Glossary:-- Spindles/Slats, in the Arts and Crafts Style

This entry is still under construction-- several points need more documentation

Oxford English Dictionary on slats and spindles:-- For slat/slats, see below; for spindle/spindles, the results are, at best, mixed.

Spindles

In the OED, none of the meanings given for "spindle" come close to what woodworkers mean when, today, they speak about spindles in the historic context of Arts and Crafts styles:-- "square". Instead, I turned to the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology

spindle n. rod or pin used to twist, wind, or hold thread in spinning. Before 1225, alteration (with added "d" after "n", as in sound and thunder) of Old English (before 800) spine], related to spinnan to SPIN; for suffix see -LE'. Old English spinet is cognate with Old Frisian spindel, spindle, Old Saxon spinnila, and Old High German spinila (modern German Spindel). —v. (of plants, etc.) grow tall and slender. 1577, (implied earlier in spindling 1441-42); from the noun in the sense of a stalk, stem, or shoot of a plant. —spindly adj. too tall and thin. 1651, formed from English spindle, n. -y1. Source: Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, Robert K. Barnhart, editor New York: H. W. Wilson, 1988, page 1046.

Slat/Slats

4. a. A long narrow strip of wood or metal, used for various purposes.

1764 Museum rusticum et commerciale or, select papers on agriculture, commerce, arts, and manufactures : drawn from experience and communicated bygentlemen engaged in these pursuits. Published in 1764, Printed for R. Davis (London) II. 189 Nailing of slats, old hoops, or laths, on the two sides and fore end of the cart.

1828-32 WEBSTER s.v., The slats of a cart or a chair.

1866 Harvard Mem. Biogr., R. Ware I. 242 The bulk of those now in bed must have lain on the slats of the bedstead.

1885 C. F. HOLDER Marvels Anim. Life 28 Arranged in transverse rows, like slats on a blind.

1890 H. S. HALLETT 1000 Miles 277 When the floors are of split bamboo, ... the interstices between the slats are many and often large.

Are These the Roots of the Arts and Crafts Spindles?

Square spindles are a product of the table saw. Lathes -- foot lathes -- have been around for centuries, and make producing round spindles easy. The original Morris chair, by William Morris, has round spindles. Frank Lloyd Wright started out with round spindles; for example the high-back chairs in Wright's own dining room of 1895 had spiral spindles; he replaced them later with square ones.

Frank Lloyd Wright's relationship to the Arts and Crafts Movement, both indigenous and European, was complicated. Just as William Morris and John Ruskin argued for a return to the simplicity of design caputed in furniture created by hand tools, Wright favored simple, unadorned forms. How to achieve these goals, though, put him in conflict with these idealists. As he stated in the 1901 speech, "The Art and Craft of the Machine,

"William Morris pleaded well for simplicity as the basis of all true art. Let us understand the significance to art of the word — SIMPLICITY — for it is vital to the Art of the Machine."

Source:

Click here for Wright's declaration about the use fo machines

; portions of text adapted from Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49.

The Arts and Crafts philosophy at the turn of the century remained locked into the handicraft ideal: in order to be "honest", the piece must be handmade. Wright never came to terms with the Mission furniture of the Stickleys, Charles Rohlfs, and others. It was not incompatible with his interiors, but he felt intellectually superior to it; in its rudimentary construction it was conceptually a remnant of the nineteenth century, whereas his, made by machine, was firmly in the twentieth. The British designer C. R. Ashbee, who shared Wright's design esthetic but not his belief in the machine to achieve it, quoted Wright as saying,

"My God ... is machinery, and the art of the future will be the expression of the individual artist through the thousand powers of the machine, the machine doing all those things that the individual workman cannot do, and the creative artist is the man that controls all this and understands it.

Source: From the Ashbee Journals, December 1900 (ms. in Cambridge University Library), as cited by Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49.

