The Collections

Most of the objects in the house today belonged to the Glessner family. Discover more about the collections at Glessner House through the stories of the artists and designers who created some of the objects the Glessners owned and cherished. Today, the museum continues to care for these objects.

To read about some of the objects that have been featured in our newsletter, visit the archives by clicking here.

Arts and Crafts

The Arts and Crafts Movement followed the Aesthetic Movement in the art world. Arts and Crafts flourished in England with the design of the Red House for William Morris in 1859, and petered out with the beginning of World War I in 1914. The Movement took off in the United States in the later 1880s, reached its zenith between 1890 and 1910, and faded after 1920. In general, the Arts and Crafts Movement has been associated with the Aesthetic movement, Socialism, and Art Nouveau, though obviously individual artists and craftsmen had different views and allegiances.

According to Alan Crawford, “The inspiration of the Arts and Crafts movement lay in the Romantic critique of industrial society, that is, in anti-modernism.” In general, the movement sought to incorporate ethical and aesthetic values, instead of separating them, and, in some cases, to use art as a tool of reform. In England, the movement had ties with early Socialism.

Arts and Crafts originated in England after the Great Exhibition of 1851 at London’s Crystal Palace. The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society finally garnered public support for the school of thought in the late 1888s, with a series of exhibitions. In Great Britain, advocates of the Movement considered all art to be equal—that is, painting and sculpture were not more artistic than decorative arts and architecture. They valued the materials above all, and thought objects to exemplify human virtues. Artists and designers emphasized hand-working materials and because of this emphasis, ironically, objects were nearly always affordable only by the wealthy.

In England, the movement’s origins were profoundly ideological, as William Blake, John Ruskin and William Morris surveyed industrialization and described the resulting poverty and slums. They advocated for a return to craft as a way to right social ills and iniquity. Leaders in the English Arts and Crafts Movement rejected industrialization and modern civilization, in favor of a return to romanticized pre-industrial methods, including guilds and small, often rural, workshops communities, and inspiration from nature. In this view, modern factories had debased production, and pre-industrial methods were more virtuous and had more integrity. An idealized version of the Middle Ages served as the model and Morris & Company typified that model.

The American Arts and Crafts Movement that emerged in the 1890s is, after due credit to the English movement from which is emerged, distinctly American, defined by a dedication to simplicity, the exposure of the object’s construction, and an honesty about tools, methods and materials used. American Arts and Crafts served in many ways as a link between Victorian historicism and twentieth century modernism. Indeed, the Arts and Crafts Movement understood beauty in a Modernist way: “clean, spare, and pure,” according to Mary Ann Stankiewicz. American designs were often more imaginative and bolder than English ones, though for the most part they continued to refer to the European design tradition.

In the movement in the United States, unlike in England, crafts were enveloped into industry, and craftsmen promoted their work as finely crafted pieces handworked by a single person, although most of the time, pieces were made by several people and machines. In the United States, arts and crafts goods were affordable for the middle class, whose own awareness of design and craft increased. Even as it touted craftsmanship, the movement became better known for its design than for the decorative arts skills it engendered. The quest to convince that decorative arts and fine arts should be equal resulted in the dominance of design over craft: decorative objects were art as long as they had visual appeal, no matter how they were made. The American success of the Movement was due, in part, to adaptations for American capitalism, as well as greater acceptance of machine production because the handcraft tradition was weaker here than in Europe.

Chicago was a major center of the Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1897 the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society was founded at Hull-House, marking the importance of the city to the movement, which culminated with founding of the Prairie School. There was much exchange between leaders of the movements, who traveled back and forth between Chicago and England for annual craft exhibits at the Art Institute between 1902 and 1921. In Chicago, there was no leader, though one center of the Chicago movement remained at Hull-House, where Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr employed some of the movement’s principles with bookbinding, handicraft workshops and a Hull-House Labor Museum. The movement had a broad audience in Chicago, from the wealthy upper class on Prairie Avenue to working class families who bought Arts and Crafts products by mail order.

Leslie Green Bowman. American Arts and Crafts: Virtue in Design, a Catalogue of the Palevsky Collection and Related Works at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1990.

Alan Crawford. “Ideas and Objects: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain.” Design Issues 13, no. 1: Designing the Modern Experience, 1885-1945 (Spring, 1997), pp. 15-26.

Wendy Hitchmough. The Arts & Crafts Lifestyle and Design. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000.

Wendy Kaplan. “Art that is Life”: The Arts and Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920. Boston: Bullfinch Press and the Museum of Fine Arts, 1987.

