James Shoolbred & Co Catalogues

Illustration: James Shoolbred & Co catalogue, 1874.

James Shoolbred started his company in Tottenham Court Road by purchasing number 155 in the 1820s. He was involved in supplying textiles to the burgeoning interior decoration market in London. He must have done well and quickly because he soon purchased numbers 154 and 156, either side of the original building. With his newly expanded premises, the shop was restructured and the stock was expanded. The new premises included a haberdashers and a carpet warehouse, as well as expanded accommodation for the stock of textiles, which included wool, silk and linen.

By the 1880s the company had expanded to such an extent that the business had to move again, this time into premises that functioned as an early department store. The new store was popular from the start. One aspect that proved popular with customers was the detailed displays of interior decorative schemes. Furniture, textiles, carpets and various accessories would be laid out as they would be seen in a real interior. This made it much easier for customers to perceive what their purchases would look like outside the constraints of the department store. It was also a good retail trick as it encouraged customers to buy whole ensembles, which they could reconstruct in their own home without having to hire an interior designer or sort out interior schemes themselves. This marketing trick is still used extensively today by such retail giants as Ikea.

By the 1870s, the company had started to design and manufacture their own furniture. This furniture, along with other interior accessories, were displayed in a series of catalogues that started to appear from about 1873 onwards. The catalogues were meant to expand the appeal of James Shoolbred & Co beyond their department store, and more importantly, beyond London.

Furniture design became an increasingly important aspect of the company and therefore played a large part in the catalogues that the company produced every year. All the major fashionable Revival movements were included, ranging from Gothic to Japanese, and included the numerous French styles.

Interestingly, because James Shoolbred & Co produced catalogues that were so detailed and wide ranging, many were used as literal pattern books in order to copy the latest London styles. This was a particular problem in far-flung British outposts like Australia and New Zealand where there was a brisk trade in James Shoolbred & Co furniture design, with details being worked out from the illustrations generously provided by the company. This furniture was then passed off as being part of a locally designed production.

The catalogues today are an intriguing view of interior tastes and styles of the later nineteenth century and are an invaluable tool, as are all catalogues, for any researcher, historian or anyone with an interest in the history of domestic interior design and decoration.

Unfortunately, the company did not survive the financial crisis of 1929 and closed its department doors for good in 1931.

Further reading links: 
An album of nineteenth-century interiors: Watercolors from two private collections
Domestic Space: Reading the Nineteenth-Century Interior
House Proud Nineteenth Century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection [HC,2008]
Interior Designs of the Nineteenth Century
Travelling by Sea in the Nineteenth Century Interior Design in Victorian Passeng
Nineteenth-Century Decoration: The Art of the Interior
History of Interior Design and Furniture: From Ancient Egypt to Nineteenth-Century Europe
English Furniture, Decoration, Woodwork, and Allied Arts; From the last half of the Seventeenth Century to the early part of the Nineteenth Century
Victorian Revival in Interior Design
Late Victorian Interiors and Interior Details
The Antiques Book of Victorian Interiors
Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau
Victorian House Style: An Architectural and Interior Design Sourcebook
Hints on Household Taste: The Classic Handbook of Victorian Interior Decoration
Victorian interior design

Heal's Furniture and the Arts & Crafts Ideal

Illustration: Heal's advertising literature, 1898.

Ambrose Heal set out with the idea to expand his family's bedding business into the lucrative furnishing and accessory market. He was convinced that simple, well-constructed and functional furniture could be produced at a reasonable retail price for the general public.

This does not, of course mean that he was adverse to selling furniture that was more elaborate and expensive. Ambrose Heal was above all a pragmatist who was well aware that there was more than one type of consumer for interior products and more than one type of retail strategy and he was more than happy to cater for a cross section of tastes and finances.

However, as far as furniture is concerned, it is the simple, well-constructed styles produced at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century that Heal's is now best remembered.

Heal himself was never just a retailer. He had the final say in all aspects of the business, whether it was graphics for advertising, shop layout, or indeed, the construction of the furniture for sale. Obviously this attention to detail paid off, as Heal's, along with Liberty, had one of the earliest corporate identity's in the retail sector.