Wright proved to be correct in his anticipation of the machine's future, but his refusal to acknowledge the impact of the Arts and Crafts Movement on his own evolving furniture style is readily disputed. An examination of contemporary periodicals, such as the London-based The Studio, while in America, sources such as The House Beautiful and The Western Architect, to which Wright surely had familiarity demonstrate that prominent founders of Arts and Crafts design -- such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Charles F. A. Voysey, Ernest Gimson, and C R Ashbee -- introduced furniture with ladderback, spindle, and splat components -- as illustrated belwo -- before Wright's own productions. These exchanges, true, occurred in both directions, with obviouse "borrowing" on both sides of the Atlantic, but

"Wright's later claim that "No practice by any European architect to this day has influenced mine in the least" was not only mean-spirited and unchivalrous, but patently untrue.

Source: Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament, New York, 1957, page205, as cited by Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49

As a definite link between the furniture and the architecture these square vertical spindles were indispensable in the Prairie School interiors. They formed screens between piers, walls, cabinets and ceilings to create visual privacy without bottling up the ever flowing free space. Repeated in the tall chair backs and beneath the tables they formed such a complete bond that it is difficult to tell which belongs to the house and which belongs to the movable furniture. Source: Donald Kalec, "The Prairie School Furniture", The Prairie School Review 1, no 4, 1964, page 6; Donald Hoffmann, Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House: The Illustrated Story of an Architectural Masterpiece New York Dover Publications, 1984, page 73.

Square spindles have flat surfaces on all four sides, and while flat surfaces can be made with planes, their production is labor intensive. Among others, John Freeman Crosby observed, quite insightfully I think, that arts and crafts designs, with their straight, rectinlinear lines, are a product of the power machine. Thus the outcome of the "flap" about producing Arts and Crafts furniture with power machines -- rather by hand, as stronlgly urged by the purists - that emerged around 1900 ws a for-gone conclusion. Rectilinear and circular saws are a natural blend.

According to David A Hanks, "The idea of geometrically shaped slats as a decorative motif was probably derived from the Japanese". However, in a "quick-and-dirty" search on the search engine, "google books search", the evidence suggests that maybe this ideas exchange was more like a "two-way" street, that is, the Japanese themselves were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement: see Yuko Kikuchi, Japanese Modernisation and Mingei Theory Cultural Nationalism and Oriental Orientalism New York: Routledge, 2004, 2006; and Yuko Kikuchi, "The Mingei Movement", in Karen Livingstone and Linda Parry, eds, International Arts and Crafts London: V&A Publications, 2005, pages 296-310. Let me add, parenthetically, in 2005, in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, I toured the Arts and Crafts exhibit, and was mightily impressed with everything I saw. However, as with many things that happen to you in life, my background information was wanting, and when I went through the Japanese Arts ad Crafts section, did not get the kind of impression I would today, because now I am more "tuned in" about what to look for. Source: David A. Hanks, The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright New York: Dover, 1979, pages 37-43 Early Examples of British Spindle Designs Stair railing with lattice-work design in Frank Miles' house, in the Chelsea district of London, 1879, exhibits the imapact of Japonisme that the architect-designer, Edwin William Godwin, is famous for. There is one more thing which must be said about Voysey and which places him further from Morris and close to us. He was a designer, not a craftsman. He could not in fact, so he told the author, work in any craft. ... In 1886 the architect Arthur Mackmurdo erected a stand for the products of the Century Guild at an exhibition at Liverpool. The attenuated shafts with their excessive top cornices instead of capitals and the repetition of these odd forms on top of the fascia board are even more original and started a fashion when Voysey and then several others took them up. Arthur H. Mackmurdo's fence for the Century Guild stand at the Liverpool International Exhibition of 1886 is another early instance of this idea in the West. Source: Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949, pages 89-93 [W]hen Voysey was very young, Mackmurdo had impressed him even more than Morris. [T]he first house … Voysey designed … amazingly independent, considering the date, 1888. … [shows an] … arrangement of the windows [that] is particularly striking.... [the] hori­zontal window openings were innovations introduced deliberately and not without a youth­ful sense of mischief ... obviously inspired by [Godwin and] Mackmurdo. Of particular importance for the coming Modern Movement was the expression of this new spirit [of spindles/slats] in furnishing. The entrance hall of Voysey's own home, The Orchard, Chorley Wood, Buckinghamshire, of 1900 can serve as an example with its lightness: the woodwork painted white, a pure intense blue for the tiles, unmitigated contrasts of uprights and horizontals [i.e., spindles and/or slats] especially in the screen to the staircase (a motif which was for a time to become eminently popular), and furniture of bold, direct if a little outrês forms. While Ernest Gimson (1864-1920) had been trained in craftsmanship, he only designed -- but did not personally make -- his famous works of cabinetmaking, metal-work and so on. The chairs, says Pevsner, "give an impression of his honesty, his feeling for the nature of wood, and his unrevolutionary spirit. Few of his works have this superb simplicity. As a rule, Gimson was more responsive to English tradition and did not despise the use of forms invented in the past". Source: Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949, pages 89-93

