Gustav Stickley (who was Gustave until he dropped the “e” in 1903) was actually born Gustavus Stoeckel to Wisconsin German immigrant parents, the oldest boy of many children, in 1858. He worked alongside his father, a farmer and stone mason, quit school at 12 to help family finances, quickly learned he disliked his father’s heavy masonry work, (“…hard daily labor with a stubborn material…” he remembered), and moved with his family to Pennsylvania to be closer to his mother’s family after his father deserted them when Gustav was 17. His uncle owned a chair factory. Gustav proved to be gifted chair builder appreciating the “responsive, sympathetic qualities of wood” and later a good business manager too. Promoted to foreman, he had comfortable life, educated himself, got married, started a family but began to feel irresistibly strong personal ambitions that would guide the course of the rest of his life.

In 1883, Gustav and two brothers went into the chair business together, Stickley Brothers and Company, selling, both retail and wholesale, their own furniture and that of others. Later, as that relentless personal ambition took hold, he left his brothers and formed a new partnership with furniture salesman, Elgin Simonds, in 1888 to form Stickley and Simonds Company. However, Gustav would soon become unhappy with the elaborate and ornate designs they were still producing that remained popular. Those tastes of the Victorian period had lingered way beyond Gustav’s patience for something unique and new.

In England, 1888 was also the year that the Arts and Crafts movement was born. Gustav had made several trips to England and was attracted to its philosophies, design simplification, and emphasis on hand craftsmanship and honest work. Back home, differences arose. Stickley bought Simonds out in 1898, and Stickley’s personal ambition was unleashed!!!

Stickley’s “New Furniture” was introduced at a trade show in 1900 and distributed through Tobey Furniture Company of Chicago. Before long, frustrated that his name didn’t get the top billing he craved, he set out on his own in 1901 with his own furniture company, United Crafts, and published “The Craftsman” magazine for the first time.

When my husband, Gary, and I came to Vashon Island in 1988, we were looking for an older house on some acreage. We had done a lot of looking in the greater Seattle area with no luck. What we found that day on Vashon was a remarkably preserved 1909 Craftsman on 14 acres which we knew we wanted just driving up the driveway for the first time. I had long loved the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods but knew little about the Arts & Crafts era in between them at the beginning of the 20^th century. Both of us were new to the Craftsman movement’s place in history, its architecture, furniture, design, and philosophies of its founders.

To say we “owned” that precious house is not the right word; we were its newest “stewards” and we assumed that role seriously. The house needed almost nothing from us except care and love. The oak inlaid floors on the main level were flawless. All the main floor windows were leaded beveled glass. Original ornate lincrusta lined the dining room walls under the plate rail. A large stained-glass window on the main stairway landing had two side panels that still opened. Most amazing were the light sockets at the intersections of the coffered ceilings still equipped with little round 7-watt 1909 bulbs that cast a warm candle-light glow in the rooms. We were missing only two!

That house of ours gave birth to my passion to learn about all things Craftsman: houses, decoration, furniture, accessories, linens, clothing, motifs, colors theory, life style, philosophies and history of the movement. One minute into that research and you’ll learn that Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) was the main proponent of the early 20^th century American Craftsman style that followed closely after the British Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1800’s.

The idea of building and furnishing a miniature 1/12 scale house has been in the back of my mind for decades. Most unfinished house shells or kits on the market are Victorian, cheesy, and/or expensive or not what I imagined. The weekend after the inauguration in 2017, seriously depressed and barely functioning, I decided the time had finally come to distract myself with a big project: build that house of my dreams. I had owned for years (and poured over countless times) the two catalogs of home plans that were featured in Stickley’s “The Craftsman” magazine, published between 1901 and 1916. Starting in 1904, members of a “Craftsman Homebuilders’ Club” could order plans for homes featured in the magazine. I took the weekend to decide on City House #99 (October, 1910 edition), one of only two “city” house plans Stickley offered, and a real departure from his usual bungalow concept. It was designed for a long, narrow, mid-block city lot, 25’ wide, and with that dimension, I could do scale drawings of the three levels of floorplans and the few elevations pictured in the article, all lacking most measurements. So, it began.