September 16, 2012
For Immediate Release
Contact: Heather E. Stivison
Executive Director
The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms
2352 Rt. 10-West
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
Phone: 973.540.0311
hstivison@stickleymuseum.org
Editors: Please note digital photographs are available on request
Stickley Museum to Present Conference on “Tastemaking” in
the 1910s
The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms today announced a full-day conference, Styling an American
Family: Tastemaking in the 1910s and Beyond, to take place at the Wilson School, Mountain Lakes, NJ,
on Saturday, October 6. The conference is in conjunction with the Museum’s upcoming exhibition,
Styling an American Family: The 1910s at Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman Farms, on view Sept. 8-Jan. 6 at the
Stickley Museum.
The Museum’s education director, Vonda Givens, noted that “Gustav Stickley’s most productive years
overlap with the Progressive Era (generally identified as the late 19th through early 20th centuries) in
American history, a period brimming with rapid change and innovation, that served as a precursor to
our modern world.” She added “American style kept pace with the changing times, mirroring its rapid
transitions, but the tastemakers of the era also sought to drive innovation as they worked to steer the
American aesthetic and shape it into an identifiable American style.”
Focused on tastemaking in America in the 1910s, the conference will consider the contributions and
legacy of a broad spectrum of tastemakers, including designers, artisans, artists, editors and museum
curators, during this profoundly significant era in American design history.
With Jeffrey Mayer, curator of the Styling an American Family exhibition, putting the spotlight on
fashion and Ann Tartsinis taking a broader cultural viewpoint, the first two speakers will address the
strategic efforts of early 20th century tastemakers to fuel and establish a uniquely American design
identity. Turning our focus to one distinct facet of this effort, Rosalie Berberian’s presentation will
look at the development of American Arts and Crafts jewelry and the efforts of artisans to bring art
and beauty into the lives of the citizenry. Melissa Leventon’s lecture on artwear will consider the legacy
of these 1910s tastemakers through the emergence of a revival in American handcraft in the latter half
of the 20th century.
Speakers include:
Jeffrey Mayer
“Fashion's Stylemakers 1909-1918 and the move for an American Fashion”
Providing an overview of the key fashion design tastemakers from Paris and London, Mayer’s lecture
will consider the years 1909-1918, beginning with the shift in silhouette in 1909 created by Paul Poiret,
following through with the move by Edward Bok, editor of The Ladies Home Journal (and supported by
Gustav Stickley in 1910 in The Craftsman Magazine) to establish an 'American Fashion', ending with
the softer and looser women's styles necessary during World War I and maintained after the war in
1918, paving the way for 'modern' fashion.
Jeffrey Mayer is curator of the exhibition Styling an American Family: The 1910s at Gustav Stickley's
Craftsman Farms. He joined the faculty at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts
in 1992, where he has been associate professor of fashion design and history for the past 17 years. He
has also served as director of Fashion Study Abroad in the Department of International Programs
Abroad from 1994 to 2003. In 1995, Mayer opened Conover Mayer in Syracuse, New York, with
business partner and designer Todd Conover. Until 2006 when the company closed, Conover Mayer
developed semi-annual collections of high-end women’s evening wear to be sold at Saks Fifth Avenue,
Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman. In 2008 Mayer mounted a major historic fashion exhibition
at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, Marie Antoinette, Styling the 18th Century Superstar, with an
accompanying book of the same title.
Ann Marguerite Tartsinis
“From ‘Indian Corners’ to the ‘Modern Maya Maid’: American Primitivism, Cultural Nationalism,
and Design Education in New York, 1900-1919”
Tartsinis’ presentation will situate the effort to of the American Museum of Natural History to educate
American textile and fashion designers during the first decades of the twentieth century in the broader
progressive currents prevailing at the time, from the American Arts and Crafts movement to
Primitivism. To this end, prescriptive literature, such as that found in The Craftsman, and progressive
design education merged with the burgeoning cultural trend of Nationalism to fuel the search for
cultural moorings at the beginning of the 1910s.Tartsinis will trace the efforts, sparked by the fragile
political and economic landscape that precipitated World War I, of New York area curators, educators,
and designers as they embarked on a search for a distinctly American design idiom, one unbeholden to
European influences and capable of expressing a growing sense of national identity. By 1917, designers
had come to embrace a more cosmopolitan array of objects, a shift in emphasis that tracked the
nation’s emergence onto the world’s stage and global presence during the interwar period.