Spindles and Slats are Integral to the Prairie Style Architecture Inititiated by Frank Lloyd Wright

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1891 Wright Introduces Vertical Slats

Frank Lloyd Wright began designing tall-back chairs with squared vertical spindles in the 1890s.

According to Tod M. Volpe and Beth Cathers, Wright disputed his indebtedness to the English Arts and Crafts movement for the root of some of his desing ideas.

Frank Lloyd Wright's relationship to the Arts and Crafts Movement, both indigenous and European, was not a simple one. Like William Morris and John Ruskin, whose reformist beliefs generated a resurgence of handicraft ideals when the negative aspects of the Industrial Revolution manifested themselves in late-Victorian England, Wright was in favor of simple unadorned forms.

He differed sharply, however, in how these should be achieved. As he stated in the famous speech, "The Art and Craft of the Machine," which he addressed to the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society at Hull House on 6 March 1901, "William Morris pleaded well for simplicity as the basis of all true art. Let us understand the significance to art of the word — SIMPLICITY — for it is vital to the Art of the Machine."

Source: Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Art and Craft of the Machine," in Catalogue of the Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of the Chicago Architectural Club (Chicago Architectural Club), 1901, no pagination; as cited by Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49.

The Arts and Crafts philosophy at the turn of the century remained locked into the handicraft ideal: in order to be "honest," an item had to be handmade. Wright never came to terms with the Mission furniture of the Stickleys, Charles Rohlfs, and others. It was not incompatible with his interiors, but he felt intellectually superior to it; in its rudimentary construction it was conceptually a remnant of the nineteenth century, whereas his, made by machine, was firmly in the twentieth. The British designer C. R. Ashbee, who shared Wright's design esthetic but not his belief in the machine to achieve it, quoted Wright as saying, "My God ... is machinery, and the art of the future will be the expression of the individual artist through the thousand powers of the machine, the machine doing all those things that the individual workman cannot do, and the creative artist is the man that controls all this and understands it."

Source: From the Ashbee Journals, December 1900 (ms. in Cambridge University Library)as cited by Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49;as cited by Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49.

Wright proved to be correct in his anticipation of the machine's future, but his refusal to acknowledge the impact of the Arts and Crafts Movement on his own evolving furniture style is readily disputed.

Look at contemporary periodicals, The Studio, or, in America, House Beautifulor The Western Architect, to which Wright had access, shows that-- before Wright's spindle designs -- British architects and designers such as Mackintosh, Voysey, Gimson, and Ashbee designed furniture with ladderback, spindle, and splat components, who -- as you can see above, in turn -- picked up on the designs of Edwin William Godwin.

With this evidence, Wright's later claim that "No practice by any European architect to this day has influenced mine in the least" is untrue.

