INFORMATION TO USERS

This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer.

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.

In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.

Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book.

Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order.

University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Order Number 1351946

The Byrdcliffe Colony and the politics of arts and crafts

Lock, Lisa Lloyd, M.A.

University of Delaware, 1992

UMI 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE BYRDCLIFFE COLONY AND THE POLITICS OF ARTS AND CRAFTS

by

Lisa L. Lock

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Early American Culture

December 1992

Copyright 1992 Lisa L. Lock All Rights Reserved

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE BYRDCLIFFE COLONY AND THE POLITICS OF ARTS AND CRAFTS

by

Lisa L. Lock

Approved: J; Ritchie Garrison, Ph.D. Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee

Approved: Curtis, Ph.D. of the Winterthur Program in American Culture

Approved: CaaM. 1 Carol E. Hoffee Ph.D. Associate Provo or Graduate Studies

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people deserve recognition for their

contributions to this paper. I wish to thank Kenneth R.

Trapp, Curator at The Oakland Museum, for introducing me

to the Arts and Crafts and setting the standards for my

professional career; Richard McKinstry at the Winterthur

Library for bringing the Byrdcliffe archive to my

attention and his generous assistance in gathering

materials; the present owner of Byrdcliffe for his

helpfulness and gracious hospitality; J. Ritchie Garrison,

my advisor, for his interest, wise insights, and valuable

contributions; Michael Seidl for introducing me to new and

fascinating ideas and encouraging my efforts; and my

family for their confidence and support.

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... V ABSTRACT ...... vi

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

THE BYRDCLIFFE ARTS AND CRAFTS COLONY ...... 3

Evidence ...... 3

A n a l y s i s ...... 37

FIGURES ...... 58 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 78

iv

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF FIGURES

1 View of Arcady ...... 58

2 Drawing studio at Byrdcliffe ...... 59

3 Interior of the F o r g e ...... 60

4 Map of Byrdcliffe property ...... 61

5 Oak cabinet...... 62

6 Detail of oak cabinet p a n e l ...... 63

cJ' <■- - 7 Mahogany cabinet-...... 64

8 C h e s t ...... 65

9 Front room at White Pines ...... 66

10 Stairhall at White P i n e s ...... 67

11 Front room at White P i n e s ...... 68

12 Library at Byrdcliffe...... 69

13 Library table ...... 70

14 S e t t l e ...... 71

15 Cab i n e t ...... 72

16 Ralph Whitehead's pottery notes .... 73

17 Pots in attic of White P i n e s ...... 74

18 Pots and molds in attic of White Pines 75

19 Exterior of White P i n e s ...... 76

20 Interior of Byrdcliffe furniture shop . 77

v

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts colony was created

to be the embodiment of the altruistic goals of one

man— Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead. The philosophies he used

in delineating the structure of the colony answered the

pressing social concerns of the time, namely the perceived

threat of factory production to the well-being of the

worker, the need for beauty in the daily lives of common

people, and the necessary restructuring of the

capitalistic system that restricted the free choice of

consumers.

This paper presents the evolution of the colony

and the circumstances of its demise but with the

understanding that the social concerns stated above (or,

Arts and Crafts ideals) were ideological constructions

particular to a specific time. By determining the

restrictions placed on Whitehead by the social, economic,

and political ideologies in which he was implicated, we

can more clearly comprehend his actions and contributions

without judging him against the narrow definitions of Arts

and Crafts employed by current scholarship.

vi

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION

The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony in

Woodstock, New York was envisioned, financed, and built by

Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, an independently wealthy

Englishman who had studied with John Ruskin at Oxford.

Byrdcliffe, like other Arts and Crafts communities, was an

unsuccessful attempt to create a cooperative socialist

utopia in a capitalist society. Whitehead was immersed in

an ideology of hierarchical control and believed that

strong leadership was the only means to attain his goals.

He built Byrdcliffe to his own agenda, professed Arts and

Crafts ideals while living at Byrdcliffe, raised a family

there, and felt that to succeed, the colony must

eventually become financially self-supporting.

Interpreting an individual's reform ideals and

actions undertaken over a lifetime often leads to

judgmental criticism when ideals and circumstances

conflict. Scholars of the Arts and Crafts must recognize

and analyze the range of conditions that affected the

actions of Arts and Crafts proponents. This study

provides an interpretation of the Byrdcliffe Arts and

1

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2

Crafts experiment in terms of Whitehead's ideals and

achievements. This study also provides a model for

examining other Arts and Crafts projects without resorting

to modern notions of artistic canons that scholars often

employ while evaluating Arts and Crafts objects or

determinations of success or failure that rely on those

inconsistent definitions.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE BYRDCLIFFE ARTS AND CRAFTS COLONY

Evidence

Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead was born in 1854 in

Saddleworth, England, a town in Yorkshire. The son of a

wealthy textile manufacturer, he was raised in a

privileged, upper-class manner at Beech Hill, the family

mansion. His formal schooling culminated in his

attendance at Oxford's Balliol College in 1873 where he

was captivated by the ideas of John Ruskin, the Slade

Professor of Fine Art and founder of the St. George's

Guild, an organization established in 1871 and dedicated

to social reform.1 In 1876 Whitehead accompanied Ruskin

to Venice. The culture of northern Italy became an

inspiration for Whitehead, providing him with an aesthetic

and intellectual model for his later endeavors. He became

a scholar of the writings of Dante and eventually, in

1892, he published his own translation of Vita Nuova with

comprehensive annotations and a thirty-five page scholarly

introduction on Dante's works. He also adopted the

1 Alf Evers, The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), 602— 3.

3

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Florentine lily as his personal emblem and printed a

stylized version of it on his publications.2 When

Whitehead first appeared at Oxford, Ruskin was already

involved with the St. George's Guild.

The complex organization of St. George's Guild

reflected a feudal social structure. Those who

contributed to the fund that would maintain the guild

would govern it, although they would not necessarily be

the ones who lived there and worked under its defined

production controls. "Companions" of the guild were

required to sign a statement of trust in the goodness of

God and a promise to protect, respect, and revere nature

and beauty.3 The Guild failed, but Ruskin had called

attention to his ideas for social reform and the model of

the Guild inspired many young idealists in Europe and

America who were seeking to create a working utopia.

Persuaded by Ruskin's attacks on the factory

system, Whitehead decided that when he inherited his

family's woolen mills, he would abolish steam power and

turn the factories into cooperative enterprises.4 The

family was unimpressed by Whitehead's plans, and he left

2 Robert Edwards, "Byrdcliffe: Life by Design," in Life by Design: The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony (Wilmington, Del.: The Delaware Art Museum, 1984), 3.

3 Evers, The Catskills, 604—5.

4 Ibid., 603.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. college for Paris following a tense family quarrel. After

reconciliation about a year later, Whitehead returned to

Oxford College and received a Master of Arts degree in

1880.5

For the next decade information about Whitehead is

sketchy. Hervey White, fellow-organizer of Byrdcliffe and

companion of Whitehead, described fragments of what little

he had learned from Whitehead himself in an article

published in 1933. Whitehead did not like to talk of

those times; he was later ashamed of his conduct. For

seven years, he lived in a castle he bought and restored

in Styria, Germany, and attempted to buy all the

surrounding land. After leaving Styria, he lived for a

few years in Italy in a palace on the Turnabuoni with

"liveried servants, [and] the extravagancies and inanities

of a society life."6 He travelled throughout Europe,

partaking of all the luxuries afforded an heir to a

wealthy, industrially engaged family whose patriarchs were

dying. Ruskin, the inspirational model of his youth, had

resigned his position at Oxford; from 1878 on, Ruskin*s

life was disrupted by periods of insanity which continued

and worsened until his death in 1900.

5 Ibid., 604.

6 Hervey White, "Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead," Publications of the Woodstock Historical Society, no. 10 (July 1933): 19-20.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 6

Whitehead eventually came to critically examine

his lifestyle in light of his old ambitions.

Reappropriating the ideals of Ruskin and the St. George's

Guild, he wrote his own guidelines for utopia in his

personal diary while in Italy in April of 1891. The tract

is recorded verbatim with an added introduction as an

essay titled "Work” in Whitehead's 1892 publication, Grass

of the Desert. In it, Whitehead begins by dismissing the

folly of his youth. Admittedly "imbued with

. . . republican and socialistic theories", he confessed

that he had wanted to

become in time the head of the factories which our family possessed in those days in Yorkshire, with a view to the gradual introduction of real cooperation; I suppose I was only half-hearted about it, . . . .

Whitehead then defined the motive behind the essay and its

proposal

Now I think not of such large beginnings, but of quietly finding out something which I shall be capable of doing as an individual, trusting that when I am master of that, I shall not fail to gather one or two round me.

Whitehead listed the crafts he intended to produce

at his colony: painting; engraving; sculpture, including

the chiseling of metal and enamel work; music; literature;

carpentry and cabinetmaking; woodcarving; leatherwork and

7 Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, "Work," in Grass of the Desert, (London: Chiswick Press, 1892), 61.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 7

bookbinding; handwork in brass and iron; pottery; spinning

and weaving; farming; gardening; and forestry. He even

prescribed the necessary sum for living expenses at the

colony as £120— an amount that each tenant was to be able

to earn in a year. Those earning more than that sum would

be taxed at ten percent with the extra income going into a

fund for the benefit of the community. He stated his

rationale for this exclusionary requirement as follows:

I know that our society is not ideally perfect unless we can admit all mankind; but for the present we are thinking of a very select few, and their lives, and are not attempting to reform the whole world. You cannot take the kingdom of Heaven by force.