Mary Ann Stankiewicz, “From the Aesthetic Movement to the Arts and Crafts Movement.” Studies in Art Education 33 (Spring 1992): 165-173.

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was an American designer born in 1856 who worked for Herter Brothers and later in H. H. Richardson’s office. In 1885, he joined A.H. Davenport, one of the most important commercial decorating firms in the United States. He is remembered for incorporating the ideals of handcraftsmanship into machine-made production. He designed the case for the Glessners’ Steinway piano in the parlor.

Frances Glessner had wanted to purchase an upright piano for her new home on Prairie Avenue, but she was such an accomplished pianist and music lover that her husband determined she should have “the finest piano that could be made.” On May 15, 1887, Frances Glessner noted in her journal that she “made arrangements for a Steinway piano.” Nahum Stetson, Chief of Sales and member of the Board of Steinway & Sons, supervised the production of this piano, indicating that the company considered this a very important commission. When the instrument was finished, Theodore Thomas, founding conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, traveled to the Steinway factory and tried out the instrument, giving it his approval before delivery for decoration to A. H. Davenport and Company's chief designer, Francis Bacon.

Francis Henry Bacon had received a degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1877 and spent several years working with such architecture firms as the prestigious McKim, Meade and Bigelow in New York. During these years he also traveled and studied in Europe, working on the excavations of Assos, Turkey during two years of travel with the Archaeological Institute of America.

Francis Bacon first designed furniture for Herter Brothers, the firm engaged by William H. Vanderbilt to decorate his New York City mansion. In 1883, Bacon began working in the office of celebrated American architect H.H. Richardson. By 1885 he had become principle designer for A. H. Davenport and Company, where he later served as vice-president. There he translated the handcraft ideals of the late nineteenth century into machine-produced furniture designs. Because of Bacon's earlier affiliation with Richardson's firm, and because Richardson's office was extremely busy at the time, Bacon, and in turn Davenport and Company, were given furniture commissions for many of Richardson's late buildings. The Glessners’ finished piano cost $1,500 and weighed 900 pounds. It was shipped from Davenport and Company to the Glessners’ home on December 23, 1887, a suitable Christmas present for a family who had moved into their new house three weeks earlier.

Charles Coolidge

Charles Coolidge was head draftsman in H. H. Richardson’s office at the time of the architect’s death, and became partner in the subsequent firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. John Glessner credited Coolidge for the design of the original dining room table (shown at left, currrently missing) and dining room chairs, as well as of the unique partners desk in the library.

Born in 1858, Coolidge graduated from Harvard University and took a special architecture class at MIT. In 1892 he moved to Chicago to oversee various projects, including the Chicago Public Library (now the Chicago Cultural Center) and the Art Institute. His work with academic institutions, including Harvard, was also widely recognized. Coolidge returned to Boston permanently in 1900, but the Glessners and Coolidges remained close friends for the remainder of their lives. He was one of the original partners at Richardson’s firm and continued his work at there until his death in 1936.

Emile Gallé

Emile Gallé was born in Nancy, France, in 1846, the son of a glassblower. After studying at the Weimar Art School in Germany, as well as in Paris and London, Galle became the artistic director of his father’s glassmaking business in 1874. He became one of the most famous contributors to the development of glassmaking and Art Nouveau, a style inspired by the curvy asymmetry of nature. Galle made significant showings at the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs in 1884 and at the Paris International Exhibition in 1889, where he presented new types of glass, including carved cameo and pate-de-verre styles, as well as new shapes and colors for vases. Soon after, in 1901, Gallé founded L’Ecole de Nancy.

Gallé found inspiration for his designs in nature, often incorporating foliage and landscape decorations. He developed new techniques that enhanced the color and transparency of the material. Galle’s glass was often very intricately designed, acid etched, or wheel-carved. His technique incorporated bright colors and capitalized on glass’s transparency. His glass designs also echo inlaid decorations of wood: he would shape hot glass and press it into objects, which he would then cool and engrave or carve. But Gallé also transformed the art of glassmaking by the simple act of signing his pieces like artists in other media have done for centuries. After his death in 1904, Gallé’s company continued to produce pieces in his style until it closed in 1935, marking each piece with the designer’s signature star.

Jane Adlin. “Modern Art.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series 59, no. 1: Ars Vitraria: Glass in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Summer, 2001), pp. 60-65.

