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Where to buy custom Stickley-style Mission furniture

You commission it. Original Gustav Stickley pieces are collectors' items sold at auction, and the L. & J.G. Stickley company still produces reissues of the original designs, but neither route gets you a piece built to your dimensions. For that you hire a furniture maker who works in quartersawn white oak and knows how to cut a through tenon. Costs sit in the ordinary range for commissioned furniture, with quartersawn oak, fuming and hand-forged hardware pushing toward the upper end.

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One thing to be clear about first: a maker builds you a piece in the Mission and Arts and Crafts style. The Stickley name is a live trademark owned by an operating company. Nobody legitimate will sell you "a Stickley." See our guide on commissioning reproductions of famous furniture designs for what that distinction means in practice.

Gustav Stickley and L. & J.G. Stickley are not the same thing

This trips up almost every buyer, and it changes what you should ask for.

Gustav Stickley (1858 to 1942) ran the Craftsman workshops and published The Craftsman magazine. His mark was a joiner's compass enclosing the phrase Als ik kan, roughly "to the best of my ability," with his signature beneath. His designs are the ones most people picture when they say Mission: heavy, rectilinear, structurally honest, no applied ornament.

L. & J.G. Stickley was his brothers' company, Leopold and John George. They marketed early work as "The Onondaga Shops," after the New York county where the furniture was made, and by 1912 were using a printed mark reading "THE WORK OF L. & J.G. STICKLEY" in red and yellow rectangles. In 1918 they took over Gustav's workshops. The company is still in business, and it reissues Gustav's original designs today.

So when a buyer says "I want a Stickley bookcase," the useful follow-up questions are: which brother's design, and do you want the original proportions or an adaptation.

If you want the exact catalog piece with provenance, buy the licensed reissue or hunt the auction market. If you want that vocabulary applied to a wall you actually have, commission it.

What defines the style, and what to specify

A maker who has never built in this idiom will give you a box with square legs. These are the details that separate real Arts and Crafts work from Mission-adjacent furniture, and they are what you put in the brief.

Element What to specify
Wood Quartersawn white oak. Not plainsawn, not red oak. Quartersawing exposes the medullary ray fleck, the flashing figure that is half of what makes this furniture look right.
Joinery Through mortise and tenon with exposed, pinned or keyed tenons. Pegged joints. Visible construction is the aesthetic argument, not a detail.
Finish Traditionally ammonia fuming, which reacts with tannin in the oak and colors it through rather than staining the surface. Modern shops may use a dye and shellac schedule. Ask which, because they age differently.
Hardware Hand-hammered copper or wrought iron. Pulls, strap hinges, escutcheons. This is usually a second maker.
Upholstery Leather or heavy canvas, often with exposed tacks.
Proportion Wide flat aprons, corbels under arms and tops, vertical slats, arched skirts. Heavy but not clumsy.
Ornament None applied. If it looks decorative, it should be doing something structurally.

Two of these are worth arguing about before work starts. Fuming is the traditional answer and it produces a depth that stain does not, but it requires a shop set up to do it safely and it commits you to a color you cannot easily adjust. Quartersawn stock costs meaningfully more than plainsawn and yields less per board, which shows up in the quote. Both are worth it, and both should be a conscious decision rather than a surprise.

What a commission costs

Mission furniture is ordinary commissioned furniture in cost terms, so the platform picture applies: most commissions fall between $500 and $10,000, with a median around $2,500, and a full built-in program runs into trade territory. See what custom furniture actually costs.

What pushes an Arts and Crafts commission toward the upper end specifically:

  • Quartersawn white oak, which costs meaningfully more than plainsawn and yields less per log
  • Through tenons, pinned or keyed, which are hours of hand work
  • Ammonia fuming, which needs a shop set up to do it safely
  • Hand-hammered copper or wrought iron hardware, which brings in a second maker
  • Scale. A bookcase wall is a different project from a side table

Adapting proportions to your room adds little. Copying a catalog piece dimensionally saves nothing.

How to brief a maker on this style

Send all of the following. A good Arts and Crafts maker will ask for it anyway.

  1. Reference images. Auction listings, museum photographs, or catalog reprints. Three to five, and say what you like about each.
  2. The room. Dimensions, ceiling height, existing woodwork, and floor color. Mission furniture was designed for a specific kind of interior and it fights a bright white room.
  3. Existing pieces you are matching. If you already own Arts and Crafts furniture, photograph the finish in daylight and say what it is. Matching an aged fumed finish on new oak is skilled work and needs to be flagged at the quote stage, not at delivery.
  4. How you will use it. A dining table that takes homework and hot dishes gets a different finish schedule than one used four times a year.
  5. Whether you want exposed joinery emphasized or restrained. There is a wide range within the style, from Gustav's severity to the softer Onondaga work.
  6. Hardware direction. Hammered copper reads warmer, wrought iron reads more severe. Ask whether the maker sources hardware or works with a metalsmith.

How to tell a good interpretation from a bad one

  • Ray fleck on the show faces. If the wide surfaces are flat and figureless, the stock is not quartersawn, whatever the invoice says.
  • Tenons that actually pass through and are wedged or pinned, not glued-on stubs.
  • Consistent reveal where a tenon exits, with clean shoulders. This is the hardest part to do well and the first place a shortcut shows.
  • Color that goes into the wood rather than sitting on it. Look at an end grain edge.
  • Hardware that was hammered, not stamped to look hammered.
  • Weight. This furniture is heavy. A light Mission piece is a hollow one.

Who makes this work

Fine furniture makers working in solid hardwood, generally with a traditional joinery background. Many will pair with a metalsmith for hardware and an upholsterer for seating. On Maker Marketplace this is one of the deepest categories on the platform, since Arts and Crafts work is core repertoire for American furniture makers.

To commission: start a commission, describe the piece and the room, upload your reference images, and you are matched with makers who work in solid hardwood and traditional joinery. All conversation, drawings, and approvals stay on the platform, which matters on a multi-thousand-dollar build with a long lead time.

Sources

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Frequently asked questions

You can commission furniture in the Mission and Arts and Crafts style, built to your dimensions, by an American furniture maker. You cannot buy something sold as "a Stickley" from anyone other than the company that owns the name. That company still reissues the original Gustav designs, which is the route if you want the catalog piece exactly as drawn.

The designs date to the early 1900s and carry no live design patent. Furniture shape is also generally outside US copyright. The trademark on the Stickley name is live and enforced. So: build in the style, do not label it with the name.

Quartersawn white oak, almost always. The quartersawing is what produces the ray fleck figure. Some period and contemporary work uses cherry, mahogany, or ash, but oak is the default and the one most buyers actually want.

Exposing the raw oak to ammonia vapor in a sealed tent. The ammonia reacts with tannins in the wood and darkens it from within, which is why period pieces have color depth that a surface stain cannot copy. It has to be done before finishing and it cannot be undone, so approve a sample.

Typically twelve to twenty weeks for a single case piece or table, longer for a dining set or built-ins, and longer again if fuming and custom hardware are involved.

Makers work from historical references routinely, and catalog images and period drawings are standard input. Expect a good maker to adapt the proportions to your space rather than clone the drawing, and to sign the finished piece with their own mark.

Arts and Crafts is the movement. Craftsman is Gustav Stickley's own term, from his workshops and his magazine. Mission is the popular American name for the furniture style. Prairie generally refers to the related architectural and furniture idiom associated with Frank Lloyd Wright and the Midwest, which is lighter and more horizontal. In a commission brief they are close enough that reference images matter more than the label.
    Where to buy custom Stickley-style Mission furniture | Maker Marketplace