David T. Owsley

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
One of the most interesting aspects of the Dallas Museum of Art's collecting in the last decade has been the involvement with the Museum of David T. Owsley.  Owsley's parents, Colonel Alvin and Lucy Ball Owsley, were well-known Dallasites.

Art from Industry: The Evolution of Craftsman Furniture

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Alongside the highly ornamental, largely conservative chairs which had sustained the firm in the waning years of the 19th century, in July of 1900 the Gustave Stickley Company introduced a line of “New Furniture” designs at the Grand Rapids Furniture Exposition. At the time, few would have expected this collection of startlingly different “furniture novelties” to result in a wholesale shift in the company’s production within the course of the following year.

Gustav Stickley in the 1890s

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
It has not been possible to learn how much the Panic of 1893 affected the Stickley & Simonds Company, the chair manufacturing enterprise that Stickley and Elgin Simonds had opened in 1888, though the firm’s decision to shut its New York City sales office in 1895 may have been a cost-cutting move.