Remembering Kitty Turgeon by Nancy Weekly

To Arts & Crafts era enthusiasts, the name Kitty Turgeon became synonymous with the Roycroft legacy. She contributed greatly to its renaissance through co-founding and participating in the Roycrofters-at-Large Association in East Aurora, New York. Staff, board, council and visitors to the Burchfield Penney Art Center will miss her spirited enthusiasm for all things Roycroft. She was an important advisor for numerous Roycroft exhibitions, including the popular Roycroft Desktop, which after premiering at the Burchfield Penney Art Center in December 1994, traveled through February 1998 to the Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, Michigan; Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina; Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, Washington; Muckenthaler Culture Center in Fullerton, California; , and New York State Museum in Albany, New York.

The Burchfield Penney Art Center has the largest, publically held Roycroft collection in Western New York. In 1994 Charles Rand Penney donated his substantial Roycroft Collection of 401 objects and 568 books and magazines, which added to the nascent collection and inspired donations from others, including Kitty Turgeon and her former husband Robert Rust. They donated publications, including a rare first issue copy of The Roycroft Quarterly from May 1896, and they promised to make a future donation of a Typewriter Desk with original Underwood Typewriter made by the Roycroft Furniture Shop. Previously, in 1992, they donated an etching by Rixford U. Jennings (1906-1996) of the East Aurora Grade Crossing printed in 1935.

Living in and promoting the Arts & Crafts aesthetic, Kitty Turgeon generously entertained in her East Aurora Roycroft home for several museum events, such as the Artful Table series, an annual fundraising event of theme dinners and entertainment hosted by noted members of the community, as well as gatherings of the Collectors Club, who help to develop the collection, and other tour groups. She ran Elderhostel events and educational lectures, programs and workshops— all to cultivate public interest in both the museum and the East Aurora campus with its Roycroft Renaissance artisans who sustain the practice more than a century later. In addition to making presentations, Kitty co-authored several books: Arts & Crafts: Architecture and Design Library (1997), The Arts and Crafts Home (1998), and The Roycroft Campus (1999). Her passion was halted only by the sands of time. Kitty (Edythe Smith) Turgeon died November 3, 2014 at the age of 81.

For readers who might not be familiar with the history of the Roycroft, here is a brief synopsis:
Harry P. Taber founded the Roycroft Printing Shop in 1895, published The Philistine in June and first printed the Roycroft trademark on September 3, 1895. Shortly afterwards, Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915) bought the Roycroft Printing Shop from Taber on November 29, 1895. After resigning from his executive position in the advertising department at the Larkin Soap Company in Buffalo, Hubbard became nationally famous through his writings published by his Roycroft Press, and by the artists’ colony he founded in East Aurora. He drew inspiration from William Morris (1834-1896), the influential 19th-century English painter, furniture designer, poet, and socialist writer. Morris was the first to adapt the philosophies of John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and others by emulating the medieval guild system and creating handcrafted items. Followers of the British Arts and Crafts aesthetic saw the increasing industrialization of Europe through the 19th century as a threat to art and society. These ideas formed the basis of a work ethic for Hubbard, who trademarked the ancient guild name “The Roycrofters,” literally meaning “King's Craftsmen.” Hubbard wrote: “The Roycroft ideal is to make beautiful things and make them as well as they can be made.” In the Roycroft workshops artisans were trained in the ways to craft domestic objects, including— surprisingly— the use of machines. Unlike his English counterparts, Hubbard had no fear of technology. He was interested in using any means to produce simple, honest objects.

In addition to publishing books, periodicals, broadsides, and mottoes, Roycrofters created a Blacksmith Shop, followed by shops specializing in copper, leather, ceramics, and wooden furniture. Hubbard applied his business knowledge and marketing skill to selling these products through catalogues sent to subscribers of his publications, The Philistine and The Fra. Attractive, practical home furnishings made in the Roycroft tradition reached thousands of American homes through mail order. Roycroft publications disseminated Hubbard's personal philosophy, wit, and opinions about social issues, including women's right to vote.
At its height, the self-contained Roycroft community of more than 500 men and women boasted its own school, inn, assembly hall, baseball team, and even a bank. Elbert Hubbard emphasized the importance of “the quality of work life” and offered his workers unprecedented amenities. The development of such a system, which drew admirers such as Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington, was uniquely American, improving as it did on an Old World ideal. Although Hubbard and his wife, Alice, were lost in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, Roycroft artisans continued making books, furniture, and copper and leather goods until forced to close in 1938 by the effects of the Great Depression. During its forty-three years of existence, the Roycroft community was a major national center for Arts and Crafts ideas and production. The Roycroft philosophy was manifest through beautifully designed functional objects made of paper, leather, glass, metal, wood and ceramics.

Nancy Weekly
Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator