Updating Your Arts & Crafts House?
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Arts & Crafts Craftsman-style Bungalow Drawing: Victoria Heritage Foundation.

We specialize in updating period homes while preserving the feel, style and craftsmanship of the historic era. Seamlessly incorporate a modern kitchen, bath or addition into your Arts & Crafts home.
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Redefining the Arts & Crafts Bathroom
Remodeled and Updated Arts & Crafts Bathroom in a Four-Square Arts & Crafts house. Designing a bathroom to fit a 1928 Four-Square house does not require slavish copying of every tiny Arts & Crafts design detail. Witness this elegant, comfortable bath that follows Art & Crafts design principles while incorporating modern fixtures and refinements. Read more. Arts & Crafts Styles: Craftsman, Prairie and Four-Square Architecture J. M. Edgar, CMC, CRC
The Arts & Crafts period from the turn of the 20th century to World War II is unique in American architectural history for two reasons. First, it was the only period in which houses that ordinary people could afford were enriched with all manner of finely crafted detail. Rich wood trim, art glass and colorful tile Arts & Crafts Craftsman-style Clapboard Bungalow The classic clapboard 1-1/2 story Craftsman Bungalow with side gable roof on Park Avenue in the Irvingdale neighborhood, Lincoln, Nebraska. Gable roofs created more second story space than hip roofs, and were far more popular. Front gables were less common.

Click here for more Bungalow-Style Houses.
mosaics had been used in houses for a long time, but only kings, potentates and industrial magnates could afford them. The rest of us had to do without — at least until the Arts & Crafts movement made rich detailing a mainstay of home building.

Second, all of the Arts & Crafts architectural styles — Prairie, Craftsman, Mission, Four-Square — are American styles. Unlike previous house styles that were adopted from European models, American Arts & Crafts homes are almost completely home­grown.

If you are fortunate enough to own an Arts & Crafts home, you own a gem — a true American original — full of handcrafted details that are rarely seen in modern housing. That 6,000 square foot McMansion that your boss just bought is full of 1/2" gypsum board walls, painted MDF mouldings and carpeting over OSB subflooring. Yours is full of thick, plaster walls, varnished quarter-sawn oak mouldings with oak strip flooring over a thick pine subfloor. Of course, your floor squeaks and his doesn't, but you have to put up with a few little quirks to live in a bit of history. Photo: Wikipedia Commons John Ruskin, father of the Arts & Crafts movement.
John Ruskin is generally recognized as the father of the Arts & Crafts movement. He spent much of his life railing passionately against mech­anization and industrialization, and for a sense of humanity and scale in architecture.
Sarah Susanka, Not So Big House Architectural Philosophy
The trend toward larege, bloated McMansions has resurrected the rebellion against design excess. Reformist architects such as Sarah Susanka, author of the Not So Big House series of philosophical and design guides advocate a return to smaller, better designed and more livable human scale houses.

The Arts & Crafts Philosophy
It all began as a rebellion against heady excesses of the late Victorian age. Victorian architecture celebrated the abundance made possible by mass production and industrialization. Dimensioned lumber, inexpensive trim and good-quality mouldings could be made very quickly by machines in previously unheard-of quantities and could easily be shipped anywhere in the country on its ever-expanding national railroad system. They were used with increasing elaboration to embellish late-Victorian homes.

By the end of the 19th century, ostentation had reached its zenith in the elaborate Eastlake style house. But, by then a great many people had had enough of industrialization. There was a widespread and growing rebellion against the numbing imensity of massive mechanization and a longing for a earlier, simpler time.

Curious about the residential architecture of the Victorian Period?

Folk Victorian House.
Click here to learn more about it.
The revolt began in England, where industrialization was the most advanced and its side effects the most odious. Largely inspired by the writings of John Ruskin, an influential moralist and social critic of the time, the Arts & Crafts Movement was just one of many forms of rejection of the dehumanizing effects of factory system and mass production processes. Former days of villages, craft shops and artisans were thought healthier and more humanizing than assembly-line work in factory towns shrouded in smoke and dust.

All of these movements ultimately failed. The Industrial Revolution did not go away, or even slow down. But before finally dying out around 1910 the Arts & Crafts Movement in America spawned a stunning revolution in architecture and Curious about the residential architecture of the Post-war Period?

Cape Cottage House.
Click here to learn more about it. design that largely dominated the 20th century until the mid-1940s. Since this period is when most prewar Nebraska homes were built, the Arts & Crafts home styles are generously represented in our older urban neighbor­hoods.

With the end of World War II, Arts & Crafts architecture, quietly but abruptly, died. Challenged to build unheard of numbers of houses to meet the ravenous postwar appetite for new housing, homebuilders quickly abandoned the leisurely, handcrafted detailing of the Arts & Crafts period. It was just too time consuming and had to go in favor of new mass production techniques that built an average of 5,000 sturdy new homes in a single day.

It was sad to see such wonderful craftsmanship go by the wayside, but it was inevitable. The Depression and World War were over. It was a bright, exciting, new era. America had changed, and so had its housing needs. The legacy, however, is still with us in the form of thousands of Arts & Crafts houses throughout the country and especially in the upper Midwest.

Ancestor Styles
Do You Own A Mail Order House?
Aladdin Marsden House Kit. Thousands of Arts & Crafts and Craftsman homes were built from kits. Click to enlarge image.
Click to Enlarge
Many Arts & Crafts houses were built from kits manu­fac­tured by Sears, Roe­buck & Co., Alad­din and other kit makers. Kits weighed about 25 tons, included a detailed assembly manual, extensive blueprints, and about 10-30,000 individual pieces. Sears alone sold over 70,000 kit homes from 1908 to 1940. So many mail order kit homes were built in Nebraska that the odds a pretty good that your pre-1940 home is a kit house. If so, congratulations are in order. You own one of the best designed and built homes in America. Here are some clues to look for.
  1. Look in your attic, basement, garage and crawlspace for blueprints, shipping documents or the assembly manual. These were often tucked in out-of-the-way places. The document will tell you the name of the company that made the kit, and the model number.
  2. Kit houses were often codified by their original owners. But usually the overall dimensions remained the same. Measure the width across the front and sides of your house and look for those exact dimensions in plan books.
  3. Compare the front and side views of your house with published plans and illustrations. Look at the overall configuration, roof style, type of porch and placement of the front door and chimneys. These are unlikely to have been modified. Windows, on the other hand, were sometimes moved around or omitted, so they are of less help.
  4. Compare your floor plan to similar plans in pattern books and mail order catalog illustrations. Keep in mind that rooms may have been added since the house was built, and porches may have been enclosed.
    5. Sears Lumber Mark Typical Sears lumber code on a rafter.
  5. Look for stenciled markings on floor joists and rafters in the attic or basement where they are exposed. These marks were keyed to the blueprints that came with the kit. Companies marked their lumber differently, so the type or marking can tell you who made the kit. Sears used a code number system to mark lumber. Each piece was marked with a letter and number for each size of board, so all boards of the same size would bear the same code number. Aladdin marked its lumber with dimensions and use, for example 2x10x14-6 - Rafter.
  6. Look at original mortgage or purchase papers, building permits, utility company records (particularly those relating to water and sewer installations), for clues as to the origin of the house.
  7. Don't forget newspaper archives. Many communities required building permits and land sales to be published. Look for articles about new home construction, especially if it mentions that the home is a kit home. The quality of Sears and Aladdin homes was such that builders often built the kits on spec, knowing there would be considerable interest in the home simply due to the reputation of the company.
  8. If you have a local historical society or association devoted to the preservation of period homes, they often have considerable research material and experts who can authoritatively determine whether your home is a kit.
No architectural style is born in isolation. It borrows from earlier styles, emphasizing some features, deemphasizing others until a new, identifiable form emerges. The Arts & Crafts styles are no exception. While the Arts & Crafts Movement provided the philosophy and rationale, the nuances of the architecture were taken from a great many sources: late Victorian shingle-style and other purely American influences such as Shaker and Southwest Spanish Mission; as well as some distinctly Asian influences, particularly the broad horizontal lines, low roofs and well-crafted natural materials characteristic of the traditional Japanese house Japanese house, one of the architectural inspirations defining Arts & Crafts architecture. The traditional Japanese house with its broad, low roofs and wide eaves was one of the strong influences on Arts & Crafts architecture.

Craftsman, Prairie and Four-Square styles also borrow freely from each other. Although distinct and identifiable styles, with some common characteristic features such low pitched hip roofs, minimal decoration, and extensive hand crafting, they each have elements unique to their style. But they also blend into each other to such an extent that it is often impossible to positively classify a particular house as one or the other style. A Craftsman Bungalow with Prairie elements is as common as a Prairie house with Craftsman elements. Four-square houses freely purloined elements of both. Arts & Crafts styles borrowed liberally from Art Deco and other "modernism" decorative styles — and just as freely were borrowed from by modernist designers. So while these uniquely American styles are identifiable, and excellent examples of each can be found in Nebraska communities, most Arts & Crafts era houses are hybrids of the three main styles — incorporating many of the best features of each.

The Bungalow
There are a number of different craftsman-style houses, the American Four-square is actually a craftsman-style house. But the most popular Craftsman home was the simple 1-1/2 story Bungalow. In fact, for most people, "Bungalow" and "Craftsman house" are synonymous terms. Just about every Nebraska town boasts at least one Arts & Crafs or Craftsman Side-gable Bungalow The side-gable Bungalow. This was the most popular style, although there are many variations including front-gable and hip-roof styles. Bungalow. Bungalow designs were spread by the practice of using mail-order plans available from illustrated catalogs. A variety of firms offered pre-fabricated homes, which were shipped by rail and assembled on site by the owners or local builders.

The Bungalow style has its roots in the native architectural styles of the Bengal in India. During the last decades of the 19th century, English officers had small houses built in the "Bangla" style. The houses were one story with tile or thatched roofs and wide, covered verandas. The style was introduced to American architecture in 1906, through an article that appeared in The Craftsman magazine published by Gustav Stickley. It was adopted by period architects such as an answer to the need for small, affordable homes, and rather quickly became a staple of homebuilding in America.

Bungalows were modest, inexpensive, low-profile houses faced with wood siding and brick or, less commonly, stone. Wood siding was often applied in contrasting wood bands or courses separated by wide horizontal trim boards. Characteristically, they possess broad, low gable or hip roofs, usually with one or two large front dormers, wide eaves with exposed rafters and brackets (actually called "corbels") under the eaves. Wide, open front porches were supported by heavy masonry or wood piers. Windows are abundant and distinctive: "4 over 1" (4 panes in the upper sash to one pane in the lower sash) or "6 over 1" double-hung. These are now commonly called "Craftsman" windows.

