Magazines For Sale at
Michael Fitzsimmons Decorative Arts
In addition to Chicago’s best selection of books on the Arts & Crafts Movement, we have the following magazines for sale at the gallery Style1900, American Bungalow Old House Interiors and Architectural Digest They all are either devoted to the Arts & Crafts Movement or regularly publish articles of interest Please feel free to call and we will reserve a copy in your name for you to pick up at your convenience.

I have been asked this question many times lately fuming was one of a number of processes commonly used in the Arts & Crafts period, and before, to artificially recreate the darkening effect that long exposure to the surrounding air caused in wood, primarily oak One of the misconceptions currently surrounding the fuming process is that it provided the only coloring necessary A brief discussion of what fuming was, how it worked, and how it was undertaken in Gustav Stickley’s workshop will illuminate what I mean.
The term fuming refers to the exposure of an unfinished piece of furniture to extremely strong vapors of concentrated anhydrous ammonia The vapors, or fumes, would start a chemical reaction with the tannic acid in the unfinished white oak, which was very light in color, to produce a deep but often uneven brown tone The darkness and intensity of this brown color would depend on the amount of the tannic acid in the oak, the strength of the ammonia, and the length of exposure.
I had an opportunity to visit Gustav Stickley’s original factory building in Syracuse and see first hand the fuming chamber, which resembled a large sauna, with wooden platforms on three sides, onto which the assembled furniture was placed, and a system of gutters running around the perimeter into which the ammonia would pour when the room was sealed There was also a drain in the floor to let the ammonia out again when the process was completed I was amazed to see how small the chamber was Thus, coupled with the facts that ammonia in the concentration necessary to produce the effect is lethal and that it took a few days to complete created a bottleneck in Stickley’s production schedule that he soon realized was costing money and time
In response he developed several solutions, all "oxidizers" like ammonia, that could be safely and economically used, and precisely controlled, to produce the same results With any of them, ammonia included, it was necessary to also apply strong yet transparent wood dyes, called anilines, to add the desired color to the piece Stickley discussed his techniques in an article for his Craftsman magazine titled "Our Native Woods and How We Finish Them ‘ Many of these formulas are still in use today by experienced craftsmen and woodworkers to deepen and enrich their finishes.