a&c movement

• Arts and Crafts on Wikipedia

  Wikipedia is a fantastically immense user-edited encyclopedia. Anyone can make additions and changes, and it’s a testament to the principles of anarchism that it does not decay into chaos. Their entry on the Arts & Crafts Movement is excellent, although slanted more than a little toward the UK, the homeland of the movement. I would suggest that some of you add to the page, develop it a bit, and perhaps explore the influence that A&C has had on other parts of the world.

• Practical Painting: the Pre-Raphaelites

  Practical Painting showcases particular artistic techniques and movements in short illustrated essay form. This month, Denise includes a brief history of the Pre-Raphaelites, retrospectively considered part of the UK Craftsman Movement, although in fact they were more an influence upon William Morris and the still-forming Movement than part of it. Artists such as Burne Jones, DeMorgan, Waterhouse, Millais, Alma-Tadema, Rossetti, and Hunt were the central Pre-Raphaelites, and are all represented in the gallery that accompanies the article.

  pictured: Waterhouse’s Spring (The Flower Picker)

• The Simple Home

  Bernard Maybeck patron / client Charles Keeler (a poet, playwright, inventor of religions and generally odd duck) wrote The Simple Home in 1906. It has been out of print for many years and was reprinted in 1979 by Peregrine Smith; however, you can read the original text online without the (copyrighted) Peregrine Smith introduction.

  ALL the arts are modes of expressing the One Ideal;
  but the ideal must be rooted in the soil of the real,
  the practical, the utilitarian. Thus it happens
  that architecture, the most utilitarian of the arts,
  underlies all other expressions of the ideal ; and of all
  architecture, the designing of the home brings the artist
  into closest touch with the life of man.

• Sotheby’s: Greene & Greene

  Rich Muller notes that "many of the pieces that have been in the Huntington’s Scott gallery are now up for auction (through Sotheby’s). There are a lot of high-resolution images that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Get your checkbooks out, or at least download some of these images!  There is also information on each lot." Catalogs are US$43; the least expensive item up for auction is significantly more expensive.

  Of special note, at least to those interested in the graphic arts: some of the most expensive cuts (of such a small size, at least) ever.

• What is a Bungalow?

  Kerry Phillips, one of the founders of the Sacramento Bungalow Heritage Association, which tirelessly protects the many beautiful Craftsman homes in my own neighborhood of midtown Sacramento (as well as the rest of the historic neighborhoods of our city), has an excellent short essay defining this sometime-contentious word up on the SBHA site.

• Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum

  
  The Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum has a wonderful site documenting much of their large and important collection of

  “…pottery, silver, metalwork, jewellery, plasterwork, leatherwork, private press books, textiles and embroideries as well as important archives.”

  Much of their collection is online, and you can search the database by designer name.

• Pasadena’s Craftsman Weekend

  
  From October 15 through 17th, Pasadena will host its annual Craftsman Weekend at the Masonic Temple on 200 South Euclid Ave. in Pasadena. This particular show is really immense, even larger than San Francisco’s event of a month ago. More than 80 exhibitors are set to show.

• Tom Stangeland & Steve Helberg:
  Arts & Crafts Master Artisans in Pacific NW

  When we moved into our home in 1998, we decided to furnish our main floor with Arts & Crafts furniture. We saw Tom Stangeland‘s Greene & Greene dining room table (modeled on one in the Blacker House in Pasadena) at NW Fine Woodworking here in Seattle and this was (to quote Casablanca) the “beginning of a beautiful [creative] friendship.”

• Auction Leftovers: Hidden Gems?

  
  Looking for authentic antique Prairie, Craftsman or A&C furniture, accessories or artwork? Check out the unsold lots at Treadway/Toomey Galleries. A resource to keep an eye on.
  

• bungalow associations all over

  Our friends over at House in Progress recently compiled & published a list of bungalow associations throughout North America.

  One they missed is my own local association, the Sacramento Bungalow Heritage Association. What organizations are trying to honor the historical integrity of and social contract in your own neighborhoods?