Charles Rohlfs

Charles Rohlfs
Rohlfs circa 1903
Born	(1853-02-15)February 15, 1853 New York City
Died	June 30, 1936(1936-06-30) (aged 83)

Charles Rohlfs (February 15, 1853 – June 30, 1936), was an American actor, patternmaker, stove designer and furniture maker. Rohlfs is a representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and is most famous for his skill as a furniture designer and maker.

Rohlfs was born in Brooklyn and studied at the Cooper Union in Manhattan. As a young man, he worked as a stove pattern-maker while pursuing his career as an actor. He received several patents for stove designs, but had limited success as an actor. (Reading a review in 1895 in which a Chicago critic wrote, "His face is comedy, his spindling legs are comedy, and those ponderous double-jointed, floppy hands of his would be two separate and distinct boons to any eccentric comedian" - and Rohlfs was performing a serious role - may have been a turning point in his choice of careers.) He married the successful crime novelist Anna Katharine Green in 1884. After their marriage, he continued his career in the stove industry, and later made another attempt to establish his reputation as an actor. Rohlfs's father-in-law had been prominent in the Republican Party in New York City, and in 1896, Rohlfs participated in public debates in support of William McKinley's presidential campaign.

Rohlfs designed and made furniture for his family's use as early as 1888, but he did not commence his decade-long career as a professional furniture maker until 1897. Rohlfs had no professional training as a furniture maker. By century's end, Rohlfs had set up a shop on Washington Street in downtown Buffalo and began producing examples of what he called "artistic furniture" or the "Rohlfs style." Starting in 1899, Chicago retailer Marshall Field advertised and offered furniture and other decorative objects by Rohlfs, but sales fell short of expectations.

Rohlfs participated at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York in December 1900. The next year, he participated both as an exhibitor and as an organizer of the Pan-American Exposition in his hometown of Buffalo. The Exposition brought him fame. "So far as furniture is concerned, Buffalo can claim to hold the most original man in America," one enthusiastic Berlin commentator wrote about Rohlfs' work. Rohlfs is the only American furniture maker known to have participated in the International Exposition of Decorative Art in Turin in 1902. Perhaps as a result of the exposure he received there, Rohlfs became a member of the Royal Society of Arts in London.