Source: Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament, New York, 1957, p.205 as cited by Tod M. Volpe, Beth Cathers, Alastair Duncan, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, 1890-1920, New York: Harry M. Abrams, 1988, page 49

A decade later, when Stickley first cataloged his own spindle furniture in 1905, he told his customers that it was "built on slender lines, tall, graceful, and showing ... quaint refinement. The use of light spindles instead of broad bars in the backs of chairs and settles gives an effect that is rather more ornate than that of the heavier pieces ." Stickley's spindle furniture shows the high level of sophistication Craftsman designs could reach, and its refinement echoes the larger architectural refinements of this spacious Wrightian home.

The new woodworking machines of the day, which created the conditions for furniture to be constructed rapidly and inexpensively, helped form Wright's notions of for an aesthetic of furniture, defintiely radical for the era.

Click here for Wright's declaration about the use fo machines

The characteristic use of vertical slats in furniture -- first seen in the Harlan House designed in July 1891 -- served

1) as integral ornament and

2) as an architectural screening device that allowed space to flow through while still an integral part of a chair.

The earliest chairs known to make use of vertical slats were probably those designed for his own dining room.

1897

Although the exact date of the dining room furniture for Wright's own house is uncertain, it was part of the photograph in House Beautiful in February 1897.

"The original pieces of Craftsman furniture were made in 1898", of 1912-1915 catalog, page 3

Details were also manifested in the thin oak strips that were nailed and glued onto various parts of the Prairie furniture, sometimes in bands of multiple and often intricate formations. The banding, which caught the light and created shadows, added vitality to the wood surface and emphasized the structural elements of the furniture. It also directed the spatial flow echoing and even continuing the molding of the room thereby helping to unify the furniture with its surroundings. Source: adapted from David A. Hanks, The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright New York: Dover, 1979, pages 37-43

Spindles/Slats in Morris Chairs:-- Gustav Stickley's 'Flat Bars'

Chairs that made use of vertical geometric slats had also been used by English designers in the 1890s. Here, for example, is the armchair designed by Wickham Jarvis, as illustrated in "Studio Talk," The International Studio, vol. 5, 1898, page 51. Editors at The International Studio show restraint in their description of the piece:

Mr. A. Wickham Jarvis's excellently designed furniture. ... The restraint of their shape, the absence of curvilinear lines -- always doubtfully suited to woodwork -- and the constructional application of the ornament deserve appreciation.... The carving and gesso decoration ... on the arm-chair ... is sufficient in quantity to impart an air of richness to the work without making it unduly ornate. As those know who have attempted it, to design furniture at once novel, useful, and comely is a triple effort of singular difficulty, especially if one's ideas of comeliness are kept to a certain severity of style that adapts itself to its surround­ings. We do not require a bureau or chair so abnormally eccentric in its shape that it arrogates to itself all the interest of the room: but things of quiet beauty that will keep their place in the interior scheme, even as such things keep their relative place in a well-painted picture.

The bolded phrase above -- the constructional application of the ornament -- is a reference to the Decorate Construction, Don't Construct Decoration

When Wright added his home's new dining room in 1895, he used the opportunitv to create a room that was as of a piece with horizontal proportions in counterpoint to the tall dining chairs he designed at the same time The straight backs of these seminal pieces, the first of his distinguished tall-backed dining chairs, framed the faces of the sitters in warm oak. adapted from rodel and binzen: Among Wright's most powerfully graphic furniture designs are his signature high-backed dining chairs. This version dates to 1895. Part of a set designed in 1895 for his own dining room, this chair originally had turned spindles. As Wright's pieces became rectinlinear, he replaced the spindles with square ones. When ell were pulled uo to the Table, they created the feeling of a second inner space the dining foom.40 These chairs originally had spiral spindles in the backs and all the legs were stright. The backs later had square spindles installed to be more comfortable and the back legs were reworked to have a flare to improve their stability. . .