Arts & Crafts Craftsman Bungalow. Another classic Craftsman Bungalow in the Country Club neighborhood, Lincoln. Slightly more upscale that the example above, all of the typical design elements are represented: Low hip roof, open rafter tails, heavy brick piers supporting the porch roof, and art glass windows in the hip dormer. Any similarity to the traditional Japanese house (above) is completely intentional. Unlike Prairie style houses that were almost always designed by an architect, Bungalows, like Four-Squares (see below) were "just built" — often from widely available pattern books. A builder got comfortable with a certain style and floor plan and built the same house with minor variations in detail over and over again — often on the same block. (For more information on how most pre-war homes were built see A Brief History of Homebuilding.) Dobler Arts & Crafts Craftsman Bungalow. This side-gable Bungalow in the Irvingdale Neighborhood has been carefully restored to traditional Arts & Crafts colors.

The house's condensed floor plan made use of all available space. A single living room replaced the front and rear parlors, entry hall, and library characteristic of the Victorian house. The living room almost always had a fireplace, often set in a niche called the "inglenook". It opened directly into the dining room, which also served as a multi-purpose family room. The dividing wall usually was only five feet high so the rooms were connected visually. The kitchen connected to the dining room through a swinging door that provided easy access but kept food odors out of the rest of the house. (These have usually been removed now that kitchen ventilation is available, and most are lost, but the swinging door hardware often remains attached to the doorjamb.)

The Prairie House The Prairie Style house is a product of the Prairie School of architecture. This new style of housing was coined the Prairie Style after a 1901 article in the Ladies Home Journal by Frank Lloyd Wright entitled, "A Home in a Prairie Town." According to architecture historian Dixie Legler:

"It was a new look for a new century. Low, ground-hugging houses with refreshingly spacious interiors under sweeping roofs, leading to terraces reaching out to nature, all dressed in the colors of the prairie in autumn and simplified with built-in furniture. A group of idealistic young architects in Chicago, led by Frank Lloyd Wright, had succeeded in their quiet revolt against the fussiness of Victorian houses. Gazing toward the horizon, they saw the prairie as the perfect metaphor for redefining the American home." (Dixie Legler, Prairie Style: Houses and Gardens by F. L. Wright, Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1999). Folk House in the Prairie style. Most Prairie style houses were designed by architects. A few, however, were built without an architect's involvement. A brick and stucco Prairie Box style house located near the Rose Garden in Lincoln. It has the footprint and square shape of a Four-Square house, but its windows and detailing identify it as from the Prairie School.

A Modern Prairie House in the Frank Lloyd Wright style includes all of the architectural features of a Prairie-style house. A striking contemporary Prairie-style house built in 1991 adopted from a Wright design. The strong horizontal aspect of this style influenced modernist design through the 1970s. Prairie Style architects sought to redefine American housing by designing houses with low horizontal lines and open interior spaces in deliberate contrast to the Victorian Era's tall, narrow houses with closed-in interiors. Victorian housing was the creature of Eastern cities with small, constricted urban lots. Prairie houses were children of the Great Plains; low, wide structures more suitable to its limitless horizons. Rooms were often divided by leaded glass panels or low cabinets rather than walls. Both American Southwest and Japanese influences are most apparent in this Arts & Crafts style, more so than in the Craftsman or Four-Square styles.

The first Prairie houses were usually finished in lime plaster with wood trim or sided with horizontal board and batten. Later Prairie homes used concrete block — a new material at the time. The spacious, open floor plans of Modernist House showing the influences of the Arts & Crafts Prairie school on post-war Modernist architecture. Built in 1955, this Modernist house shows distinct Prairie influences including the extended eaves, and characteristic window styles. Similar to Prairie designs from the 1930s. Prairie homes took on many forms: Square, L-shaped, T-shaped, Y-shaped, and even pinwheel-shaped. Furniture was either built-in or specially designed by the architect just for the house.

The style was popularized by pattern books and illustrated magazines, but there was never, as far as we can determine, a kit for a Prairie Style House. Few Prairie style homes were built without the involvement of an Architect. They never received the widespread builder acceptance of the Craftsman and Four-Square styles, and are consequently much less common in our communities. The few that do exist, however, are usually little gems and well worth preserving.

The Prairie house is the only Arts & Crafts style to penetrate the great post-war housing boom. By the 1940s Prairie School architects had evolved the Prairie style into something resembling the Mid-Century Modern style by continuing to flatten the roof and adding glass wherever they could.

Wright's own work had already incorporated many Modernist elements into Prairie architecture by the 1930s. The post-war European influences also had their impact on the transition from Prairie to Modernist, including the Bauhaus and Scandinavian Modernist design schools. Sears Model 102 Four-Square house kit First floor plan for a Sears Model 102 Four-Square kit. The boxy shape, wide front porch, large windows and minimalist style are typical. Like most Four-Squares, this house featured a hip roof. Space was available for a second floor indoor bathroom, but the bathroom itself was an option.

The American Four-Square In 1890 there were no Four-Square houses in Nebraska. By the end of World War I in 1918, there were thousands. Where the style came from is somewhat a puzzle. The Craftsman and Prairie styles can be traced to specific architectural schools or historical antecedents. But the Four-Square style seems to have no such precise parentage, no renown architectural advocates, no underlying design philosophy, not even a distinct school of thought. It just got built.

Theories abound as to its architectural origins. One such theory is that it appeared when builders squared off the Folk Victorian house, stripped it of its elaborate orna­mentation, lowered the roof pitch, extended the eaves, American Four-Square Farm House. This Arts & Crafts style house was inexpensive and expansive, and very popular in Nebraska rural communities. The ubiquitous Four-Square farm house. Every Nebraska county has at least one. There must have been a law in the 1920's that these had to be painted white — in any case, most were and many still are. added Arts & Crafts-influenced interior features and a big front porch.

Or perhaps it was the already square Italianate Victorian design that was the arcnitectural genesis of the style. Remove the cupola and gingerbread; replace the tall Victorian windows with Arts & Crafts-style windows, enlarge the porch, and you end up with a Four-Square house.

Still others believe that it is, in fact, a refinement of the traditional rectangular two-story colonial repopularized by the Colonial Revival school at the very end of the 19th century. The colonial was squared off, a porch added, its roof lowered and Craftsman detailing applied.

We think that the more likely explanation is much less complicated. The Four-Square is just the builders' two-story version of the popular Craftsman Bungalow. Buyers liked the simplicity, open floor plan and interior efficiency of the Bungalow, but many wanted a larger house. Builders responded with the larger Four-Square, preserving the essential design elements of the class Bungalow while adding a full second floor.

But, the fact is that while there are a great many varying opinions, no on really knows for sure where the Four-Square came from. We suspect that a number of different architectural influences intersected a large dose of Midwestern common sense and get-r-done attitude to create this distinctive house that has become one of the most recognizable of American home styles — widely recognized by architectural historians as one of the most efficient house designs of all time.

An American Four-Square House One of the most popular Arts and Crafts house designs. American Four-Square houses with clapboard siding and a hip roofs in the Irvingdale area of Lincoln. Both of these houses were built by the same builder, probably from a mail-order kit.

An American Four-Square House One of the most popular Arts and Crafts house designs. In contrast to other localities, Four-square houses in Nebraska usually do not feature the typical horizontal band between floors nor different siding on the upper story. The American Four-Square is clearly a "folk" house. It has no pretensions of any kind. It is a plain, unassuming and spacious two-story house with a low-pitched, hipped roof and widely overhanging eaves. Its square or nearly square footprint is perfect for making the most efficient use of city lots. It is obviously designed for prairie weather. The low-rise roof collects snow, a natural insulation in the winter, and the wide eaves protect the house from blistering summer suns for which the Great Plains is famous. The term "Four-Square" comes from its square shape and interior layout.

Folk Victorian House. A Victorian Gothic house. The classic American Four-square may have evolved from this house style as builders squared off the house, stripped off its elaborate orna­mentation, substituted a low hip roof for the more involved multiple gables, extended the eaves, and added typical Arts & Crafts trim and detailing. Typically, each floor contains four rooms, one neatly tucked into each corner. On the first floor, you will find an entry foyer, living room, dining room, and kitchen. Upstairs, three bedrooms and a bath surround a small foyer at the top of the stairs.

Arranging each floor in quadrants eliminated the need for long hallways and made the most efficient use of interior space. Simple, symmetrical Four-Square homes were less costly to build than earlier, more complicated designs with protruding wings and complex roof lines. The houses are very efficient to heat, often designed so that the upstairs and downstairs were distinct heating zones separated by a door at the top or bottom of the stairs. The downstairs was heated by day, and upstairs at night.

Large tracts of Four-Square homes still exist in older Lincoln neighbor­hoods, particularly in the old "streetcar suburbs" in the Near South, Irvingdale, Country Club, Bethany, College View, University Place, and Havelock; but the design was universal and can be found in remote farmhouses as well as in the urban core of nearly all Nebraska cities. Omaha has several Arts & Crafts neighborhoods including Dundee which houses the Happy Hollow Historical District.

The Four-Square was a popular mail-order era style along with the Craftsman Bungalow. Sears alone offered a dozen different kits and other manufacturers as many as twenty. It arrived crated in a boxcar with a "free" assembly manual and all the parts pre-cut and numbered for "easy assembly" (uh-huh).

Four-Square houses were built with a variety of exterior finishes, including brick and narrow-strip wood clapboard siding. A few feature shingle siding or stucco, but these are relatively rare in Nebraska. The second story was often finished in a different siding than the first - shingles over clapboard, for example. A wood band usually separated the two treatments. Its entrance was the focal point of the front facade, and it often had a front and sometimes side-hipped dormers in its pyramid-shaped roof. The interior and exterior spaces of these houses were usually linked by a full-width first-floor front porch with massive, square porch supports. Photo: Rejuvenation An Arts & Crafts Craftsman Fireplace The fireplace was the focal point of Arts & Crafts living rooms, especially Bungalows and houses built in the Craftsman style. An Arts & Crafts fireplace reproduced by Rejuvenation, our favorite house parts store.

Arts & Crafts Interiors
The Arts & Crafts philosophy shunned urban industrialization and mass production while extolling the virtues of village living where skilled artisans created beautiful things in small, human scale craft shops using hand tools and traditional techniques. The Arts and Crafts reality, however, was that most of everything manufactured during the period was the product of urban factories. The simple fact was that even as early as the middle of the 19th century the populations of Europe and North America had completely outstripped the ability of pre-industrial crafts shops and small-plot farmers to keep them fed, clothed and housed.

Arts & Crafts idealists often started communities where their philosophy was put into practice. All of them failed. Morris Chair. The Morris chair was named in honor of one of the guiding lights of the Arts & Crafts design movement. The bow-arm, slatted Morris Chair and Ottoman, an Arts & Crafts period icon. These utopians, like the counter-culture Hippies of the 1960's and '70's greatly underestimated the complexities of living a simple, communal life. Those that endured for a time, such as the Roycroft Community near Buffalo, New York, survived because they adopted, at least in part, industrial techniques and mass marketing. Roycroft's printing business was considered one of the most modern in the region, and its print shop made liberal use of mass production techniques. The community's excellent and high quality craft products were promoted nationally through a very up-to-date and very successful mass marketing campaign. The community even printed its own magazine to promote its ideals and products.