Herter Brothers

The Herter Brothers, Gustav and Christian Herter, had gained fame by the mid-nineteenth century for producing pieces in a variety of styles: Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec, Eastlake, and the Aesthetic Movement. They came to be associated with the Anglo-Japanese style in the 1870s and 1880s. Gustav was born in 1830, Christian in 1839. Their father was a cabinetmaker, clearly an important influence on the brothers. In 1848, Gustav immigrated to the United States, where he created ties with some of the greatest cabinetmakers in New York City. In ten years, Gustav Herters became sole proprietor of his own cabinet-making company, one of the first in interior and furniture design. Christian officially became a part of the business in 1864, and the company name was changed to Herter Brothers. In 1870, Gustav left the firm to return to Germany with his children, and Christian remained in charge of the company. By 1880, the company was well known in France and had furnished William H. Vanderbilt’s Fifth Avenue home. In 1882, Christian left the firm, which continued to produce fine furniture until 1905.

William De Morgan

English ceramist William De Morgan was born on November 16, 1839. As a designer of ceramic tiles, stained glass and furniture for his lifelong friend, William Morris, De Morgan played a central role in the English Arts and Crafts Movement.

Born in London, young William was influenced by an intellectual home environment. His father was Chair of Mathematics at University College in London and a philosopher and astronomer; his mother a suffragette and social reformer who worked to improve conditions in prisons and workhouses. De Morgan enrolled in art at the Academy Schools in 1859. In 1862, he met artist and social reformer William Morris, beginning an association that caused him to abandon painting and join Morris’ team of designers. De Morgan began to execute glass and tile designs for Morris, and painted panels for furniture designed by his associate Philip Webb.

De Morgan is perhaps most famous for reviving the use of luster decoration, pigments made from metallic oxides like silver or copper that are used to create an iridescent surface. While working on stained glass De Morgan discovered that silver pigments created iridescence in the surface of the glass. His subsequent experiments on tiles to reproduce this effect created the first luster tiles in 1870. He took over the production of Morris’ tile designs, copying Morris’ floral and vegetative fabric and wallpaper patterns. These early designs included such Morrisian features as English flowers, daisies, anemones and roses painted in turquoise, pink, or yellow in simple outline against a monochrome blue or green ground. Such stylized designs suited well the two-dimensional surface of ceramic tile.

De Morgan soon began to adapt designs from Islamic pottery from Turkey, Persia, and Syria and to develop his own naturalistic patterns to suit his increasingly innovative technical methods. Art tiles came to play a significant role in interior decorating due to his designs; over the course of the ten years he spent in Chelsea, he created three hundred different tile designs, which are often based on medieval or Persian patterns, using deep blue and turquoise glazes.

The nineteenth century Aesthetic Movement promoted the idea that objects could be both beautiful and functional and emphasized art in the home as a means for raising the quality of life. This greatly influenced the design of furniture, textiles, wallpaper, and tiles. Decorative art tiles became so popular that no household was complete without them, and Frances and John J. Glessner were avid fans of this fashion. De Morgan designed the tiles originally installed in the master and courtyard bedrooms in the Glessners’ house, as well as the large two-handled vase in the parlor and other items.

De Morgan also wrote novels later in life, with great success. He died on January 15, 1917.

H. Batterson Boger. “De Morgan, William.” The Dictionary of Antiques and the Decorative Arts. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1967.

William Morris

William Morris was born in England on March 24, 1834. Morris is regarded as a leading reformer in the English Arts and Crafts Movement, but is also remembered as a poet and social reformer. In his adult life, Morris wore many hats, as a wood-engraver, illuminator, dyer, weaver, painter, printer, paper maker, author, politician, publisher, Socialist, lecturer, avid traveler, student of architecture, and interior decorator.

In April 1862, Morris co-founded Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. as a group of decorative artists interested in developing the quality of artistic expression in opposition to the industrial mass-production of objects. Morris reorganized the firm into Morris & Co. in 1875. Morris & Co. goods were widely available through Marshall Field as early as the 1870s, and at Foreign Fair in Boston in 1883. The firm dissolved in 1940.

In his company’s early years, Morris worked in printed cotton in order to market affordable products that might expand retail. Morris was not satisfied with the quality of his early wallpaper designs and the commercial dyes used to create them; he later came to prefer block printing over roller printing because, to him, it seemed inherent to good design. Later, Morris experimented with natural dyeing techniques. Designing with a goal to provide a sense of depth, he believed fabric and paper should carry different designs because the surfaces themselves were different. Morris & Co. designed numerous products ranging from stained glass windows to candlesticks, but it is wallpaper designing that seemed best suited to Morris’s talents. He built his designs entirely around the motifs of flowers, leaves and birds, and many of his designs feature curves and tendrils. Morris would revolutionize fabric printing by studying old techniques and recipes and byemploying organic materials and sunlight to get the effect he desired.

