The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs

A protean artist, actor, and furniture maker dedicated to the primacy of individual expression, Charles Rohlfs (1853–1936) called his unprecedented designs “artistic furniture.” This exhibition—the first major survey of his work—will present over 40 pieces of his furniture and related objects in the context of groundbreaking new research. With roots in the “art for art’s sake” theories of Aesthetic movement, Rohlfs’s virtuosic carving and imaginative silhouettes relate to Art Nouveau, combined with a wide range of international design traditions. His innovations influenced the pared-down oak forms of the Arts and Crafts movement. Combining design motifs in remarkably inventive ways, Rohlfs created furniture like none other, whose story and legacy contribute a new chapter to the history of American design.

About Charles Rohlfs

Charles Rohlfs’s furniture-making was the culmination of a lifetime dedicated to art, design, and theater. Trained in socially progressive artistic ideals at The Cooper Union, Rohlfs went on to design decorative cast-iron stoves for some of the largest industrial foundries in the country, while pursuing a career as a stage actor. Rohlfs married the famous mystery novelist Anna Katharine Green, and together they began furnishing a home steeped in the artistic ideals of the late nineteenth-century House Beautiful movement. This exhibition and book project is the first to explore Anna Katharine Green’s contribution to the Rohlfs furniture enterprise. In creating furnishings that expresses their individual tastes, Rohlfs found an outlet that combined his skills in design, carving, and dramatic salesmanship.

Although all major studies of the American Arts and Crafts movement, and some of Art Nouveau, have included his furniture, Rohlfs denied connection to any particular style and preferred to call his work “The Rohlfs Style” or simply “artistic furniture.” This unabashed dedication to his own creative vision makes Rohlfs’s work difficult to categorize and suggests the influence of late nineteenth-century “art for art’s sake” ideologies. Although his furniture features the dark matte oak that would become widely popular as “Mission Style,” Rohlfs was too much of a businessman to embrace the socialist tendencies of William Morris or the utopian visions of his own regional competitors, the Roycroft Shops. His designs directly influenced Gustav Stickley’s popular Craftsman Furniture, but Rohlfs’s own commercial success was limited.

Rohlfs’s unconventional career and work mark him as among the more imaginative design figures of his time. His ambitious chairs, case furniture, and commissioned interiors reveal earnest dedication to his individual artistic vision. Their imaginative curves, bold forms, and fluid carved decoration derive from a wide array of international aesthetic influences and set him apart from his contemporaries.