But Roycroft and craft communities like it were the exception, not the rule. Its hand-crafted, hand-made products were expensive. Most people could not afford them. What they could afford, and what they bought in great quantities, were similar products, sometimes outright knock-offs, made in mass-production factories. Many of these large factories used marketing techniques to create the illusion that they were not actually factories, but large scale craft shops. They were, in fact, factories. Sometimes very nice, open, airy factories, but factories nevertheless.

Photo: Thomas Strangeland, Artist Craftsman. Craftsman Interior by Thomas Strangeland. The Craftsman living room as reproduced by Thomas Strangeland. Extensive built-ins reduced the need for furniture. Less furniture also contributed to the airy and open feel of the house. Probably the best known and most prolific of the period furniture makers was Gustav Stickley. His simple, geometric furniture designs defined the American Craftsman furniture style and are now considered American classics fetching astronomical prices on the antique Harvey Ellis bookcase made by Gustav Stockley A Model #704 American Craftsman bookscase designed by Harvey Ellis for Gustav Stickley. The designs created by the Stickley shops virtually defined American Craftsman furniture. But while advertised as "hand crafted", they were, in fact, manufactured in a very up-to-date factory using the most advanced machinery available at the time. market. But his Syracuse, N.Y. workshops did not remotely live up to the Arts & Crafts ideal. They were a factory, well equipped with every industrial woodworking tool known to the time. The company's insurance inventory for 1910 (from business records housed at the Winterhur Museum and Library in Wilmington, Del.), for example, listed power lathes, heavy spindle shapers, horizontal boring machines, chair presses, grinders, a number of band and table saws, mortisers, dovetailing machines, tenoners and post borers as well as drive belts, pulleys and power shafts that alone were worth thousands of (1910) dollars. The notion that a skilled Stickley artisan patiently crafted mortise joints with a carefully wielded chisel is pure myth. Stickley workers were usually paid by the piece, not by the hour, and they were in a hurry. The reality was that the mortise was stamped out in one pass on an powered industrial mortiser, much as it would be today.

Wallpaper is another instance of the triumph of Yankee pragmatism over moral philosophy. Decorative all paper was meant to be a cottage craft in which artists manually stenciled their designs onto hand laid paper or, worst case, block printed designs using pre-industrial, hand-operated screw presses similar to those used by Ben Franklin. But, in fact, most Arts & Crafts wallpaper was printed on huge, powered, roller presses. Had it not been, middle class homeowners would not have been able to afford it. Even diehards, like fabric and wallpaper artist/designer, William Morris, eventually adopted roller press technology for his later, more complex, mult-colored designs to meet stiff price competition.

So, while social philosophers and moral critics bemoaned the evil effects of industrial mechanization, architects, builders and homeowners enthusiatically embraced it, and the increasing prosperity it produced, to build, furnish and decorate period homes.

Aladdin Paint Chart. Arts & Crafts designers typically used a limited palette of somber, earth-tone colors unlike the bright and vibrant colors favored by Victorian designers. The Aladdin Company would not only sell you an Arts & Crafts house kit, but the paint and stain to finish it with and the buggy and auto paint needed to make your vehicle match your house trim. This chart from circa 1916. Homeowners were also quick to adopt the new home technologies that industrialization was making possible — A Craftsman Desk in oak. An Arts & Crafts home office outfitted with the latest 1920s technology — a dial telephone. central heating and hot water systems; mechanical refrigeration, electric lighting, and indoor plumbing allowed Arts & Crafts homeowners of modest means more personal luxury than the richest kings of yore. The Arts & Crafts period saw the first truly modern homes with most of the conveniences that we take for granted today.

Interior Layout: The defining characteristics of Arts & Crafts interiors are openness, light, distinct horizontal lines, handsome, high-quality materials and lots of glass-, stone- and wood-work.

The layout of an Arts & Craft interior was largely dictated by common sense and a drive for simplicity. Interiors featured an open floor plan of airy rooms with simple surfaces of plaster and wood. Living and dining "rooms" are often divided by low wood and glass partitions rather than walls.

Beamed ceilings and simple wainscots are typically seen in living and dining rooms. Art glass might be used throughout the interior in dividers and cabinet doors — more likely in architect-designed houses than in builder-designed or kit houses. The front door or a window facing the front of the house would typically be glazed with a stained glass artwork of some kind.

Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) (Gustav Stickley)
One of eleven children of a German immigrant, Gustav Stickley was a very astute businessman, but also an true idealist and a firm believer in the Arts & Crafts ethic of a simple life surrounded by useful and beautiful things.

His starkly simple geometric "New Furniture" designs literally defined not just the American Craftsman furniture style, but how the houses of the period were decorated and appointed. The classic Craftsman interior with extensive, plain woodwork, and simple but beautiful materials throughout, is largely the product of his design philosophy.

He believed that well-designed and well-crafted surroundings would make life better through "perfect simplicity". His furniture reflected his ideals of honesty in construction, and truth to the materials. The plain surfaces of his wood furniture were devoid of carvings, moldings and other embellishments and relied solely on the character and beauty of the finished wood itself for decoration. Mortise and tenon joinery was exposed to showcase the structural quality of the work. His furniture company, Craftsman Workshops, was very successful, eventually becoming national force with showrooms in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C.

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Click to Enlarge

 To showcase his designs, but also to give voice to his his ideas for better living, he began publishing his own magazine, the Craftsman, in 1901. It featured furniture design and house plans, poetry, biographies, and current events as well as articles on decorating, organization, ideas for better living, and social philosophy. The magazine greatly influenced public taste and perceptions of beauty, but it had even more impact on American design professionals, becoming the voice of the entire generation of Arts & Crafts designers that followed Stickley's ideals.

Today, Stickley and his work have once again become popular. His furniture, particularly his early furniture designs produced between 1901 and 1904, have become collectibles selling for as much as a half million dollars. Excellent reproductions of his furniture are available from a number of furniture shops, for a lot less.
For more information about our heirloom quality, Stickley-inspired furniture designs for your Arts & Crafts home, please contact us. Long sight lines gave the viewer a sense that the house was larger than it actually was. It is not uncommon to be able to see completely through an Arts & Crafts house from front to back. Typical Bungalow floor plan. The compact design or Craftsman Bungalows made the houses affordable for young families. A typical Bungalow floor plan.

Built-In Furnishings: Much of the furnishing in an Arts & Crafts house was built in. A well-ap­pointed dining room featured buffets and china cabinets integrated into the woodwork. Built-in recessed wardrobes with drawers and hanging clothes storage in the bedrooms eliminated the need for chests of drawers and bureaus. The only furniture needed in the bedroom was the actual bed — and not even that if a fold-up bed was built into the wall. Living rooms usually featured bookcases alongside the fireplace, wall lamps to illuminate sitting areas and settles or benches built into alcoves. Linen cabinets were built into hallways and medicine cabinets and shelfs for toiletries in bathrooms. Ironing boards folded into wall niches, with a nook for the iron. Telephones occupied their own recesses, with a slot for the telephone directory. The breakfast nook, with two bench seats and a table, was often built into one corner of the kitchen.

Built-ins were also caught up in the health and hygiene movement sweeping the era. Built-in furnishings were thought to be more sanitary since dust could not collect beneath them. Fold up beds permitted bedding to be hung so it could be "aired", which was thought to contribute to good health.

Plans for built-in furnishings of all types were available from sources such as architect William A. Radford, publisher of American Builder magazine, who distributed them free of charge to potential homeowners, and were widely adopted by Arts & Crafts builders. (Many complete issues of American Builder Magazine can be found at Google Books. Dozens of Radford house plans are still available at Antique Home Style.)

The result of all this building-in was that very little furniture was needed in an Arts & Crafts home. Less furniture contributed to the open, uncluttered, airy look of the house. Unfortunately after the 2nd World War much of it was destroyed in ill-advised "renovations". Some survives in attics and garages, and we we can find it we have no hesitation in restoring it. Otherwise, we have to suss out what if probably looked like, and rebuild it. Fortunately, in our little part of the world, most Arts & Crafts period housing was built by the same four or five guys who used the same built-ins over and over.

Furniture and interior woodwork was typically oak and dark. Gustav Stickley was well know for his fumed oak finishes in which the surface of the wood is chemically altered to make it very dark — almost black. Other native woods such as elm, walnut and cherry were also used, however. American or Black Cherry was favored on in the East, where it is abundant, and walnut on the West Coast. Modern reproductions of Arts & Crafts furnishings commonly avoid the very dark oak look in favor of a lighter, browner finish. Arts & Crafts Wallpaper "Celtic Knot" Arts & Crafts-style wallpaper from Bradbury & Bradbury.

Colors: Period color schemes returned to the earthy, natural pigments of an earlier age. Prior to the 1850s, virtually all pigments were derived from natural, mostly mineral, sources. But in 1856 William Perkin accidently discovered the first chemical color, mauveine or aniline purple (which today we call mauve). His discovery was quickly followed by a hoard of other inexpensive, chemically-derived colors, which the delighted Victorians used abundantly in elaborately painted houses and many-colored wallpapers and fabrics.

Photo: Fine Homebuilding Craftsman window casing

"While there are some good books on Craftsman style, no pattern book or carpenters’ scripture provides exact measurements. Unless there’s an architect involved, I design window trim myself based on my experience and a few guiding principles. Start simple, stay simple Use flat surfaces and square edges instead of molded profiles. Casing parts meet with basic butt joints. Subtle shadow lines are created by slight changes in thickness and overlapping elements. Wood grain is part of the effect For this job, I chose vertical-grain Douglas fir. When I selected the lumber, I chose boards with tight growth rings and consistent color. Oak (either rift-sawn or quartersawn) is another popular choice. Bold, balanced proportions are critical To get it right, I often mock up a full casing treatment to make sure all the pieces work well together. Also, to enhance a custom look, I avoid off-the-shelf dimensions where possible."

Read the rest of Tucker Windover's excellent article on designing and installing Craftsman window casing.

Click to Download PDF Article

 Arts & Crafts palettes avoided the bright, synthetic, primary and secondary colors of the early Industrial Age, favoring a muted pre-industrial palette of earth-tone tertiary colors: yellow became ochre, red appeared as terra cotta or clay and green was represented by olive. Bright colors, if used at all, were used sparingly and as highlights. Blue was rarely used, but if used was on the gray side of true blue.

Architects often specified the color scheme and incorporated colors into the final plaster coat using a calcimine tint rather than paint. (Learn step by step how to repair and add tint to your plaster walls at How to Fix Loose Plaster.) In addition, final plaster coats often contained sand to give them a rough coat to better reflect light and to discourage wallpaper, a Victorian holdover that many designers disliked.

Wallpaper: But the use of wallpaper persisted, tapering off only at the very end of the Arts & Crafts era. Part of the reason for the tenacity of wallpaper is that there was so much beautiful wallpaper available. And, it was affordable beauty. The transition from hand-press block printing to mechanical rotary printing in the late 19th century drove down the cost of wallpaper, sometimes to less than that of paint. Wallpaper was also practical. Wet plaster could not be painted for up to a year after a house was built, but wallpaper could be applied almost immediately.