This explanation hints at Whitehead's grander vision but

at the same time explicitely defines only a "select few"

who would benefit.

Also in 1891, Whitehead met Jane Byrd McCall, an

American traveling in Europe. She had attended the

Academie Julian in 1887 and had met and possibly studied

drawing with Ruskin.9 Ralph Whitehead and Jane McCall

swore allegiance to each other and the arts and crafts

ideal previously itemized by Whitehead in June of 1891 and

commemorated their spiritual union with a wooden plaque

engraved with a pair of wings descending through a

8 Ibid., 67.

9 Edwards, "Byrdcliffe: Life By Design," 3.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 8

sunburst— the design later used as the Byrdcliffe emblem.

The next year, on August 25, 1892, they were married in

Portsmouth, New Hampshire.10

The couple bought land in Santa Barbara,

California and built an immense Mediterranean villa on a

hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. They called it

"Arcady" and furnished it in Morris patterns and

Whitehead's collected Morris and Company furniture (fig.

1). Whitehead also painstakingly landscaped the grounds,

complete with strategically placed boulders and a planned

randomness in wildflower plantings. Passionately

interested in horticulture, he spent at least two hours a

day working in the gardens at Arcady, believing the

outdoor work healthy for the soul. Arcady quickly became

a locus for young artists and musicians from Santa Barbara

and beyond but welcome only on special invitation from

Whitehead.

The Whiteheads' earliest acquaintances included

Birge Harrison, the painter, and Frederick Hurten Rhead,

the potter. Whitehead also traveled extensively during

the first years of his marriage, making contacts and

collecting influential friends. Charlotte Perkins Stetson

(later Gilman) met Whitehead in the Adirondacks where she

was staying for a summer at the socialist colony of

10 Ibid., 4-5.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 9

Prestonia Mann. She sent him back to Chicago to meet the

group at Hull House and wrote to Hervey White, a published

author of novels and social worker there, to see to

Whitehead's arrival.11 After the first visit, Whitehead

returned many times to Hull House, bringing Jane along on

occasion. White introduced Whitehead to many of his

friends in Chicago and at the university: Thorstein

Veblen; Professor Martin Schutze and his wife Eva Schutze,

the photographer and artist; Oscar Lovell Triggs; Clarence

Darrow; and many others involved with social reform and

the arts.12 Whitehead eagerly pursued these

introductions, actively collecting influential allies to

involve in his project.

White was invited to stay at Arcady in 1899, three

months after the birth of the Whiteheads' first son Ralph.

He described Arcady in his unpublished "Autobiography" as

"luxurious," surrounded by "as exquisite a piece of

landscaping as I have seen," and added, "before this time,

I had pitied the leisure class who had no work but I found

now I did not miss work at all."13 The days at Arcady

were spent in artistic pursuits. Whitehead arranged

11 White, "Autobiography," University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa, 1937 (Typescript), 101.

12 Ibid., 116.

13 Ibid., 117.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 10

musical concerts for his guests, placing White as the

impresario for these evenings. It was at this time that

Whitehead began talk of organizing an arts and crafts

colony, and he specifically enlisted White's help with the

enterprise. Whitehead claimed he especially wanted to

make furniture and that he had discovered a spot in Oregon

which he thought might be a suitable location.14 White

had previously been involved with the arts and crafts

during his days at Hull House as the organizer of his own

business called the "Krayle." That business consisted of

three friends, and they completed one piece of

furniture— a settee for a waiting room in a doctor's

office.15 Eager to resume this interest in cooperative

arts production, White joined Whitehead's plans despite a

friend's insightful warnings against Whitehead's

dilettantism, said to be the meddling of a wealthy

individual who would make playthings of the ambitions of

serious youths. White declared in response, "I was

willing to be his buffoon if he took me places I wanted to

go," and that "as a novelist if not as a friend, I can

gain great advantage by being with him."16

14 Ibid., 125.

IS Ibid., 96. 16 Ibid., 125.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 11

Whitehead planned for the summer building of the

colony in Oregon. After acquiring the land, Whitehead

sent money to build a log cabin studio and dining room,

and five frame shacks to provide bedrooms for the

musicians. The tenants were to be Whitehead's Beethoven

trio, a group that regularly gave concerts at Arcady.

Whitehead decided the trio should settle in six weeks

ahead of his arrival with White in order to rehearse

trios. By the time the two men arrived, however, the

colony was doomed— the three musicians were fighting and

refused to play together. Whitehead accepted the outcome

graciously according to White and the group disbanded.17

Over a year later, and motivated by the birth of a

second son, Whitehead called on White to continue to

assist with plans for an art colony. They met in

Indianapolis; Whitehead brought along a third member

unknown to White— Bolton Brown, a professor of art at

Stanford University whom Whitehead had enlisted at a

salary of $1500 a year to assist in the creation of the

colony.18 The three men decided that Brown would explore

northern regions, the Catskills in particular, and

Whitehead and White would travel south to the Carolinas

and Virginia. The search began and ended in the spring of

17 Ibid., 128-9.

18 Ibid., 154.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 12

1902. Bolton Brown had discovered Overlook Mountain and

the cultivated fields that would become the site of

Byrdcliffe, the manifestation of Whitehead's utopian

plans.19 Upon seeing the land, Whitehead relinquished his

preference for the South and was persuaded by White and

Brown to settle in the "more civilized North," near New

York.

At this point, so close to visualizing his goals,

Whitehead's plans swelled once again to encompass the

enrichment of all humankind; he believed again in a

personal ability to make a real change, to bring about a

new society. He wrote to his wife on June 12 of 1902,

In the train again, dear, travelling up the Hudson, but this time on my way to you, and feeling that I have really accomplished something for you and the boys. For I have a definite plan of life and work now, definite in its outline and locality, though the details can only be filled in as the years fulfill themselves. You and I together, dear, to make a new life, nobler than the old, because we know life and each other better, and because the boys have taught us much. . . . For their sake, what has been in us merely sentimental must now become real, and you and I will make an art of life at last. . . . we have to admit that the new thought which is spreading and which shall make the future of Society brighter than the past, . . . lies in the enlargement of the human horizon through the recognition of infinite duties, no longer duties to the family alone, or to the tribe. . . . [It is only] through the

Bolton Brown, "Early Days at Woodstock," Publications of the Woodstock Historical Society, no. 13 (August/September 1937): 6.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 13

progress of the whole society that the beauty of the individual can be insured and enhanced.

By the end of that fall he had purchased six farms on the

mountainside amounting to twelve hundred acres.

Byrdcliffe would contain an orchard, springs, a stream,

woods, pasture, and a commanding view of the valley— a

list that fulfilled all Whitehead's stipulations.

Whitehead left money at Brown's disposal in the

Kingston Bank and returned to Arcady for the winter.

Before leaving, he planned his residence, to be called

White Pines, and located the sites for the other

buildings, including a library and dance hall, a dining

hall, studios, and a barn.21 The studios amounted to what

Hervey White called a "furniture factory" complete with

expensive machinery, a metalwork shop and smith, and a

large room for painting classes (fig. 2). The metal shop,

called the Forge, was contained in four large rooms: the

first housed a forge, a lathe, and stakes for metal

raising; jewelry and chasing equipment in the second; acid

baths and the means to color, polish, and clean metals in

the third; and furnaces for enameling jewelry in the

2 0 • Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Letter to Jane Byrd Whitehead, 12 June 1902, private collection.

21 Brown, 10.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 14

fourth (fig. 3).22 Whitehead spared no expense in

outfitting his enterprise, even allowing the gas-powered

machines most modern arts and crafts historians believe

were unconditionally outlawed by reform minded Arts and

Crafts practitioners.

By June of 1903, the buildings were completed and

Whitehead returned to Byrdcliffe, this time with his

family, and laid out his plans for the colony in an

article titled "A Plea for Manual Work" published that

same month in Handicraft magazine. After pages of

nostalgic ramblings on the state of art and the potential

beauty of country life, Whitehead described his precise

purpose at Byrdcliffe:

And so we are organizing, with small beginnings, such a life for a group of associated but independent workmen in the country. We desire to form no "community," because communities have never succeeded. . . . To make and sell our products, to supply ourselves with some necessities of life, we shall organize means in common.

He continued later in the article to reminisce about his

mentor, John Ruskin,

And, finally, we know that not only the joy of labor and the sanity of man depend on manual work done under healthy conditions, but that art itself can never be strong and sane till the

22 Alvan F. Sanborn, "Leaders in American Arts and Crafts," Good Housekeeping (February 1907): 148.

23 Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, "A Plea for Manual Work," Handicraft 2, no. 3 (June 1903): 70.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 15

gulf which separates the artist frop the mechanic has been bridged, ....

With Byrdcliffe built and ready for all Whitehead's noble

plans, he continued to reiterate the importance of his

endeavor in the struggle to change society for the

betterment of the individual.

