Arts & Crafts Furniture Movement

Arts & Crafts furniture making, as a Movement, is based on dedication to quality and integrity. Arts & Crafts furniture is, historically, a big umbrella that covers a number of subcategories. Mission, Craftsman, Stickley, Quaint, Handcraft, Greene & Greene, Prairie Style, Roycroft, and others all apply the same idea: hand made furniture made attractive by its very structure, usually made of white oak, often fumed in ammonia, or red oak, and finished simply and honestly.

Arts & Crafts/Mission Furniture - 21st Century

Arts & Crafts Furniture, although popular in the early 20th century, became a rarity when new forms of modernism moved to the fore. Mission design and Prairie Style continued to have advocates, even though the Movement waned.

Arts & Crafts furniture revived in interest at the start of the 21st century and devoted collectors skimmed the cream off the antiques market. Arts & Crafts furniture became prohibitively expensive for ordinary folks, and the pressures of late 20th Century life made making one’s own custom oak furniture problematic. So a community of craftspeople has grown up, most of whom are dedicated to the principles of utility, simplicity, and integrity of design and workmanship.

Arts & Crafts/Mission Furniture at Desert Craftsmen

Furniture makers at Desert Craftsmen are proud to be a part of that community. Custom oak Arts & Crafts and Mission furniture and accessories are what we build. Each piece we ship is made from start to finish by one person, and represents the very best that worker can do. We use Arts & Crafts and Mission style design principles in furniture making, addressing the opportunities and profound satisfaction it entails.

Arts & Crafts Principles in Hand Crafting Furniture

Arts & Crafts principles applied to custom furniture consist of two important aspects: integrity of design and adaptation of application. Arts & Crafts and Mission furniture is attractive in that it is what it appears to be. It’s color is the color of the white oak acted upon by natural processes. A pegged through-tenon actually is such, not a skin-deep appliqué.

Arts & Crafts Furniture/Mission Furniture for Today's Lifestyle

Arts & Crafts/Mission furniture - one of its beauties is that it can be adapted to even the most modern application. To wit, this exposition was composed on a Macintosh computer which lives in a quarter sawn white oak secretary. But it’s an impressive piece of custom furniture If you close it up. Lower the writing surface and it’s an up-to-the-minute computer work station with room for just about every known peripheral.

The DesertCraftsmen Arts & Crafts/Mission furniture makers of Phoenix, Arizona invite you to browse through our web site. If you’re an Arts & Crafts or Mission style furniture fan you may have a piece in mind for us to make for you. If so, contact us and we'll get started. If you're new to the Arts & Crafts style, you may not know the range of pieces it includes, so we've provided some examples. Just below you'll see some pieces we're particularly proud of. And below them, you'll see examples to stimulate your imagination. When something strikes your fancy, contact us. We’ll be pleased to help.

The Oak Park Series

Dining Table Click on photo to see more.	This table is intended to capture the Prairie Style Wright made famous. And it's BIG. It will seat ten comfortably, twelve if they're really good friends.
Dining Chair Click on photo to see more.	We tried to do two things which are very hard to make coexist. We tried to capture the freshness and originality of turn-of-the-century Prairie Style while providing a comfortable place for a human to sit. While our success at the former is subject to individual judgement, personal experience says we accomplished the latter.
Prairie Sofa Click on photo to see more.	The object of this piece was to provide a cozy place to curl up (or stretch out) in front of a roaring fireplace. It's rather like a rectilinear cocoon.
Tall Case Clock Click on photo to see more.	Even in a place as timeless as a Frank Lloyd Wright house it's nice to be able to know the hour. In this case, you could do that without looking. Westminster chimes sound on the quarter hour, with the hour struck on the hour.

The Range of Commissions

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Why Limit Your Thinking

Once you've found a place where you can get exactly what you want, consider the possibility of getting all the different things of the type you want, either all at once or in sequence. You're not limited to the examples you see on this web site.

For example, if you want a Morris chair for your living area or den, why not consider matching or complimentary bookcases, plant stands, appliance stands, a clock for the mantle, arm chairs, end tables, a settle, a couch, a magazine stand, dictionary stand, writing desk, library table, or any of the things that make the space useful and attractive?

Or in a dining area, think not just of a side board, but maybe a dining table with carver's chair and side chairs, or a hutch, a buffet, a wine cabinet, or a room screen for that sense of intimacy. That's why they call it a suite, from the French, 'things that go together.'

They call it a bedroom because that's where the bed is. But so's the night stand, a dresser, a chest of drawers, an armoire, a wardrobe, assorted chairs, and the inevitable gentleman's dressing stool. To say nothing of reading lamps or floor lamps, a vanity, or a mirror.

In the office, you'll need a desk and desk chair, or a roll top desk, a cadenza, a telephone stand, a conference table with chairs.

And that's just the start. If you have furniture needs, there's almost certainly an Arts & Crafts solution for them. Either all at once or one at a time.