Interestingly, Heal was a trained cabinetmaker and he in fact designed the 'St Ives' furniture shown in the advertisement of 1898 that illustrates this article. However, he commissioned Charles Robert Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft workshop to produce the furniture initially, but Heal, always being a man who needed direct control over all aspects of design, production and retailing, and with a careful eye on costs, felt that he could achieve cheaper and better results if he were to set up his own workshop. This he did, having first persuaded Ashbee's chief cabinetmaker to run the new Heal's workshop.

Ambrose Heal, through the Heal retail outlet, was able to produce realistic Arts & Crafts inspired interior furnishings and accessories. That he was able to sell furniture, at a relatively cheap price made it all the more attractive and affordable to the masses, something the Arts & Crafts Guilds, although aspiring to, never managed.

This had always been the dream of the Arts & Crafts movement and it is perhaps ironic that a retailer was able to achieve one of the fundamental aspects of the movements philosophy, simple, well-constructed and functional furniture, affordable to the common man. But perhaps what had really been needed amongst the Guilds and the Arts & Crafts movement in general, was the realistic and above all practical and pragmatic imagination of an Ambrose Heal.

Further reading links:
Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors: From the Gothic Revival to Art Nouveau
The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain (Shire History)
The Arts & Crafts Movement
Arts and Crafts Movement (World of Art)
Arts and Crafts Furniture: From Classic to Contemporary
Arts and Crafts Furniture
Arts & Crafts Furniture Anyone Can Make
Arts & Crafts Furniture: Projects You Can Build for the Home (Woodworker's Library)
Authentic Arts & Crafts Furniture Projects
Good Citizens Furniture: The Arts and Crafts Collection at Cheltenham 

Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Magazine

Illustration: The Craftsman magazine cover, January 1904.

The first issue of Gustav Stickley's The Craftsman magazine was produced in 1901. From its inception it was meant to be seen as a vehicle to promote the philosophy of the English Arts & Crafts movement across North America. This can be seen quite clearly with its first issue, which was dedicated entirely to the recently deceased William Morris, while the second issue was dedicated to the also recently deceased John Ruskin.

However, as the magazine matured it gradually took on a more native, home-grown element, promoting the by now burgeoning American Arts & Crafts movement. The magazine took the basic ideas behind the English Arts & Crafts philosophy and moulded them to suit an American environment.

The magazine promoted an all-encompassing simple life philosophy, which included in its remit, architecture, interior design and decoration, gardening and lifestyle. This largely home-grown idyll had elements of colonial reminiscences, so while the English movement tried to foster links with the English and European medieval period, the American tried to forge links with its own historical infancy. Of course, it must be admitted that most of the Arts & Crafts linkage with past eras was based largely on a fictitious nostalgia, but in the end that really is not that important. What is important is that the American Arts & Crafts movement which was a fairly broad grouping of elements from a number of disciplines including architecture, furniture, metal, ceramic and textile design, was making the first steps towards a recognition of American cultural uniqueness.

The gradual independence of the American Arts & Crafts movement from the European and particularly English movements, helped to foster the idea of America as a separate entity in its own right.

The Craftsman magazine by highlighting and encouraging the home-grown elements of the Arts & Crafts philosophy, helped to embolden the differences rather than the similarities between the two continents. Although the international aspect of the Arts & Crafts movement was tangible and many of the different national groups around the world did share a similar philosophy, the great strength of the Arts & Crafts movement was that it was adaptable to any number of native customs and cultures. It did much to bolster a reconnection that those cultures had with their own native history and traditions, which were then transmitted into contemporary architecture, design and craft. 

The Craftsman magazine ceased publication in 1916. The impending threat of American involvement in the First World War and the general disruption of markets and finances caused by that war put an end to the magazine. However, during its fifteen years of publication it had become the most read magazine of its type across North America and had helped to foster a dynamism within American mediums like architecture, interior decoration, furniture, metalwork and ceramics, which was to long outlive its short publication run.

Further reading links:
Gustav Stickley: Craftsman Home
Stickley's Craftsman Homes
Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Homes and Bungalows
Craftsman Bungalows: 59 Homes from "The Craftsman"
More Craftsman Homes
Making Authentic Craftsman Furniture: Instructions and Plans for 62 Projects (Dover books on woodworking & carving)
Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Farms: A Pictorial History
Gustav Stickley, the Craftsman
Craftsman Houses: The 1913 Catalog
Craftsman Furnishings For The Home
Stickley Style: Arts and Crafts Homes in the Craftsman Tradition
Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement (Dallas Museum of Art Publications)