By the beginning of that summer, Whitehead had

also recruited artists to populate his community. White

cites in his autobiography that a Norwegian cabinetmaker

and an American assistant were in charge of the furniture

shop. They were apparently Riulf Erlandson, a member of

the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, and Fordyce

Herrick, a local craftsman.25 Also arriving that first

summer to work in the furniture shop were Edna Walker and

Zulma Steele, two recent graduates from the Pratt

Institute .1 Brooklyn. Other artists included Birge

Harrison from California who painted a few furniture

panels and made wood block prints in a Japanese manner

using pastels and rice paste,26 and Hermann Dudley Murphy,

a student from the Academie Julian who, along with Bolton

Brown, taught drawing to the first group of students to

24 Ibid., 71.

25 Robert Edwards, "The Utopias of Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead," Antiques 127 (January 1985): 267.

26 Bertha Thompson, "The Craftsmen of Byrdcliffe," Publications of the Woodstock Historical Society, no. 10 (July 1933): 10.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 16

arrive at Byrdcliffe. Marie Little was the only

craftsperson to permanently settle at Byrdcliffe; she wove

silk rugs in "The Looms," her small home above White

Pines, and remained loyal to the Whiteheads through all.

The search for other residents for Byrdcliffe that

first summer was instigated by Hervey White and his

partner Carl Linden, a painter from Chicago. The two were

put in charge of a large converted farmhouse on the

property and they made it a boarding house for invited

guests. According to Hervey White, they outfitted the

house with running water, lights, and plumbing, joined it

to a barn, built a dining hall, studios and bedrooms,

hired a cook, and rented it for $75 per month; recruiting

renters by sending letters to friends they thought might

be interested in Byrdcliffe. Their intentions were "to

get the leaders of the different sets we knew in Chicago

and New York, thinking they would bring the others when

there would be room." White admits that these intentions

were somewhat malicious. "We thought, too, . . . it would

be interesting to pit these captains against each other

and see how they would stand up without the support of

admiring friends."27 Among those who took them up on it

were Charlotte Perkins Stetson; Professor Martin Schutze

and his wife, photographer Eva Watson Schutze;

27 White, "Autobiography," 157.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 17

lithographer John Duncan; and Olive Dunbar, a newspaper

editor.28

The first problems at Byrdcliffe began not with

the invited guests, but in the inner circles. The drawing

classes were a disorganized venture from the

beginning— comprised of three teachers and few students

with no order other than the freedom of each student to

choose with whom he or she would like to study. Bolton

Brown was the third member of a teaching staff that had no

regular students. Because Byrdcliffe had a financial

policy and Whitehead charged students for classes and also

for housing, he found it necessary to give scholarships to

attract financially needy students to the colony.

According to the leaflets Whitehead published to advertise

the summer schools, fees for classes were $15 for one

month and room and board came to $7 per week. In these

leaflets, he also laid down Byrdcliffe law: "The

management reserves the right to decline unqualified

students and to dismiss any who may be unsatisfactory."29

He also followed staff recommendations for admitting

worthy students so that consequently, Hermann Dudley

Murphy and Professor Cameron who each taught design

28 Ibid.

29 Summer Art School Announcements, Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 18

elsewhere came to Byrdcliffe with their own students in

tow.

Brown and Whitehead had many disagreements in the

first year. Whitehead did not always agree with Brown's

building strategies in the planning of the colony and

Brown was disatisfied with his position in the art school

as being less than the role he had been promised. But,

Brown stated, they never argued; they "differed." In an

article on Byrdcliffe written in 1933, Brown characterized

Whitehead as being

all for 'democracy' in theory; but down in his British sub-conscious class consciousness was an influential ghost of medieval social arrangements. . . . The idea implied something like a benign reign over gracious and grateful dependents.

As Brown tells it, when Whitehead found him in a

disposition to stand for his ideas, Whitehead said Brown

"mistook his position" and gave Brown notice to leave the

colony. Evidently the split was an amiable one. Brown

bought forty acres of land only a mile to the east of

Byrdcliffe, settled with his family, and painted in the

woods for himself instead of the betterment of humankind

or Byrdcliffe's students.

By the second season, personnel had changed at the

colony. Whitehead asked a cellist to give a recital at

30 Brown, 13.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 19

Byrdcliffe and found him to be so delightful that

Whitehead invited him and his family to take up residence.

Edward (Ned) Thatcher, another student from the Pratt

Institute, agreed to teach blacksmithing and decorative

iron work. With Bolton Brown gone, Whitehead persuaded

Birge Harrison to sell his house in California and move

permanently to Byrdcliffe to take over the art classes.

Harrison took over Brown's position and moved his family

into the house Brown had built for his own family.31

Laurin H. Martin from the Society of Arts and Crafts in

Boston taught lighter metalwork, jewelry, and

enamelling.32 Vivian Bevans, a pupil of John Duncan, came

to teach Japanese block printing. She later married

Hervey White. White described the second season's array

of guests at Byrdcliffe as "more circumspect and less

colorful. There was an atmosphere of paying guests rather

than of cooperation."33 White made his own criticisms of

Whitehead's policies expressing his "great disappointment"

for Whitehead's refusal to provide John Duncan with a

lithographic press at Byrdcliffe. He quoted Whitehead's

argument in his "Autobiography" as, "I don't want a

lithographic press on the place. I don't want to put it

31 White, "Autobiography," 163.

32 Thompson, 9.

33 White, "Autobiography," 163.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 20

into the hands of Mr. Duncan." Believing as they did in

Duncan's training and ability and in the appropriateness

of his subjects and design techniques which recalled

William Morris's endeavors, neither'Hervey White nor Carl

Linden could understand the rationale behind this

decision. They decided that

here was the crux of the whole proposition, Mr. Whitehead was not willing to put anything into anybody's hands. He would only employ people he could dictate to, and no self-respecting artist would ever stand for his dictation. The two artists he had engaged as instructors were not coming back. Brown was already gone. . . . there was nothing that would endure but the buildings.

White's original plan to clean up after his rich

benefactor when he had tired of his latest plaything was

unintentionally thwarted by Whitehead's extravagance and

wealth. Whitehead poured so much money into the colony

that White and Linden could never have afforded to buy him

out. By 1904 Byrdcliffe encompassed thirteen hundred

acres and included thirty buildings and shops equipped

with expensive machinery and running water (fig. 4).

The furniture shops began producing during the

first summer. Members of the shop included Erlandson and

Herrick, carpenters Warren Wheelock and George Eggers, and

the carver Giovanni Troccoli of the Society of Arts and

Crafts in Boston (figs. 5—6). Edna Walker and Zulma

34 Ibid., 161.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 21

Steele, the two graduates from the Pratt Institute, made

nature studies of local plant life for the patterned

reproduction of painted panels that were set into larger

case pieces (fig. 7). All known signed Byrdcliffe

furniture (comprising some fifty pieces) is dated by the

mark "1904" burned into the wood. But on the basis of

drawings and sales records, some were designed in 1903 and

some in 1905. The types of objects made in the shops

included tables, chairs, lamp stands, hanging shelves,

bookcases, sideboards,. and chiffoniers. • 35

All the Byrdcliffe furniture is of a particular

heavy and solid style— designed with straight lines and

right angles, finished in muted hues, and decorated with

indigenous plant life or landscapes and simple metalwork,

some of which was made in the metalshop at Byrdcliffe

(fig. 8). There were many design sources available to the

craftsmen; Whitehead collected William Morris furniture

and kept some pieces at White Pines. Whitehead's notes

can be found next to appropriate designs in the Byrdcliffe

library's run of International Studio, and two of the

shop's designers came from the Society of Arts and Crafts

in Boston and brought that organization's current

stylistic trends with them. White Pines was stocked like

a showroom with Morris fabrics on the furniture and burlap

35 Edwards, "Utopias," 267—8.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 22

on the walls (fig. 9-10). Eventually the house was filled

with furniture made at Byrdcliffe, Byrdcliffe pottery,

pots by Frederick Hurten Rhead, and a tiled fireplace made

by Henry Chapman Mercer, a relative of Jane's (fig. 11).

Whitehead believed in motivating his craftsmen by

surrounding them with inspirational objects, and he

offered all his collections for inspection and

contemplation, including his vast personal library which

became the Byrdcliffe library (fig. 12).

Whitehead had always intended Byrdcliffe to be

self-sufficient, and the furniture shop production was to

be the heart of this endeavor. Instead, the well-

outfitted shops closed in 1905. The reasons were probably

many— the large pieces of furniture, usually made of oak,

were too heavy to be easily transported to the train to

take them into New York to be sold (figs. 13-15). Alvan

F. Sanborn, in a 1907 article in Good Housekeeping, blamed

the failure of the shops on the fact that the furniture

made there could not compete in price with other handmade

furniture on the market and identified Whitehead's

unwillingness to advertise as the ultimate blow.36 Bertha

Thompson claimed in a 1933 article that the shops closed

because Whitehead found the furniture "very expensive to

36 Sanborn, 149.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 23

make, and difficult to exhibit and sell."37 Lastly,

Robert Edwards cited Whitehead's lack of interest as the

reason for the closing of the shops.38 Perhaps more to

the point was the lack of interest on the part of the

artists in making Byrdcliffe a permanent residence and

dedicating themselves to production for self-preserving

profit.

