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W.W.Denslow) who
illustrated the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was a Roycrofter.
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This week, in
honor of Dyngus Day, I’m concentrating on my home town, Buffalo, New York.
On the southern fringes of Buffalo lies the village of East
Aurora, which was a center of the turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts Movement
called the Roycroft.
The Roycroft was founded by Elbert Hubbard. After
achieving success as traveling salesman for the Larkin Soap Company, he
eventually came to the firm’s Buffalo home office, where he was an innovative
and successful employee. A visit to
England exposed him to William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts Movement.
After returning to Buffalo, he founded a short-run press based on Morris’
ideals. This press was called the Roycroft Press and the movement would
eventually take its name.
Hubbard was a self-described anarchist and socialist
living in one of America’s capitalist boomtowns. In A Message to Garcia and Thirteen Other Things, Hubbard wrote, “I am
an Anarchist. All good men are Anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all
gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist.”
But don’t dismiss that statement as quaint. The same year that A Message to Garcia was published, President William McKinley was
assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz on the
other side of Buffalo. Anarchism was a threat to American culture on a par with
fundamentalist Islamic terrorism today.
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Elbert Hubbard may
have described himself as a socialist, but he was clearly a genius at marketing
and branding. The double barred cross and circle logo was a logo used by the
Roycroft artisans to identify their products. It came to signify the Roycroft
movement, used only on authentic Roycroft pieces. Even today it commands a premium.
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“I believe John Ruskin, William Morris, Henry
Thoreau, Walt Whitman and Leo Tolstoy to be Prophets of
God, and they should rank in mental reach and spiritual insight with Elijah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and Isaiah,”
Hubbard wrote.
Somehow Hubbard managed to stay on the popular side of outrageous. He was a brilliant
promoter. His championing of the Arts and Crafts movement attracted craftspeople
to East Aurora, where they formed a community of almost 500 printers, bookbinders,
furniture makers, and metalsmiths. Their creed was taken from John Ruskin, and
it’s hard to argue with: “A belief in working with the head, hand and heart and
mixing enough play with the work so that every task is pleasurable and makes
for health and happiness.”
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Roycroft was one of several
rugged faces used around the turn of the century, when the Arts and Crafts
Movement was in vogue. It was inspired by the Saturday Evening Post, and came
by its current name when it was adopted by Elbert Hubbard for the Roycroft
Press.
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Hubbard and his wife were killed in the sinking of the
Lusitania in 1915. The movement struggled on under the management of his son,
but without Elbert Hubbard’s charisma, it foundered and closed.
The Roycroft Campus consists of fourteen buildings in the
center of East Aurora. This complex has National Historic Landmark Status and
includes the Elbert Hubbard Roycroft Museum and the Roycroft Inn.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
