Simple Mission Furniture Gaining In Popularity

Bill Porter says that when his mother was growing up in the 1920s, she was embarrassed to have friends visit because her family still had mission oak furniture in their home.

And 50 years later, when Porter and wife, Pat, started collecting mission furniture, a good many antique dealers would practically throw them out of their shops when they asked for it.

``They thought it was insulting to them,'' Porter remembers. ``They'd say: `You won't find it in my shop, please.' ''

By 1920, Americans were tired of mission. Mission-hating didn't truly end until the 1970s, and it's only in the last five years that the market for mission has exploded into the mainstream.

Some say that mission oak furniture looks about as warm and comfortable as an electric chair, but good pieces combine the richness of quartersawn oak with elegant yet functional design.

And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, mission furniture is set to be reborn in the 1990s. At this year's International Furniture Market in High Point, N.C., mission-inspired furniture showed up, with names such as Painted Prairie and Shinto Mission. Just last year, the dust was wiped off the old mission designs and authentic reproductions are being sold by L. and J.G. Stickley Inc., Manlius, N.Y.

When Bill Porter started collecting in about 1970, mission furniture was simply used furniture. He remembers paying $100 for a chest of drawers, $75 for a sideboard.

The Porters were living in a house built in 1908 near downtown Birmingham, Mich. He'd been collecting Early American glass when a friend suggested furnishing their home with mission because it was of the same vintage. Porter wasn't sure what it was, but he took a look at his friend's dining room set.

``It was strong and bold and had a simple, ethical look that I really liked about it,'' he says. ``It's sort of hard to verbalize.''

He was sold.

But mission was hard to come by in the 1970s, and for years Porter built his collection by placing ads in a hobbyist magazine.

By 1980, he had amassed what many believe is one of the finest collections in the country. His furniture formed the bulk of a 1980 show at the Detroit Historical Museum called The Craftsman in Detroit.

Now, he's slowed down his buying. These days, only the very wealthy can afford original pieces made by the big-name designers of mission furniture. Those high prices have taken some of the fun away from collectors who for years stole masterpieces that were put out with the trash.

``I've not stopped collecting, but I've sort of drifted out of the center of it,'' he says. ``It's no fun to collect something that you can't afford. Pieces bring 20, 50 or 100 thousand dollars. That's no fun to me. I'll go down to Christie's to see them and see what I can learn.'

But he is still sold on the furniture and what it represented when it was made - a reaction to the fussy, overdone furniture from the late Victorian era.

``The earliest collectors showed up in the late '60s, and this was when that '60s generation was going on, when that schism appeared in our society,'' he says. ``I think it's no accident that some of those people were the first pioneer collectors. They sensed that it was anti-establishment, reformist.''

Mission furniture was borne out of the Arts and Crafts movement, a design revolution that dates from about 1901 to 1916 in this country. Started in Europe in the mid-19th century, the philosophy of the movement resulted from what many social critics of the day believed were the dehumanizing effects of industrialization.

Gustav Stickley became the voice of that philosophy in the United States when he began publication of a monthly magazine called The Craftsman, and produced what are still considered the finest examples of mission furniture from his Eastwood, N.Y., studio.

Bruce Szopo, a dealer and collector of mission who works at Birmingham's Duke Gallery of 20th-century decorative arts, bought his first piece of mission in 1979 - a $20 rocker. He'd just graduated from Western Michigan University with a marketing and advertising degree and was looking for some cheap furniture. At the time, Szopo's hobby was stereo equipment. He also was restoring a 1957 T-bird, but had no real interest in furniture.

In fact, he probably wouldn't have known the rocker was mission if it hadn't been for the tag that said ``mission rocker.''

Szopo was intrigued. He bought a few more pieces and in 1980 attended the Detroit Historical Museum show, where he met Porter.

``He and I just got together and I just started learning. The inherent desirability of the furniture inspired me.''

That first mission rocker turned into a full-time occupation when he left his job as an advertising agency account supervisor two years ago to become a mission dealer.

Szopo has created a sort of shrine to Gustav Stickley in a two-bedroom bungalow outside the small town of Goodison, north of Rochester, Mich. Each room is sparsely furnished with choice pieces to create the kind of relaxing environment Stickley spoke of in his writings. Pottery, carpets, linens and light fixtures are from the same period, and Szopo and his mother made the linen curtains with an embroidery border copied from a stitch Stickley wrote about in The Craftsman.

Looking around, there isn't a single piece of post-mission bric-a-brac to be seen. Szopo has the capital ``I'' Important furniture, with price tags to match. His collection is pretty much complete.

A few weeks ago at the Duke Gallery, a Gustav Stickley V-back armchair with original finish was on display with a price tag of $650. The gallery also had one of the most striking pieces of Stickley furniture, a Morris chair for $7,600.

But as Szopo points out, there are generic rockers at garage sales and flea markets that still sell for as little as $75. Stickley was the creator of mission, but copy-cat companies, which produced lower-priced furniture of questionable quality, also produced their share. Even Sears Roebuck Co. got involved.

``What's nice is everybody can participate,'' Szopo says. ``You can buy cheap stuff or you can buy one piece of Gustav Stickley and spend not that much money.''

Because Grand Rapids was such a big manufacturing and design center earlier in the century, Szopo says, there's as much mission in Michigan as anywhere else in the country.

To recent converts, that's encouraging.

``I think people sense that there's this innate honesty and simplicity in mission furniture,'' Porter says. ``I don't know why that would cycle back into our society, but I think somehow this appeal strikes deep.''