Hervey White was the next of the inner circle to

leave Byrdcliffe. By 1904 White had taken over the

managing of the farm and was in charge of the dairy,

dispensing milk, cream, and butter to residents. As White

related the break, Whitehead called the farmhouse one

evening at the end of a very dry and debilitating summer

and complained to Fritz Van der Loo, a friend of White's

and driver for the colony, that he was not getting the

milk he had ordered for White Pines. He would not accept

explanations and said if they "couldn't furnish supplies

he would get someone who could." White retorted, "He will

not talk to me that way," and immediately ran up the hill

to White Pines to declare his outrage and announce his

departure. Ralph Whitehead tried to reconcile the

situation but Hervey White was firm. By the first of

September a financial settlement was made for the horses,

37 Thompson, 9.

3ft Edwards, "Byrdcliffe: Life By Design," 11.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 24

cattle, and farm implements and White and Van der Loo left

Byrdcliffe.39 The word at Byrdcliffe was that they were

discharged. White eventually bought land near Byrdcliffe

and started the Maverick colony, an artist's haven that

set the stage for the infamous Woodstock of the 1960s. By

the end of only the second season the only member left

from Byrdcliffe's founding trio was Whitehead himself. He

was left with a colony of teachers invited by himself and

guests invited by others, and Byrdcliffe eventually became

what Whitehead feared and hated— a boardinghouse.

Birge Harrison and his family also left Byrdcliffe

soon after White. At their farewell party, White learned

that others at Byrdcliffe had grievances against

Whitehead. He described his interpretation of the failure

of the colony:

. . . the turmoil underneath the general gaiety was as intense as that in my own heart. The trouble was . . . the young artists had come up with great hopes of work and promotion, they had been dallied with, made toys of for rich people, had played instead of working all summer and now were being dismissed for a new crop that would be engaged the following season for the same price, their board and expenses.40

In the years between 1904 and 1907, little changed

at Byrdcliffe itself. Artists still came and went, no

White, "Autobiography," 167— 8.

40 Ibid., 168.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 25

real ‘'tenants" lived there year-round, not even Whitehead

who wintered at Arcady in the more temperate Santa

Barbara. But after Birge Harrison left Byrdcliffe, the

Art Students League of New York, which had formerly been

located in Lyme, Connecticut, moved into the town of

Woodstock with Harrison in charge. The students that

arrived in Woodstock were of a new type, distinctly

different from the invited patrons at Byrdcliffe.

According to Alf Evers, these students followed in the

tradition of Bohemianism that expanded after the French

Revolution among young French artists and impacted the

States in certain favorable locations in large American

cities. These students cut their short hair into patterns

and checkerboards and streaked their trousers with paint

to identify themselves as artists. They swarmed

Woodstock, renting any shelter in which to work. They

looked up to Byrdcliffe with snickers and nicknamed it

"Boredstiffe." As Byrdcliffe shrank, the League grew in

its size and influence on American painting, according to

Evers.41 By 1907 Hervey White's Maverick colony which had

also grown out of the Byrdcliffe experiment, did not

recruit artists, but instead had become a locus for

41 Evers, The Catskills, 632-4.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 26

musicians, writers, and "offbeat thinkers" such as

Clarence Darrow and Thorstein Veblen.42

Two articles on Byrdcliffe were written by

visitors to the colony and published in popular magazines

in 1907 and 1909. The 1907 article, "Leaders in American

Arts and Crafts" by Alvan F. Sanborn, was published in

Good Housekeeping and diplomatically described the state

of the colony and some of the circumstances of its

failures. The problems he listed include the lack of

advertising for the furniture production, and the

"floating population" which refused to make Byrdcliffe a

permanent home. The reasons for an unwillingness to

settle in the Catskills could be many, according to

Sanborn. Perhaps it was the cold in the winter, perhaps

the tiresome journey from the city, perhaps the heat in

the summer that could not be relieved by a natural lake

nor river. Sanborn's last explanation provides piercing

insight into Whitehead's agenda for control:

Finally, it may be partly— and here we have the seamy side of [Whitehead's] benevolent feudalism which is in many respects so charming— because parties who might otherwise be disposed to settle down there hesitate to give hostages to fortune to the extent of actually transferring their lares and panates to houses which can never be theirs, and whence they can be summarily ejected if the lord of the manor,

42 Ibid., 634.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 27

finding them uncongenial, decides that their room is better than their company.

Sanborn's description of Byrdcliffe as a feudal estate was

generous and his characterizations of Whitehead as

"infinitely kind, gentle, generous, and considerate"44

were most likely met with derision from those no longer

welcome at Byrdcliffe.

Interestingly, one of the aspects of Byrdcliffe

that modern critics of the arts and crafts would scoff at

was praised by Sanborn:

. . . Byrdcliffe as a vacation colony is a well- nigh unqualified success. . . . because they [the families visiting Byrdcliffe] can not only blend out-door sports and labor with artistic endeavor to good advantage there, but because they find there an exceptionally refined social life whose attractiveness the touch of feudalism . . . enhances rather than mars.45

This characterization hardly reflected the serious reform

aspirations with which Whitehead first conceived the

colony.

Indeed, Whitehead realized the failure of his

intended contribution to society witnessed in the fast

departure of residents and consequently turned his

attentions closer to home. In an effort to bring more

people to Byrdcliffe, he published a pamphlet in 1907 that

43 Sanborn, 149.

44 Ibid., 148.

45 Ibid., 149.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 28

declared the colony was growing every summer. He claimed

that a tennis court and swimming pool were to be built

soon and that a school founded on the model of John Dewey

and other educational reformers was to be established

there year-round.46 In 1921, according to a lease

agreement made between Whitehead and Annie D. Mead of

Mead's Hotel on the edge of the Byrdcliffe property,

Whitehead leased twenty acres of land at $25 rent per

annum to

be used for the purpose of golf links and for pasturing of cattle. . . . It is further agreed that the residents upon the properties commonly known as Byrdcliffe and their guests shall be allowed and have the privilege of playing golf upon the links to be constructed by the second party . . . .47

None of these projects were ever started, but the shift in

emphasis from an important social reform experiment to an

advertized summer resort indicates the depth of

Whitehead's immersion in his project and his dedication to

making Byrdcliffe a personal success.

The second article on Byrdcliffe was written by

Poultney Bigelow, "The Byrdcliffe Colony of Arts and

Crafts" and appeared in American Homes and Gardens in

46 Alf Evers, Woodstock: History of an American Town (Woodstock, N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 1987), 445.

47 Lease, Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and Annie D. Mead, 1 October 1921, Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 29

1909. With a flourish of flowery prose and the inclusion

of sixteen large photographs in a six-page article,

Bigelow described Byrdcliffe, no longer in its prime of

activity, as if it were a Shangri-La of truth in

handicrafts representing the antidote to the evils of

society quietly tucked away in the picturesque Catskills.

The author's admiration for Whitehead is apparent, yet

allusions to the power structure of Byrdcliffe as feudal

are related with careful homage,

We know that most colony experiments have failed through socialistic or communisitic government. Byrdcliffe is frankly a benevolent despotism. Whitehead is the absolute monarch, and no one is tolerated who is not in sympathy with his rule. . . . The Byrdcliffe despot is the most gentle and admirable tyrant. . . .

He went on to give his own interpretation of Byrdcliffe's

raison d'etre, one that was far from Whitehead's

originally stated intentions but based on what existed

there in 1909. "No problems are being solved at

Byrdcliffe. The founder and proprietor is an artist, and

he wants to fill his bungalows with men and women of

kindred taste. There is the secret in a nutshell."48

The same year Sanborn's article was published, the

longest-lived craft endeavor began at Byrdcliffe. The

Byrdcliffe Pottery opened in 1907 with Edith Penman and

48 Poultney Bigelow, "The Byrdcliffe Colony of Arts and Crafts," American Homes and Gardens (October 1909): 393.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 30

Elizabeth Hardenburgh in charge. It stayed open until at

least 1928 with a change in directorship in 1923 when

Zulma Steele took over. The pots they made were handbuilt

and received much attention at the exhibitions of the New

York Society of Ceramic Art.49

Jane Byrd Whitehead began taking lessons at the

Byrdcliffe Pottery in 1913, and by 1915 she and Ralph were

setting up their own enterprise, naming it White Pines

Pottery. It is not understood why the Whiteheads set up

their own pottery works while the Byrdcliffe pottery was

still active. Coming at a time when Byrdcliffe was more a

private family estate than a large art colony, the venture

was most likely a means by which Whitehead could learn the

craft without disrupting the existing pottery. It was at

this time that C. R. Ashbee, organizer of his own

handicraft community, the Guild of Handicraft in Chipping

Camden, England, traveled to the States and visited

Byrdcliffe. His impression of the colony reflected the

state to which the bustling, enthusuastic experiment of

1903 had degraded.

Whitehead is an English country gentleman transplanted to the Catskills .... The landscape is wonderful, the conception superb; the houses with delightful workshops, finely

Jane Perkins Claney, "White Pines Pottery; The Continuing Arts and Crafts Experiment," in Life by Design: The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony (Wilmington, Del.: The Delaware Art Museum, 1984), 16.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 31

placed; there are kilns, metal shops, weavingsheds, a central hall with library, good books and fine workmanship. . . . the shell of a great life all empty but for two or three lonely spinsters, one weaver and two potters. It was tragic.

This observation was poignant when seen in light of the

fact that Ashbee's own Guild of Handicraft was also slowly

deteriorating and had never had the impact on society that

Ashbee had hoped.

Whitehead, however, was enthralled with his new

diversion. He immersed himself in the work of potting,

finally finding artistic talents that years earlier he had

decided he did not have. At the time of his marriage this

sense of artistic incompetency most likely prompted him to

accept his fate as a provider and not an actor. With his

newly discovered potting skills, however, he was actor,

inventor, and director.

