Arts & Crafts Furniture

Arts and Crafts furniture, or mission furniture, is a style of furniture that originated in the late 19th century. It traces its origins to a chair made by A.J. Forbes around 1894 for San Francisco’s Swedenborgian Church. The term “mission furniture” was first popularized by Joseph P. McHugh of New York, a furniture manufacturer and retailer who copied the Forbes chair and offered a line of stylistically related furnishings by 1898. The word mission references the Spanish missions throughout colonial California, though the design of most mission style furniture owes little to the original furnishings of these missions. The style became increasingly popular following the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and ever since has been associated with the American Arts and Crafts movement.