(Oneida, NY) This fall’s Adult Enrichment Series at the Oneida Community Mansion House will feature the Arts and Crafts Movement of Central New York and is offered free to the public.
Sarah Lanigan, Stickley Museum executive director, will present “A Visit to The Stickley Museum: Stickley History & Style” at the Oneida Community Mansion House at 7 p.m. on Wednesday Oct. 2.
The five Stickley brothers from Osceola, Wisconsin—Gustav, Albert, Charles, Leopold and John George—began making furniture at their uncle’s factory in Brandt, Pennsylvania around 1877. Their Mission Oak designs gained international prominence in the early 20th century and were based on the notion that furniture should be “honest”—a reaction against the fake joinery, unnecessary gaudiness, and shoddy workmanship of many of the pieces created in the early days of industrial furniture making.
Lanigan has been the Executive Director of The Stickley Museum in Fayetteville, NY since 2011. She has traveled nationally to lecture on Stickley history and craftsmanship and serves on the board of the Arts & Crafts Society of Central New York.
On Wednesday Oct. 16 at 7 p.m., Steven Kern, Executive Director of the Everson Museum, will speak on “Syracuse, Ceramics, and the Everson Museum.”
The arts and crafts pottery movement began in America in the 1870s and it is generally accepted that the original arts and crafts movement ended around 1920. Pottery from this time period, as with furniture, reflected a return to the creativity and simplicity associated with the craft of producing things by hand, one piece at a time.
At the helm of the Everson since 2008, and with more than 26 years of museum senior management experience, Kern oversees the Everson’s world-renowned ceramics collection which includes the largest holding in the world of the works of famed ceramicist Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865-1929).
The series concludes on Wednesday Oct. 23, at 7 p.m. with a presentation by Nancy Green, the Gale and Ira Drukier Curator of European and American Art, Prints and Drawings, 1800-1945, at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, on “Byrdcliff: An Arts and Crafts Colony.”
The Arts and Crafts Movement arose in the late nineteenth century in reaction to the dehumanizing monotony and standardization of industrial production. Byrdcliffe was created as an experiment in utopian living inspired by this movement and is still in operation today as an arts colony in Woodstock, NY.
Green joined the Johnson Museum staff in 1985, was awarded fellowships from the Getty and Winterthur museums to pursue her research on the Byrdcliffe Colony, and authored an award-winning book, Byrdcliffe.
The Oneida Community Mansion House is located at 170 Kenwood Ave.
For information, call 315-363-0745 or visit www.oneidacommunity.org.