Jane Whitehead was primarily responsible for

decorating the pottery, a craft which she had studied with

Frederick Hurten Rhead in California in the fall of 1913

and William G. Whitford at the University of Chicago in

August of 1914.51 Rhead was an old friend of the

Whiteheads from Santa Barbara. Jane took classes with

Alf Evers, "Foreword," The Woodstock Guild and Its Byrdcliffe Arts Colony: A Brief Guide (Woodstock, N.Y.: Woodstock Guild), 13.

51 Claney, 17.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 32

Rhead and even took some of her biscuit-fired wares from

Byrdcliffe to Santa Barbara for help with glazes. She

also brought Rhead blanks to decorate during her summers

at Byrdcliffe. It was after Jane's classes that Ralph

Whitehead began to develop an active interest in the

pottery. He took over the technical side of the craft,

experimenting with glazes and searching for a non-porous

body made from local clays. He kept very precise notes.

His ledgers were organized into kiln loads by date; he

listed vessel shapes by number with notations as to clay

type and the percentages of different colors in the glazes

(fig. 16). Whitehead also kept a physical inventory of

sample glazes in the form of small tiles with body type

and glaze noted in pencil on the back of each; they are

still stacked in the attic of White Pines.

For the creation of vessel shapes, Whitehead used

some of Jane's pots to make molds. In a letter dated 29

October 1915 he wrote to her

I have today stacked the kiln with vases to be biscuited; I have made about two dozen slip casts of your pots & shall fire them tomorrow, along with some little tiles for more experiments. . . . I am quite charmed with some of your pots, (from] which I have made plaster moulds; seven of them.5

52 Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Letter to Jane Byrd Whitehead, 29 October 1915, as quoted in Claney, 18.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 33

Whitehead also copied vase shapes from the Near and Far

East (fig. 17). As Jane Perkins Claney revealed in her

essay, Whitehead enlarged photographs from Robert Lockhart

Hobson's Chinese Pottery and Porcelain of 1915, and Garret

Chatfield Pier's Pottery of the Near East of 1909. He

then made drawings from the photographs, and templates

from the drawings. Wood models of the vases were made

from the templates and molds from the models. These wood

models are still piled in a cabinet in the pottery attic

of White Pines with page notations scratched into the

bottoms. Slip casting done from these molds was a method

by which many pots could be made with consistent and

predictable results without much skill. This sort of

"mass production" points to the difference between White

Pines pottery and Byrdcliffe pottery which was always

handbuilt (fig. 18). It seems Whitehead's intent was to

master the process of creating pottery; he was not

particularly conscious of the faithfulness of his methods

to an ideal of handcrafting, but worked instead to create

objects he was particularly pleased with in form and

color, by any viable means.

As with other crafts practiced at Byrdcliffe,

Whitehead was more interested in the manufacture of the

objects and his personal satisfaction with their creation

than in a practical plan for advertising or marketing

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 34

them. Jane wrote to her eldest son in 1917 about the

prognosis for the pottery venture in light of other

production attempted at Byrdcliffe:

Certainly the way we do things does not succeed, the furniture failed, the weaving failed, & now the pottery looks to me to be going to fail because Ralph won't have an expert here to show him the way, & an outlet in New York to get rid of what he makes.

Shortly after this letter, Jane found a way to promote the

couple's wares. She approached a friend, Phillip Chase,

and arranged an exhibition in New York for May of that

year, hoping to interest gallery owners in adding White

Pines pottery to their inventories.53

The couple eventually marketed their pottery in

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago,

Cincinnati, Cleveland, Woodstock, and Santa Barbara

according to entries in a 1919-23 sales ledger kept by

Whitehead. Single item prices ranged from $1 to $30.54

Prices at the high end of this scale reflect an exorbitant

amount in 1920, generally amounting to a few days wages

for the normal working man. With prices set this high,

Whitehead was not offering pots to educate an

aesthetically misinformed public, but catering to

53 Jane Byrd Whitehead, Letter to Ralph Radcliffe- Whitehead, Jr., 6 January 1917, as quoted in Claney, 19.

54 Sales ledger, Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 35

extraordinarily wealthy individuals well versed in current

fashions and already predisposed to buying art.

Although the wares sold moderately well, placed as

they were in exclusive galleries, the profits would not

have been capable of sustaining a working colony. White

Pines pottery at its height was a venture the Whiteheads

pursued as a couple, and as something interesting and

artistic to devote time and energy to since Byrdcliffe had

become a private estate.

The couple continued making pottery until 1926

when Whitehead's notes ended and Jane stopped marking

events at the pottery in her calendars. Ralph Radcliffe

Whitehead was seventy-two that year and most likely

stopped working due to age. Two years later, in October

of 1928, the Whiteheads threw a bon voyage party for their

eldest son, Ralph Jr. who was returning to South America

where he worked as an engineer. The ship, the

SS Vestris, was lost at sea and Ralph Jr. was among those

on the missing list posted November 14, 1928. Ralph

Whitehead, Sr. never recovered from the death of his son.

He became seriously ill that winter and returned to Santa

Barbara to rest. He was taken to a hospital by ambulance

on February 12. Jane's calendar entry for February 22

reads, "not able to talk, said 'very long road No Pain'

Passed 9pm Dr. Layton" with a line of X's in the margin to

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 36

mark the entry.55 Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead was cremated

in Santa Barbara on February 25, but his ashes were

brought to Byrdcliffe and buried in the Artists' Cemetery

in Woodstock. Jane moved permanently to White Pines and

continued to rent space at Byrdcliffe to summer visitors.

She sold Arcady and strips of land from the outer

stretches of Byrdcliffe to support herself and her younger

son Peter. She died in 1955 at age 90. In her will, she

provided that if Peter predeceased her, there should be

created a "self-perpetuating committee" to manage and own

Byrdcliffe "for the purpose of promoting among the

residents of the Town of Woodstock . . . the study,

practice, and development of skill in the fine arts and

crafts, as well as a true appreciation thereof . . . ."

Peter Whitehead continued to live at Byrdcliffe and

maintained the grounds and buildings that still stand

today (fig. 19). He honored his mother's wishes by

keeping the core of Byrdcliffe intact and by continuing to

offer housing to artists. He died at White Pines in 1975

and left Byrdcliffe to the Woodstock Guild of Craftsmen.

55 Jane Byrd Whitehead, calendar for 1929, private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 37

It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places

in 1979.56

Analysis

An interpretation of this evidence must begin with

a definition of the evidence itself. There are many

factors that contribute to our understanding of the

existence of Byrdcliffe, most pervasively, the

circumstances surrounding Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead

himself. The evidence presented in this study falls into

three categories: what Whitehead said— the ideals and

beliefs and plans he asserted throughout his life in his

writings and conversations; the physical facts of what he

did— the site he built, the relationships he instigated

and severed; and the traceable results of Whitehead's

influence on others, both direct and indirect— the objects

produced at Byrdcliffe and the reactions of others to

Whitehead's methods. Any description or evaluation of

Byrdcliffe must analyze more than just one of these pieces

of evidence; it must regard them all. Any one source

taken separately can be manipulated easily to present any

variety of conclusions.

56 Michael Perkins, The Woodstock Guild and Its Byrdcliffe Arts Colony: A Brief Guide (Woodstock, N.Y.: Woodstock Guild), 35.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 38

Analyzing this body of evidence is more

treacherous than it may seem because evaluations of the

things people said and did or said about others must

include an understanding of the historical/ideological

contexts in which they occurred. At this point it is

crucial that I define "ideology" because scholarship

frequently uses the term in place of "ideas," "ideals," or

"conscious belief systems." A more rigorous definition,

as derived from Karl Marx, is that ideology is "a false

consciousness of social and economic realities, a

collective illusion shared by the members of a given

social class and in history distinctively associated with

that class."57 This interpretation of ideology as

economically based is of course Marxian; Althusser expands

this notion: "Ideology represents the imaginary

relationship of individuals to their real conditions of

existence."58 The action of an ideology exists in the

rationalization of contingent historical facts as

permanent immutable ones. An ideologically based point of

view distorts perceptions of history as much by omitting

57 Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1967), 125.

58 Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971): 153.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 39

to ask questions as by affirming false answers.59 All

historical conditions and events are grounded in ideology,

and any historical analysis must account for the

limitations ideology imposes on human action.

An example here will best elucidate my use of the

term. Thomas S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions offers a comparison of Western and Chinese

astronomers:

Can it conceivably be an accident, for example, that Western astronomers first saw change in the previously immutable heavens during the half- century after Copernicus' new paradigm was first proposed? The Chinese, whose cosmological beliefs did not preclude celestial change, had recorded the appearance of many new stars in the heavens at a much earlier date.

What Kuhn describes as a "paradigm" I would call the

ideology introduced by Ptolemy's theory of a geocentric

system that prevented astronomers before Copernicus from

being able to question the self-evidential reality of

fixed heavens.

Ideology constitutes the belief systems that shape

interpretations of reality. As applied to Ralph Radcliffe

Whitehead and his adaptations of certain Arts and Crafts

ideals, ideology exists in the paradoxes Whitehead was

59 Ibid., 126.

60 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 116.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 40

prevented from recognizing— in the possibilities

unavailable to his consciousness. Strictly speaking, not

only was Whitehead incapable of realizing that he was

furthering the capitalistic hierarchical industrial system

he proclaimed to be opposing, but he could not understand

that the Arts and Crafts reform ideals could not instigate

social reform because they did not engage, but accepted,

the ideology promoted by the pervasive capitalistic

system.