Source: David Cathers, Stickley Style: Arts and Crafts Homes in the Craftsman Tradition New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999, page 187

1900s:-- Gustav Stickley and "Square" Spindles

According to Stickley scholar, David Cathers

Gustav Stickley's Spindle Armchair "It is often impossible to say with complete certainty when a particular Stickley design was first introduced. This, however, is not the case with his line of furniture with spindles" Parenthetically, Cathers notes, "Since spindles are usually thought of as round, rather than square, 'spindle' may seem to be the wrong name to apply to this furniture [style]. However, it is the name Stickley used to describe it." According to Cathers, Stickley patented his spindle furniture on August 8, 1905.2 [2 Furniture World , August 17, 1905, reported that Stickley had been granted patent #37507 and #37508 for his spindle chair frames. Stickley's high-backed armchair with spindles appeared first in The Craftsman, September 1905, and then frequently for about 18 months. The first catalog appearance is 1906; in Stickley's 1907 "Descriptive Price List" it is described as a "hall chair." Cathers continues: The chair echoes the forms of normal-size dining-room armchairs, but in actuality is much larger. The design is clearly more delicate than Stickley's characteristic "mission" look. The vertical spindles emphasize the strong upward thrust of these pieces, and therefore may be said to show a definite relationship to Mackintosh's high-back chair designs. There is, of course, the strong influence of Frank Lloyd Wright on Stickley's spindle chairs. By 1909 Stickley was phasing out his spindle designs. He did include a spindle armchair in that year's catalog, but it was 10 inches shorter than the earlier version and the spindle below the arms had been replaced by Stickley's characteristic stretcher arrangement. Since Stickley's spindle pieces were made for such a brief period, it is likely they did not achieve great commercial success. Pieces are found today only rarely. While Stickley's -- i.e., Harvey Ellis' designs -- use of spindles suggests following the influence of spindle designs created by Frank Lloyd Wright, Wright is never men­tioned in The Craftsman. According to the "Introduction" of the Supplement to Catalogue D The use of light spindles instead of the broad bars in the backs of chairs and settles gives an effect that is rather more ornate than that of the heavier pieces, although it is in reality quite as structural and simple. His spindle furniture gave Stickley elegant forms that, unlike the more costly to produce inlaid pieces, were readily accommodated to his factory's mechanized production capacities that did not require the services of an outside contractor. It gave him a cost-effective way to bring a measure of "quaint refinement" to Craftsman furniture, and was thus one line of defense in his campaign to counter the ear­lier criticisms that his work was too massive. The spindle line was to flourish only during the first four or five years of the Standard Stickley era, and by the end of the decade it would be dropped from production. Source: Adapted from David Cathers Gustav Stickley New York: Phaidon, 2003, page 133. L. & J.G. Stickley made its own version of this spindle chair in 1910, but rather than spindles, it had thin lightweight slats. David Cathers, Furniture of the American Arts and Crafts Movement New York: New American Library, 1981, pages 129, 148-149

1897-1898

Several years before 1900, Gustav Stickley was evidently developing versions of the Morris chair idea, including both concepts: square posts and spindles on the sides. In the Christmas shopping seasons of 1897 and 1898, the Syracuse Herald features ads for a "Morris Chair" -- the 1898 ad includes this unclear artist's rendering, which at least allows us to see the rough outlines taking shape of the classic Morris chair Stickley created in the early 1900s. (December 14, 1897, page 10; December 11, 1898, page 22.)

This was also the period when Gustav Stickley was developing his "flat bars arranged vertically", the "m" parts of the description for Stickley's 1901 patent in the image above. (Later, evidently, he specifically identified the thin "flat bars" and/or the slats as spindles. Logic argues, though, that slats, in shape, in the cross-section, are rectangular, while spindles, in shape, also in the cross-section, are almost always square.)

1900

Art Nouveau's impact, essentially as a style of ornament, much more than as a style of furnishings, endures as memory.

Among furniture designers/builders influenced by Art Nouveau are Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) -- trained as an architect -- who designed the chair above and below in 1900, in his Edinburgh studio.

and the chairs designed in the Art Nouveau styles by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Edinburgh. ).

