National Arts & Crafts Conference and Show

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Glossary

1

Arts and Crafts movement

A design reform movement that began in Britain in the 1860s around John Ruskin and William Morris, arguing for honest materials, handcraft, and the dignity of the maker. It reached American furniture, pottery and architecture from the 1890s and is the subject of this Asheville conference.

2

Mission style

The American commercial name (roughly 1890s to 1910s) for Arts and Crafts furniture with straight lines, exposed joinery and little ornament, a look loosely derived from California Spanish mission interiors. Used for pieces by Stickley, Phoenix and Grand Rapids makers.

3

Gustav Stickley

Syracuse furniture manufacturer and publisher of The Craftsman magazine (1901 to 1916) whose Craftsman Workshops produced the best-known American Arts and Crafts furniture. Original pieces carry a red joiner's compass decal or a branded mark.

4

Quarter-sawn oak

Oak sawn radially so the boards show the ray fleck figure prized in Arts and Crafts casework and chairs. The cut wastes more timber than plain sawing and signals a higher-grade piece.

5

Fumed oak

Oak darkened by exposure to ammonia vapour in a sealed chamber rather than stained, a Stickley-era technique that gives the wood a deep brown tone with the grain still visible.

6

Morris chair

A reclining armchair with a hinged, adjustable back and loose cushions, based on a design by Philip Webb for Morris and Co. and named after William Morris. One of the most widely copied forms in American Craftsman interiors.

7

Hammered copper

Vessels, lamp bases, trays and hardware raised and textured by hand hammering, produced by workshops including Roycroft and Stickley's metal shop. Planished surfaces and visible hammer marks are the collecting cues.

8

Grueby Faience Company

Boston art pottery active 1894 to 1911, known for thick matte glazes, especially cucumber green, and carved leaf and rib ornament. A benchmark name in American art pottery and a regular reference point for collectors at the conference.

9

Newcomb Pottery

A women's art pottery programme run at Newcomb College, Tulane, in New Orleans from 1895 to 1940, decorated with Southern flora under soft matte glazes and signed by the decorator.

10

Roycroft

Elbert Hubbard's craft community founded in 1895 in East Aurora, New York, producing furniture, copper, leather, lighting and books under the Roycroft mark. Its output sits alongside Stickley in most American Arts and Crafts collections.

11

Kelmscott Press

William Morris's private press, active 1891 to 1898, which revived hand printing, handmade paper and medieval type design. It triggered the American fine press and book arts strand represented in the conference's dealer rooms.

12

Prairie School

A Midwestern architectural group around Frank Lloyd Wright and contemporaries, using long horizontal lines, open plans and integrated craft interiors. It overlaps with Arts and Crafts and is a frequent seminar subject for the architecture-minded audience.

13

Craftsman bungalow

The one-and-a-half storey house type popularised through pattern books such as Stickley's Craftsman Homes, with low roofs, porches, built-in joinery and stone or shingle cladding. The domestic face of the movement and a common restoration project for attendees.

14

Art pottery

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century decorated and studio ceramics, including Rookwood, Grueby, Newcomb and Van Briggle wares, collected alongside Arts and Crafts furniture and metalwork.

15

Total work of art

The movement ideal, borrowed from the German Gesamtkunstwerk, that architecture, furniture, textiles, lighting and metalwork should form one unified scheme. It explains why Arts and Crafts buyers often purchase across several categories at once.

16

Craft communities

Utopian maker settlements such as Rose Valley in Pennsylvania (1901) and Byrdcliffe in Woodstock, New York (1902), where designers and craftspeople lived and worked collectively. Their output and archives are recurring research topics for conference speakers.