Whitehead's writings— namely the essay "Work" in

which he outlined plans for the construction of an

artistic community, and "A Plea for Manual Work" in which

he specifically delineated his agenda for Byrdcliffe and

his goals for its success— described his vision and

presented his carefully formulated ideals and intentions

in print. Whitehead was a skilled writer and practised

diplomat. Yet his language exposes his embeddedness in a

hierarchy of power and his unawareness that that level of

involvement was an obstacle.

In the essay "Work" Whitehead's tone is elitist

and defensive:

Of arts and crafts I would suggest the following: we want to do not any sort of work, but chiefly work in which culture and refinement are an advantage, and which cannot be so well done by boors; and although we will do simple manual labor when necessary . . . we will rather

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 41

spend our energy in those crafts in which our culture and experience give us an advantage.

The influences of John Ruskin and William Morris are

apparent throughout this essay and yet Whitehead

conspicuously relied on his "culture and refinement" and

saw his privileged upbringing as a means to secure for

himself a gratifying lifestyle in the latest

fashion— which happened to be Arts and Crafts. After all,

one of the characteristics of Arts and Crafts theories was

that they were available to small informed groups and that

duty rested with those enlightened intellectuals to lead

the way for the masses, both by example and philanthropy.

There is evidence that Whitehead and his group accepted

this duty:

Consider the future of the arts when wood, and wool and brass and leather are worked into shapes, no longer by machines, and by workmen who are as mechanical as, and only more slovenly than the machines themselves, but by men and women imbued with all that the culture of past ages and the beauty of living nature has shown them.62

In "A Plea for Manual Work" Whitehead continued to

assert a distinction between more privileged groups and

the rest of society simply by the language he used to

describe them: "It has been shown that in some cities the

61 Whitehead, "Work," 64.

62 Ibid., 62.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 42

inhabitants cannot survive three generations unless by an

admixture of country-bred stock."63 He also set up a

hierarchy of race:

The beauty of repose and of the finely imaginative mind, though oftener found in the Latin and in the oriental races, has not been denied to the more favored children of Anglo- Saxon and Celtic and Teutonic blood.

Whitehead went on to describe the "new upper class" of the

Anglo-Saxon race (to which he and his group belonged) as

"physically saner and pleasanter to look upon, . . . and

[that] their intimacy with a foreign language gives them

one of the best opportunities of acquiring greater mental

freedom."65 It is clear that Whitehead's prescriptions

were intended to be carried out by the upper class for the

upper class.

After the rhetoric used to describe the qualities

and attitudes necessary for a better life, Whitehead

explained his own contribution to this end— Byrdcliffe.

When we have organized some small industries here; when we have proved that it is possible to combine with a simple country life many and varied forms of manual and intellectual activity; when we have made some furniture and woven some handmade textiles which can hold

63 Whitehead, "Plea," 65.

64 Ibid., 60.

65 Ibid., 65.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 43

their own, the writer hopes to be permitted to give an account of our doings.

Whitehead's only prescriptions for social reform were to

make products available to those who cannot afford to buy

"real" art, and to make Byrdcliffe a publicized example to

prod conscientious and sympathetic followers to realize

the shortcomings of their present lives and take up his

cause. The audience for Whitehead's reforms were the

intellectuals already supportive of his cause: the readers

of Handicraft magazine. Indeed, as evidenced by his

language and the sympathies aroused by his class and race

specific discourse, Whitehead wrote for an audience

composed of fellow intellectuals— he did not offer options

to other classes. As indicated by these writings and by

the remaining two categories of evidence, his actions and

influences, Whitehead remained forever trapped between the

materiality of his wealthy life and his reformist

instincts.

The circumstances of Whitehead's actions have been

described in depth in the preceeding pages. The most

striking of these are in the manifestations of Whitehead's

own understanding of his position at Byrdcliffe. He was,

as others called him, "the Byrdcliffe despot," the "lord

of the manor." He cultivated this impression, never

66 Ibid., 73.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 44

failing to exercise his authority over the colony. He

hired and fired the people he claimed were at Byrdcliffe

because of their commitment to the ideal of better living.

Bolton Brown and Hervey White had been recruited by

Whitehead as partners in a venture that happily had a

benefactor who was also interested in all aspects of its

design. It was not until they were at Byrdcliffe and

given specific tasks that they realized they were actually

'•employed" by Whitehead and subject to his methods of

control. The large salaries he offered his inner circle

in order to bring them to and keep them at Byrdcliffe

reflected this control. The $1,500 paid to Bolton Brown

had no relation to the earlier decision described in

"Work" to tax community members at ten percent for money

earned over £120. The failure of the furniture making

enterprise to provide financial support for the colony

also factored into the reassessment of Byrdcliffe's

financial plan. Whitehead's original self-perpetuating

financial schemes deteriorated to consist only of charges

assessed for room and board. Whitehead was forced to

supply the bulk of the money necessary for the upkeep and

enhancement of Byrdcliffe.

Whitehead was as particular about the people he

would allow to live and work at Byrdcliffe as he was about

those he hired to administer his colony. He oversaw the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 45

arrangements made at the "hotel" run by Hervey White and

Carl Linden. He allowed prospective tenants to stay for a

while as White's guests and, if they passed inspection,

Whitehead would invite them to take up residence. His

criteria for judging guests had as much to do with their

social appropriateness and cultured demeanor as their

dedication to the craft arts and reform ideals.

In order to attract the appropriate people to his

cause, Whitehead provided tempting settings for guests and

craftsmen. The plans to transform Byrdcliffe into a more

hospitable summer resort to cater to vacationers instead

of like-minded reformers was one example of how Whitehead

used his financial power to entice people who interested

him. The lavishly outfitted shops with the most modern

conveniences were similarly designed to attract craftsmen.

The woodworking shops were equipped with the most

technologically advanced and expensive machinery that ran

on gas power; there were streams on the Byrdcliffe

property, but none were strong enough to power the saws or

lathes (fig. 20).67 Whitehead justified the use of

machinery, an apparent breach of good arts and crafts

reform etiquette, in his early essay:

. . . the human hand is still more efficacious than any machine; there are, however, some trades in which unassisted manual labour cannot

67 Edwards, "Utopias," 275.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 46

compete with elaborate machinery; and others in which, by using machines, man is enabled to produce such articles as would defy his unaided power. . . . shorter hours for those who work with machinery are necessary, and the absolute refusal of the public to buy goods which are produced under conditions fatal to the health of the workers. This refusal would be naturally and directly given when labour is reasonably organized, and the system is abolished under which man submits to the tyrannical rule of the brutal despot, competition, whom he himself has set up.*8

Whitehead's view was eminently practical. The point is

that he purchased the best and most impressive machinery

in order to attract craftsmen who could not pass up an

opportunity to use the equipment freely.

A comparison of Whitehead's statements to an

analysis of his actions uncovers an interesting dilemma.

In 1891 Whitehead charged the public with the duty of

boycotting commercial goods that did not conform to an

ideal of healthful production techniques. Yet the items

that he and his craftsmen at Byrdcliffe offered for sale

in the marketplace ten to thirty years later were not

viable alternatives for the majority of consumers. The

furniture produced at Byrdcliffe was outrageously priced

for the average worker. A large chest sold for $160 in

1905; a comparison with a more readily available, mass

produced Arts and Crafts style alternative shows that the

most expensive item in L. & J. G. Stickley's 1905 Onondaga

68 Whitehead, "Work," 73—74.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 47

Shops catalogue was a buffet priced at $62.69 Granted,

the Byrdcliffe pieces were handbuilt, one at a time, with

carved and polychromed wood; but in choosing that

particular set of characteristics for his furniture,

Whitehead guaranteed a method of manufacture that

necessitated greater capital and labor and therefore, a

higher price. Some of the pottery he and Jane sold

through galleries from 1921 to 1923 was priced between $20

and $30— again a range directed to the wealthy elite who

had been taught to appreciate the latest styles of art

pottery and who had the disposable income to buy it.

After examining these comparisons, it is easy to

resort to a judgmental analysis, a method too often used

in scholarship on the Arts and Crafts or any reform

movement. The fact that what Whitehead said and what he

did ofen did not correspond does not mean that he betrayed

his ideals or the ideals of the Arts and Crafts. The

written ideals and the events occurred thirty years apart.

There were other factors in Whitehead's life that might

have caused a change in his approach to Arts and Crafts

reform.

Byrdcliffe was more than an experiment to Ralph

Radcliffe Whitehead. It was the Whitehead family home,

the site that he built to raise his sons. And Whitehead's

69 Edwards, "Byrdcliffe: Life by Design," 14 n. 40.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48

intention to make it a success on any level outweighed his

dismay at seeing his original plans fail. He lived his

life in a continuum as all human beings do. He was not

betraying himself or his ideals; he was adapting his

actions to his circumstances. Whitehead's life could be

easily judged from the distance that hindsight gives a

modern scholar, but it is imperative to search for all the

information pertinent to the decisions that were made at

that time in order to more fully comprehend the events.

