CRAFTSMAN HOMES: Architecture and Furnishings of the American Arts and Crafts Movement

The late 19th-century protest against machine-age artificiality which spawned the Arts and Crafts Movement in England, engendered a distinct American offshoot: the Craftsman, or Mission style. Gustav Stickley's handsome magazine The Craftsman (1901-16) became the voice of that style, seeking beauty and creativity in simplicity and organic harmony.

Craftsman Homes gathered together in a sumptuously produced volume the entire range of design from The Craftsman. This edition reprints that beautiful work, originally published in a private edition on The Craftsman's own press. Essays on the simplification of life, the art of home building, and the Craftsman idea recall the vigorous school of theory which influenced the young Frank Lloyd Wright and has returned to vogue today; 296 architectural drawings, photographs and floor plans recapture and preserve a vision of beauty and utility which dignified and elevated a mere handicrafts fad into a uniquely American style.

The plans and drawings for 40 different kinds of cottages, bungalows, suburban houses and city dwellings are a long-lost gallery of functional American home planning, designed and in many cases built by the staff of Stickley's magazine. Sample plans include a cement house with decorative concrete framework; a California Mission style home; a cottage suitable for working women who cannot afford the conventional house; variations of farmhouses and cabins, each an experiment in exterior and interior design.

Many features advocated by The Craftsman exist today-split-levels, semipartitions, and of course the primacy of form following function and complete integration with natural surroundings. Other areas, such as the primitive Craftsman furniture (featured here in 25 photos), can only be seen in expensive antique stores and on auction blocks.

Craftsman Homes brings back an influential and thoroughly American style of design and construction: Americana collectors will find it an inexpensive introduction to this ripe field; today's architects, designers and decorators will find enough information and illustration to appreciate the Craftsman idea in its totality.