The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Community
The Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony was one of the premier Arts and Crafts communities in America. Dating from 1902, when it was founded by Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Hervey White, and Bolton Brown, noted artists intellectuals, and craftspeople from all over the United States flocked to Byrdcliffe to design and construct handcrafted goods such as furniture, metalwork, weavings, and pottery in this bucolic setting in the Catskill Mountains. Although the experiment faded quickly after it’s founding, Byrdcliffe remains a treasure as a total sensory artifact of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.
Locations for Tour
The Varenka
A counterpart to the Bottega, the Varenka was a one-and-a-half-story building with a garage-like door that was largely used for furniture storage and possibly sales.
Although Byrdcliffe furniture was stored and sold at the Varenka, it was also…
The Studio
Although now a theater, this was the site of the Byrdcliffe Studio and Library in the early twentieth century. As the purpose of Byrdcliffe was to encourage artistry and handcraftsmanship, it was one of the first buildings erected as a workspace,…
The Looms
According to keeper of Woodstock history, Anita Smith, if you were invited to Marie Little’s cottage and studio, dubbed The Looms, assuming she did not suddenly cancel the invitation “to savor control over another’s actions,” guests “would…
The Barns
In the October 1909 issue of American Homes and Gardens Poultney Bigelow wrote, “Ralph Whitehead is a mighty farmer in addition to his other many accomplishments.” While not a “mighty farmer” Whitehead did, however, have “mighty” barns as…
The Bottega
“The community must earn its food and raiment, and to this end will want to sell part of its produce” Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead wrote in Grass of the Desert. “Consider the future of the arts when wood, and wool and brass and leather are worked…
The Forge
The Forge or Metal Shop, built in 1903, was the primary location for metalworking at the Byrdcliffe Art Colony. According to a 1907 brochure, The Forge was a large and accommodating three-room structure for the use of artisans. “The largest room is…
The Gardens at White Pines
Lost among overgrown vegetation and structural ruins, the grounds surrounding White Pines were once home to magnificent gardens that titillated all of the senses in a beautiful and practical way.
Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead cultivated two gardens at…
Casa Carniola
In the winter of 1902-1903 Bolton Coit Brown stepped into his home, Casa Carnola, which was at that point a construction site. As he descended into the cellar Brown spied a catamount: “I saw its round head, back beyond a beam,” Brown recalled,…
White Pines
In 1909 Poultney Bigelow, reporting for American Homes and Gardens, described Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead’s Byrdcliffe as “frankly a benevolent despotism. Whitehead is the absolute monarch, and no one is tolerated who is not in sympathy with his…
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