Equally significant to an understanding of

Whitehead's personal goals of family stability and

prosperity is an examination of the ideologies in which

Whitehead was implicated. The Arts and Crafts philosophy

included a variety of ideals promoted by wealthy

individuals as prescriptions for living. They ranged from

exercise programs for the body to a revolution in

manufacturing methods of consumer goods and included the

belief that providing examples of change in these areas

would consequently effect change in all aspects of life.

In assessing the failures of utopian Arts and Crafts

schemes, in debating why the actions taken failed to

effect the expected change, we ask misleading questions.

A more rigorous methodology would try to determine the

contingent historical facts that ideology masked as

permanent immutable conditions not subject to questioning.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 49

Whitehead was enmeshed in ideologies of production

and social relations. The most apparent was the ideology

of capitalism that affected every aspect of Whitehead's

project from the marketing and selling of products to the

hierarchical power structures that governed Byrdcliffe's

organization. After claiming to protest the factory

system that supported his family, Whitehead effectively

recreated the factory condition in the country. Instead

of recognizing and dismantling the hierarchical structure

of the factory system of labor, he reiterated it by hiring

a staff and placing himself at its head as the single

ultimate authority.

Evidence of the pervasiveness of this ideological

demand for defined power structures is not limited to

Whitehead's thoughts and actions. It can be found in the

language of both his critics and advocates. Alvan F.

Sanborn, in his article "Leaders in American Arts and

Crafts" of 1907, felt obliged to describe the social

organization of Byrdcliffe. In introducing Ralph

Radcliffe Whitehead to his readers, the first

characterization he gave was of an English lord.

. . . the creator of Byrdcliffe retains the title to all the Byrdcliffe houses and lands and is the ultimate authority with regard to any and every question of policy and administration that may arise.

70 Sanborn, 148.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 50

The author's instinct to determine and expose the core

power structure of his subject exemplified the

pervasiveness of the ideology that saw an ordered

hierarchy as a requirement for an effective plan to bring

about change. This current runs throughout the article.

Sanborn also described the Rose Valley Arts and Crafts

experiment in Pennsylvania and found it necessary to

compare the project to Byrdcliffe: "So far as its social

organization is concerned, it is evident that Rose Valley

is more democratic than Byrdcliffe."71 In the last

sentence of the article, Sanborn displays the ideology of

control that pervades characterizations of the arts and

crafts movement made by his contemporaries, "The American

arts and crafts movement is broadening and deepening.

. . . it is slowly but surely becoming a great power for

good in the land."72 Poultney Bigelow in his American

Homes and Gardens article follows suit. "Absolute

monarchy saves the colony from a vast amount of wrangling

and wasted time which has usually wrecked other efforts in

this direction.1,73

In the writings of those advocates of Arts and

Crafts ideals not connected directly to Byrdcliffe, the

71 Ibid., 151.

72 Ibid., 152.

73 Bigelow, 393.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 51

ideology was still apparent. In a 1910 article in

Handicraft magazine titled, "What the Arts and Crafts

Movement has Accomplished," the author described the

movement as, ". . . the embodiment of the ideals and

aspirations and achievements— social, moral, aesthetic,

spiritual— of those immediately concerned with its

organized development in your community."74 And on the

page following was printed the roster of the Handicraft

Club of Providence, Rhode Island listing the officers of

the club including president, first vice-president, second

vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and honorary

president.75 This organizational control can be seen in

every Arts and Crafts society in America; societies elect

presidents, vice-presidents, and council members yet in

their "Statements of Principles" they call for equality

among all craftsmen, unjudged exhibitions, and cooperative

studios.

Analysis of these ideologies should not be reduced

to conjecture about what could have happened if Arts and

Crafts organizations had not formed formal hierarchies.

Instead we must investigate the possibilities that are

masked by an ideological belief in formal control. The

74 Frederic Allen Whiting, "What the Arts and Crafts Movement has Accomplished," Handicraft (June 1910): 108. Emphasis added.

75 Ibid., 109.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 52

replication of a hierarchical power structure in a

supposed alternative to a factory system of production

reveals a failure to recognize that a hierarchical system

of control is one of the most fundamental conditions of

industrial production.

Many other ideologies are easy to identify in the

strongly prescriptive literature of reform. Witness

statements taken from various articles: "The instinct of

workmanship would be the greatest source of happiness, if

it were not for the fact that our present social and

economic organization allows only a few to gratify this

instinct.1,76 "The production of 'goods' has become an

evil. Here we find the fundamental cause of the whole

'inartistic,' and hence painful, character of our present

society."77 "It is, of course, a fact that a work of art

can only be wrought by an individual who is free to put

his best ability and choice into his work, and so we

cannot expect art from our factory system. . . ."78 All

these statements interpret conditional historical facts as

permanent immutable situations. After determining that a

particular aspect of factory production was the ultimate

76 "The Economic Foundation of Art," The Craftsman 1, no. 6 (1902): 33-34.

77 Ibid., 37.

78 Mary Ware Dennett, "The Arts and Crafts Problem and a Way Out," Handicraft (September 1911): 215.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 53

evil, Arts and Crafts advocates, by demanding action

against that evil, ensured that all effort would be put to

solving the determined inequity in the industrial system.

In doing so they failed to see the other conditions that

might support the same result.

Modern scholarship on the Arts and Crafts relies

too heavily on the writings of the movement's leaders,

particularly Ruskin and Morris. By using their texts to

categorize later Arts and Crafts practitioners, this

scholarship unwittingly reaffirms the same ideologies that

affected its subjects. This tendency, the need to pin a

definition of Arts and Crafts to a historical period and

determine which objects and makers fit the definition

seems to comprise the bulk of current scholarship.79

Scholars regularly return to the writings of Ruskin and

Morris and critically examine their texts as prescriptive

writings instead of abstracted theories. They judge both

self-proclaimed and silent followers of Ruskin and Morris

by the completeness of their artistic adherence to

designated tenets. Objects become intellectual

79 The recent three-day conference on the Arts and Crafts at Winterthur Museum, October 18— 20, 1990, is an example of this. The concluding remarks praised the participants for expanding awareness of previously overlooked Arts and Crafts figures and acknowledged that our definitions are not all-inclusive, and are sometimes problematic, but justified the research presented at the conference by claiming that scholarship is still at the early stage.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 54

receptacles carrying every socially conscious reform issue

pertinent to the period. The adjectives these scholars

use are all too familiar: simple, honest, pure,

handcrafted, true to nature, reform-minded, a usefulness

equal to beauty, unified design. Not everything that

claimed to be within Arts and Crafts ideals fit all of

these descriptions if any. This methodology of nostalgia

leads scholars to create myths around people and objects

without examining the contexts of production.

The recent catalogue on Byrdcliffe and Ralph

Radcliffe Whitehead is an example of misguided nostalgic

analysis. In describing furniture produced at Byrdcliffe,

Robert Edwards writes:

Though some Byrdcliffe furniture lacks refinement in proportion, and all is simple, it remains an instructive manifestation of the Arts and Crafts idea that beauty found by the craftsmen in their daily lives was more important than the finished product.

By asserting that the only function pertinent to the

creation of furniture was to provide an enjoyable pastime

for their makers, this particular evaluation of the intent

of arts and crafts ideals conveniently overlooks

Whitehead's intentions, his inadequate efforts to market

his products, and his mistaken estimation of the

popularity of his wares in the commercial marketplace.

80 Edwards, "Byrdcliffe: Life by Design," 11.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 55

Similarly, Jane Perkins Claney's concluding

statement about the pottery experiments at Byrdcliffe

incorporates a similar core definition of the "true”

expression of Arts and Crafts ideals and provides a

limiting and misleading impression of the pottery's

existence at Byrdcliffe:

The Whiteheads' attitude about their pottery was a quintessential expression of Arts and Crafts belief: they took pleasure and pride in producing useful and beautiful objects and sought validation for their efforts through sales and exhibits.

Can the "quintessence of arts and crafts expression" be

limited to this description?

The allure of the objects is too compelling for

arts and crafts scholars. Descriptions of the visual

characteristics of Arts and Crafts style too often include

generalizations about the manufacture of the objects which

may or may not be accurate. In any case, scholars have so

securely installed a language of Arts and Crafts that they

do not question the connotations implicit in the words and

phrases. The reverse is also true. If a chair that

appears similar to an already cannonized Arts and Crafts

object is found to have evidence of machine-sawn wood, its

lineage is questioned and its maker condemned for

betraying Arts and Crafts ideals. The rules have begun to

81 Claney, 19.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 56

bend in recent years, and the definition of arts and

crafts is expanding to include more production techniques

than were previously accepted. But in most cases other

requirements must be met before something is deemed arts

and crafts: the designer must have been striving for

social reform, or have based his form on a Morris product,

or have kept a complete collection of Ruskin's papers in

his library. But how many requirements are necessary?

Which criteria do we accept and which do we reject?

Instead of concocting definitions that arbitrarily assign

value by association with modern criteria of intellectual

consistency, scholars must begin with the objects and

craftspeople, identify to what degree they were involved

with various social institutions and influences, and

define the ideologies revealed by their actions and stated

beliefs.

