Adhere To These Tips If Selecting The Best Mission Style Furniture

If you are thinking about buying furniture, consider Mission style for its clean lines and sturdy American construction

Mission furniture is an actual American art form which remains popular as a collector's item and modern day furniture design. The exact origins of this design seem to be unknown, nevertheless the story usually quoted has been that Mission furniture was made by the congregation of a San Francisco church around 1890. Having little money, the parishioners chose to build the furniture themselves, creating items mimicing furniture commonly found in the Spanish mission stations of Mexico and also in the western and southwestern areas of the United States. An alternative story has the Native Americans helping the monks build pieces of furniture for the newly built missions in California and Mexico. The resulting styles were plain, durable, practical chairs and tables, devoid of frills, and graceful in their simplicity, strength, and visual appeal. Learn more information about mission furniture.

Mission-style furniture was well known in the United States between 1890 and 1914 and became an element of the Arts and Crafts movement which began in England. This movement stressed the great importance of preserving the handcrafted pieces of furniture, and was a departure from the more extravagantly styled furniture associated with the Victorian era. The design was heavily affected by the straight lines and basic structure associated with the Japanese furniture of the times, although Mission style furniture is native to America, and it merely maintained the basic philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement. Once it became fashionable, the title "Mission Furniture" was assigned to this particular style, and though it had begun in the West, it was a New York-based designer, Joseph McHugh, who began making Mission furniture for the middle class. Learn more information about unfinished wood furniture.

Given that manufactured goods of the period were often weak in quality and design, the Arts and Crafts movement pushed the rebirth of individual workmanship. Cheap, mass-produced goods would be replaced with attractive items produced by skilled hands, and this furniture reflected the ideals of the movement. Mission-style furnishings were simple, stylish and functional, and built from organic, unpainted wood and other earthy materials.

Mission-style furniture in those days was manufactured almost solely of weathered or fumed oak. Characterized by clean lines, and mortise, tenon, and dowel joinery, this style of furniture was ordinarily free of ornamentation, although large nail heads, simple cut out shapes or hand-hammered copper appliqués were sometimes utilized for decoration. Both original and present-day Mission furniture is characterized by straight, clean lines and the unadorned appeal of quarter-sawn white oak with features of joinery, including through tenons, corbels and butterfly joints. Few furniture designs have retained the elegance of Mission style furniture. From its sturdy lines and handcrafted roots, this furniture has been at the forefront of solid oak and wood furniture for more than a century.