The Gamble House is an architectural staple in Pasadena that has residents visiting throughout the year, but have you ever noticed the furniture inside?
On Tuesday, November 10, guests are invited to view the priceless collection of Stickley furniture throughout the estate as Preservation Pasadena: Craftsman to Modern, the virtual reimagination of Pasadena Heritage’s annual Craftsman Weekend, continues.
For only $12, Pasadena Heritage’s Jennifer Trotoux, the Director of Collections and Interpretation, will provide an insider’s look at how Stickley furniture has always been present in the Gamble House to supplement its priceless collection of furniture designed by Greene & Greene.
Stickley furniture pieces have played an important role in the presentation of the Gamble House’s interiors. Trotoux will explain how this commercially available furniture line seems right at home in the highly customized surroundings of the Gamble House. She will also trace where the early bungalow dwellers of Pasadena buy their Stickley furniture from, and how Stickley furniture came to be used in The Gamble House, both in the historical period and today.
Stickley Furniture started when the Stickley brothers – Gustav, Charles and Albert – formed Stickley Brothers and Company in 1883, the same year Gustav married Eda Ann Simmons.
Within five years, the company was dissolved and Gustav Stickley’s ambitions led him to partner with Elgin Simonds, a salesman in the furniture trade, to form the firm Stickley & Simonds in Binghamton, New York. During the 1890s, Stickley divided his efforts between his new enterprise and the Auburn State Prison. At the prison he and his brother Leopold served as foreman of furniture operations. In 1898, he orchestrated the removal of his business partner and formed the Gustave Stickley Company (he dropped the “e” from his first name in 1903).
In the summer of 1900, he worked with Henry Wilkinson and, possibly, LaMont A. Warner (soon his first staff designer) to create his first Arts and Crafts works in an experimental line called the New Furniture. In 1901, he changed the name of his firm to the United Crafts, issued a new catalogue written by Syracuse University professor Irene Sargent, and began to offer middle class consumers a host of progressive furniture designs in ammonia-fumed quartersawn white oak, as well as other mostly native woods.
After the Stickley brothers passed away, the legacy was passed to the Audi family. At his Manhattan showroom, E.J. Audi had for years been the leading seller of Stickley’s unsurpassed furniture. His son Alfred, and Alfred’s wife Aminy, were unwilling to let Stickley become a relic of the past and decided to purchase the Stickley factory when Leopold’s widow was on the brink of closing it. Alfred promised the couple of dozen employees then remaining that “If you stick with me, I’ll stick with you, and we’re going to make this place move.”
Alfred Audi passed away in the fall of 2007, but the Stickley legacy is continued by his wife Aminy and son Edward.
“A Century of Stickley at The Gamble House” begins Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
To buy tickets for this and other upcoming Preservation Pasadena events, visit www.pasadenaheritage.org/
All events are $12 for Pasadena Heritage members and $15 for non-members.
