Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Where does inspiration come from?

All artist would should agree that their greatest inspiration comes from other artists.

Impressionists would agree that Impressionists influenced each other. Modernists the same. Influence is not confined to a lifetime. Traditionalists who studied Renaissance Art in school learned their techniques. Picasso acknowledges his debt to the Paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux, France. After a visit to Lascaux, Picasso said, “They've invented everything.”

Stickley Furniture introduces the Highlands Collection, modern, tapered, and light, inspired by the work of Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Stickley's Highland Collection features design elements from Charles Rennie Mackintosh, well-known for Willow Tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland. The Highlands Collection included carved motifs and pierced slats, crafted in solid oak and cherry wood, wood that is sustainably harvested in North America, with rich hand-rubbed finishes.

For Charles Rennie Mackintosh, inspiration came from his wife to whom he wrote in a letter, "Remember, you are half if not three-quarters in all my architectural work ..."

Then, to friends, "Margaret has genius, I have only talent."

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh was herself a renown artist and influential member of the Glasgow School and the “Glasgow Style” it inspired. She and her sister Frances went to school at the Glasgow School of Art and later established the Macdonald Sisters Studio at 128 Hope Street, Glasgow. Their paintings reflected the growing liberation of the young woman at the fin de siècle and early 20th century, art prominently featuring women in elongated stylized drawings. Margaret herself was strongly influenced by the 19th century phenomenon of Japonism or Japonaise, and its influenc on Impressionists like Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh. Margaret Macdonald also drew on earlier stylized Gothic architectural motifs.

Thus, when Charles Rennie Mackintosh was given the commission for The Willow Tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland, it is not surprising that his friezes incorporated the art of his wife. Or that the furniture utilized the cutout motifs that she used in her metal sculptures.

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh’s influence was not restricted to her husband. She also influenced and was influenced by British Arts & Crafts designer and author William Morris. In America, Elbert Green Hubbard and the Roycroft community of East Aurora, New York followed similar design trends. Across the country, architects and furniture designers Charles and Henry Greene, employed the use of cut-outs in their furniture design. Architect and furniture designer Harvey Ellis, who worked for Gustav Stickley for a short time before his early death, was also influenced by her work.

Prairie Style

May Sale on Stickley

It is already May in the Midwest, the tulips and daffodils have gone, the wheat and corn is in the fields, and it's time for our Last chance to buy Stickley at 2016 prices. Our great pricing makes this a wonderful opportunity to freshen up the bungalow, craftsman home, or whatever style house you have.

Stickley the new Studio Collection

Prairie Style Architecture and Furniture

There is a fertile piece of land in America that stretches from the Appalachian Mountains west to the Rockies, which eastern dwelling city folk find strange because it is both simple and natural.

Traveling across this green and fruited plain and dressed in suits and finery, these city folk must have wondered who could leave behind the wonders of the industrial age for this wasteland. But to the God-fearing and hard-working Americans who lived here, this was their paradise.

One took delight in the rising and setting of the sun. The milkman delivered fresh milk. The egg man newly laid eggs. And a corner grocery store stocked necessary sundries. Screen doors banged throughout the day as children came and went, headed out to an empty lot to play baseball, or coming home to cookies and milk, and backyard fences were gathering places for good neighbors to talk while the laundry was hung to dry.

A Midwesterner by birth, Gustav Stickley settled in upstate New York, deep within the forest of the Allegheny Mountains at the western edge of the Appalachias, in a region called the Fingerlakes. There eons ago, glaciers left their mark carving out the beautiful lakes that give the area its name. And there, Gustav Stickley found his inspiration in nature, establishing the American Arts and Crafts Movement and creating the Prairie Style that would become better known as Mission Style, perhaps because of its association with California. In his magazine, Stickley preferred the use of Prairie Style and Craftsman Home, but he acknowledged the influence of the California Missions because of their simplicity in style and decoration.

Like Henry Ford and his Model T, Stickley new Prairie Style was meant for working-class families and those who loved the simplicity of well-made homes and furniture. The home that Stickley designed and featured in The Craftsman Magazine was called the bungalow, or more aptly, the American Bungalow. It was inexpensive to build, practical to live in, and easy to maintain. And because this was the age before television, there was always a front porch where at the end of the day, neighbors exchange the news of the day.

The popularity of the Prairie Style was immediate. Plans could be found in Stickley’s magazine and even entire homes could be purchased from a Sears catalog; and Craftsman homes cropped up like wheat from the suburbs of Chicago to California, where in Pasadena, the Greene and Greene brothers gave the style their own unique twist.

Pasadena Bungalow bed by Stickley

The furniture that Gustav Stickley designed for these homes was both “simple and honest”. This was a term Gustav Stickley interpreted to mean that it was made of natural native woods like oak and cherry, that the construction was always handmade, using time honored techniques. Stickley’s classic designs include the Prairie Settle and Prairie Bed. Borrowing a design from noted English designer William Morris, Stickley redesigned and improved the Stickley Morris chair in several variations including the beautiful bow arm reclining chair.

In 1904, Stickley was joined by architect Harvey Ellis, who added an element of refinement to the furniture, graceful arches, and delicate inlays. You can see the full line of Prairie Style furniture at Traditions Furniture in Overland Park and in Wichita, Kansas.

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