Ann Marguerite Tartsinis is the assistant curator at the Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design
History, Material Culture (BGC) in New York. She was a contributing author and editor to the
exhibition catalogue Knoll Textiles, 1945 – 2010 (Yale University Press, 2011) and coordinated the
BGC faculty-curated exhibitions American Christmas Cards, 1900–1960 (2011) and Staging Fashion,
1880–1920: Jane Hading, Lily Elsie, and Billie Burke (2012). Currently, she is working on an exhibition,
to be held at the BGC in Fall 2013, that will explore the efforts of the American Museum of Natural
History to educate textile and fashion designers during World War I.
Rosalie Berberian
“Jewelry of the American Arts & Crafts Movement”
The focus of Berberian’s presentation will be on the American Arts and Crafts movement as the
underpinning of the pursuit of artistic craft work and the place of jewelry within that framework. The
movement’s founders wanted to bring beauty into daily life and believed this could be achieved by
reforming design and by respecting craftsmanship and honoring its achievements. Through a
discussion of a large number of extant examples of American Arts and Crafts movement jewelry,
Berberian will demonstrate how the jewelers of the period met the ideals of the founders, contributing
both to their own lives and the lives of those who became the recipients of the work from their hands.
Rosalie Berberian became interested in pottery of the American Arts and Crafts movement in 1969 as
a collector. Her hobby quickly evolved into a part-time business that she began as ARK Antiques in
1971. Adding other handcrafted objects of the period to her inventory, she expanded her scope of
interest and expertise across a wide spectrum of early 20th century craftsman works. Ten years later,
the enterprise became a full-time undertaking. Beginning in 1986, she devoted the business of ARK
Antiques exclusively to the work of the metalsmiths. Recognized nationwide as an authority on
American Arts and Crafts Movement metalwork, she has lectured, written articles and served as a
consultant to private collectors and museums. Currently she is writing a book on the jewelry and
enamel work of the American Arts and Crafts movement. Berberian has a B.S. in Journalism from
Boston University, an M.P.H. (Master of Public Health) from Yale University School of Medicine, and
an M. Phil. (Master of Philosophy) from Yale University Graduate School. She is a former faculty
member in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and a former member
of adjunct faculty a New York University.
Melissa Leventon
“Artwear: Fashion and Antifashion”
Rooted in the Arts and Crafts movement and related to the work of earlier twentieth-century figures,
such as Sonia Delaunay, wearable art is a quintessentially American phenomenon. Leventon’s lecture
follows the trajectory of wearable art from its development in the 1960s and 1970s to its maturity in
the 1980s and decline in the 1990s.
Melissa Leventon, a founding partner of Curatrix Group museum consultants and appraisers, is a
specialist in European and American costume and textiles. She was formerly Curator-in-Charge of
Textiles at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and she has also curated exhibitions involving
many different art media ranging from contemporary glass to the Dead Sea Scrolls. She has authored
or contributed to many exhibition catalogues and journals; the encyclopedic What People Wore When
(St. Martin’s Press, 2008, published outside the US by Thames & Hudson as Costume Worldwide) and
the comprehensive study Artwear: Fashion and Anti-fashion (Thames & Hudson, 2005), are her most
recent books. She teaches fashion history and fashion theory at California College of the Arts and
lectures frequently on costume and collecting. Melissa has been a consultant to institutions such as the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, The
Museum of the African Diaspora, The Chrysler Museum, the Chicago History Museum, and the
Museum of Performance & Design, as well as to individuals and companies. Currently, she is a
consultant to The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok, which opened on May 9, 2012.
Melissa received her BA in English and American literature from Brandeis University and her MA in
Art History/History of Dress from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.
The Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms is open Wednesdays and Thursday from noon to 3, and
Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 11 to 4. The entrance is located at the intersection of Manor Lane
and Route 10 West in Morris Plains. For further information on the conference please see the
museum’s website at StickleyMuseum.Org or call 973.540.0311.
Restoration of the National Historic Landmark, Craftsman Farms, is made possible in part, by a Save
America’s Treasure’s grant, administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, and
by support from Morris County Preservation Trust, the New Jersey Historic Trust, and individual
members. The Craftsman Farms Foundation received an operating support grant from the New Jersey
Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. The Craftsman Farms Foundation
gratefully acknowledges a grant from the New Jersey Cultural Trust. Educational programs are funded,
in part, by grants from the Arts and Crafts Research Fund and PSE&G.
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