The Story of A Developing Furniture Style: Its Inspiration, Its Objectives (Fiftieth Anniversary Edition)

52 pp. "Gustav Stickley (March 9, 1858 – April 21, 1942) was an American furniture manufacturer, design leader, publisher, and a leading voice in the American Arts and Crafts movement. Stickley's design philosophy was a major influence on American Craftsman architecture. One of eleven children of German émigrés Leopold and Barbara Schlager Stoeckel, Gustav Stickley was born Gustavus Stoeckel on March 9, 1858, in Osceola, Wisconsin. The eldest surviving son, Stickley experienced the rigors of life growing up on a small Midwestern farm, forgoing his formal education in 1870 to continue work in his father's field of stonemasonry and help support his struggling family. By early 1876, Stickley's mother and siblings moved to Brandt, Pennsylvania, where Gustav worked in his uncle's chair factory – his first formal training in the furniture industry. With his brothers Charles and Albert, Gustav formed Stickley Brothers & Company in 1883, the same year he married Eda Ann Simmons.[1] Within five years, the company was dissolved and Stickley's ambitions led him to partner with Elgin Simonds, a salesman in the furniture trade, to form the firm Stickley & Simonds in Binghamton, New York. During the 1890s, Stickley divided his efforts between his new enterprise and the Auburn State Prison. At the prison he and his brother Leopold served as a foremen of furniture operations. In 1898, he orchestrated the removal of his business partner and formed the Gustave Stickley Company (he dropped the use of the "e" from his first name in 1903). Gustav's brothers Leopold Stickley (Lee), Albert Stickley, Charles Stickley and John George Stickley also produced Arts and Crafts furniture. Although no longer held by the Stickley family, the successor firm to the L. & J.G. Stickley Company continues to operate in Manlius, New York, producing a variety of styles, including many original Gustav Stickley Arts and Crafts designs. The Company operates a museum, located in the original L & J. G. factory build. It features the work of the Stickley brothers and is located near its current factory site.[11]"--Wikipedia