Cabinet Work from the Craftsman Workshops: Catalogue D

1905

The Craftsman Workshops

9 x 6 inches, 128 pages.

In March 1905, The Craftsman announced the publication of "Cabinet Work from The Craftsman Workshops: Catalogue D" and informed readers that “a new and interesting edition of the Craftsman Workshops Catalogue [would] be ready for distribution as soon as this issue reaches our readers.” Cabinet Work from The Craftsman Workshops: Catalogue D was Stickley’s largest catalog to date, with more than 170 models illustrated. If the announcement provides an accurate manner to determine the date of the catalog’s release, it speaks little to the design date of the furniture or when these models were more broadly available. Advertisements in the The Craftsman featured photographs from what would become Catalogue D as early as October 1904, so it must be the case at least a handful of forms had been designed and were ready for production by the late summer of 1904. Most notable, however, is that there are extant records that retailers were ordering models first documented in Catalogue D as early as January 1904.

Although no evidence survives that documents the manner by which these models were offered to retailers (they were probably not dissimilar to the earlier Retail Plates) an order from the Columbus, Ohio retailer McCallister, Mohler, and Company arrived, via mail, on January 9th 1904 documents the earliest known reference to these forms. That this order appeared fifteen months before the catalog’s release was announced, and nearly ten months before photographs of models appeared in The Craftsman, and that it came by mail, all suggest that a set of materials illustrating these forms must have been issued to retailers sometime in late 1903. While, at the time of this writing, no known trace of these materials is known, the orders that preceded the release of Catalogue D preserve (at least in part) the extent of the materials that were available.

As very few forms–notably Settle (no. 213) and its related Armchair (no. 328) which appeared in the November 1903 Craftsman as line drawings–from this catalog have previously been documented with such an early design date, these orders necessarily diminish the usefulness of previous methods for dating objects. Relying on the catalog alone–for at least these models–to determine the date is to place many of them more than eighteen months after their introduction. While over 100 years later, this may seem like needless hair-splitting, it is not the span of time itself (just eighteen months) but rather the radical shifts that Stickley’s factory underwent in that time, notably the death of designer Harvey Ellis whose contributions to this catalog would be suspect (if not altogether eliminated) based solely on the release date.

I have seen at least two distinct versions of "Catalogue D" which feature the same cover, though more may emerge. One version is missing Office Revolving Screw & Spring Chair (no. 362) and Billiard Chair (no. 312 1/2-B). It is unclear at this time whether there is a chronology to these versions.

The introductory text clarifies (to some degree) the distinctions between the leather used for seating. “Craftsman Soft-Tanned Leather… is used for covering all seat cushions for settles. Where large skins are required a h=whole hide is used. In no case is the leather pieced. It is also used for all chair-seats where the covers are nailed on.” By contrast, “Craftsman Sheepskin” was described as the leather “used for all seat cushions and pillows for chairs and settles, because of its softness and pleasing texture.” Table tops are described as “Craftsman Hard-Tanned Leather” which, “resembles sole leather, but is not so thick.”