Stickley Footstool, Part 3

The Stickley footstool is finished and in place next to the extra large Morris chair. I finished it to match the chair and used matching fabric for the cushion. Pam was very happy when I bought it into the house and immediately curled up with her book in the chair.

One of the most rewarding things about being a woodworker is making high quality furniture for your home. I'm slowly filling my home and those of my friends with furniture that I've made. You can't find furniture like this in most stores and if you do you can't afford it. It gives me a huge amount of satisfaction to take rough boards and transform them into fine furniture.

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it. - Mahatma Gandhi

Arts and Crafts Details: Corbels

This is the first in a series of posts on details of Arts and Crafts Furniture. Today I'm going to focus on the Corbel, its a curved wooden support that goes between the leg and the arm of a chair of sofa.

According to Wikipedia the word "corbel" comes from Old French and derives from the Latin corbellus, a diminutive of corvus (a raven) which refers to the beak-like appearance. Corbel is defined as a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. For us, its a decorative addition that ties the arm to the leg.

Gustav Stickley used a small corbel on his morris chairs while his brother's designs used a more elongated corbel as seen here in my reproduction of their Prairie Style Sofa and also below in my L&JG Stickley Paddle arm Morris chair.

There are several ways that you could attach the corbels to your chair/sofa. You could drill through the corbel and screw it into the leg and plug the holes. You could use dowels to attach it. You could glue it directly to the leg/arm like I did on the Morris chair, since its a long grain to long grain match, careful aligning and clamping works well. My favorite method, which I used on the sofa, is to cut a dado down the leg with a router and a guide, and cut a long tongue on the back of the corbel. This method aligns the corbel correctly every time and provides for plenty of glue surfaces.

Once you decide on the size and shape of your corbel make a pattern out of plywood or MDF, trace the shape out on some nicely figured quartersawn white oak, cut on the band saw proud of the line. Attach the pattern to the stock using double sided tape and using a pattern routing bit run them on your router table. A little finish sanding and carefully glue the corbel in place. Nicely shaped and proportioned corbels will add a nice detail to your project.

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." - Henry David Thoreau

New Arts and Crafts Furniture Project Book

The staff at Popular Woodworking have done it again. They have delved into their vast pool of talent and treasure of articles from their magazine and have brought us a wonderful collection of Arts and Crafts furniture projects. The authors are all current or former editors and senior editors for Popular Woodworking Magazine. Robert W. Lang is not only a senior editor for Popular Woodworking, he also has published five books on arts and crafts furniture in his "Shop Drawings" series, which I have used extensively for building reproductions of some very nice Arts and Crafts pieces. The first two Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture: 27 Stickley Designs for Every Room in the Home , and More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture: 30 Stickley Designs for Every Room in the Home, will give you a great variety of projects for every room in the home.

Christopher Schwarz is an editor of Popular Woodworking, and a contributing editor to The Fine Tool Journal, in addition to teaching traditional woodworking techniques he has recently published a fantastic book on workbenches, Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use, which has been discussed to some length at The WoodWhisperer blog and chat room.

Steve Shanesy was an editor for Popular Woodworking and is now publisher of the magazine. Jim Stack is a senior editor or Popular Woodworking and also the author of eight woodworking books. Jim Stuard is a former editor of Popular Woodworking, and Kara Uhl is a former managing editor of the magazine. David Thiel is the executive editor of Popular Woodworking Books and a former editor for Popular Woodworking.

With this much talent on board this project was sure to shine. The Book includes 26 projects, a chapter on the history of Arts and Crafts Furniture and a chapter on techniques of of construction and finishing. There is also a CD included that has a PDF file with 10 additional projects and 10 articles on techniques from the archives of the magazine. Long time readers of the magazine will notice that most of these projects have previously appeared there, however in the book you will find that more detail and more photos have been included along with all new drawings. One thing that did disappoint me is that the book appears to be an updated and expanded version of their book Authentic Arts and Crafts Furniture Projects from 2000.

Each project chapter begins with a description of the project's origins and history. Included is a very detailed text description of the process along with a cut list. Drawings for templates that you will need and a list of supplies along with sources are included. Very clear and instructional color photos along with nice shop drawings and exploded views complete the chapter with enough information for novices to make a very nice piece of furniture. One thing that this book includes that many do not is upholstery tips and techniques that allow you to move from a nice woodworking project, to a finished piece of fine furniture. The projects range from the simple, Limbert Waste Basket, to the impressive, Byrdcliffe Linen Press.

In my opinion this is the finest book of Arts and Crafts Furniture projects to date, and I should know, I have bought them all over the years of my obsession with the style. I hope that you take a look at this book and enjoy making the projects in your shop and that your family and friends get to appreciate your skills combined with some amazing reproductions of original masterpieces. If you would like to purchase a copy you can do so from the link below.

Bow-Arm Reclining Chair

The first piece I'd like to focus on is the Bow-Arm Reclining Chair circa 1904, this is the signature Gustav Stickley Morris Chair. This style of chair is the original "Lazyboy", a comfortable recliner with a thick soft cushion, just the thing for the man of the house to relax in after a hard day. You can find plans and shop drawings for this chair at Robert Lang's site, http://www.craftsmanplans.com/ , and in his set of Shop Drawings books that I use for almost all of my furniture.

The first thing I'd like to point out is the exposed joinery, the though tenons on the arms are not only for strength but as a statement of the importance of precise joinery, there is no room for error here, any sloppy mortises or poorly cut tenons will be readily apparent. This was the Arts and Crafts movement ideal of "honest joinery" no dowels or screws here.

