ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, January 5, 1997                TAG: 9701070054
SECTION: HOMES                    PAGE: D-1  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BARBARA MAYER ASSOCIATED PRESS 

ROYCROFT REVIVED FURNITURE OF THE PAST COMING BACK INTO THE PRESENT

When the Arts and Crafts style resurfaced in the 1980s, the Stickley name and furniture reaped the benefit. Now, it's Roycroft's turn.

At its height of popularity around 1910, the Roycroft name was at least as famous as Gustav Stickley's. Like the products of Stickley and other competitors, Roycroft's simple, ready-made oak furniture had a handmade look, although it was manufactured using mass production methods.

But Roycroft was as much a way of life as a furniture manufacturing company. Today, backed by a local foundation and some enthusiastic hometown boosters, that way of life is being celebrated.

East Aurora, N.Y., where the Roycroft community was established at the turn of the century, is once again a flourishing center of craftsmanship. And Roycroft furniture and accessories are being sold by mail order and in home furnishings specialty shops around the country.

Roycroft's main building, known as the Roycroft Inn, has been restored and reopened as a luxury hotel. The inn's famous murals by Alexis Jean Fournier have been reinstalled in its main room.

Kitty Turgeon-Rust and Bob Rust, who run the Roycroft Shops, a combination crafts and antiques shop, began promoting the Roycroft revival more than 20 years ago.

``When we started in the '70s, only antiques were available and only a few collectors, dealers and scholars cared,'' Kitty Turgeon-Rust said.

Today, East Aurora, about 30 minutes south of Buffalo, N.Y., is a crafts center for the work of more than 20 artisans inspired by the Roycroft example. The town is also home to 10 craft galleries and antiques shops that specialize in Arts and Crafts items.

``A lot of us left other careers to do something that we love,'' says Bennett Little, president of the Roycrofters At Large Association, which was founded in 1976 to preserve the heritage of Roycroft.

``Roycroft is an attitude and a feeling about wanting our work to provide a sense of satisfaction at the end of every day,'' adds Little, who is a woodworker and owner of the Schoolhouse Gallery.

Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft's founder, no doubt would be pleased at the revival of the community he established. Hubbard was something of a sales promotion genius who made a fortune in direct sales.

At age 37, he sold his stake in the large soap company that he helped to build. He used part of the proceeds to start the Roycroft Press in 1895. The press soon expanded into a multifaceted manufacturing operation for home furnishings, as well as producing magazines and books read by hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Hubbard hired fine craftsmen and artists to design Roycroft products and established a lively community of free-thinkers in the small community of East Aurora. He welcomed celebrities and the general public to the 51/2-acre Roycroft ``campus'' and opened the Roycroft Inn.

In 1915, Hubbard and his wife Alice died in the sinking of the Lusitania. The Arts and Crafts Movement petered out several years later. The Roycroft community continued to operate until 1938, when it declared bankruptcy. A period of near total oblivion ensued.

Local efforts to restore the Roycroft legacy began in the 1970s.

In 1987, the Roycroft campus and its 14 buildings were designated a national historic landmark, and efforts to restore the deteriorating buildings began in earnest.

With the help of an $8.5 million grant from the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation of Buffalo, the Roycroft Inn was revamped by 1995. Working mainly from photographs, architects kept the original outlines and as many original details as possible.

A number of buildings on the Roycroft campus are open to visitors including the East Aurora Town Hall, located in a structure that once housed a sales room and artists' studios, and the Elbert Hubbard Museum.

The Roycroft Inn is at 40 S. Grove St., East Aurora, N.Y. Telephone number: (716)-652-5552.

For a copy of the Roycroft Shop Catalog, which includes reproductions of Roycroft furniture and china, lighting fixtures, antiques and other Arts and Crafts style items, call toll-free (888)-769-2738.

LENGTH: Medium:   81 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. The main lounge of the Roycroft Inn contains 
          restored murals by Alexis Jean Fournier. During the first decades of
          the century, the building was the center of Elbert Hubbard's 
          community of craftsmen. color.