• Craigslist: Stickley, July 2007

    Plenty of Stickley – some contemporary, some antique, and some needing a good amount of TLC – available on Craigslist this week. As always, be careful that you are buying the real deal and aren’t being taken to the cleaner; unless you are confident in your ability to discern authenticity, stick with buying from a reputable dealer.

    • very pretty rocker with Nouveau inlay design; Rhode Island – $595
    • spindle-sided Morris chair; Palm Springs – $750
    • more spindle-sided Morris chairs, these with leather cushions; Los Angeles – $650 for two
    • Morris-style rocker; Niantic CT – $850
    • rocker & armchair, cushions need work; Palm Springs – $1500
    • #729 drop-front desk; Santa Barbara – $2999
    • slat-sided Morris-style recliner with custom southwestern upholstery; San Diego – $100
    • L & JG side chair, simple design, circa 1910. Seat needs reupholstering; Reno – $385
    • #818 server / sideboard; Portland OR – $950
    • Quaint Furniture rocker, needs refinish & arm repair; Seattle – $125
    • #89 / 91-224 spindle-sided love seat / small settle; Washington DC – $2000
    • red label (Stickley Handcraft) rocker, original  seat, needs cleaning; Hudson Valley area – $350
    • Stickley Bros. metal tagged armchair, slat back, sturdy; Richmond VA – $475
    • set of 4 ladder-back sidechairs, Fayetteville stamp; Long Island – $300
    • set of 4 wicker-seat sidechairs, need refinish, partially recaned; Brooklyn – $40 each, all for $150
    • contemporary Harvey Ellis series cherry, copper & maple dresser; Albany NY – $1500
    • red / gold Fayetteville (Stickley Bros.) label drop-front desk; Pittsburgh – $990

  • Frank Lloyd Wright & the house beautiful

    From June 28 through October 8, the Portland Museum of Art is presenting a new exhibit showcasing "Frank Lloyd Wright’s passion for creating a new way of life for Americans through architecture."

    In particular, the exhibition focuses on his legendary skill in
    creating harmony between architectural structure and interior design
    while fulfilling the needs of a modern lifestyle. Featuring
    approximately 100 objects, the exhibition includes furniture,
    metalwork, textiles, drawings, and accessories from the collections of
    the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and other public and private
    collections. Curated by Dr. Virginia T. Boyd, professor at the
    University of Wisconsin-Madison, Frank Lloyd Wright and the House
    Beautiful conveys the methods through which Wright implemented the
    philosophy of the “house beautiful.” The exhibition explores how Wright
    sought to develop a modern interior reflective of a uniquely American
    spirit of democracy and individual freedom, illustrates his development
    in integrating the space with furnishings and architectural elements,
    and shows his experiments with bringing these ideas to the homes of
    average Americans.

    Several podcasts and audio programs relating to the exhibit are also available:

  • Robert E. Koch custom woodworking

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    Robert Koch studied under John Kassay (author of The Book of Shaker Furniture) and continues that tradition of austerity and craftsmanship in his own work. His furniture is influenced by "Arts & Crafts, Asian and American Shaker furniture designs" – and in its smooth lines, deceptively simple framing, delicate dovetailing and use of several beautifully-grained woods, these pieces combine elements of all three styles.

    Robert lives and works in Diamond Springs, California (not far from my home in Sacramento), and takes commissions and may have other pieces for sale.

  • nice table, super cheap!

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    I don’t want to turn H&H into something especially commercial, and the ads that are here are necessary to pay for our hosting and other such stuff. However, I saw this on one of those "all the deals on Amazon" sites and thought folks here might find it useful or interesting.

    This table, while not spectacularly beautiful, looks sturdy and is certainly fantastically cheap. $20! Looks like it’s going out of stock, so there might not be many available, but if you need something like this, you won’t find a better deal, that’s for sure.

  • more houseporn: brown shingles for sale

    The unpainted (or brown-painted) brown shingle is one of my favorite types of house. Usually taller than a one-story ground-hugging bungalow, built in either a Craftsman style or Western Stick variant (which often incorporates more rustic and cabin-like features, like rougher beam endings and less-symmetrical eaves), and are less often Craftsman-fied Queen Annes, with glossy trim and a bid of beadwork around the windows, these houses always seemed warm and friendly to me – partly because I grew up in Berkeley, CA, which is full of such homes, and partly because my father lives in a very warm & comfortable house built in this style. Some are raw wood or brown-painted wood shingle, others use wood siding or brown-painted wood siding; all share a sort of undecorated honesty of design. (There are also quite a few very modern brown shingles, built in the angular "Northern California" style that owes far more to Sea Ranch than Maybeck; these are mostly in the Eucalyptus woods of the upper Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco Hills, and while I am sure many of them are fine homes, they’re not especially interesting to me, or – I imagine – to you.)

    Here are a number of attractive brown shingles for sale. As you can see, the style is most popular on the West Coast, specifically in the Bay Area; I doubt wood shingle would last nearly as long when exposed regularly to snow, wind and ice.

  • “cannibalizing my Craftsman bungalow” on alt.home.repair

    from the Usenet group alt.home.repair:

    I have a modest 90yr. old Craftsman bungalow that I have owned for over 15 years. I recently bit the bullet and took the time (months!) and  money (you don’t even want to know) to have the old composite shingle  siding removed to expose the original redwood clapboard. My
    painter/restorer filled every nail hole, scraped every nook and cranny,  carefully and conservatively sanded off every layer, repaired every  corner of old window frame, etc. and finally completed a new coat of  paint that does my little place justice. It is constructed of solid old  growth redwood and feels like it will go another 90 years, no worries.

    Until today. My roofers came out today. This is a company I have used before – they re-roofed my detached garage a few yers back. I don’t have any leaks, but I’m trying to be proactive and not wait for trouble, so I signed up for a new 30 year shingle. After about two hours of banging I decided to go out and have a look at progress. I was stunned to see two workers in the process of nailing up a dinky piece of pine in the place where my front fascia used to be. This was a 12
    ft. long 2×8 that completed 1/2 of my front roofline – nice and wide with an angled rafter end tail. Gasping, I asked "What have you done with my redwood "Oh, there was some dry rot on the end" Well, I had known about that – my painter had informed me and we felt that during
    the re-roof would be the time to address it, repair and repaint. The involved area was about 1-2" deep along about 6" of the rafter tail.

    For this they removed the WHOLE thing. Just ripped it off – and were nailing up a piece of typical modern day lumber – in other words, too small in two dimensions. A 2×8 doesn’t measure 2×8 these days, but my old one did. Can you imagine how inadequate that was? I felt like someone had cut off my foot – being a preservationist is not easy. They looked at me like I was cockeyed, I was trying not to shoot anyone. 🙂

    My contract specifically notes that the owner is to be informed immediately if any latent damage is discovered, requiring any wood work. What happened!?! They acted as though they were doing me a favor – "Oh, we thought you’d want to go with the lowest cost option" Ack!
    Removing an irreplaceable lengtht of redwood is an option?! Gawd, if they’d only asked me first.

    Read the full article and folks’ advice for fixing this enormous cock-up.