Small Home Gazette, Fall 2019
Letter From the Editor: It’s Over
If you haven’t noticed, the Arts & Crafts revival—and with it, the bungalow revival—is over.
You don’t have to look far to find evidence for this assertion, especially if you ask younger people. For example, there was this summer’s Star Tribune article, “The Beleaguered Bungalow,” in which a real estate agent explained that millennials don’t want bungalows: “They think [midcentury houses] are old, and bungalows are just ancient.”
And you may have noticed that all those green pots and pieces of vintage oak furniture you lovingly (and often expensively) collected aren’t commanding the prices they once were. A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, titled “Generational divide skews antiques market,” came with this sub-headline: “Millennials don’t want heavy antiques, brown furniture; they crave ‘Mad-Men’-era stuff.”
I recall discovering Arts & Crafts in the early 1990s after I bought my bungalow. Oh, what giddy days! Almost overnight, newspaper and magazine articles on all things Arts & Crafts were everywhere. Television and movie characters were suddenly living in bungalows. Prices for vintage Arts & Crafts furniture, pottery, metalwork and textiles launched into the stratosphere. I mean, if Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand and Brad Pitt were into Arts & Crafts, how could you possibly not be?
Years passed; Arts & Crafts became even more popular. And just when we thought interest couldn’t get any higher, pop-up mall stores appeared, packed with masses of cheap, Tiffany-style lamps. Target, Wal-Mart and Ikea offered assemble-it-yourself Mission end tables. Arts & Crafts motifs broke completely free of their historic past and became the equivalent of peel-n-stick decals that could be slapped on your furniture, your house or your doghouse.
While it was exhilarating to ride the revival’s ramp-up, it wasn’t so great to watch it eventually jump the shark. Suddenly, everyone seemed to be over it.
Okay, pay attention now: This is the part of the essay in which I partly, even mostly, walk back that provocative, attention-grabbing opening line.
The Arts & Crafts revival isn’t over, but it has definitely matured. Many of the excesses of its youth are now just a painful memory. Those who hopped on board because it was the Next Big Thing have moved on. And those of us who stuck with it are more clear-eyed and confident. There are still plenty of people—yes, even young people—who happily choose to surround themselves with rich oak woodwork and prefer some color on their walls.
All movements cycle in and out of fashion, and even Midcentury Modern will ebb. Maybe minimalist architecture will get a bit boring; perhaps white walls will become passé. Something new (yet somehow retro!) will come along and the masses will rush to embrace it.
When that happens, I won’t celebrate with I-told-you-so spite. With a knowing nod, we Arts & Crafts enthusiasts will welcome the Mid-Mod crowd into the timeless classics club.
