for sale

  • this weeks’ Craigslist finds!

    Plenty of gorgeous bits & pieces of furniture on sale around the country this week; here's a rundown of some Stickley pieces that stood out:

  • for sale: Coxhead home in Pacific Heights, $3.4m

     
    Picture 1

    from the listing and article:

    Built in 1894, this home was designed by renowned Arts and Crafts-style
    architect Ernest Coxhead. The property has been remodeled but still
    maintains many of its original details, starting with an entrance that
    features a carved front gate. The foyer opens up to a bright living
    area. It has a fireplace, as does the formal dining area. One more
    fireplace can be found in the home, which also has dark hardwood
    flooring. All four bedrooms are on the second level, including the
    master bedroom with two dormer windows that look out through the front
    of the home. A third-floor play room could function as an office. The
    property is two blocks from Alta Plaza park.

    As our friend The Jaundiced Eye notes, "Doubtlessly, the place has been "modernized" and every square inch of
    original woodwork has been painted. From the photos posted, this house
    is a beautiful arts and crafts shell waiting for a new owner to further
    destroy Coxheads original vision."

    Yeah, you know something is wrong when the big selling points for an historic home by a famous architect are "the kitchen … features a Sub-Zero refrigerator (and) a
    Thermador range."

    photos by Samantha Lawson

  • Alice Roth Suszynski’s boxes & chests

     Picture 1

    We last ran a piece on Alice Suszynski's work a few years ago – at the time, she had recently produced an absolutely stunning wooden Arts & Crafts chandelier. Her newest venture is on a slightly smaller scale, although the work is no less intricate and attractive. Recently Alice has been busy making jewelry boxes that are quite a bit different from any you've seen before; some are inlaid, others etched or decorated with interesting dark wood accents; all are hand-made from top-quality woods with beautiful grain, and many include nods to Asian, Prairie and Arts & Crafts forms, although several are firmly modern and would be an excellent gift for an aficionado of almost any style.

    Her Rye Grass flatware storage box is also particularly attractive. Alice is open to commissions for a wide range of woodwork projects.

  • Greentea Design Winter Sale

     Greentea-kitchen-5-sale

    Just got an email today from one of my favorite retailers, Greentea Design: they're having a big winter sale, with some furniture items as much as 30% off! While much of what they sell is a mixture of traditional and contemporary Asian-inflected wooden furniture, the vast majority of it is a perfect fit for traditional Craftsman homes – remember, there's a long tradition, going back to Greene & Greene, of mixing Japanese and Chinese themes with the Craftsman look.

    One of my favorite product lines at Greentea is their Maru collection, which consists of various tables (and other items) made from wood reclaimed from floors in old Korean homes and other buildings. Beautiful, classic, and green, too! The sale even includes 20% off on Greentea's stock kitchens, all of which are gorgeous and many of which are a perfect modernizing feature which won't overwhelm the look & feel of an older home.

    I'm writing to let you know that Greentea Design's Winter Sale starts on January 6th. This is one of our biggest sales of the year. We're offering up to 30% off throughout the entire website. I had hoped to send this off earlier, but the sale start date got bumped up suddenly.
     
    The Winter Sale discounts are offered based on the collection the furniture is in. The Kuryo Collection gets the biggest discount at 30% off. The popular Maru Table Collection, made directly from reclaimed Korean floors has a discount of 10%.  The Sakura lighting collection and Antiques Section are both 10% off as well.  The rest of Greentea Design's line is 20% off. The sale only applies to stock pieces; custom orders are excluded from any discounts.

  • book: Shop Class as Soulcraft

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    Last weekend, the NY Times Magazine included a short excerpt from a terrific new book by Matthew Crawford, a motorcycle mechanic with a Ph.D. in philosophy.

    Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
     addresses issues of craft and work that will be important and thought-provoking to anyone interested in the philosophies behind the Arts & Crafts movement, and I look forward to getting my copy as soon as my local bookshop has it in stock.

    High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s
    as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The
    imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it
    to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in
    which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a
    pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with,
    such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally,
    now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog
    our toilets, build our houses.

    When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had
    no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and
    emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such
    sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring
    power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as
    well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be
    the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes
    with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for
    work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.

    This
    seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling
    economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that
    repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current
    recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they
    have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are
    also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information
    technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades
    — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers.
    The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial
    distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more
    or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered
    over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The
    latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to
    distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over
    the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in
    India.

    If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t
    really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic
    about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some
    people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their
    own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning
    to build things or fix things. One shop teacher
    suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning
    environments for our children that they know to be contrived and
    undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the
    opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and
    distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”

    A
    gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to
    accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not
    self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there
    is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a
    series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there
    is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their
    natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I
    taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set
    up a Ritalin
    fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is
    naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then
    indefinitely at work.

  • Frank Lloyd masterworks available in lego form

    6a00d8341bf72a53ef0115708abde9970b-800wiOur friends at Prairie Mod, always hep to news in the tiny overlapping center of the Frank Lloyd Wright / Lego Venn diagram, have noted two additions to Lego's classic architecture line. Both are Frank Lloyd Wright designs, of course: the Guggenheim model is now on sale for $55 shipped, and Fallingwater will be available soon.

