'Live, Love, Work: The Roycroft Legacy'

GLEN FALLS, N.Y.

:"This is more than just a parade of books or a parade of furniture. It's the story of an era," says Erin Coe, curator at the Hyde Collection, about the current exhibition "Live, Love, Work: The Roycroft Legacy."

To those familiar with Roycroft, Coe is clearly referring to the American Arts and Crafts movement - pure and simple. For those unfamiliar with Roycroft or its times, the story is the stuff of grand opera, complete with self-styled hero, seekers of Utopia and a contorted version of Verdi's rousing "Anvil Chorus."

Before the fat lady sings, the seekers - Roycrofters - produced some of the finest examples of early Twentieth Century furniture and decorative arts.

Roycroft was an umbrella term used to cover a community, a printing operation, a line of bound books, copper ware, leather craft and furniture.

In the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, even as prosperity reigned, disenchantment with the tawdry undercurrents of industrialism festered. Those who could afford to find their focus through higher learning or adventure did so. The rest stayed wed to the machine, dreaming of a better way. The times were ripe for charismatic leaders.

Europe had theirs. Since the mid-1860s, John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William Morris (1834-1896) had been preaching an artistic brand of socialism. Moreover, Morris found a way to capitalize on it, printing books, wallpaper and textiles at his Kelmscott Press.

Enter Elbert Hubbard (1853-1915), a successful soap salesman - some say a genius marketer - for the Larkin Soap Company.

Rich enough to follow his heart, Hubbard dropped out. He tried Harvard for a semester, but remained emotionally and intellectually unfulfilled. In 1895, he retired to East Aurora, N.Y., about 20 miles south of Buffalo, then one of the nation's leading industrial centers, and bought a printing operation called Roycroft.

The Roycroft name has two meanings, according to Bill Menshon, facilities manager and acknowledged Roycroft expert at the Burchfield-Penny Art Center at Buffalo State College, the lending institution for the Hyde Collection show. "Roycroft is an old term that meant the quality of something was good enough for the king. It's also a nod to the Roycroft brothers, who were Fifteenth or Sixteenth Century book makers in Europe," he said.

After a trip to England to meet with Morris, Hubbard returned to East Aurora inspired. He began politicizing others through writings published in a monthly magazine called The Philistine. While it lasted 20 years, his greatest literary accomplishment came in 1899 when he penned and printed the motivationally charged essay, "Message to Garcia." "Garcia" met with instant success and cast Hubbard into the public eye.