Mouldings: Elaborate mouldings are not a feature of the Arts & Crafts house. Mouldings were plain, without the elaborate, decorative profiling of the Victorian era, but of handsome, well-figured wood. White oak was the wood most commonly used, followed by red oak, elm, ash, and chestnut, especially in the Upper Midwest. Except in kitchens and bathrooms, mouldings were seldom painted, Most were stained or dyed. But many builders used chemical processes to color woodwork. Oak and other woods containing tanic acid such as chestnut, cherry and walnut can be darkened by exposure to ammonia fumes. Woodwork was often colored after it was installed by placing bowls of ammonia hydroxide (very dangerous — don't try it) throughout the house and waiting 12 to 72 hours. This resulted in very uniform and very inexpensive coloring because virtually no labor was involved. After coloring, the wood was varnished. Someone may have painted over these original finishes. Fortunately the paint is relatively easy to remove, and it usually should be removed to reveal the beautiful wood underneath. Photo: American Bungalow Magazine. Rated by the Chicago Tribune as one of American's top 50 magazines, American Bungalow magazine is published in the interest of preserving and restoring the modest American 20th century home, the Bungalow, and the rich lifestyle that it affords. An Arts & Crafts Craftsman Dining Room. Dining rooms typically included built-in cabinetry that replaced the butler's pantry of the Victorian Era. Built-in cabinetry in an Arts & Crafts dining room. Built-ins eliminated the need for all dining room furnishings except a table and chairs.

The Tripartite Interior Wall
Tripartite wall decoration
Click to Enlarge

 The Dado, Field and Frieze sections of the wall can be either painted or wallpapered. The borders between the sections are either mouldings or wallpaper borders. A complex design like this needs a tall wall — 9' or higher is recommended. For shorter walls, either the frieze or dado would be eliminated and the field extended. Wallpaper designs courtesy Bradbury & Bradbury. The Tripartite Wall: Walls were often banded in wood at several heights. At the foot of the wall was base moulding, which should be at least 5" wide, and at least 3/4" thick. The next band was the chair rail, set at between 30" and 54" above the floor. The space between the base and chair rail was called the "dado". Banding around the room at the top of the windows was also common. The banding forms the top casing of the windows and doors, creating a space called the "frieze" between the top of the windows and the ceiling. This feature was unabashedly borrowed from the traditional Japanese house. Finally, at the top of the wall was a crown moulding, but not the heavy, angled crown of colonial and Victorian houses (although common in reproduction houses). Flat ceiling moulding is more consistent with the style, as is narrow bed moulding.

These wood bands created what is called a tripartite wall, and gave the house a distinct horizontal aspect, visually enlarging the rooms and discouraging hanging pictures. Many Arts & Crafts designers thought pictures were an unnecessary adornment to already perfectly decorated rooms. Most homeowners disagreed and hung pictures anyway — often suspended on decorative cords from the picture rail. The Prairie School pushed the horizontal plane further than any other period style, but almost all Art & Crafts houses favored the horizontal over the vertical plane favored by traditional Victorian designs.

A 1920s gas range. Gas and electricity finally replaced wood and coal as the primary fuel for cooking during the Arts & Crafts period. A period advertisement showing a gas range and typical cooking implement storage in the 1920s. If you think your modern kitchen range has features, take a look at the double ovens, two warming drawers and bread warmer built into this one. The Arts & Crafts Kitchen Revolution
When we first started building kitchens many years ago, no one wanted an Arts & Crafts look. They wanted to replace their Arts & Crafts kitchen with something "modern". We spent hours talking Bungalow owners out of colonial-style and county kitchens — then all the rage. Sometimes we succeeded. Mostly we failed. Things have definitely changed. More than 80% of the kitchens we build today are some version of the Craftsman, Mission or Prairie kitchen. We are in the middle of an Arts & Crafts revival and even houses that do not otherwise Photo: Midcontinent Cabinetry A 1930s Arts & Crafts Craftsman Kitchen. Kitchen design underwent a revolution during the Arts & Crafts period. The Arts & Crafts period saw the very beginning of the modern fitted kitchen. This is a reproduction of a well-appointed late Arts & Crafts period kitchen by Midcontinent cabinetry. have a hint of Arts & Crafts styling feature Arts & Crafts kitchens.

Of course, what we now call the Arts & Crafts kitchen is actually a modern interpretation — the invention of contemporary kitchen designers applying Arts & Crafts design elements and features to modern kitchens. No such kitchens existed during the actual Arts & Crafts era.

Prior to the First World War, Arts & Crafts kitchens barely differed from their spartan Victorian antecedents. A wall sink, a few drawer chests and a table or two for food preparation, along with a wood- or coal-burning stove was the standard. In contemporary illustrations, kitchens of the period seldom featured built-in cabinetry. There was very little need for extensive storage. Most food was grown or produced locally and purchased fresh daily — at least in upscale neighborhoods. The milkman delivered fresh milk, the butcher fresh meat to order, the greengrocer fresh vegetables to supplement whatever was growing in the back garden. Very little food needed to be stored. The little storage that existed was devoted to storing kitchen implements and possibly dining ware. Photo: Pompano Beach Historical Society Reproduction 1930s Arts and Crafts or Craftsman itchen from the Pompano Beach Historical Society. A typical early Arts & Crafts era kitchen as recreated by the Pompano Beach Historical Society. Early kitchens had virtually no cabinet storage since each day's food was purchased the day it was consumed. There was very little to store. Late in the era, homemakers used many more prepared foods that needed to be stored, and kitchens were often fitted out with built-in cabinetry.

But things were beginning to change. A number of distinct trends converged during the period between the world wars that radically altered the American kitchen.

Health and Sanitation
Bon Ami advertisement.
"No Hiding Place for Germs". Health and sanitation sold products in the 1920s and '30s much as "green" does today, so sellers emphasized hygiene and cleanliness in their advertising. The flu pandemic of 1918-19 on top of the adulterated and impure food scandals1 of the early 1900s badly frightened the country and a created a national clamor for better health and sanitation. It was, as many trends have been both before and after, fueled by widespread advertising hoping to sell more products. Like today's fervor for everything "green", in the 1920s and '30s it was everything "hygenic". If my product was more hygenic than your product, people would buy more of my product. Consequently, everything was suddenly "more sanitary", "healthier" and "cleaner", or at very least "polished", "sparkling" or "gleaming". Listerine was essential for clean breath, and Johnson Wax for sanitary floors — which were not really clean unless they were "Spic and Span®".

Warnings against the more odious personal habits, such as spitting on the sidewalk ("You cannot expect to rate if you expectorate!") appeared on trams, billboards and posters, alongside exhortations to weekly bathing, and daily teeth cleaning. Spitoons disappeared from restaurants, bars and hotel lobbies almost overnight. In 1890 they were everywhere, by 1910 they had become curiosities. The federal government through the Public Health Service was fully behind the sanitation movement as was the Department of Agriculture as part of its mandate to improve living conditions on America's farms.
Familiar Foods From the Arts & Crafts Era

Most of the "Modern" foods you buy everyday are not that modern. Many of our most familiar brands originated during the Arts & Crafts period.
1900s1910s1920s1930s
1900
• Jell-O gelatin
• Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar
• Wesson Oil
• Chiclets chewing gum
• Hill's Bros. Coffee
• Egg Cream (which contains neither egg nor cream) invented by Louis Auster in Brooklyn (disputed)
• The term "hot dog" referring to a sausage in a bun allegedly coined by cartoonist Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (disputed)

1901
• NECCO Wafers
• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich invented by Julia Davis Chandler (disputed)

1902
• Karo Corn Syrup
• Cracker Jack
• Presto self-rising cake flour

1903
• Dole canned pineapple

1904
• Quaker Puf­fed Cer­eal
• Swans Down Cake Flour
• Campbell's Pork & Beans
• French's Mustard
• Dr. Pepper
• Tea bag invented by Thomas Sullivan
• Banana split created by David Strickler who continued to sell the concoction in his pharmacy until 19651

1905
• Heinz Baked Beans
• Royal Crown Cola
• Ovaltine
• Popsicle created by Frank Epperson. The "popsicle stick", widely used in crafts, has become as famous as the frozen treat.

1906
• Hebrew National frankfurters
• Planter's Nuts
• A-1 Steak Sauce
• Kelloggs Corn Flakes

1907
• LeSeur canned baby peas
• Hershey Kisses
• Canada Dry Ginger Ale

1908
• Hershey chocolate bar with almonds 		1910
• Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour
• Hydrox cookies
• Post Toasties
• Melitta drip coffeemaker,
• Chipped Beef on Toast appears in the "Manual for Army Cooks" and immediately was renamed "s__t on a shingle" by unhappy GIs.

1911
• Crisco vegetable shortening
• Domino brand sugar
• Mazola corn oil
• Electric waffle iron

1912
• Hellman's may­on­naise
• Oreo cookies
• Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce
• Morton Table Salt
• Whitman Sampler
• Thousand Island Dressing invented by Sophia LaLonde (disputed)
• Lorna Doon cookies
• Scoville Scale for measuring the "hot" in hot peppers introduced
• Cracker Jack includes "a prize in every package"

1913
• Peppermint Life Savers
• Mallomars
• Quaker Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat cereals

1914
• Reuben sandwich
• First electric refrigerator for commerical use

1915
• Kellogg's 40% Bran Flakes
• Pyrex glass baking dishes introduced by Corning

1916
• Nathan's Famous frankfurters
• Fortune Cookie invented by George Jung

1917
• Moon Pies
• Clark Bars

1919
• Hostess Snack Cakes
• Nestlé Milk Chocolate Bar
• KitchenAid Mixer2 		1920
• La Choy Food Products
• Eskimo Pie
• Good Humor ice cream bar
• Baby Ruth & Oh Henry! candy bars
• Marshmallow Fluff

1921
• Pre-sliced Wonder Bread
• Welsh's grape jel­ly
• Betty Crocker cake mixes
• Land O'Lakes butter
• Sanka freeze dried decaffeinated coffee
• White Castle Drive-in, home of the "belly bomb"
• Quaker Quick oatmeal

1922
• Girl Scout Cookies
• Gummi Bears
• Clark Bar candy bar
• Klondike ice cream bar

1923
• Pet Canned Milk
• Welch's grape jelly
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
• Mounds candy bar
• Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink

1924
• Wheaties
• Bit-O-Honey candy bar
• fruit-flavored Life Savers
• Beech-Nut Coffee
• Caesar Salad

1925
• Mr. Goodbar
• Jolly Time Popcorn ("Guaranteed to pop.")

