• Greene & Greene’s Gamble House – in Lego!

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    Grant Scholbrock lives in Portland, Oregon, and – if these photographs are any measure – is one of the greatest Lego architects of our time. His focus includes architecturally significant and unique skyscrapers in the United States, landmarks across the world (check his photostream for a terrific White House and Taj Mahal), as well as important Arts & Crafts homes.

    After his earlier (and beautiful) Robie House model, Grant decided to build a tableaux of the Greene brothers' Gamble House in Pasadena. After Three months worth of work and at least 500 blocks – which included a trip to Los Angeles to visit the real thing (Grant took numerous photographs of various details to supplement the images he found online; this was his sixth trip to visit the building), the piece is finally finished. He's had several requests for various Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, and hopes to someday complete a model of the Blacker House, especially if he's able to visit it during the 2010 Pasadena Heritage Weekend.

    See more photographs of this project – and many others – in Grant's Flickr stream. And, if you're so inclined, Grant and I would both like to know what you'd like his next project to be – do you have any favorite buildings that would lend themselves to this kind of model-making?

  • Greene & Greene and Christopher Nolan’s Inception

    Inception, the new Christopher Nolan film about psychic espionage, includes a number of scenes in an extremely striking, obviously Greene & Greene home. Scenes in a hallway, dining room, kitchen and back yard show off cloud lift cabinet pulls, green ceramic mosaic tile in the kitchen, and Japanese-inspired lamps (and a front door with some very interesting stained glass inserts) that could be made by the Greenes or very talented imitators.

    Does anyone know which house this is? It may be right on the Pasadena arroyo, if it is in that city, as the backyard is gently sloped down away from the back porch. I've heard much of the film was shot in and around Pasadena, so that gives a bit more weight to the idea that it's a real Greene & Greene, rather than a set.

  • The Sun Valley Seasons: Greene & Greene-ish in Idaho

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    The "Sun Valley Seasons" (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) are four luxurious 4,000+ sq ft single-family homes designed by Ruscitto / Latham / Blanton and built by Intermountain Construction on three lots in Sun Valley, Idaho. What makes them interesting is the level of detail – they were designed and built to resembled Greene & Greene homes, and the gabling, roofline, and much of the interior architectural woodwork is certainly in that vein.

    I can’t speak to the quality of the homes – I haven’t visited them or seen construction pictures – and I sometimes feel a little odd looking at new construction that is so self-consciously "antiqued," in that it’s made to look very similar to a particular designer’s work in a particular era. However, you can see that at the very least the designers and builders certainly had a thing for the Greenes.

    The people who staged the homes and did some of the finishing, though, included a few items that are completely incongruous in such a home – an ornate chandelier and other light fixtures, for instance, that owe more to Louis XIV than the Arts & Crafts movement; white beadboard in the kitchen; fake-paneled appliances, and a fountain that looks like something out of a Berkeley hippie commune. Overall, though, the level of detail is certainly impressive.

  • a visit to the Lodge at Torrey Pines

    Given that the New York Times recently opened up their archives, I’ve been spending lots of time looking for interesting A&C related articles. Just found this gem by Barbara Lazear Ascher, dated September 2002. The first few paragraphs are below; visit the NYTimes site to see the full article.

    I’m driving down a twisting, clinker-brick driveway banked by
    boulders, wildflowers and rare Torrey pines. Ahead is a green-stained,
    cedar-shingled building, which from my East Coast perspective resembles
    an Adirondack lodge. Then I am reminded of Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie
    houses with their celebration of the horizontal line. An outward sweep
    of unpainted, broad roof overhangs, projecting outriggers, and rafter
    tails appear to dance with the light.

    This isn’t Surfin’
    Safari, Southern California. John Ruskin, William Morris and Charles
    Rennie Mackintosh have come to La Jolla.

    I’d heard about the
    recently opened Lodge at Torrey Pines from my stepdaughter in San
    Diego. Tucked between the Pacific Ocean and Torrey Pines State Reserve
    by the 18th green of the South Course of the famed Torrey Pines Golf
    Course, the hotel is a result of its owner William Evans’s love affair
    with California’s Arts and Crafts Movement.

    I’m curious how a
    hotelier in the Era of Asphalt will interpret the movement’s reverence
    for nature and craftsmanship. How will he tip his hat to Ruskin, whose
    espousal of the meditative and redemptive qualities of crafting and
    living in beautiful surroundings inspired the movement in England? And
    how is it possible to integrate into a 175-room hotel the intimate
    details of Mr. Evans’s inspiration, the 1907 Blacker and 1908 Gamble
    Houses designed by his idols, the Pasadena architects Charles and Henry
    Greene?

    I drive beneath the port-cochere composed of massive
    timbers stacked horizontally on one another like a bird’s wing
    feathers, which impart an ironic sense of lightness, as though the
    entire lodge could be carried skyward on these outstretched wings.

    photo of the Torrey Pines Lodge courtesy of Flickr user John Koss

  • Arts & Crafts gems from the New York Times’ archives

    The New York Times recently decided to open up much of their historic archives for free, finally realizing that the ad revenue generated by increased access is far higher than what they could make in fees or subscriptions. As a result, there are plenty of interesting articles suddenly available to all of us that we’d have had to pay for in the past. I spent the morning searching for various Arts & Crafts related keywords, and here’s what I turned up:

  • Gladding, McBean

    The firm of Gladding, McBean has produced materials for hundreds – and probably thousands – of beautiful historic homes here in California. The Greene brothers used their stuccoed planters at the Gamble House, and Bernard Maybeck used their roof tiles, chimney tops, planters and more in both his residential, civic and commercial projects. While it is now a division of Pacific Coast Building Products and no longer independently-owned, they are still making the clay and terra cotta items they’ve become known for since 1874. Today they are the only remaining maker of ornamental hand-made terra cotta in this country.

    The company is still going strong today, producing those items and all sorts of architectural terra cotta work, fire flashed clay floor tiles, and a whole range of garden pottery. Their website has a number of photo galleries; their garden pottery, especially the big oil jars, are beautiful, as are the tiles and decorative chimney tops, the perfect finishing touch to any A & C home.