• Arroyo’s Edge: Greene & Greene interiors 2012

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    a tour of six Greene and Greene-designed properties in Pasadena’s historic Park Place neighborhood
     
    This coming Earth Day, architecture buffs are in for a Greene and Greene (and green) treat. On Sunday, April 22, 2012, The Gamble House will present Arroyo’s Edge: Greene and Greene Interiors 2012, a rare opportunity to visit six privately-owned properties designed by Charles and Henry Greene between 1902 and 1915. Featuring acclaimed architectural features and design by the masters of the American Arts & Crafts movement, the five private homes and one private garden will be open for touring along Arroyo Terrace and North Grand Avenue in Pasadena, all within easy walking distance of The Gamble House.
     
    It has been twenty years since a “Greene and Greene Interiors” tour featured the interiors of houses in the historic Park Place neighborhood.  On April 22 from 12 noon to 5 p.m. (last entry 4 p.m.), this remarkably intact enclave of the Greenes’ work – once known as “Little Switzerland” for its woodsy, chalet-style structures – will once again be the focus of a tour to benefit The Gamble House, a National Historic Landmark designed by Greene and Greene in 1908 and operated by the University of Southern California School of Architecture as a public site since 1966.
     
    Thanks to the generosity of six property owners, the Arroyo’s Edge tour will feature: the Duncan-Irwin house(1906-08), the Mary Ranney house (1907), the F. W. Hawks house (1906), the Van Rossem-Neill house (1903-06), the Louise T. Halstead house (1905-15) and the James Culbertson garden (1902-14), and will give participants a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Greene and Greene interiors that are rarely, if ever, opened to the public.
     
    tour details:
    date: Sunday April 22, 2012
    hours: noon – 5 pm (last entry at 4 pm)
    general admission: $85 per person; $50 for children under 12
    member admission: $75 per person (to join Friends of The Gamble House visit gamblehouse.org or call 626.783.3334 x16)
    Off-street parking is available to ticket holders. We regret that these private homes and gardens are not wheelchair accessible. Visitors should plan to wear sturdy walking shoes.
     
    proceeds benefit The Gamble House, a National Historic Landmark in Pasadena, CA
     
    about The Gamble House: Built in 1908, the Gamble House is the most complete and best-preserved example of the work of renowned Pasadena architects Charles and Henry Greene. The Gamble House is an internationally recognized National Historic Landmark in the style of the American Arts and Crafts movement. Owned by the City of Pasadena, the Gamble House is operated by the University of Southern California School of Architecture.
     
    The Gamble House is open for public, docent-led, one-hour tours Thursday – Sunday, noon – 3 pm, closed on national holidays. For more information, visit gamblehouse.org.

    photograph: Exterior detail from the Duncan-Irwin house (which is part of this tour). Photograph by Alexander Vertikoff.

  • 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?

  • 4th Annual Arts & Crafts Chicago show & sale

    Just got this press release in my inbox. If any of you go, please send me photographs! And remember, the Frank Lloyd Wright home & studio is in River Forest, too, so you could easily make a nice weekend out of this:

    The 4th Annual Arts and Crafts Chicago Show and Sale is coming back to
    Concordia University in River Forest on Saturday, May 30th and Sunday,
    May 31st 2009. Focusing on mission furniture and accessories of the
    American Arts and Crafts Movement (approximately 1890-1920), this show
    will truly be one you won’t want to miss. You’ll find 20th Century
    Decorative Arts including furniture, metalwork, pottery, textiles, art
    and lighting; everything from Stickley, Limbert, Roycroft, Rookwood and
    much more. Over 50 of the nations leading dealers will be on hand to
    answer questions and advise on how to decorate your home. This
    specialized event has proven to be one of the premiere antique and
    contemporary shows in the Midwest.

    Dealers attending this year’s show are coming from all across the
    country. We have dealers from Massachusetts, New York, California,
    Texas as well as the best dealers from the Midwest. JMW and Crones
    Collectibles from Massachusetts will be featuring high-end pottery from
    the Northeast such as Grueby, Saturday Evening Girls and Marblehead, as
    well as furniture and accessories. Jack Papadinis Antiques,
    Connecticut, will be showcasing some of the premiere lighting in the
    country and David Surgan from New York will offer the best Heintz
    Collection for sale in the country. Paramour Fine Arts, which
    specializes in arts and crafts era woodblocks and art, will be on hand
    showcasing some fabulous artwork from the era. Local dealers such as
    John Toomey Gallery will be exhibiting as well, highlighting Midwest
    artists such as Frank Lloyd Wright, TECO and Jarvie.

    Not only is this an antique show, but the weekend will showcase the
    highest quality contemporary craftsfirms as well. Ephraim Faience
    Pottery, Door Pottery, Arts and Crafts Hardware and Dard Hunter Studios
    will be in attendance, just to name a few.

    With the success of the show over the last three years and with the
    rich tradition of bungalows, as well as the Prairie School heritage of
    Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago has proven to be a perfect fit for this
    specialized show.

    Homeowners interested in educating themselves as to the appropriate
    furnishings for their turn of the century bungalows and craftsman style
    homes shouldn’t miss the 4th Annual Arts and Crafts Chicago Show and
    Sale, Saturday May 30th, 2009, from 10 am – 5 pm and Sunday May 31st
    from 11 am – 4 pm at Concordia University at Geiseman Gym in River
    Forest, Illinois. Admission price is only $7 each. Free parking on site
    in a 5-level garage. No parking on Monroe.