His design work is based on the medieval ideal of craftsmanship in which men found satisfaction in their work. Morris’s own design principles were based on the ideas of John Ruskin, who theorized about the relationship between art and society, and Morris would become better known as a political activist than as a poet. Morris once wrote, “Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.” In that vein, Morris railed against Victorian mass production and rejected naturalistic design. Morris had a strong influence on the American Arts and Crafts movement, especially in terms of morals and ethics.

Morris founded Kelmscott Press in 1891 and served as president of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society from 1893 until his death on October 3, 1896. H. H. Richardson embraced many of Morris’s ideas and encouraged the Glessners to study Morris’s extensive line of products. They ultimately chose numerous Morris draperies, wallpapers, and rugs for their new home.

David Whipple. “Textile Designs and Books by William Morris.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 65 (Sep., 1978), pp. 247-257.

Patricia Poore. “Morris in America,” Old-House Interiors (Fall 1996), 50-53.

Regina Cole. “The Morris Way,” Old-House Interiors (Fall 1996), 54-56.“William Morris,” The Dictionary of Antiques and the Decorative Arts. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1967.

Roger Ellis, ed. “William Morris,” Who’s Who in Victorian Britain. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997.

Isaac Scott

One of the most highly regarded designers and craftsmen in the art furniture movement at the time, Isaac Scott lived in Chicago between 1873 and 1883. Scott hailed from Philadelphia originally and taught himself to carve. His relationship with John and Frances Glessner ensured his success in the emerging furniture market. Scott met the couple at the 1875 Inter-State Industrial Exposition, where the Glessners purchased their first piece—the bookcase that still stands in the Second Floor Hall. The purchase marked the beginning of a loyal patronage and friendship that produced numerous works of art and craftsmanship. The Glessners commissioned Scott to design furniture first for their house on Washington Boulevard, then for their house on Prairie Avenue; Scott also designed their summer estate, The Rocks, in New Hampshire.

Scott’s designs often reflected medieval influences in form and motifs, exemplifying the Modern Gothic style and the Design Reform Movement that had begun in England’s design world and flourished in Chicago after the 1871 fire. The plain, conventional decorations and rectilinear designs of Scott’s school sharply contrasted the round and curvy Rococo Revival of the mid-nineteenth century. Scott originated the “cameo woodcarving” technique, which layered and laminated different woods which when carved revealed layers of color. He personally hand-carved the ornaments on all of the pieces he designed, and used machines for flat surfaces and cabinet joining only.

This American designer, wood carver and architect was close friends with the Glessner family for over forty years. The Glessners first met Scott in 1875 at the Interstate Industrial Exposition, where they saw a bookcase he carved. They ordered a copy, which stands today in the second floor hall. He designed numerous other pieces seen in the house today, including the furniture in the mater bedroom, dozens of picture frames commissioned for specific prints, furniture for Fanny Glessner, textiles that Mrs. Glessner herself sewed, and mantels from their previous home.

After his time in Chicago, Scott lived in New York and Boston, all the while maintaining a close friendship with the Glessners through correspondence and visits until his death in 1920.

David A. Hanks. Isaac E. Scott, Reform Furniture in Chicago: John Jacob Glessner House. Chicago: Chicago School of Architecture Foundation, 1974.

Louis Comfort Tiffany

Charles Lewis Tiffany’s son Louis Comfort Tiffany founded the Tiffany Glass and Decoration Company in 1879, as an offshoot of his father’s original jewelry and silverware company. Louis Comfort Tiffany’s fifty-year career encapsulated the Gilded Age’s artistic spirit. With his studio of artists, glassmakers, stonemasons, mosaicists, modelers, metallurgists, carves, potters and textile workers, Louis Tiffany ushered in the idea of the continuity of design in a single aesthetic expression. He became known as a master of Art Nouveau, though he discovered early on that he was not a good painter. He joined the New York Society of Decorative Arts, rubbing elbows with some of the key players in the Aesthetic Movement in England, and founded Louis C. Tiffany and Associated Artists in 1881. The firm specialized in interior decoration from a holistic perspective that considered interior spaces as integral pieces of a whole. Tiffany designed interiors for the homes of many prominent New Yorkers, and redecorated the White House in 1882. Soon afterwards, Tiffany decided to focus on glass and colored windows. His Favrile glass emerged in 1893, and after 1900 his windows were widely associated with the Art Nouveau style.

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