Home & Garden Columns

It’s one of those discussions that only Arts and Crafts people would have, because we’re weird. The basic question is, “What would Stickley do with a computer?” (Gustav Stickley, for those who don’t know, was a famous furniture designer and proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement during the first two decades of the 20th century.) There seem to be two points of view on the question: the “Oh, he’d just stick it out on a library table” camp and the “No, he would have designed a special piece of furniture for it” camp. 

In no way am I saying there’s a right answer to the question, but in many ways the struggle to have both technology AND art IS the central question of the original Movement as well as the Arts and Crafts Revival that has been going on for the last 30-odd years. And this being 2007, not 1907, we have to come up with our own answer, because some of the technology we have now is nothing Stickley could have even imagined.  

I myself tend toward the “special piece of furniture” camp, for a couple of reasons. One of them is the difference in attitudes toward utilitarian objects at the beginning of the 20th century compared to today. In the early 20th century, even functional objects like water heaters and furnaces were embellished. Many East Bay homes still retain their original Ruud instantaneous water heaters, complete with Art Nouveau ornamentation. And things back then were generally made of materials like metal and wood, not plastic. 

Another reason is that Arts and Crafts is not just a philosophy, it’s also an aesthetic, and while an iMac may be fine-looking, it doesn’t exactly have an Arts and Crafts aesthetic. But at least an iMac HAS an aesthetic. The design, if you could call it that, of most modern technology, could be summed up completely by the word “gray.” But the second reason is even more compelling—take a look at the tangle of wires on the back of your computer. A home office may still contain bookcases and a desk, but instead of the typewriter of 1907, there will be a computer, and that will entail at least a monitor, a CPU, a keyboard, a mouse, and a printer.  

But more likely it will also entail more than one printer, a notebook computer, a scanner, a copier, a fax machine, a cradle for the PDA and the iPod, a battery backup, a router, a USB hub, a cable modem or DSL connection, a webcam, speakers, surge protectors, a regular phone, a cordless phone, a lamp, a file cabinet, a Rolodex, etc. These things will require wires and power cords, and the dreaded transformers. And that’s why Stickley would have designed a special piece of furniture, because it just wouldn’t be very artful to put all that junk out on a library table. That’s why we of the 21st century have the computer desk and the computer armoire. 

Ah, you say, but I have gone wireless! I have a wireless keyboard and mouse! I have Blue Tooth! I take my laptop to Starbucks! I surf the Internet on my back porch! All well and good, but the wireless router still needs to be plugged in, as does the printer and most of the other stuff. 

There are certain parts of the house where the technology has changed more than it has in others. The dining room, for instance, is not much different now than it was then. Houses of the Arts and Crafts era WERE the first modern houses, as we would think of modern—they had electricity, central heat, and indoor plumbing. They had telephones and vacuum cleaners and sewing machines and other pieces of technology which we still have. 

For instance, bathrooms haven’t changed that much in a hundred years. I think everyone would agree that indoor plumbing is the very basis of modern civilization, and few of us would be willing to give it up. We might like to have two sinks, which is easy enough to do if there’s room. We might prefer to have mixing faucets instead of separate taps, which is easily done. Modern code requires a pressure balance valve, so you don’t get scalded when someone turns on the dishwasher while you’re taking a shower. They actually had these at the turn of the century, and you can still buy new ones that look old, or you can get one that is plumbed into the supply lines before they reach the shower. Reproduction low-flow toilets are now available that look like old ones, where the tank hangs on the wall instead of sitting on the back of the bowl. 

GFCI’s, which stands for ground fault circuit interrupter are now required in the bathroom. This is the plug that keeps you from being electrocuted should you be standing in a puddle of water when the hairdryer short circuits. It’s hard to make these look old. It is possible to install one upstream on the circuit, which then protects all the outlets downstream from it, or you can put a GFCI breaker at the main panel. 

In the early 20th century, the living room was to be the center of home life, with the family gathered around the hearth. They would play board games or parlor games, read, play musical instruments, women would do needlework. They might even listen to 78s on the gramophone, or listen to the radio. They would even, God forbid, talk to each other. We prefer to watch TV. In fact, it’s pretty much replaced the fireplace as the center of home life, whether you think that’s good or bad. But it’s not just the TV. It’s the VCR and the DVD player and the Tivo and the Wii, and the remote controls and joysticks and whatever that go with all of these. Often the stereo and a computer are hooked into it as well. And that, friends, is why the entertainment center was invented.  

The kitchen is far too complicated to go into here—I’ll save that for another article. 

If you look closely, you may be struck by just how ugly many of the elements of contemporary life really are, and how out of place they look in an Arts and Crafts interior. Beauty is not really part of the equation any more for most things. Certainly our lives have become very complex. Maybe we need to try to live a simpler existence in the face of cultural pressures, and to choose only the technology that is actually helpful to us.  

Much of the technology that has come about in the last century is useful- I certainly don’t intend to give up the computer that allowed me to rewrite this paragraph several times with ease. But I often think we have become enamored of bells and whistles for which we have no real use, and altered our houses, our lives, and even the outer environment in unfortunate ways in order to make room for them. It isn’t a new struggle. Oscar Wilde realized this in the 19th century, saying, “Do you think, for instance, that we object to machinery? I tell you we reverence it; we reverence it when it does its proper work, when it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labor, not when it seeks to do that which is valuable only when wrought by the hands and hearts of men. And let us not mistake the means of civilization for the end of civilization; steam-engine, telephone and the like, are all wonderful, but remember that their value depends entirely on the noble uses we make of them, on the noble spirit in which we employ them, not on the things themselves.” 

Jane Powell is the author of Bungalow Details: Interior and can be reached at janepowell@sbcglobal.net. 

Photograph: A custom armoire built by The Craftsman Home (3048 Claremont Ave.) allows these homeowners to keep their computer in the living room.