Chronology of L. & J.G. Stickley's Arts and Crafts Period

Early Period: 1900-1903 Onondago Shops: 1903-1906 Handcraft: 1906-? The development of the L. & J.G. Stickley Handcraft pieces signaled a new matu­rity in their work. These new designs exemplified a fresh approach whose roots could be traced to four stylistic sources: 1) the Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwestern contempo­raries, 2) English Arts and Crafts masters such as C. E A. Voysey, A. H. Mackmurdo and Ernest Gimson, 3) the European reform movement espoused by Viennese architect-designers and 4) the Glasgow School and C. R. Mackintosh. The infusion of these disparate influences, especially that of Prairie-school architects, revitalized the simple mission style and pushed the firm into a new prominence in the marketplace. The full realization of this new aesthetic would not be achieved for several years, but the work reproduced in the first Handcraft catalog illustrates the new directions. Donald A. Davidoff, "Innovation and Deivation: The Contribution of L. & J.G. Stickley to the Arts and Crafts Movement", in Donald A. Davidoff and Stephen Gray, Innovation and Deivation: The Contribution of L. & J.G. Stickley to the Arts and Crafts Movement By Township of Parsippany-Troy Hills, Craftsman Farms Foundation, 1995, page 33 Pivotal 1910 Catalog: Quarter Sawn White M. H. Baillie-Scott; Peter Hansen American Prairie Style English Arts and Crafts Masters: Voysey, Mackmurdo, Gimson Donald A Davidoff, 1989. See Sources

1904-1905

Gus designed very few new pieces after 1910 (his last innovative designs were his spindle pieces of 1904-5) and relied instead on the simplification of his already existing designs.

1905

Morris Chair -- Gustav Stickley, 1905 Solid quartersawn white oak Leather upholstery 40" high, 33" wide, ... post construction, a virtually identical reissue of a Gustav Stickley design except that it incorporates the durable quadralinear post construction later perfected by Stickley's brother, Gustav... [am going to look at the context of this quote in the actual book]

Sources: Carla Lind, The Wright Style New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; Barbara Mayer, In the Arts and Crafts Style San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993, page 22; David Cathers, Stickley Style: Arts and Crafts Homes in the Craftsman Tradition New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999; Kevin P Rodel and Jonathon Binzen, Arts and Crafts Furniture: From Classic to Contemporary Newtown, CT: Taunton Press, 2003, page 17

Check more details about the anatomy of the quadralinear post here

1913

Though designed on simple lines and void of decoration it is an expensive chair to build because of the absence of rectangular joints. The joints are all on a bevel, as can be seen by consulting the drawing. But when the pattern began to be copied the bevel joints were done away with, by which procedure the most essential feature, the rearwood droop of the seat, was abolished. Also were the number of spindles reduced a few at a time until there came to the front an individual more venturesome than the rest, as in figure 4, eliminating them en- tirely.

All this of course was done in the interest of cheapening the product, in process of which considerable may be done and the public be none the wiser. We start a Morris chair with sixteen spindles to a side, and not one customer in a dozen discovers the difference when some "cheapener" cuts the number in half. Given general simili- tude to the original, and the average person will deem them practically the same.

1914, 1923

Source: Paul D Otter, "The Morris Chair" from Paul D. Otter, Furniture for the Craftsman: A Manual for the Student and Mechanic, 1914, 1923. (According to the Preface, the drawings and the text originally appeared in issues of the trade journal, The Building Age, before 1914, a fact that I confirmed by obtaining photocopies of these articles.

1964

In 1964, Donald Kalec, in "The Prairie School Furniture" (The Prairie School Review, vol. 1, no. 4, fourth quarter), theorizes about the important role of Wright's furniture in setting an interior spatial flow and for creating architectural space. In this sense,

The articulation of the open space of Wright's interiors was often achieved by the movable and built-in furniture as well as by the image to come) had an important function in creating the secondary space of the room. The elongated slatted backs served as screens that defined the eating area, creating a room within the room.