1926
• Milk Duds
• Breyer's Ice Cream
• Pop-up Toastmaster toaster

1927
• Gerber's baby food

1928
• Peter Pan Pea­nut But­ter
• Velveeta processed cheese
• Rice Krispies
• Progresso soups
• Nehi soft drinks
• Butterfingers
• Heath bars
• Kool-Aid invented by Nebraskan Ed Perkins
• Pez

1929
• Gerber baby food
• Oscar Meyer Wieners
• Karmelkorn
• Snickers
• Twizzlers
• 7-Up
• Wax paper milk cartons
• Kentucky Fried Chicken 		1930
• Twinkies
• Mott's Apple Sauce
• Philly Cheese Steak
• Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail
• Birdseye frozen foods appear in stores
• Faberware Electric Percolator
• Pre-sliced Wonder bread

1931
• Beech-Nut Baby Food
• Bisquick
• Wyler's Bouillon Cubes
• Tootsie Pops
• Chryst-O-Mint Life Savers
• Alka Seltzer
• Sunbeam "Mixmaster" mixer3

1932
• Fritos corn chips
• Skippy Peanut Butter
• 3 Musketeers bar
• Heath bar
• Pablum baby food

1933
• Nestlé Toll-House Cookies
• Miracle Whip Salad Dressing
• Campbell's Chicken Noodle & Cream of Mushrrom soups
• Waring "Miracle Mixer" Blender

1934
• Pet Evaporated Milk
• Ritz Crackers
• Hawaiian Punch

1935
• Adolph's Meat Tenderizer
• Kit Kat Bar
• ReaLemon Lemon Juice
• 5-Flavor Life savers

1936
• Jell-O Instant Chocolate Pudding
• Hungry Jack Pancake Mix
• Mars Almond Bar

1937
• Kraft Mac­aro­ni and Cheese din­ner
• SPAM lunch meat
• Kix cereal
• Ragu Spaghetti Sauce
• Krispy Kreme Donuts

1938
• Lawry's Seasoned Salt
• Mott's Apple Juice
• Nescafé Instant Coffee
• Tupperware

1939
• Lay's Potato Chips
• Cream of Wheat
1 The Food Chronology, James Trager [Henry Holt:New York] 1995;
2 The Kitchen Aid mixer design never changed. Attachments made for the original 1919 mixer still fit today's models. It is, as far as we know, the only kitchen appliance to have itw own fan club.
3 The most widely owned kitchen appliance in history, and the only small appliance to ever appear on a U.S. Postage stamp.

Sources: The Food Chronology, James Trager [Henry Holt:New York] 1995; The Century in Food: America's Fads and Favorites, Beverly Bundy [Collectors Press:Portland OR] 2002; Candy: The Sweet History , Beth Kimmerle [Collector's Press:Portland OR] 2003


Food was a very big part of the health and hygiene movement. Food scandals of the late 19th century prompted the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906. The Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, later recast as the Food and Drug Administration was given the job of ensuring food safety. It was very active, and very effective. There had already been 12,000 seizures and prosecutions by 1924, and it quickly became clear to all that the federal government was not kidding around about food safety. As a result, in the 1920s people started to have much more confidence in processed foods, and began buying a lot more of them.

Processed foodstuffs that could be stored for long periods were becoming universally available. Kellogg's Corn flakes became a breakfast staple just a few years after its introduction in 1906 and Wheaties was already the "Breakfast of Campbells Soup Advertisement Mmmm, mmmm, Good. In 1928 there were 21 varieties of Campbell's condensed soups selling for 12¢ each. The price later declined to 10¢ for all but some premium soups. Campbell's was already a staple in just about every American middle-class household by the mid-1920s. Champions" by 1930. Condensed canned soups replaced the soup pot on the stove. Canned soups were thought to be healthier, and they certainly were much more convenient.

A huge and growing range of canned vegetables and fruits meant that American diets no longer depended on what happened to be in season locally. The Jolly Green Giant became the symbol of the Minnesota Valley Canning Company in 1928, and his familiar, deep throated, "ho ho ho" a radio staple in the 1930s. The character is one of the most recognizable brand icons of the 20th century, second only to Ronald McDonald. The Del Monte brand of California fruits and vegetables came to dominate much of the canned produce market by the mid-1930s due in no small part to consumer confidence in California's very strict food quality and safety laws.

By the end of the Arts & Craft era, exotic foods, many virtually unknown to Americans just a few decades earlier, such as apricots, mangos and pineapple, had become commonplace in the corner grocery, neatly tucked in their gleaming, sanitary, government-regulated cans, and available year 'round for as little as 5¢.

Universal Electrification
Indoor plumbing was the technology that transformed Victorian kitchens and brought the bathroom indoors. In the Arts & Crafts age, it was universal electricity.

In 1900 only a few major cities could boast electricity, but by 1940 all but the most remote communities were electrified, in no small part due to the New Deal's Rural Electric Administration. Electricity powered lights, fans and, most importantly, refrigerators.

Del Monte Canned Peas Ad A canned peas magazine ad from Del Monte. California had such strict food safety and quality laws that consumers had considerable confidence in fruits and vegetables grown and packed in the Golden State, and bought a lot of them. Del Monte was the premier brand name of the state's largest produce canning cooperative. Home Refrigeration General Electric introduced the first widely accepted home refrigerator in 1925, the "Monitor Top". The compressor motor was housed in a cylinder (the "monitor") on top of the actual refrigerator. One million Monitors were sold by 1931 for $230.00 each. This might sound cheap. It wasn't. In today's dollars it would be about $3,000. You could buy a new Ford for about the same price.

But, it did not take long for competitors to challenge GE's dominance of the field. Westinghouse, Maytag, Kelvinator, Norge, Sears-Kenmore and, especially, Fridigaire introduced more streamlined refrigerators that moved the compressor motor inside the refrigerator cabinet. This much quieter design became the model for all future home refrigerators. As the century progressed, the two-ice-tray freezer compartment had grown large enough to hold ice cream and frozen foods. By the late 1930's Frigidaire dominated much of the market. In fact, the Frigidaire name became so closely associated with home refrigeration that the name became part of the vernacular. In many parts of the U.S. any refrigerator is still called a "frigidaire" no matter who makes it.

Click to enlarge.
Click to Enlarge
 Appliance makers published pamphlets and booklets that showed housewives how to use the new electric devices, complete with recipes and hints on how to store leftovers. Many of these were packaged inside the new appliance. GE published "The Silent Hostess Treasure Book" (1930), Westinghouse "The Refrigerator Book" (1933), and Frigidaire "Famous Dishes from Every State (1936).

Refrigerator purchases were encouraged by the federal government. Under Title I of the National Housing Act of 1934, the government subsidized low interest loans to homeowners looking to improve their houses and add modern conveniences. Local electric utilities, seeking more electricity customers, often sold large appliances at barely above cost; or stimulated their purchase with rebates and rate discounts.

At the turn of the 20th century, mechanical home refrigeration was a engineering curiosity. But, four decades later, by the eve of World War II, 44% of American homes, about 15 million households, had at least one mechanical refrigerator, and a growing number were equipped with a separate food freezer.

Commercial Refrigeration Even more important to the American diet, however, was commercial refrigeration.

Refrigerated rail cars made importation of fresh foods from distant parts of the country reliable and safe. Produce companies, such as the Western Fruit Express and Fruit Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmer's Bulletin 1513 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
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 By the 1920's everyone, including the government, was tinkering with kitchen design. Most of the advice in this pamphlet seems plain common sense to us today, but in the 1920s it was revolutionary. To read the entire bulletin, and other bulletins from the period published by the US-DOA, please go to the Google Digital Library. Growers Express transported citrus fruits, lettuce, asparagus, watermelons, cantaloupes, green onions, strawberries, peaches, nectarines, cherries and tomatoes grown in California and Florida and apples from Washington State as much a 3,000 miles in refrigerated rail cars or "reefers" attached to fast, cross-country, passenger trains. Oranges in December became a common sight at the grocery by 1930 — and a welcome addition to every child's Christmas stocking.

As the old ice wagons began to disappear, refrigerated delivery trucks took their place, By the end of the 1930s the, white-uniformed Good Humor Man in his jingling ice-cream truck had already become an icon of American pop culture and the summer-day hero of every kid with a nickel in his pocket.

Milk trucks with on-board refrigerators appeared in most cities by 1925. Milk was packaged in sanitary, sealed, bottles, and not ladeled from dusty crocks; and by 1937 the familiar disposable wax milk carton was coming into use to replace the returnable bottle. A number of studies had shown that the disposable carton was more sanitary and less liely to promote disease. The milkman delivered not just milk and cream, but many other products that needed to be chilled: eggs, cheese, butter, yogurt, fruit juice and sometimes soft drinks. His daily rounds saved the busy homemaker the bother of a trip to the grocery for perishables.

At the grocery store, freezers, cold rooms and refrigerated displays meant that food could be kept fresh until it was sold, vastly reducing spoilage and waste. Glass-fronted self-service coolers and open-top freezers were in common use in the 1930s as chain supermarkets began to replace the corner grocery by offering more variety at lower prices.

Organization and Efficiency
The focus on a better organized life ("A place for everything, and everything in its place") started during Victorian times, but peaked during the inter-war period. It was the impetus for Hoosier-style cabinets, designed to better organize food preparation and make it more efficient. A great variety of what we now call kitchen organizers were on the market. Popular homemaker magazines such as Better HOmes and Gardens published articles by "efficiency experts" on kitchen design and organization.

Kitchens were starting to be recognized as meal production centers where principles of industrial design and ergonomics applied. As early as the 1920s Lillian Moller Gilbreth, a psychologist and industrial engineer, began applying rudimentary ergonomic principles to household work using time and motion studies. These led to her later invention of the kitchen work triangle that became the cornerstone of kitchen design for the next half century. In 1925, Katharine A. Fisher, director of the Good Housekeeping Institute, author, and columnist for Good Housekeeping Magazine, started a series of columns about grouping kitchen tasks according to purpose and materials. The focus of her idea of an orderly kitchen was the cabinet workspace that held all the things
A Workingman's Weekly Food Basket
From 1900 to 1940
Weekly Cost of Food During the Arts & Crafts Period
Food Item19001910192019301940
1 lb. apples 0.10 0.11 0.11 0.11 0.05
2 lbs. roast 0.36 0.38 0.82 0.82 0.62
3 lbs. steak 0.48 0.60 1.41 1.44 1.23
1 lb. bread 0.05 0.05 0.12 0.09 0.09
1 lb. butter 0.27 0.39 0.71 0.46 0.41
2 lbs. chicken 0.39 0.57 0.32 1.11 0.90
1 lb. coffee 0.16 0.20 0.43 0.37 0.22
1 doz. eggs 0.23 0.36 0.76 0.52 0.42
1 gal. milk 0.20 0.34 0.66 0.62 0.56
2 bu. potatoes 0.61 0.40 0.66 0.38 0.25
1 lb. rice 0.36 0.08 0.17 0.09 0.07
1 lb. sugar 0.36 0.05 0.18 0.06 0.08
total 2.98 3.53 7.37 6.07 4.90
Wkly Wage 9.40 12.08 28.56 28.65 26.70
Food as a % of Wkly Wage 31.7% 29.2% 25.8% 21.2% 18.4%
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, 2 vols.
required to accomplish a particular task: ingredients, implements, spices, bowls and cutlery. Her concept of a "task-centric" workspace, is today a key element of modern kitchen design.

