If you thought Craftsman design was all about those Greene & Greene houses, art instructor Ann Chaves has news for you. In her home studio at the majestic Duncan-Irwin House in Pasadena, Chaves teaches the techniques of Craftsman-style embroidery, a metier she's been perfecting since age 5, when her grandmother taught her how to knit and sew. "In Arts and Crafts embroidery, it's about color, form and good, strong design, not elaborate or fancy stitches," says Chaves. For more than 20 years, she and her husband, Andre, have been immersed in the aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts movement, which flourished in England and America during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The pair avidly collect the period's decorative arts and practice its ethos of lasting workmanship in textiles, furniture, book arts and other fine handiwork. (Andre owns Clinker Press, which prints books about the Arts and Crafts movement and sells rare editions from Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft Press.)
Stylized design is a defining trait of Arts and Crafts needlework, according to Chaves, an admirer of turn-of-the-century embroiderers such as Ann Macbeth, who taught at the distinguished Glasgow School of Art. Craftsman images were often conventionalized for consistent rendering, becoming almost geometric. "You sometimes can't quite tell what kind of flower or leaf it is," says Chaves, who specialized in textile design and weaving while earning a bachelor's in art education from Buffalo State College in New York. "But [Craftsman design] really lends itself to needlework and embroidery." For her own botanical designs in the Craftsman style, she sketches and photographs plants from gardens around town. When she was hired to make corn-themed pillows for the Gustav Stickley room at the Hotel Pattee in Iowa, Chaves fastidiously tracked down a friend who grew the vegetable, "not exactly an easy task in Southern California," she notes.