  • wanted: dining room table

    wanted: Attractive & sturdy Craftsman-style rectangular dining room table with 2 leaves – capable of seating 8 or 10 with the leaves in, 4-6 without – for under $500. Something that will stay sturdy and last at least two generations. Any suggestions?

  • real estate listings: MLS to RSS

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    So, obviously I’ve become a bit addicted to Yahoo Pipes. This free tool lets you aggregate, organize, and filter data from an unlimited number of RSS feeds and databases and present it in almost any kind of electronic form you can imagine.

    I’ve found a really good use for it, one which is – amazingly – missing from the vast majority of real estate listing sites. Redfin, Zillow, Realtor.com and all the others: you are really letting the entire industry down by not having raw MLS data available as an RSS feed! I just could not believe that in an age when so many of us get our data on mobile devices and from feed readers that these firms wouldn’t have easily-configurable custom RSS feeds of their listings, but sure enough they don’t. Ziprealty is one of the very few to have such a useful feature, and more power to them for it.

    Using Ziprealty’s listings, house-for-sale posts on Craigslists in a dozen markets and a few other small sites here and there, I’ve created a Yahoo Pipe that includes only listings self-described as "Craftsman," "Mission," "Prairie," or "bungalow." Now, if I can only figure out how to include photos of each property…

    http://pipes.yahoo.com/hewnandhammered/homesforsale

    If you are an agent, a broker or an MLS firm, please publish your data as a configurable / custom RSS feed. This way, searches that could take hours can be finished in just a minute or two, and users don’t need to revisit the sites every single day – using a service like feedburner or one of the many rss-to-email services, we can be notified only when our search criteria pop up in a market we are interested in, in our price range.

    And if you know of any listings services that do issue their data as an RSS feed, please share that info in the comments section below – I’d love to add them to the pipe. Also, let me know if you’d like me to include other cities’ Craigslist posts, I can do that pretty easily.

    If this tool is useful to you and if you think other folks might find it interesting, please digg it:


  • this month’s ebay finds

    Plenty of interesting furniture, metalwork, glass & more on Ebay this month, with more than the usual number of small gift items available:

  • finding arts & crafts in unexpected places

    One thing we talk about regularly is finding Arts & Crafts vernacular in what can only be called unexpected places. Sometimes the use might be inappropriate but still well-executed; sometimes neither. Reader Jean Emery wrote to tell us about her own experience at finding Spanish Colonial architecture in the last place you’d expect – upstate New York:

    This is a visual response to the post about transplanting or recreating the arts and crafts vernacular. I hope this picture comes through. I’m a fourth generation San Diegan transplanted to upstate New York and I’ve always taken a great interest in a group of about twenty or so Spanish colonial homes built in Albany, probably in the 1920s or so. They’re so California!  But, as you can see, they haven’t fared very well here. I would love to buy one, but they generally are in pretty poor shape, have been terribly re-muddled. The stucco doesn’t take well to repeated freezing and thawing, and the original windows weren’t at all energy efficient so have been replaced with ugly double-panes.

    Also, the new Stickley arts and crafts reproductions are big here in town because we’re near the manufacturer in Syracuse, but they just don’t have the soul and the patina of the originals. And American Bungalow has recently had some vulgar, expensive houses with customized woodwork run amuck!

    I’m not really sure what the moral of all this is. I do love these bits of Mediterrean architecture plunked down in the snow belt!

    Jean notes that one such home – 17 Rosemont Street in Albany (pics) – is for sale at an asking price of $178,900.

    Thanks for sharing these, Jean. We do love to see this kind of thing, so if other readers have pictures to share, please do send them in!

  • Sacramento CA: Mission sofa, $175

    More a sofa than a settle, the owners of this sturdy piece want only $175 for it. Personally, I’d put a slipcover on it or reupholster, but you really can’t beat $175 if it’s in as good shape as it looks. If you’re in or near Sacramento, this looks like a great deal. I’m trying vainly to pare my own cluttered house down, or else I’d take it myself!

  • bits & pieces on ebay, September 25 2007

    I’m trying to keep to my policy of only including items here that are listed honestly – i.e., not labeled "Stickley-era," "possibly Roycroft," etc.

    These are mostly unsigned items, either underpriced or honestly priced in my opinion (although I did include a few interesting signed items, too). While there were plenty of other good deals this week, many were expiring today or tomorrow, so I didn’t include those.

    furniture

    • high-backed Stickley rocker
    • slat-back/arm bench with leather seat
    • small bookcase / magazine rack
    • sofa table with interesting tenon detail
    • Limbert daybed with spade / leaf cutout
    • Limbert child’s rocker with original seat
    • light wood wall shelves

    ceramics

    • matte green hanging flowerpot
    • Seiz Pottery doorbell
    • matte blue Zanesville bowl
    • pink & green Fulper vase
    • nautilus shell motif tile in oak frame
    • unsigned green glossy low bowl
    • lot of 40 Mexican talavera tiles, 4×4, floral design

    metal

  • DIY Networks’ Wood Works: a mission-style ottoman

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    From the episode abstract:

    Based on the design motifs of the Arts and Crafts style of the 1920s, the Mission-style ottoman in this Wood Works
    project features strong lines, mortise-and-tenon joinery and a natural
    wood finish. Precisely milled wood and subtle details such as the
    beveled through-tenons suggest strength and fine craftsmanship.