Advertising began to portray the kitchen in industrial terms, as a "production center" for meals, with the housewife as its superintendent. Ads in popular magazines promoted labor-saving tools and devices as critical to "the business" of food preparation. University research centers began studying household ergonomics, eventually leading to the establishment of the Small Homes Council to research housing issues at the University of Illinois in 1944.

Jell-O Ad with Recipes This Jell-O add from 1915 featured colorful dessert recipes. Recipe booklets were free, and recipe contests challenged homemakers to come up with new and innovative ways to use Jell-O. To encourage use, Jell-O often gave away aluminum Jell-O molds at demonstrations of the product inside grocery stores. A well-organized kitchen actually became something of a national obsession. The middle-class housewife of the Arts & Crafts era did not usually have full-time servants and would be doing most of the domestic chores herself, as well as watching the children and taking care of the garden. These added roles meant that it would not be possible to use most of the day preparing, serving and cleaning up after meals. In response, the Arts & Crafts homemaker was quick to adopt almost any labor-saving device or practice that reduced her time in the kitchen. The upshot was that meal preparation and cleanup, which required an average of 44 hours per week in 1900, had dropped to under 20 hours in 1939.

But while labor saving devices, and better organization made major contributions to more efficient meal production, the biggest time- and work-saver of all were pre-packaged foods. Processed foods were heavily promoted by food companies for their "ease", "speed", "simplicity" and "efficiency". And, the fact is, they were every one of these things, and ever busier housewives were quick to take advantage of them.

Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge

 1932 magazine advertisement for Bisquick. Bisquick, a mixture of flour, salt and baking soda, allowed baking, especially biscuits and pie crusts, in one easy step. Add an egg or two and blend. SPAM, a mixture of pork products and seasonings, came packaged in a revolutionary vacuum can, ready to heat, slice and eat. It could be kept on the shelf for seven years without spoiling (which made it ideal as a staple of GI mess halls during the World War). It entered the national diet almost overnight.

The dinnertime icons, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Ragu Prepared Spaghetti Sauce, were introduced in 1937, a decade after Gerber premiered its puréed baby foods with "heat and eat" simplicity.

Jell-O, appeared in 1900 in six fruit flavors. It was an enormous hit with American homewives. Colorful recipe booklets, free for the asking, seemed to offer endless new ways to serve the chilled, shimmering dessert. Jell-O instant pudding followed in 1936; add milk, "heat, chill and eat". It put pudding on the nation's menu.

After 1928 an ice-cold pitcher of Kool-Aid was a stock item in nearly every summertime refrigerator. At 5¢, for two quarts of the sugar-sweetened, fruit-flavored, soft drink, with vitamin D added, it was a Depression-era bargain — and still is.

In fact, almost all of these packaged processed foods, in addition to being simple to prepare, healthy, nutritious,and quick, were very easy on the budget.

Food cost as a percentage of an American's wages plummeted during the Arts & Crafts period, in no small part due to the revolution in processing, packaging and transportation. At the turn of the century a workingman spent nearly 1/3rd of his wages feeding his family. By 1940 that cost had declined to just over 18% and was still falling. Today it is about 13%. At the same time, an increasing variety of wholesome, healthy food — both fresh and packaged — was available throughout the year in all but the most remote parts of the country and, after 1930, many basic foods such as milk and bread were fortified with vitamins and other nutrition supplements.

Sunbeam T-9 Automatic Toaster The T-9 "Toatsmaster" Automatic Toaster designed in 1939 by George Scharfenberg for Sunbeam Corporation. In bright, sanitary chrome and Bakelite, this toaster remained in production until the 1950s. This vastly improved national diet contributed materially to better overall health in North America. Dietary deficiency diseases that had plagued mankind since the dawn of time were in steep decline by 1941, and within the next decade all but disappeared in most parts of the United States. Life expectancy rose sharply. A male baby born in 1900 in the U.S. could expect to live just 48 years — a number barely changed since the Middle Ages. But, by 1941 his expected life span was 63 years — the largest increase in life-expectancy since record-keeping began.

Cabinets and Storage
The massive shift toward refrigerated, canned, frozen and dry foods that could be kept for days, weeks, even months meant that some place to store all this food had become a critical need in American kitchens by the eve of the World War. There simply was no place to put all the food.

Adding to the problem was the dramatic increase in the number of kitchen utensils and small appliances. The pop-up toaster, waffle maker, blender and electric mixer had all become common kitchen features, as had the electric percolator. By the mid-1930s not only were small appliances vastly improved over earlier, utilitarian models, they were becoming stylish. Sleek, rounded and chromed, they could be brought right to the table. Some became icons of industrial design. The 1930 Art-Deco Sunbeam Mixmaster remained virtually unchanged well into the 1960s and has now been revived under a new name with modern innards, but the same 1930s "retro" look. It is the only small appliance ever to have appeared on a U.S. postage stamp. The Sunbeam T-series "Toastmaster" toaster enjoyed the same longevity. The 1930s design was made well into the post-war period.

Hoosier Cabinet advertisement. Hoosier made the very first hygienic kitchen workstations in compact, well-organized cabinets.
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 The Hoosier Cabinet combined all of the prevailing trends of the Arts & Crafts period. It was organized, efficient and hygenic with cleverly designed storage and easily cleaned, sanitary work surfaces. In many early period kitchens, this was all the cabinetry there was. The answer to the pressing need for more kitchen storage was the built-in or "fitted" kitchen cabinet. By the second half of the 1930s, some sort of built-in cabinetry was standard in most new kitchens, and every homemaker with an older kitchen aspired to the new style of kitchen with numerous built-in cabinets that was pictured in contemporary advertisements. Listering Advertisement Without Listerine you had no chance at romance in the 1930s.

National-scale cabinet factories did not exist before 1945. Cabinetmaking during the Arts & Crafts era was primarily a local enterprise. A skilled cabinetmaker built cabinets on site, first locating the kitchen sink under a window (for keeping an eye on the kids in the yard), then building pantries and cupboards to fit around appliances. Sometimes his efforts were guided by an architect or designer, but more often not. By today's standards the storage was often primitive, awkward and inconvenient. But some of it was ingenious. Adjustable shelves, slide-out trays on wooden glides, fresh bread drawers with zinc liners and pull-out cutting boards were common, and often cleverly designed and well-built — very well-built as anyone who has ever had to tear out these cabinets will readily, but unhappily, attest.

It took the post-war housing boom to bring industrial-scale cabinetmaking into full bloom. During the Arts & Crafts period the only "factory cabinets" advertised in national media were Hoosier-style all-in-one baking centers. But the basic cabinet standards that made large scale cabinet manufacturing possible after the World War were developed during the Arts & Crafts period. Cabinet dimensions such as the standard 36" countertop height, 24" deep base cabinets and 12" deep wall cabinets were all well established by 1941.

The late Arts & Crafts kitchen had evolved far beyond the its spare, utilitarian Victorian beginnings. It had become a efficient meal preparation and cleanup center with cold and dry storage, distinct preparation areas, running water, electricity, and even sanitary waste disposal. General Electric had already invented and was selling the kitchen sink disposer that was later to become a market leader as the "Disposall". Still not quite the modern kitchen of today, but very close, and it took little more than a firm design nudge after the World War to bring about the fully modern kitchen in thousands upon thousands of post-war suburban homes.

The Contemporary Arts & Crafts Kitchen
Today's Arts & Crafts kitchen is only a distant relative of the actual kitchens of the Arts & Crafts period. In fact, the contemporary kitchen is more accurately a modern kitchen in the Arts & Crafts style. What kitchen designers have done is take the best design elements of the Arts & Crafts house and combine them with modern kitchen features to produce a hybrid kitchen that looks and feels like it could have been completely at home in an Arts & Crafts period house. But it is anything but historically accurate. And if it were, no one would want it.

Fortunately Arts & Crafts kitchens were usually fairly large because as well as cooking and washing up, they were often the place where laundry was done. The sink and washboard gave way to the wringer washer once electricity was available, and the laundry was often moved to a porch or the basement. A built-in drop-down ironing board was a standard feature. With the laundry moved elsewhere in the modern home, the Our Arts & Crafts Kitchens — A Heritage Preserved
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 Our updated Arts & Crafts kitchen follow the Arts & Crafts design philosophy and include period detailing without slavishly copying any particular Arts & Crafts style.

Contact us to get started on your hierloom kitchen, ironing board recess has often been converted to a cup and glassware cupboard or spice cabinet — and in its new role is very functional. The fairly generous footprint of the Arts & Crafts kitchen makes it easier to modernize the kitchen without adding on.

Wall Treatments: By the 1920s and on into the 1930s, hygiene and sanitation were key elements of the Arts & Crafts kitchen. Above all else, any kitchen feature needed to be easily cleaned and unlikely to harbor germs. Ceramic tile was a favored material. A tile wainscot was a common feature — often extending up the wall to as high as 56". Tile was hygenic and easy to keep clean. The walls above the tile were painted in durable, washable enamel paint. Wallpaper in kitchens was not sanitary, and, therefore, less often used. If more decoration was wanted, stencils were used to paint designs on the walls.

Arts & Crafts Craftsman Doors. Arts & Crafts cabinet door styles reflect the patterns used in period furniture and window sashes. The door on the left is quarter-sawn white oak. The middle door is plain-sawn and, therefore, not as authentic. The door on the right is cherrywood - rare in the Midwest, but more common on the East Coast. For more Arts & Crafts cabinet door styles, see Cabinet Door Styles. Unlike the rest of the house, usually painted in somber earth tones, the most common colors for both tile and paint in kitchens were pastels. Contemporary illustrations show various shades of peach, yellow, pale green and light blue. Many of the colors we usually associate with post-war modernism were already well established in the Arts & Crafts kitchen palette: aqua, turquoise, peach, lemon yellow and nearly every shade of pink. Colors were frequently banded. One color to about midway up the windows, another color up to the top of the window, and a third color in the frieze above the window. Often the color bands were separated by horizontal mouldings. Where a tile wainscot was used, the tile was often bordered in a contrasting color. Peach and aqua were popular combinations.

Cabinets: Original Arts & Crafts kitchens were work rooms where cooking and cleaning up was done. They were not "public" rooms that guests entered, so they were very utilitarian. While the trend today is toward stained fine wood kitchen cabinets, the cabinets of the actual period were usually pine, painted in light, "sanitary" colors. White was by far the most popular — not usually a bright "hospital" white, a slightly "off white". Variations of white were also used: cream, eggshell, ivory were popular.

