Byrdcliffe:

An American Arts and Crafts Colony

BIOGRAPHY:  Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead

Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, founder and chief investor of the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, was responsible for bringing many world-famous artists and musicians to Woodstock, New York and transforming it into an arts center that still thrives today.  Founded in 1903, the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony was a major contributor to the American Arts and Crafts Movement.  Many of the artists and musicians that stayed at the Colony over the years became nationally renowned for their work.

Born in 1854 in Yorkshire, England, Whitehead was the son of a prosperous mill owner and industrialist and used his inheritance to help finance the Byrdcliffe Colony.  Growing up, Whitehead became a student of John Ruskin at Oxford and became captivated with the Arts and Crafts Movement.  Whitehead was also influenced by the English artist, writer and socialist William Morris, who felt that the crafts would uplift the mind and spirit from mind-numbing industrial jobs.

Whitehead moved to the United States in 1892 and married Jane Byrd McCall of Philadelphia.  The two had met in Europe years earlier, where McCall also studied under Ruskin.  The Whiteheads had false starts in creating a utopian community in Italy, California and Oregon, but were successful in starting the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY with the help of Hervey White and Bolton Brown.  Jane and Ralph had two sons by the time Byrdcliffe was started, Ralph Jr. and Peter.

The Byrdcliffe Colony attracted many leading artists of the time, who produced furniture, pottery, textiles, paintings, ceramics, metal works and fine arts. Unfortunately, Byrdcliffe failed as a community of artists.  Whitehead experienced difficulty relating to his residents and delivering products to viable markets was difficult.  Eventually Byrdcliffe became a place for the Whiteheads to raise their children and to entertain.  Heartbroken over the death of his son Ralph Jr. in 1928, Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead died a year later.

(Sources: Byrdcliffe exhibition catalogue, www.woodstockguild.org, www.craftsmenperspective.com, www.winterthur.org)

Local support for this exhibition is provided by Omni Development Company, Inc.  and  M.M. Hayes Co., Inc.

The exhibition and catalogue were organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York State Council on the Humanities, the Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and Furthermore: a program of The J. M. Kaplan Fund. 
* Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the exhibition, publications, and programming do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information on the exhibition, visit www.museum.cornell.edu/byrdcliffe/

For more information on The Woodstock Guild and The Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, visit www.woodstockguild.org