I make my living making A&C furniture - 7 years now. Yes, I also see a rabid
desire for "lots of rays and flakes" and "tiger stripes"... my clients
terms... in A&C furniture, both on the part of crafters and buyers. I get
about one board in 15 that has a really frantic flake pattern. The rest of
the pile is quite average and looks just like the 100 year old originals do.

I was given the task of reproducing a piano (the first made, the prototype
from 1905) for the (Gus) Stickley Museum - the original is still owned by
Stickley's great-grand daughter. The original can be seen in the book
"Stickley Style". I picked out a few really great looking boards and saved
them for this special project. I ended up not using them.

I was surprized when I got to see the piano first hand. Being the first one
made for the old man, I expected that the boys in the shop would have
selected some prime, grade "A" boards. Nope. Very run-of-the-mill lumber,
just like the wood that I get. Nice rays and flakes, but not the frantic
"old growth" stuff used by Hile, Voohees, etc. (I hate when I hear someone
say old growth, when they mean "slow growth")

As with most things in America, we've gotten carried away.

Mitch


Drew D. Saur wrote in message
...
Hi, all.

I've recently gotten pretty interested in Arts & Crafts furniture (both
reproduction and antique) and am wondering something: in the recent
renaissance, have some A&C reproduction designers gotten too carried
away with "pure," extremely highly-figured quartersawn oak? It seems to
me, as I study older (original) A&C pieces, one would generally find
that pieces were constructed of a good mix of quartersawn and slightly
riftsawn lumber, even in quite prominent areas. This is true of both
"big name" (Roycroft, Stickley, Limbert) and "unsigned" pieces.

Today, some reproduction A&C furniture can be found that still uses such
a mix, while other, apparently "high end" pieces, are made of so much
highly figured oak that they don't resemble *anything* I have ever seen
from the distant past. The conspicuous ray flake in these pieces is
almost ridiculous. They don't really seem authentic to me when compared
against period pieces.

Is it possible that today's high-end craftsman furniture reproduction
"masters" have somewhat missed a point of practicality of the original
Arts & Crafts movement? Or am I missing something?

Thanks for any historical guidance anyone can offer!

Drew

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