Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead was born in 1854 in Yorkshire, England. He won a Master of Arts degree at Oxford, where he studied with Ruskin and was influenced greatly by William Morris.

Whitehead's concept of an artists' colony was founded strongly on socialistic lines popular in his day, ideas which he undoubtedly heard from his mentor and idol, William Morris, who actually abandoned the socialist platform soon afterward.

His idea was that the colony, which was to be founded in Woodstock, New York, not too far from the City, but far enough to get some peace and quite for painting, would consist of beautiful and talented people who were willing to live an artistic life free of any political taint.

He was joined in this venture by Hervey White, who helped Whitehead spend his enormous inheritance in the pursuit of aesthetic perfection.

Besides the famous Bolton Brown, other early art instructors at Byrdcliffe included Herman Dudley Murphy and Dawson Watson.

Erlensen, a giant blonde Swede from Konigsberg, ran the woodworking shop; Elizabeth Starr was a bookbinder from Hull House. Elizabeth Hardenberg and Edith Pennman started a pottery shed with a handbuilt kiln, Zulma Steele and Edna Walker from the Pratt Institute designed furniture with Whitehead's continual kibitzing...

Art Teacher John Carlson, of Buffalo, NY, came to Byrdcliffe, and so did George Macrumb, who helped build the famous chests and cabinets that emerged from the Byrdcliffe Workshop, but they were so heavy to ship and expensive to manufacture that they decided to stop making them, although Erlensen apparently continued in the cabinetry business on his own and made a fine name for himself as a guild craftsman, and some of his creations made their way into various museums over the years.

It wasn't long before Bertha Thompson's famous Hillside Studio just west of White Pines, where she produced her incredible silver creations, similar to those made by Art Smith and Sam Kramer in Greenwich Village at about the same time.

One of her friends was the great etcher, Mathilde de Cordoba, who did a commissioned portrait of the famous naturalist John Burroughs when he visited the Catskills.

Bolton Brown was an art teacher from nearby Cornell University, and reportedly lived at the Zena Mill for some time, and painted and sketched it often; he was better known for his lithographs of George Bellows' famous prize fighters, but he was a heck of a painter, too, and was a prodigiously fine instructor, when he accepted a student.

Brown wrote several excellent books on lithography which are still read as "Printers' Bibles" today! He also mastered pottery, making his own wheel and kilns and keeping a careful record of his unique glazes and firings, as did many potters in the area, from whom he no doubt learned the basics before carrying the art to his own special extreme.

His wife Lucy nursed him during his last illness at the Zena Mill in Zena, NY. She told a story about his last days: two days before he died, he suddenly decided to personally direct the erection of his monument, a large boulder he had selected as his headstone. He was transported to his grave covered by boughs of pine, as he had requested of the beautiful and radiant Lucy Brown.