The Burchfield Penney Art Center has the largest public collection of Roycroft objects. Only a few artifacts representing Roycroft artisans when Charles Rand Penney donated his substantial Roycroft Collection of 401 objects and 568 books and magazines in 1994. Since then the collection has grown with more donations. Dr. Penney and other contributors have believed that hand-made Roycroft designs are the epitome of refined simplicity and craftsmanship.
In addition, the Center’s collection is contextualized by art, artifacts, furniture, photographs, and publications by other Arts & Crafts era artists, artisans, and aesthetic production companies. The collection includes furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley and Charles Rohlfs; fabric designed by William Morris; wallpapers designed by Morris & Company and M. H. Birge & Sons Company; Deldare Ware produced by Buffalo Pottery; and simple household objects aestheticized by Heintz Art Metal and Karl Kipp in the early 20th century.
Roycroft History
Harry P. Taber founded the Roycroft Printing Shop in 1895, basing the business name on promotional material about the new “Roycroft type face” from American Type Founders. He published The Philistine in June and first printed the Roycroft trademark on September 3, 1895. 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, New York.
Hubbard drew his inspiration from William Morris (1834-1896), the influential 19th-century English painter, furniture designer, poet, and socialist writer. Hubbard had traveled to England in 1894, visited the Kelmscott Press (which had been established by Morris in 1891), and admired its elegant books as well as the workers' dedication to quality. William 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. Mail order brought attractive, practical home furnishings made in the Roycroft tradition to thousands of American homes. 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 major national center for Arts and Crafts ideas and production. The Roycroft philosophy was manifest through beautifully designed functional objects made of leather, glass, metal, wood and ceramics.