1992

While none so focus on "carefully calculated horizontality" to evoke the "long horizon line of the prairie [itself]"16 [16 Donald Kalec, "The Prairie School Furniture," Prairie School Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (Fourth Quarter, 1964): 6.] as would the soon-to-be-produced Prairie settle, many of the pieces illustrated here do rely on the square spindle, found so ubiquitously in the work of the Prairie School architects. As Don Kalec has pointed out, these spindles served "as a definite link between the furniture and architecture" in that they supported "a sense of visual privacy without bottling up the ever free flowing space. "17 [17. Donald Kalec, "The Prairie School Furniture," Prairie School Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (Fourth Quarter, 1964): 6 12.]

Source: Donald A Davidoff, "The Work of L & J G Stickley The Mature Period and Design Sophistication", 1992

As to the chair frame there is a field of change of style from Fig. 193. Using the same seat plan create a different treatment under the arms either by square spindles or three or four slats or flat balusters under the arms.

1964

In 1964, Donald Kalec -- in "The Prairie School Furniture", The Prairie School Review, vol. 1, no. 4, fourth quarter -- theorized about the important role of Wright's fur­niture in setting an interior spatial flow and for creating architectural space. In this sense,

the articulation of the open space of Wright's interiors was often achieved by the movable and built-in furniture as well as by the image to come) had an important function in creating the secondary space of the room. The elongated slatted backs served as screens that defined the eating area, creating a room within the room.

Source: adapted from David A. Hanks, The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright New York: Dover, 1979, pages 37-43, is still under construction:--

1993

Although the term spindle usually refers to turned posts, Stickley and Morris (sic) used square spindles.

2000

Gustav Stickley also responded to market dictates although he did not generally tack catchy names on his lines of inlaid or spindle furniture. Modern historians like to call these changes of appearance "development" but there is little evidence of any conscious design evolution. Source: George E Thomas, William L. Price: Arts and Crafts to Modern Design, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, page 321.

Source: James Thomson, "Concerning the easy chair", The craftsman August 1913 page 546.

Source: Jessie Kingsley Curtis, Chests, chairs and settles, The craftsman September 1902 page 297

Sources

University of Wisconsin's Home Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture

Image and Text Collections:-- Link to University of Wisconsin Digital Collections (To access the options listed below for retrieving digitized material, including a full text version of The Craftsman, published by Gustav Stickley between 1900 and 1915, click on the link above) Decorative arts home Search the image collection Search the text collection Subject guides for text collection

Source: Gene Lehnert, "Craftsman-Style Comfort in a Morris Chair", Fine Woodworking July/Agust, 1993, page 39.

Source: adapted from David A. Hanks, The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright New York: Dover, 1979, pages 37-43, is still under construction:--

Donald A Davidoff, Early L. and J.G. Stickley Furniture: From Onondago Shops to Handcraft New York: Dover, 1992, page xiv.

Source: David Thiel, [on Frank Lloyd Wright], Popular Woodworking, December, 2000, pages 72-76

Sources: David M. Cathers, Furniture of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Stickley and Roycroft Mission Oak New York: New American Library, 1981; Donald A Davidoff, ed., Early L. & J. G. Stickley Furniture New York: Dover, 1992 , pages xii-xiii.

Sources: Sources: VicTaylor, The woodworker's dictionary Hemel, Hempstead, England, Argus Books,1987, page 149; Carla Lind, The Wright Style New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992; Barbara Mayer, In the Arts and Crafts Style San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993, page 22; David Cathers, Stickley Style: Arts and Crafts Homes in the Craftsman Tradition New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999; Robert W. Lang, More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture: 30 Stickley Designs for Every Room in the Home Bethel, CT: Cambium Press, 2002, pages 10-12; Kevin P Rodel and Jonathon Binzen, Arts and Crafts Furniture: From Classic to Contemporary Newtown, CT: Taunton Press, 2003, page 17

Check more details about the anatomy of the quadralinear post here