Design in the Roycroft Era

This exhibition featured selections from the newest acquisitions for the Roycroft Collection. Roycroft is the trade name for an arts community established in 1895 in East Aurora, New York. The exhibition included furniture designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Gustav Stickley and Charles Rohlfs; fabric designed by William Morris; wallpapers designed by Morris & Company and the M. H. Birge & Sons Company; Deldare Ware produced by Buffalo Pottery; and simple household objects aestheticized by Heintz Art Metal and master craftsman Karl Kipp in the early twentieth century.

Visitors from the New York University Arts & Crafts Conference being held in Buffalo and other Arts & Crafts era enthusiasts were able to compare American design approaches to the earlier British aesthetic established by William Morris and his associates. The exhibition was enhanced with examples from our collection of Buffalo’s Photo-Pictorialists such as Clara E. Sipprell, Rose Clark and Edward B. Sides, as well as turn-of-the-century painters such as Alexis Jean Fournier, Lars G. Sellstedt, and Raphael Beck.