WHILE MANY Arts and Crafts pieces are considered little more than quaint antiques, others command six figures. An armchair made by Greene and Greene sold for $913,000 at auction in June. (Photograph by Sotheby's.)

VALUE JUDGMENT Arts and Crafts items run the gamut from fur-niture to lighting to pot-tery, and prices can vary just as much. While top pieces have broken records in recent years, less unique items still sell for rather unimpressive amounts. Condition is often critical, particularly when it comes to furniture. Experts say the best opportunities these days can be found in pottery, where prices have steadily risen.

Among Arts and Crafts architects, brothers Charles and Henry Greene possess astral status. The best example of their work is the Gamble House in Pasadena, Calif., built in 1908 as the winter residence of Procter & Gamble’s David and Mary Gamble, who lived the rest of the year in Cincinnati. The Greenes used repeating themes such as bisecting lines and climbing roses throughout the home.

They also designed most of the house’s furniture and decorative objects. From the piano to picture frames, lighting to andirons, the same or complementary patterns were repeated. In those rooms where the Greenes didn’t design the furnishings, they recommended pieces made by Gustav Stickley, one of the fathers of the American Craftsman movement. The Gamble House is now jointly owned by the city of Pasadena and the University of Southern California, and is open to the public.

The Blacker House, Greene and Greene’s largest commission and a neighbor of the Gamble House along Pasadena’s Millionaires’ Row, suffered a far different fate. Like the Gamble home, the Blacker estate’s furniture and accoutrements were designed specifically for the house. However, much of the furniture was sold in a lawn sale about 1950, and in 1985 the home was purchased and stripped of its lighting and leaded-glass windows. In response, the outraged Pasadena City Council passed an ordinance forbidding the removal of significant items from a house for which they were commissioned.

Occasionally, an item from the Blacker House appears at auction and commands record-setting prices. When an armchair from the home was auctioned at Sotheby’s last June, collector Bruce Barnes paid $913,000 for it, and considered it a very good buy. A bedroom chair from the estate sold for $396,000 at the same auction.

Heart’s Desire
Lytwyn and Carbo, enthralled by the lines of Arts and Crafts, began a collection that has evolved over the years as they sold some pieces to acquire better ones. They bought their Short Hills, N.J., home in part because it had walls large enough to display the items they have obtained during the past three decades.

A FREDERICK Rhead vase garnered $516,000 last March. (Photograph by Rago Arts.)

Lytwyn’s favorite item is a two-piece Stickley sideboard made in 1901—the only one known to exist. The top and bottom of the sideboard had been separated at some point, and Lytwyn and Corbo bought the top half. "We knew it was one-half of a piece of furniture, but bought it anyway. People were teasing us," Lytwyn says. "We put it on the floor and displayed pottery on it for years." When a dealer came across the bottom of the sideboard, he tried to buy the top from the couple. They refused to sell their section, and after haggling back and forth, Lytwyn and Corbo ended up purchasing the bottom piece. The couple has since lent the sideboard to Craftsman Farms, Stickley’s home and museum in Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, N.J.

The rarity of these specially designed items elevates prices. "There are some seminal commissions," says Jeni Sandberg of Christie’s 20th-century decorative arts department. "Chairs from the Blacker House were a big Greene and Greene commission. Some names are golden, and if you can collect them, you get golden money for them." On the other hand, she points out, average furniture, even from a well-known artisan such as Stickley, can be hard to move, especially if it has been refinished. "Condition is key with Arts and Crafts," she says. "It’s very much akin to early American furniture. Original finish is mandatory."

In fact, many pieces from the movement sell for unimpressive figures. A child’s dresser by Stickley sold for only $2,400 at a Bonhams & Butterfields auction in late September.

Randell Makinson, the curator of the Gamble House for 26 years before his retirement, says part of the lack of interest lies in the name of the style. "You have to define Arts and Crafts," he explains. "To many, it sounds like a hobby shop—basket-weaving and that type of thing." He notes another problem: As the style became popular, the market was flooded with shoddy imitations, and those still appear today. "Sometimes people began to bastardize the Arts and Crafts movement by thinking they could outdo someone like Louis Tiffany or the Tiffany lamp," he says.

