Updated:
July 20, 2007
or many years, the Mission Inn was furnished, in part, with Arts and Crafts style furniture. The Arts and Crafts movement, which began at the end of the 19th century, emphasized the importance of handcrafted everyday objects. Architecture, furniture, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, and glass objects were created using simplified designs and natural materials. In part, the movement was a reaction to machine made products and industrialization. People such as Elbert Hubbard, Gustav Stickley, Earnest Batchelder, architects Charles and Henry Greene and Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Charles Limbert, made the movement, which began in Europe, popular in the United States.
Frank Miller purchased from the Limbert Company custom-made furniture for the Mission Inn. The Limbert furniture included desks, beds, chairs, and chest of drawers. Each piece was made of oak and was identified with an inlaid Raincross design. The Mission Inn was not the only hotel to use Limbert furniture. According to the Arts and Crafts Society, The Old Faithful Inn at the Yellowstone National Park, also had the Limbert-made furniture.
The hotel also contained furniture from the Stickley brothers (Gustav, Albert, Leopold, and John) and Elbert Hubbard’s Roycrofter’s shop. Furniture pieces were also made on-site in the hotel’s carpentry shops. Not all the furniture was in the Arts and Crafts designs. An area of the hotel named the Colonial Landing featured furniture representative of the original thirteen colonies of the United States.
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