Shop Drawings for Byrdcliffe Furniture

28 American Arts & Crafts Period Masterpieces

Measured & drawn by Robert W. Lang

The Byrdcliffe colony was a short-lived but important producer of furniture in the American Arts & Crafts period of the early 20th century. This distinctive furniture featured colorful carved designs created by Zulma Steele and Edna Walker. Robert W. Lang, author of the “Shop Drawings” series of books about Craftsman furniture and interiors, researched these pieces and has created detailed drawings for the construction of 28 pieces from Byrdcliffe, utilizing both original pieces and drawings.

Introductory chapters include the history of the colony and the people responsible for creating this unique line of furniture, including colony founder Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Bolton Brown, Dawson Dawson-Watson, and chief designers Steele and Walker. These chapters contain both period and contemporary photographs. The drawings allow for the construction of reproductions or a deeper study of these designs.

Robert W. Lang has been building furniture since the 1970s and writing about the process since the late 1990s. He is the author of Shop Drawings for Craftsman Furniture and Woodworkers Guide to SketchUp. He was formerly the executive editor and project illustrator for Popular Woodworking magazine and currently edits American Period Furniture, the annual journal of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers. Born and raised in northeastern Ohio, he currently lives in the Cincinnati area.

This softcover book has 226 pages, more than 40 color images, and close to 300 black-and-white photos, drawings, and charts. Its trim size is 8.5 by 11 inches. Copyright 2020 by RWD Publishing.