Shopmark Book To Be Released at Grove Park Inn Show

The first shopmark I ever saw was a red oval paper label curling up on the back of my father's mission oak dropfront desk. The year was 1959. I peeled it off and threw it away.

Twenty years later I saw my first carved Roycroft orb-and-cross, and then, in the back of a Chicago antique dealer's pickup truck, my first Gustav Stickley faint red decal. As I did I thought back to my father's desk and that red oval paper label…..

Either smitten or cursed, I embarked on a journey, determined to collect as many photographs of Arts & Crafts shopmarks as I could find. In 1988, for the first Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference, I printed a small red booklet, modestly entitled "Arts & Crafts Shopmarks." It was 24 pages long and contained 38 shopmarks.

During the ensuing 25 years I continued to collect shopmarks, helped along the way by other Arts & Crafts zealots. None proved more supportive than Michael Clark and Jill Thomas-Clark, who would greet me at the Grove Park Inn each February with a handful of shopmark photographs they had snapped on their own Arts & Crafts journeys.

Last summer I finally decided that it would be fitting to organize, research, write and release in time for the 25th anniversary Arts & Crafts Conference a fresh book of shopmarks. I had no idea how many I had accumulated and how many more I would discover once I really started looking -- and asking the readers of www.ArtsAndCraftsCollector.com to send me any unusual shopmarks you had found.

When Alex, my talented graphic artist assistant, announced we could not add any more shopmarks to the book and still meet our printer's deadline, I finally stopped. More accurately, I paused. I still have not counted precisely how many shopmarks Alex fit into what has become a 328-page book, but it's somewhere between 1,200 - 1,300 paper labels, brands, decals and metal tags.

Including a familiar red oval paper label from the Cron-Kills Company in Piqua, Ohio, makers of "wardrobes and dropfront desks." A photocopy that that label is now in a drawer in my father's dropfront desk.

I insisted that "Arts & Crafts Shopmarks: 1895-1940" be printed as a paperback, for it is intended to ride along with you, helping you identify and distinguish, for instance, whether the letters "CS" in a circle represent Craftsman Studios in California or metalsmith Carl Sorenson from Philadelphia. A 5-star evaluation scale will help you determine if an obscure mark is from a rare and respected firm, or if it's just obscure.

Publishing this book as a paperback also makes it affordable, meaning you can keep one in your car and another in your Arts & Crafts bookcase. The book will retail in bookstores and antique shops for $24.95, but can be purchased at the Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference for just $20. Following a tradition established by Elbert Hubbard, each copy of the special first edition will be signed and numbered, except I won’t have help signing mine, as Roycroft collectors have learned sly Elbert was prone to do.

If you want to see what Arts & Crafts Shopmarks: 1895-1940 looks like, simply click on this link:

http://www.arts-craftsconference.com/theshopmarksbook.html

And if you will have to miss the 25th anniversary celebration at the Grove Park Inn on February 17-19, you can order your signed and numbered copy using that same link.

Like any true Arts & Crafts collector, I haven't stopped looking for more obscure shopmarks. Once you get your copy, see if you have any I have missed, and send them to us for inclusion in the next edition and at our Shopmarks Directory at www.ArtsAndCraftsCollector.com.

Many thanks!

- Bruce Johnson