyed the Stickley revolution and has been their flagship vehicle for decades. Expanding and contracting since then, the Collection hosts a variety of new pieces but also has the distinction of offering original designs from Harvey Ellis, Elbert Hubbard, and Gustav Stickley that were part of the company’s original catalog over 100 years ago. The Roycroft pieces, some designed by Elbert Hubbard as early as 1906, are a hallmark of the collection. The Roycroft Tabouret for example; a smart and sturdy cocktail table made from solid oak, shares the function-over-form discipline that Gustav Stickley insists be a part of anything that should bear his family’s name, with slick, incognito tongue-in-groove joints, a rich texture of oak grain and the Roycroft’s Orb seared into one side. The Orb, once a medieval symbol signed by monks at the end of a manuscript to indicate one’s best work, was repurposed by Hubbard and given a grand letter R to represent Roycroft, a term itself lent to a carpenter’s work that was actually built for a king. Thus, where ‘fit for a king’ came from.

To see how Elbert Hubbard’s goal of bringing exceptional furniture–craftsmanship truly ‘fit for a king’–to the market was accomplished in his Roycroft designs, visit an Ennis Fine Furniture showroom today!

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