• Ebay roundup, October 2007, part 1

    This month, there are more knicknacks than you can shake even the fanciest stick at over on the mother of all online auction sites. The following aren’t necessarily excellent deals, but everything here is at least interesting.

    As usual, I’m avoiding everything labeled misleadingly (i.e., "Roycroft era," "Stickley style," "maybe Stickley?," etc. … I’ll have plenty more up next week and the week after.

  • 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

  • Charles Rennie Mackintosh(esque) kitchen remodel in W Virginia

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    Monongaehala PA cabinetmaker Pat Herforth recently channeled the spirit of Charles Rennie Mackintosh to build a new kitchen for client Carrie Russell’s 1920 Tudor/Craftsman home in Morgantown, West Virginia.

    Once in a great while, if you’re very lucky, you’re sorry to see a work
    day end so soon. Pat Herforth felt that way when he created a kitchen
    for Carrie Russell.

    "I was at work eight hours, and it seemed like 15 minutes," said the Monongahela woodworker.

    "I didn’t sleep at night — for excitement."

    The thrill was in building cabinetry, trim, light fixtures and
    furniture in the style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a Scottish
    architect/designer whose take on Art Nouveau jelled with the European
    Arts & Crafts movement near the turn of the 20th century.

    photograph by Darrell Sapp for the Post-Gazette