Gustav Stickley had experimented briefly with furniture…

Gustav Stickley had experimented briefly with furniture designs in the fashionable Art Nouveau mode before introducing a new line of sturdy oak furniture whose virtues of simplicity, functionality, and soundness of construction are for Stickley an expression of democratic values.

In 1900, through the Tobey Furniture Company of Chicago, Stickley introduces a catalog titled “New Work”, which represents his first efforts at designing and manufacturing Arts & Crafts furniture, influenced by sources as diverse as American Colonial furniture, Art Nouveau, Oriental furniture, and Stickley’s New York contemporary, Charles Rohlfs.

Limited largely to chairs, small benches, small stands, and a few small cabinets, the “New Work” catalog represents the beginnings of Stickley’s career as a champion of the Arts & Crafts movement. 

Stickley had learned basic furniture-making skills in a Pennsylvania chair factory owned by an uncle.

Taking  over the factory after a time, he had moved it to Binghamton, New York, in 1884.