In the case of Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead and

Byrdcliffe, definitions are irrelevant. The "failure" of

the colony to effect the changes that Whitehead originally

envisioned is not a label that can categorically describe

every aspect of Byrdcliffe. Whitehead's success lies in

the records preserved from Byrdcliffe that document the

decisions made and the actions taken at a specific place

in a specific time. Armed with a broader understanding of

the changing nature of ideology and its subtle but

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 57

absolute pervasiveness in all human action, scholars must

untangle the misleading language, preconceptions, and

nostalgic interpretations of the Arts and Crafts and

present clearer, more comprehensive studies which aim not

to judge their subjects, but to learn from them.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 58

Figure 1 View of Arcady. Santa Barbara, Calif., ca. 1895. Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 59

Figure 2 Drawing studio at Byrdcliffe. Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 60

Figure 3 Interior of the Forge. From an original photograph by Jessie Tarbox Beals, ca. 1909. Source: Coy L. Ludwig, The Arts and Crafts Movement in New York State. 1890s— 1920s. exhibition catalogue (Hamilton, N.Y.: Gallery Association of New York State, 1983), 8 .

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 61

I

turmhfxiKC

* 0 Barzin

The Barn

Iggdroslll

v> hue Pines

Antfdus

12 —^Cam lola

Fleur

10 —ultcrm tlaflc \arenko o ^

11 m m Bottcga Skylights Quartet Uilpm unk

Theater Tltc Forge Evening Star moo Tlie Y lllctta

Morning Star

TlieWoixIstock Guild's Eastovcr Sunrise " a Byrdcliffe Arts Colony Muster Plun I ana w m * MDtrcr

Figure Map of Byrdcliffe property. Source: Michael Perkins, The Woodstock Guild and its Byrdcliffe Arts Colony: A Brief Guide (Woodstock, N.Y.: Woodstock Guild, 1991), 61.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 62

Figure 5 Oak cabinet. Designed by Zulma Steele. 65 x 60 x 23 3/4 in. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 63

Figure 6 Detail of oak cabinet panel.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 64

Figure 7 Mahogany chest. Painted motif designed by Zulma Steele. 72 1/2 x 40 x 16 in. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 65

Figure 8 Chest. Motif painted in oil on inset panels. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 9 Front room at White Pines. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 67

Figure 10 Stairhall at White Pines. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 68

Figure 11 Front room at White Pines. Mercer tiles around fireplace, portrait of William Morris at left. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 12 Library at Byrdcliffe. Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 13 Library table. 30 3/4 x 36 5/8 x 24 in. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 14 Settle. 68 x 68 x 26 in. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 72

Figure 15 Cabinet. Designed by Edna Walker. 72 1/2 x 48 x 21 in. Private collection.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 73

/;Ct, i /fi^ % A ~ jh A~y=sw Cv ?M l V/ y.'.a.tit-v - Vi'if V > / ,- / A y /r ri.. , ) s /'

Vj/i'i/' Vr^' li-lu. ^ ^ 2• /?■> - / £*. / J V 7**i

iA%fi - . A /On . ^ ., fj- t - / if '*'*'/ \ h r ~ ^ ' - ~ ‘ i °’/. 11 * /£ 4l « //v N* ‘ s a 'h^ i> - ^ -y // a w , x . , V/ ['t.i;.../?<■ ny. ^ ^ ■ ll) c b ~ tCuje^,. 'k.~A.r‘,„ y / ’ -S a n - 7?” ft fr*** /• £?. l(2**t //*» 77^ a v v . :•'*/• jiffi Q hu^/it ~ i/>4/>**<■ fly*' rjm L2:'. 'IwcM 1 e t a j t t r ,/^j // /fo* i>v ' 77^ A , ii>- I) ■

a £»?♦/. c^s 3 ■/ 7 ^ 5 -- ' - V

aK'4 !< - r! ,; * > • S »••-•• ■ — J/t...<■ . V .^

Figure 16 Ralph Whitehead's pottery notes. Showing pot shapes by number and references to color. Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Figure 17 Pots in attic of White Pines. Photographed 1 by author, 1991.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75

Figure 18 Pots and molds in attic of White Pines. Photographed by author, 1991.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 76

Figure 19 Exterior of White Pines. Photographed by author, 1991.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 77

Figure 20 Interior of Byrdcliffe furniture shop. Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209, The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor. Prisms. Trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981.

Adorno, Theoder. "Situation.11 In Aesthetic Theory, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolftiede Mann; trans. C. Lenhardt. London: Routledge, 1984.

Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1971.

Ashbee, C. R. Craftsmanship in Competitive Industry. Campden, England: Essex House Press, 1908. Reprint. New York: Garland Publishing, 1977.

. A Few Chapters in Workshop Reconstruction and Citizenship and An Endeavour Towards the Teaching of Ruskin and Morris. London: Essex House Press, 1894 and London: F. Arnold, 1901. Reprint. New York: Garland Publishing, 1978.

Assiter, Alison. Althusser and Feminism. London: Pluto Press, 1990.

Batchelder, Ernest A. "The Arts and Crafts Movement in America: Work or Play?" The Craftsman 16, no. 6 (1902): 544-9.

Baudrillard, Jean. Political Economy of the Sign. Trans. Charles Levin. New York: Telos Press, 1981.

. Revenge of the Crystal: Selected Writings on the Modern Object and its Destiny, 1968—1983. Ed. and trans. Paul Foss and Julian Pefanis. London: Pluto Press, 1990.

. Selected Writings. Ed. and trans. Mark Poster. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

78

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 79

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt; trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, 1968.

Benton, Ted. The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and his Influence. London: MacMillan Publishers, 1984.

Bigelow, Poultney. "The Byrdcliffe Colony of Arts and Crafts." American Homes and Gardens (October 1909): 389-94.

Boris, Eileen. Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the Craftsman Ideal in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.

Brown, Bolton. "Early Days at Woodstock." Publications of the Woodstock Historical Society 13 (August/September 1937): 3—14.

Byrdcliffe Records, Collection 209. The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library.

Claney, Jane Perkins. "White Pines Pottery; The Continuing Arts and Crafts Experiment." In Life by Design: The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony. Wilmington, Del.: The Delaware Art Museum, 1984.

Commerce and Culture: From Pre-industrial to Post­ industrial Value. Ed. Stephen Bayley. Great Britain: Penshurst Press, 1989.

Dennett, Mary Ware. "The Arts and Crafts Problem and a Way Out." Handicraft 6 (September 1909): 209-20.

"The Economic Foundation of Art." The Craftsman 1, no. 6 (1902): 33-42.

Edwards, Paul, ed. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1967.

Edwards, Robert. "Byrdcliffe: Life by Design." In Life by Design: The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony. Wilmington, Del.: The Delaware Art Museum, 1984.

. "The Utopias of Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead." Antiques 127 (January 1985): 260-76.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 80

The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Trans. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978.

Evers, Alf. The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

. Woodstock: History of an American Town. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Press, 1987.

Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1983.

Jacobs, Michael. The Good and Simple Life. Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1985.

Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934.

Kahler, Bruce Robert. "Art and Life: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Chicago, 1897-1910." Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 1986.

Kaplan, Wendy, et al. "The Art that is Life": The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875—1920. Exhibition catalogue. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Lambourne, Lionel. Utopian Craftsmen: The Arts and Crafts Movement from the Cotswolds to Chicago. Salt Lake City: Peregrin Smith, 1980.

Ludwig, Coy L. The Arts and Crafts Movement in New York State, 1890s—1920s. Exhibition catalogue. Hamilton, N.Y.: Gallery Association of New York State, 1983.

Marling, Karal Ann Rose. "Federal Patronage and the Woodstock Community." Ph.D. diss, Bryn Mawr College, 1971.

McCracken, Grant. Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 81

Morgan, H. Wayne, ed. The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1963.

Naylor, Gillian. The Arts and Crafts Movement. London: Trefoil Publications, 1990.

Perkins, Michael. The Woodstock Guild and Its Byrdcliffe Arts Colony: A Brief Guide. Woodstock, N.Y.: Woodstock Guild, 1991.

Poulson, Christine. William Morris. Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell Books, 1989.

Rosenberg, John D. The Genius of John Ruskin. New York: George Braziller, 1963.

Sanborn, Alvan F. "Leaders in American Arts and Crafts." Good Housekeeping (February 1907): 146-52.

Shi, David E. The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Stickley, Gustav. "The Craftsman Movement: Its Origin and Growth." The Craftsman 25, no. l (1914): 17-26.

Stickley, Gustav. "The Use and Abuse of Machinery, and Its Relation to the Arts and Crafts." The Craftsman 11, no. 2 (1906): 202—7.

Thompson, Bertha. "The Craftsmen of Byrdcliffe." Publications of the Woodstock Historical Society 10 (July 1933): 8-13.

Thompson, E. P. William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary. New York: Pantheon Books, 1977.

Triggs, Oscar Lovell. "The New Industrialism." The Craftsman 3, no. 2 (1902): 93-106.

Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: Modern Library, 1934.

White, Hervey. "Autobiography." University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, Iowa, 1937. Typescript.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 82

White, Hervey. "Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead." Publications of the Woodstock Historical Society 10 (July 1933): 14-29.

Whitehead, Ralph Radcliffe. Grass of the Desert. London: Chiswick Press, 1892.

. "A Plea for Manual Work." Handicraft 2, no. 3 (June 1903): 58-73.

Whiting, Frederic Allen. "What the Arts and Crafts Movement Has Accomplished." Handicraft 3 (June 1910): 90-108.

Wilhide, Elizabeth. William Morris: Decor and Design. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991.

Woodstock: An American Art Colony, 1902—1977. Exhibition catalogue. Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College Art Gallery, 1977.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.