Another element of this style is the corbels under the arms of the chair, this is also a mixture of function and style, they support the overhanging arm and add mass to the front of the leg. I think as woodworkers we can all agree that a few inches of inch thick quartersawn white oak has sufficient strength to support a couple of inches of overhang, but I think you'll also agree that without the corbels the chair would look unfinished. Gustav used a short corbel and his brothers (L&JG) used a more refined, long tapered corbel.





The chair is adjusted using a nicely shaped movable peg as apposed to the later L&JG chairs that use a movable bar, more later on that chair. It also uses a similarly shaped peg for the pivot. In this photo you can also see that the crossmembers are pinned tenons, again, probably not necessary for the weight it carries but a nice touch of visible joinery. The early Gustav Stickley chairs as you can see in the above reproduction and in the picture below use a woven rope seat with a loose cushion where as those after about 1909 and those of L&JG (below)employ a spring seat.

Two features that make this chair extremely comfortable are the Bow arms, radiused at 72 inches, and the slanted seat (approx. 3 inch drop) that you can see on the left. This gives the seat a very comfortable feel and tends to snug you down into the cushion.

The front, side, and back rails are arched slightly to give this simple design lift and interest. The back reclines from almost straight up to very laid back. Add a foot stool and you've got a great napping chair with arms wide and flat enough to hold a laptop or a dinner plate.

The back slats are bent at a 36 inch radius to add to the comfort, while the original chairs and many reproductions are steambent, I find that I prefer to resaw and laminate the bend on a form. Notice the beveled ends on the seat back, another nice little detail. Some people have said in forums that flat slatted backs are just as comfortable and far easier, I have to say that I used this method on my first two morris chairs and I was less than impressed with the results compared to the curved slats. As with anything in furniture making, the devil is in the details, but then, so is the delight.

One thing I want to point out with this picture from the original chair is the grain, notice that the side is planesawn, whereas the front is quartersawn. Early Stickley chairs use this solid leg method and later Stickley furniture use quartersawn veneers to hide the planesawn surface, but there was a problem, the veneers tended to peal off from the bottom of the leg. Leopold Stickley came up with a solution to maintain the quartersawn appearance on all four sides of the leg yet still be durable, he called it the "quadralinear leg". It consists of four mitered pieces of Quartersawn white oak filled with a square middle. This five piece leg lent itself well to factory production but not having a large shaper makes it difficult for the home woodworker. You could miter and the sides and glue it up, a method I've struggled with with mixed results, no matter how careful you are with setting up the table saw and gluing you still get some gaps in the finished leg. I've also tried the miterlock router bit, but the set up is very tedious and its taking a huge bite out of some very hard wood, I've abandoned this method as too dangerous for my taste. The easiest way is to use solid legs like Gustav, but if you don't have access to 12/4 oak, you can still glue up a few pieces of 4/4, a method used on some of the originals and just as valid today. The nest time I build a Morris chair, and I've made 6 already, I'm going to attempt the original Leopold Stickley method on the tablesaw and I'll post a series of pictures and a discussion.

If you are interested in making your own Bow-Arm Stickley Morris Chair, a fantastic plan that is historically accurate can be found in Robert Lang's More Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture and a large format plan can be purchased separately from his site http://www.craftsmanplans.com/ .

The Stickley Museum

Over the Holiday's I visited the Stickley Museum in Fayetteville, NY http://www.stickleymuseum.com/ . The Museum is located above the Fayetteville Free Library in the original L & JG Stickley Factory and is open Tuesdays and Saturdays. There are examples of early works of Gustav Stickley and L & JG Stickley, and in their various iterations up to the present day.

It was very rewarding to be able to have up close views of some very nice antiques that I've only seen in pictures. Some of the older chairs were shown without cushions which gives a woodworker an insight into the joinery and the structure. They even had one exhibit of a modern dresser next to the 1915 original which showed the internal structure of the drawers and bracing.

My only regret was that flash photography was not allowed, this limited my ability to capture the details I wanted on some of the pieces, so some of the shots my be a little fuzzy, I apologize in advance.

The Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States lasted only from 1900-1915, but the influence of the style and the work of Gustav Stickley, his brothers Leopold, John George, Charles and Albert, Stickley's designer Harvey Ellis, Charles Limbert, and Elbert Hubbard and his Roycroft community have influenced woodworkers and designers to this day. In fact Gustav Stickley created the first truly American furniture, known throughout the world as Craftsman. Some refer to this style as Mission Style, this comes from a mistaken assumption that the style was a reflection of the bulky furniture of the California Mission era. However after a trip to England in 1897 Stickley was inspired by British reformers, John Ruskin and William Morris to create a new line of handcrafted furniture based on honesty and simplicity. In 1898 he opened United Crafts in Eastwood, New York where he introduced his Craftsman line which, by 1900, reflected an indigenous American Arts & Crafts philosophy. His quarter sawn oak furniture incorporated overt structural details such as tenon-and-key construction, chamfered boards, and exposed tenons. His rectilinear shapes were free of any excess ornamentation except for what occurred naturally in the construction, design and material. This revealed not only the excellent craftsmanship that went into each piece, but also the beauty simplicity, and utility of the design. Stickley originally intended his furniture to be all made by hand, but this proved to be too costly for the average family who he was targeting, so he introduced the use of power tools and factory production while still keeping the integrity and handcrafted feel to his line. I found this quote in the museum and found it still true today "The modern trouble is not the use of machinery, but the abuse of it"