Roycrofting

Last week I was in western New York on business and had so much fun I can't even express it. I managed to squeeze in a visit to the Roycroft campus. I've been interested in this movement since discovering it back in high school, and I found the campus very inspiring. I was struck instantly by the feeling that the buildings give you when you move through them, and my friends and I had brunch at the Roycroft Inn to get a feel for the place as much as possible. Elbert Hubbard founded this utopian crafts community in the late nineteenth century in East Aurora, near Buffalo, with artisans and craftspeople producing books, furniture and other items for the home according to the principle of "head, hand, heart."

Real Arts and Crafts work has a slightly medieval feel to it (as you can see in the door above). The Roycrofters were harkening back to the medieval guilds and the ideal of craftsmanship, authenticity and nature when they designed their living spaces and their products. They were inspired by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement he initiated in England in the late nineteenth century. As the ideas spread across the United States, some artisans developed the Mission style of furniture and architecture.

Mission furniture is popular today, and you can see a lot of look-alike knock-offs for sale everywhere. But the real stuff was and still is made by hand. If I come across real Arts and Crafts things in museums or stores, they give me goosebumps -- you can spot them a mile off.

The Emperor of the Garage has been edging toward study and construction of Arts and Crafts furniture, so I bought him two books with measured drawings to dig through. For me, a little Mission-style furniture can go a long way -- how many pieces of square furniture with three slats can a room sustain without looking like a cartoon? I'm a fan of the eclectic in the home, and hope that my husband is inspired to express his inner Emperor and make some unique and fun things.

For myself, I'm inspired to create some textiles. Many of the things the Roycrofters made were basic, useful items for the home, and you see plenty of things like pillows, curtains, and table coverings. I'm thinking an osnaburg table cloth with applique somethings enhanced with embroidery. I want to avoid repeating the same five or six designs you see plastered all over other Arts and Crafts things, such as gingko leaves, certain views of pine cones, the Glasgow Rose, etc. I'd like to do poppies designed by me from my photographs. Poppies with a medieval feel to them.

I also brought home a postcard with a lovely sentiment about work, which I'll frame and put in my office, and a book of Roycrofter mottos, which I hope to do up in calligraphy sometime.