The elegant, fine wood cabinets you see in the modern interpretation of the Arts & Crafts kitchen cabinet did not originate in the kitchen, but in the more public living and dining rooms of the period. Fine hardwood was a feature of built-in living room and dining room furniture and fireplace mantels. However, since kitchens now have become public rooms, upgraded cabinet wood is a appropriate interpretation. But whether painted pine or carefully finished hardwoods, Arts & Crafts cabinet styles are distinctive. The cabinets typically feature a flat 1- or 2-panel door with The Three Faces of Oak

Oak boards

How oak is sawn affects its appear­ance and price. Rift oak is characterized by straight, close-set, parallel grain; quartersawn by straight grain with perpendicular "flecks" (sometimes called "flakes"). The darker the wood is stained, the more obvious the flecks become. Flat- or plain-sawn oak has a coarse arched or "cathedral" grain. It is the most common cut because it produces the most usable wood, but it is rarely seen in Arts & Crafts furnishings or cabinets.

Quartersawing wastes more wood and is therefore pricier, but much more authentic. Rift sawn oak is rare. Few logs are deliberately rift sawn. Rift sawn boards are produced in the process of quartersawing. Rift and quarter boards are often mixed together as "quarter­sawn" oak, so it pays to look at each board before you buy it. square, unadorned frame. Edge profiling typical of the Victorian era is almost completely absent except in very early kitchens. Raised-panel and flush cabinet doors are inconsistent with the period, as are arched-panel doors. Glass-panel doors are, however, appropriate, especially with art or stained glass. Many architect-designed Prairie-style cabinet doors and drawers are more elaborate, but still rather plain.

Generally, each part of the country used wood that was common to its area. Use of local materials was a key tenet of the Arts & Crafts philosophy. Oak was the most frequent wood of choice in the Midwest: usually red oak, either rift cut or quartersawn. Although major cabinet manufacturers often use flat sawn oak in most of their Craftsman cabinets, it is not actually authentic to the period. Rift or quartersawn elm and chestnut are also good choices. Cherrywood was not commonly found in Arts & Crafts houses in the Midwest, but was fairly common in the East. Similarly, walnut was more common in the far West and was the staple of Greene & Greene cabinetry and furnishings on the West Coast. Straight-grain, Douglas Fir is also a good choice. It was used to build period kitchen cabinets because it was cheap at the time, not so any longer. But it makes a beautiful cabinet and is a staple of Japanese cabinetmaking. Light colored woods, such as maple, should be used only if they are painted. Whatever the wood, it should be well figured, high quality wood. The color and grain of the wood was considered all the decoration needed in Arts & Crafts cabinetry. Photo: Zinc Countertop Pro. Zinc countertops were used widely in Arts & Crafts and Craftsman kitchen and baths. Zinc Countertop with integral sink.

Countertops: Early countertops were often linoleum or what was then often called "oil cloth". Linoleum works well as flooring, but it doesn't suffer the kind of abuse a countertop gets, and has to be replaced frequently. It is not a good choice for today's kitchen. Wood countertops were common, especially where any cutting was done. If stone was used, it was typically a local stone such as limestone, or, in upscale kitchens, soapstone or slate imported from the East. Artificial stone will work if the color is kept dark to look a little like soapstone or slate.

Laminates were invented in the early 20th century by Formica and found their way into many late Arts & Crafts homes, often with wood banding on the edges. Zinc was a common countertop treatment during Victorian times, and was carried over into the Arts & Crafts era. Zinc countertops are still being made. Ceramic and stone tile are also an available countertop surface. At the time tile was more common for floors, but it does not take much imagination to translate it to countertops.

It was common in the early Craftsman period to use tables as work surfaces, and these could have been fitted with an enamel-on-steel working surface. "Porceliron" was a common trade name for the material. Enamel-on-steel tended to chip, so unmarred examples are difficult to find, and auction prices are climbing for exceptional pieces. The working surfaces of Hoosier cabinets were also often enamel-on-steel. Painted Arts & Crafts Craftsman kitchen. The typical Arts & Crafts kitchen color palette was brighter that the somber colors used through the rest of the Craftsman home. This bright, well-lit Arts & Crafts kitchen features shallow painted custom cabinetry made to fit the space. The bump-out at the sink allows the use of an inexpensive standard sink and full-size faucet. The laminate countertops are a close approximation of soapstone. The period lamps are from our favorite house part seller, Rejuvenation.

Flooring: In the immediate post-Victorian period, bare wood floors were common, sometimes waxed, mostly not. By the 1920s kitchen floors were often painted pine. Most paint companies of Can We Build an Arts & Crafts Kitchen for You?
If you live in North American, we can help you with your kitchen design and build high-quality custom hardwood cabinets true to the Arts & Crafts tradition for your new kitchen.

We make the process simple and inexpensive. We can work through your local kitchen designer, your remodeling contractor, or directly with you.

See how to order designs and cabinets from us here. the time offered various shades of a floor paint in such hues as orange, brown, gray and maroon. The sanitation movement meant that floors had to be hygenic, which meant weekly cleaning and monthly waxing in many homes. Yearly repainting as part of general Spring Cleaning was recommended by paint companies — although it was very inconvenient since it usually took more than a week for the paint to dry. Painted floors are not durable enough for the modern kitchen, although we have done some. It is especially appropriate where the original flooring is in good shape but stained and discolored to the extent that the color cannot be restored. Figure on repainting every two or three years — more often in high traffic areas. Fortunately, today's floor paint dries overnight.

Hardwood flooring was sometimes used, primarily in upscale homes. If used it was usually strip and plank wood (usually red oak). Hardwood is a good choice for today's kitchen since modern finishes give excellent protection against water damage. Stone tile (typically slates), ceramic tile or true linoleum are also authentic, and excellent choices. Vinyl sheet flooring can simulate linoleum, although true linoleum is nonce again available. The Arts & Crafts Society offers a slide show of linoleum patterns common in the 1930s. While most of these are no longer made, the show gives you a good idea of what your great-grandmother thought was trendy.

Most Requested Feature: We have never seen an original Arts & Crafts kitchen cabinet with a glass door. But glass doors were common in built-in dining room breakfronts. Kitchen designers simply adopted the style of of these glass doors and Craftsman windows to kitchen cabinets. Glass is common in reproduction Arts & Crafts kitchens, particularly stained or art glass in Arts & Crafts and Art Deco designs.

It may not be original, but it is authentic, and the most requested kitchen feature of Arts & Crafts kitchen renovations. Put a little low-voltage light inside the cabinets, and you have a built-in display case for grandma's Irish china.

The Arts & Crafts Bathroom
In the early part of the Arts & Crafts era, the bath was merely a continuation of the Victorian bathroom with its stand-alone claw-foot tub and wall-mounted lavatory sink. This was often a very monochromatic room — with a subway tile wainscot, white floor tile and painted white wood trim. Arts & Crafts Craftsman Bathroom This updated bath in a traditional Four-Square house makes liberal use of modern fixtures while preserving the Arts & CraftS design philosophy and using traditional Arts & Crafts materials and techniques. The design is an interpretation rather than a slavish copy, but it fits the house very well. For more information on this kitchen see "Redefining the Arts & Crafts Bath". Toward the end of the era, alcove bathtubs combined with pedestal lavatories were becoming the standard and bathrooms began to blend in more modern art-deco design elements and modern touches such as a tiled shower and vanities.

Photo: Duravit Arts & Crafts Craftsman Painted Bath Arts & Crafts bath fixtures are still available from a number of manufacturers. Many have been in continuous production since the early part of the 20th century. Here is Duravit's 1930 Series of updated reproduction fixtures, in white. Heavy, bright chrome was the most common finish for faucets and white enamel for sinks, tubs and toilets. Chrome was a relatively new finish at the time, and expensive. It was much more durable and lasted much longer than the polished nickel plating of the Victorian era, so it quickly became the standard. Today's more durable nickel plating and polished brass would also work well. Toward the end of the period, pastel porcelain fixtures were just starting to become available. These colors, including turquoise, peach lemon-lemon and hot pink, were to become closely associated with post-war modernism in tens of thousands of Cape Cod and post-war Colonial houses. However, most of these colors actually originated during the late Arts & Crafts era.

Floors: Photo: Pratt and Larson Ceramics Arts & Crafts Craftsman Tiled Bath Decorative tiles can add an Arts & Crafts look when carefully combined with modern ceramic or porcelain tile. Flooring should be ceramic tile. Ceramic manufacturers produced distinctive tile colors and designs during the Arts & Crafts period that are forever associated with the era. Characterized by extremely glossy finishes, period tiles are still made by most tile companies as well as boutique tile makers who specialize in period tiles. It is often not possible to use only specialty period tiles without shattering the budget, but a a border or medallion of these period tiles adds a distinctive Arts & Crafts period flavor to a period bath.

Wood bathroom floors were uncommon in the Arts & Crafts period. Wood finishes did not protect the wood well enough for use in a wet area like a bathroom. But great strides in wood finishes now make the use of wood floors practical in bathrooms, and we are seeing more and more wood in designer Arts & Crafts baths. Not actually authentic, but true to the Arts & Crafts philosophy of using natural materials where possible.

Walls: Walls should include a tile or panel wainscot. Tile is more typical, but painted breadboard wainscot was also common. If wainscot was not used, the lower wall was often painted a different color than the upper part of the wall, and the two sections separated with an applied moulding.

Mouldings: All Arts & Crafts mouldings were simple and lacking the often intricate ornamentation of the Victorian Era. But they were almost always heavy and deep. A base moulding 8" tall and 7/8" thick was not uncommon (compared to the current standard of 3 1/2" tall and 3/8" thick). Window and door casing should be wide, often with back banding. Wood mouldings would normally be painted, but sometimes varnished woods typical of the period were used: oak, elm and gum.
Footnotes:
1 The results of Upton Sinclair's undercover investigation of the meat packing industry were published in his novel, The Jungle in 1905. Outraged public reaction compelled President Theodore Roosevelt to send federal inspectors to meat packing plants, and what they found resulted in the Meat Inspection and the Pure Food and Drug Acts of 1906 that created the Food and Drug Administration to ensure food safety.

Sinclair's was neither the first nor the last expose that finally compelled the governemtn to take remedial action. Rachel Carson's The Silent Sprint virtually created the the grassroots environmental movement and led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The 1965 publication of Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Spped led Congress to unanimously pass the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act establishing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and marked a historic shift in responsibility for automobile safety from the consumer to the manufacturer which still exists today.

But, of course, the ultimate expose novel is still Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe published in 1852. The book's emotional portrayal of the impact of slavery aroused abolitionist sentament in the North and enraged the South, eventually leading to the Civil War and the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States.


Arts & Crafts Resources
We do not endorse any product or service appearing in this listing, nor to we accept compensation of any kind for listing a business, product or service. If you feel your organization, product or service should be listed here, please contact us. Generally, you must be located in North America, have an Arts & Crafts related product or service of interest to our readers, and a working web site that describes or illustrates the product or service. We do not accept listings from directories, search services or referral sites.