However, important pieces do appreciate. A chair by Charles Rohlfs, another luminary of the movement, went for $96,000 at Sotheby’s in November 2006, more than triple the low estimate of $30,000. In a sale last June at Bonhams & Butterfields, a Rohlfs fall-front desk went for $96,000; the high estimate was $70,000.

Branching Out
Other components of the Craftsman movement, such as pottery, metalwork and lighting, were essential to the overall effect of the style, and their prices are on the rise, albeit usually slowly.

Lytwyn sees particular promise in pottery from the era. Pieces vary from the very plain to works with luminescent glazes. A Frederick Rhead vase sold for $516,000 last March at Rago Arts in Lambertville, N.J. (After the Arts and Crafts movement died out, Rhead designed the iconic Fiesta dinnerware.)

"Furniture had its dips a couple of times, but high-end pottery continues to go up," Lytwyn says. "A few new collectors have stepped into the arena, and that drives up prices." And, notes David Rago of the auction house, pottery is much easier to display than furniture, which adds to its cachet.

The Rhead vase—along with some other decorative arts—transcends Arts and Crafts, says Jodi Pollack, a vice president and senior specialist in 20th-century decorative art at Sotheby’s. "That vase was always revered as a museum masterwork," she says. "It even had hairline cracks. It’s just something you’ll never have another opportunity to acquire. The best of the best is always going to generate intense competition. People are willing to pay big premiums."

Lighting, both built-in and lamps, also figured prominently in the Arts and Crafts home. Designs on built-in light fixtures match those on the walls or furniture. Tiffany, although not specifically an Arts and Crafts artist, created complementary pieces. (Dark lampshades were de rigueur because people in the first decade of the 20th century harbored a bit of fear regarding the long-term effects on vision of the newly invented light bulb.) Metalwork, such as hammered-copper bowls and bookends, can also command good prices, says Lytwyn, who was cocurator of a metalwork display at Craftsman Farms. Last March, a hammered-copper and wicker table lamp sold for $26,400 at Christie’s; the high estimate was just $4,000.

However, the fact that most Arts and Crafts pieces remain bargains is one reason to collect them, Rago says. "The furniture, from a buyer’s perspective—with the exception of top pieces—is a good place to be because prices have soft-ened. They are very good and very affordable right now."

New collectors should consider works by lesser-known artisans, Sandberg says. "Look outside the biggest designers. There were other people working who made good pieces as well." In December 2006, Christie’s sold a punch bowl by Susan Frackelton, a relatively unknown Wisconsin potter, for $33,600. "There are still good pieces available," Sandberg says, citing John Scott Bradstreet and George Washington Maher as two other examples of underappreciated craftsmen.

A plethora of books on the movement are available, and Makinson suggests that novices start with them. "The biggest trap," he says, "is to see something that’s cheap, and not really well designed and well built, detailed and finished well."

A Resort-Size Homage
Collector Bill Evans was so taken by the Arts and Crafts movement that he designed the lobby (left) and rooms of his family-owned resort—the Lodge at Torrey Pines on the famed golf course in La Jolla, Calif.—in the style. The Gamble and Blacker homes in Pasadena, Calif.—built by architects (and brothers) Charles and Henry Greene—inspired the project. With Gamble House curator Randell Makinson as his advisor, Evans took pains to ensure that furniture, lighting and even frames emulated the works of Greene and Greene. Actual specifications were used where appropriate.

Original Craftsman accessories Evans has collected, from pottery to copperware, are kept in areas off limits to the public because of the potential for damage. However, a stained-glass Greene and Greene window is on display. "I’ve always loved American decorative art," Evans says, "and this is truly our first homegrown decorated art."

The Lodge at Torrey Pines opened in 2002, replacing a Japanese-style hotel. A bonus to the Craftsman style is the Japanese influence, Evans says. Those touches—lines and simple flowers—present a tie-in with the past of Torrey Pines.

Debra Ryono is the managing editor of Worth.