    Brickstructures, the folks who are collaborating with Lego and the Frank Lloyd Wright folks on these models, has several other structures available to view on their website, including 7 South Dearborn, the Burj Dubai, the Chicago Spire, the Empire State Building, Jin Mao Tower, the John Hancokc, Marina City, the M.B. Skyneedle, Sears Tower, the St. Louis Arch, San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid, Trump Tower and the World Trade Center.

    No idea if these others will be available for sale; for most, it's doubtful, given the huge number of blocks

  • Greentea Design: spectacular custom kitchens

    Toronto-based Greentea Design has a special place in my heart: not only do they design, build and sell some of the most beautiful kitchen cabinetry available anywhere – in beautiful Japanese-influenced styles that are a perfect match for any Mission or Craftsman home – but they also carry a range of both antique and contemporary reclaimed-wood furniture, some in historic Craftsman and Japanese designs and others in more contemporary shapes. And the prices, even including the (very professional and speedy) shipping from Canada are surprisingly low, making them competitive with any of the larger semi-custom cabinet makers out there, even while using better materials like a clear coat for kitchen cabinets and sturdier building techniques..

    While many of their signature pieces – step tansu and other room-defining wood furniture items – are gorgeous, it's that line of kitchen cabinets that I keep coming back to. Sold as custom kitchen sets or as individual stock pieces, the grain of the wood, beautiful (and exclusive to Greentea) hand-forged hardware and trim detail is both Asian and Craftsman at the same time, with enough character to be beautiful and enough attention to design to be eminently useful. Their Loft Kitchen custom design, above, is a combination of the various Mizuya cabinets, including an island and a full range of wall cabinets and accessories; other past custom kitchens have included the simplified Asian Bistro, minimalist Zen Modern, and Chalet Chic, which was tailored for a more open, airy space. Of course, each piece is available by itself as well – all the islands, hutches, wall and base cabinets and pantries you could possibly need are available piecemeal should you wish to design your own kitchen, amd all can be installed in a fixed position or left free-standing (for a movable island, for example). The custom design services offered are impressive – Greentea's staff of furniture and room designers are more than happy to assist with your own custom project or do the work for you; their staff worked extensively with Kim Johnson, owner of a 100-year-old home in Ottawa, on her recent remodel, and the results were very impressive; Kim blogged the entire process on her website, Design to Inspire.

    I'm very happy to have a piece of theirs up in my own modern Craftsman kitchen, and I hope to have a few photographs of it soon; a smaller version of the Dana cabinet (pictured above; mine is a similar to what sits above the glass cabinets on the right and left of this unit) completes the rear wall of that recently-remodeled room in my 1925 Mission Revival bungalow in Sacramento, California, and it's a perfect complement for the bamboo floors, stone countertops and glass tile backsplash that round out the project. Some day, I'd like to own one of their step tansus, which I have always maintained are the perfect bridge between an austere Asian design style and the earthy workmanship of the Craftsman aesthetic. And they're running a special "Stepping Into Summer" promotion right now, with 20% discounts on these unique pieces, including the Elm Burl step tansu, shown below.

    Owner Dale Storer has worked hard to make sure that Greentea's products complement a wide range of architectural styles, though, and much of their more contemporary designs would look at home whether in a traditional Japanese home, a Craftsman bungalow, or a modern high-tech apartment. The Lattice TV Stand, pictured below, hides components behind a latticed sliding door that still allows remote controls to function, and is just as good a match for an urban loft as it is for a 90-year-old brown-shingle Craftsman bungalow. Every one of these pieces is made from reclaimed wood, and all come in a variety of finishes with different types of hardware available as well. Mike Ramsey writes that the reclaimed wood usually comes from "aging rural structures that are being taken down to make way for Asia's rapidly expanding urban centers. The Maru tables are the best example since they're turned into tables directly from being reclaimed. The original supports are cut into legs who have correspondingly sized holes cut in the base of the slabs of floor."

    Their antiques stock, some of which is on hand at their Toronto showroom, is also worth checking out; I'm partial to the large selection of all sorts of Japanese tansu, but they also carry plenty of Chinese and Korean pieces as well.

    I'm not so used to giving such praise to a business – as regular readers know, I'm pretty stingy with compliments and generous with criticism, which is certainly a fault. However, after dealing with this company myself and going gaga over their website, I just wanted to make sure you were all as familiar with them as I've become. After seeing so many (primarily) Japanese antiques blend so well with the large shingled Craftsman homes of California, but noticing the absence of same elsewhere in the country, I thought perhaps most people didn't realize that the two styles matched so well.

    If you're in or near Toronto, definitely check out the Greentea showroom; otherwise, spend a few minutes browsing their website, or call them at 1.866.426.7286 to talk with someone about your kitchen design or furniture needs.

    I've made a small Flickr album for photos of their work; I'll soon add a good shot of the Dana cabinet in my own kitchen; those of you who already have Greentea cabinets, please do send me your photos, and I'll add them as well!