Associations
The Arts & Crafts Society of Central New York The Arts and Crafts Society of Central New York is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of the Arts and Crafts Movement through a schedule of lectures, symposia, tours and other educational programs for the purpose of increasing awareness of this rich cultural heritage and stimulating interest in its preservation. Colorado Arts & Crafts Society CACS is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to the preservation and study of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Colorado. Historic Chicago Bungalow Association Fosters an appreciation of the Chicago Bungalow as a distinctive housing type, encourages sympathetic rehabilitation of Chicago Bungalows, and assists Bungalow owners with adapting their homes to current needs, which in turn helps to strengthen Chicago Bungalow neighborhoods. Twin Cities Bungalow Club Is dedicated to fostering an appreciation for these charming and livable early 20th century homes. "We are committed to preserving Bungalows and other Arts & Crafts style homes of the era along with the neighborhoods they occupy; to learning their history; and to exploring the furnishings and decorative objects that filled them." Membership required.
The William Morris Society in the United States Founded in New York in 1971 as an affiliate of the UK William Morris Society, the William Morris Society in the United States strives to publicize the life and work of William Morris and his associates in coordinate the Morris Societies in the UK and Canada, and distribute UK and US Newsletters and a biannual Journal of William Morris Studies.    
Furnishings
American Furnishings Hand crafted furniture, lighting, pottery, glasswork and accessories in the Arts & Crafts style. Berkeley Mills Furniture Furniture made to order in styles including Arts & Crafts, Prairie and Japanese. Buffalo Cabinet Company Accurate recreations of Arts & Crafts furniture, handmade in solid wood. Cassina USA Sole worldwide licensee of Mackintosh furniture designs.
Clear Lake Furniture This traditional furniture and cabinetry shop makes its handmade furnishing the old way — one craftsman builds the entire piece from selecting the wood to hand finishing. Customizable catalog or custom designed. Cold River Furniture Hand made wood furniture in the Arts & Crafts style. While inspired by the masters of the Arts & Crafts period, Limbert, Mackintosh and Wright, this furniture is a reinterpretation rather than a reproduction. Design services available. Craftsmen Hardware
Authentic, hand-hammered copper hardware in the Arts & Crafts style		 The Craftsman Home Arts & Crafts furniture, lighting, ceramics, artwork, textiles, metalwork and interior design services.
Darrell Peart, Furnituremaker Beautiful hand-made reproduction furniture of the California Arts & Crafts period, with heavy emphasis on Greene & Greene influenced stylings. Kevin Rodel furniture & Design Studio Mr. Rodel has been designing handmade custom fine furniture in Maine since 1986 in a consolidation of Asian and European Arts & Crafts traditions. He is the co-author of Arts and Crafts Furniture; from Classic to Contemporary, and occasionally writes for Fine Woodworking magazine. Mission Evolution One of a kind custom furniture in the style of Greene and Greene. Mission Studio Fine furniture and lighting in the Arts & Crafts style.
Modern Bungalow. "The best of the Arts & Crafts movement all under one roof." Furnishings, lighting, pottery, tiles, accessories and rugs. StarCraft Custom Furnishings & Accessories

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Beautiful, authentic and affordable Arts & Crafts furnishings for every room in your period house, including beds, dressers, tables, sideboards and nightstands in the Stickley and Greene and Greens tradition. contact us for mor information.		 Thomas Strangeland, Artist Craftsman

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Beautiful and authentic period furniture for every room in your Arts & Crafts house (see additional photos, this page).		 William Laberge Cabinetmaker Hand crafted furniture in the spirit of the Arts-and-Crafts movement inspired by the Craftsman philosophy of high quality materials and workmanship. Each piece is custom made to meet your needs. Embellishments include a variety of inlays including ebony inlay, hand carved components and a meticulous hand rubbed finish.
Interiors & Accessories
Archive Edition Textiles. Fine, woven fabrics. Bradbury & Bradbury The resource for reproduction Arts & Crafts wallpaper, ceiling paper and borders, along with matching curtain and upholstery fabric. Craftsman Ceramic Tile. A wide range of craftsman inspired tiles in the company's Craftsman Series are well suited for any arts & crafts, mission or Bungalow style home. Ephraim Pottery Arts & Crafts style pottery.
Historic Styles. Almost everything for the interior of arts & crafts, and mid century house: wallpaper, fabric, tiles, hardware, tapestries, and accessories. We especially like their extensive collection of William Morris wallpaper and fabrics. Jax Rugs Reproduction period carpets and rugs. Laurel Hurst Fan Company. "Craftsmen of custom exhaust fans and vintage grills." A fan and grill company may sound pretty humdrum, but wait til you see these things. Mitchel Andrus Studios Now doing business as Mission Furnishings. Manufactures craftsman and mission accessories including doorbell covers and medicine chests feturing wood inlay designs by Mitchel Andrus. The inlays are also available as panels to enhance your custom cabinetry. We use them all the time in our Arts & Crafts cabinetry. Vintage stencil design and stencil supplies and Laura Wilder prints also available.
North Main Studio. Handcrafted porcelain pottery. Oak Park Home & Hardware Oak Park Home & Hardware specializes in lighting products in the spirit of Arts & Crafts, Mission, Prairie, Bungalow, English Tudor, Tudor Manor, and Spanish Revival styles. Pratt & Larson Ceramics. Finely crafted art tiles by Portland artists Michael Pratt and Reta Larson. Custom designs available. Rejuvenation For period lighting, hardware and house parts plus a raft of ideas and illustrations, we know of no better place than Rejuvenation, your first, and usually final, stop for period lighting and hardware.
Subway Ceramics For absolutely authentic subway tile made exactly the way it was made during the Arts & Crafts period. Includes authentic reproduction subway tile, trim, mouldings, floor mosaics and ceramic accessories. This is where we buy authentic subway tile for our projects. Tile Restoration Center Reproduction Arts & Crafts tiles. Trustworth Studios Reproduction and original wallpapers in the English Arts & Crafts style. Design consultation for accurate period interpretation. River Run Center for the Arts. Original handmade tiles in the craftsman tradition. Custom and made to order available.
Magazines & Books
American Bungalow Magazine: "American Bungalow is a quarterly magazine dedicated to homes of the early 20th century, the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Bungalow lifestyle. Since issue No. 1 of American Bungalow premiered in the fall of 1990, interest in Bungalow architecture and Arts and Crafts-style furnishings, antiques and collectibles has surged." Rated by the Chicago Tribune as one of American's top 50 magazines. Its masthead announces that American Bungalow magazine "is published in the interest of preserving and restoring the modest American 20th century home, the Bungalow, and the rich lifestyle that it affords". Arts & Crafts Homes and the Revival: "Devoted to the Arts and Crafts Movement past and present, this… magazine celebrates the revival of quality and craftsmanship. Each issue is a portfolio of the best work in new construction, restoration, and interpretive design, presented through intelligent writing and beautiful photographs. Offering hundreds of contemporary resources, it showcases the work not only of past masters, but also of those whose livelihoods are made in creating well-crafted homes and furnishings today. The emphasis is on today’s revival in architecture, furniture, and artisanry, informed by international Arts & Crafts and the early-20th-century movement in America: William Morris through the Bungalow era. Includes historic houses, essays and news, design details, how-to articles, gardens and landscape, kitchens and baths. Lots of expert advice and perspective for those building, renovating, or furnishing a home in the Arts & Crafts spirit. The publishers have generously allowed Google Books to archive past issues online. Bungalow Shop Books: Perhaps the definitive source for books in print about Arts & Crafts period architecture arranged in collections by architectural style.
Old House Interiors "National architectural magazine…;, covering period-inspired design 1700–1950. Commissioned photographs show real homes, inspired by the past but livable. Historical and interpretive rooms are included; new construction, additions, and new kitchens and baths take their place along with restoration work. A feature on furniture appears in every issue. Product coverage is extensive. Experts offer advice for homeowners and designers on finishing, decorating, and furnishing period homes of every era. A garden feature, essays, archival material, events and exhibitions, and book reviews round out the editorial. Many readers claim the beautiful advertising—all of it design-related, no “lifestyle” ads—is as important to them as the articles." The publishers have generously allowed Google Books to archive past issues online. Old House Journal "Old-House Journal is the original magazine devoted to restoring and preserving old houses. For more than 35 years, our mission has been to help old-house owners repair, restore, update, and decorate buildings of every age and architectural style. Each issue explores hands-on restoration techniques, practical architectural guidelines, historical overviews, and homeowner stories--all in a trusted, authoritative voice." The publishers have generously allowed Google Books to archive past issues online. Style 1900 Magazine: Style 1900 is a quarterly magazine exploring the antiques, architecture, philosophy and personalities of the Arts & Crafts movement in America and abroad. It covers Craftsman, Mission, and Prairie style and the distinctive California homes of Greene & Greene — but also foreign Arts & Crafts such as the Glasgow School, Jugendstil, the Vienna Secession, British Arts & Crafts, and Art Nouveau in France, as well as the work of modern-day craftsmen inspired by the Arts & Crafts spirit.
Web Resources
The Arts & Crafts Society: A web site created to provide an online "home" for the present-day Arts & Crafts Movement community. Antique Home: Home Resources From 1900 to Mid Century for owners of vintage homes. Craftsman, The. Published by Gustav Stickley from 1901 until 1916, The Craftsman Magazine more or less defined the Craftsman movement with articles on philosophy, design, architecture, decoration and techniques. All of the issues are digitally reproduced in the collection of the University of Wisconsin. Craftsman Style Guide published by the City of Glendale, California.
The Sears Modern Homes Archive.From 1908–1940 Sears designed 447 different housing styles. This archive, reently made available and maintaned by Sears, details about 100 of these homes using pages from period Sears Modern Homes catalogs. With architectural drawings and floorplans If you are researching a kit home, this site is invaluable.    



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    Organized to prepare a large variety of appetizing meals at a moment's notice, we can learn a lot about kitchen efficiency by studying commercial kitchens.
  • New and Traditional Countertop Choices
    Is solid surfacing, laminate, stone or tile your best choice of counter top? Or maybe something more exotic. Take a look at the incredible selection of modern counter top materials.
  • Off the Wall Kitchens: Living Without Wall Cabinets
    Wall cabinets are unquestionably useful storage, but with drawbacks. A major disadvantage is that wall cabinets make a kitchen seem smaller by closing in the space at eye level — which is where we subconsciously judge how large the space around us is - and limit the number and size of windows in the kitchen. Can your new kitchen do away with wall cabinets? Probably. Find out how.
  • The Rules of Bathroom Design
    The Kitchen and Bath Association has published guidelines for designing a safe and functional bathroom. Created and maintained by a panel of expert designers, these recommendations should be closely followed in any kitchen plan.
  • The Rules of Kitchen Design
    In 1944 the University of Illinois conducted a study of kitchen design and developed fundamental design principals that are still very much in use today. Here are the rules for designing great kitchens.
  • Selecting Bath Fixtures
    The choices of bathroom fixtures are a little overwhelming. Tubs, showers, sinks, faucets and toilets come in so many shapes, sizes, colors and with such a great variety of features that choosing the right fixtures can be a challenge. Here are some guidelines and suggestions.
  • Sources of Supply: Faucets
    Thinking about buying a faucet? Before your do, see our list of major faucet manufacturers with ratings and guidelines on what to look for and how to select a good, lifetime faucet.