By Kaye Ross
 JOE HU/TOWN CRIER Debbie and Dennis Segerses’ dining room in their Los Altos home is an example of Craftsman style. The style is epitomized by comfortable, simple design and earthy colors. |
The rich wooden beams, built-in bookcases, stained glass and other decorative components of a Craftsman home may seem somewhat heavy to modern eyes. But when viewed against what it replaced, the Arts & Crafts style that first became popular in the 1880s in England was like a breath of fresh air.
Arts & Crafts was a reaction to the ornate Victorian period that was then reaching a level of high rococo. Large windows were all but covered with velvet drapes, busy floral patterns decorated wallpaper and carpets. Furniture was massive and ornately carved - often further ornamented with fringed cloths. On top of all this was an array of bric-a-brac recently made affordable to an emerging British middle class through mass production. Victorians were dedicated collectors.
The Arts & Crafts Movement was also a rejection of the dehumanization of the Industrial Age according to various internet sites on the style. Proponents endorsed a return to handcrafting everything from tiles to furniture using nature as a model. Guilds of artisans were established to break down barriers among designers and craftsmen and turn their focus to creation of an entire environment, not just one part of it.
In England the movement extended into politics as one of its earliest practitioners, decorative arts designer William Morris, took its ideas about art, work and society into liberal and socialist circles.
The British iteration of Arts & Crafts had a gothic tone, but in America, “Craftsman-style” came to mean a return to the simplicity of the country’s rural roots. Homes featured light-filled interiors from many windows and ornamentation limited to the gloss of natural wood beams and room dividers, with touches of stained glass and handmade tiles featuring scenes drawn from nature. Furniture eschewed carving in favor of architectural shapes aimed at comfort rather than dazzle. Colors were muted versions of earth colors such as barn red, forest green and browns with touches of aquamarine.
The United States’ first Arts & Crafts society, the Chalk and Chisel Club, was founded in 1895 in Minneapolis. Soon thereafter, House Beautiful magazine began publication, showcasing Arts & Crafts artists. For the first time, women became leaders in design and crafting.
The straightforward, geometric designs of Gustav Stickley’s furniture and homes helped define the period, beginning with the establishment of his company in Syracuse, N. Y., in 1898. His Craftsman magazine did much to popularize the movement from 1901 to 1916.
Historians generally mark 1916 as the end of the formal Arts & Crafts Movement, but its influence extended well into the 1920s as the demand for homes increased with the development of American suburbs and the West.
The early 1900s was a boom period in Southern California, and the area became a center of the Arts & Crafts style. Pasadena’s Throop Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1891, boasted an important Department of Arts & Crafts which became very influential in the development of the Los Angeles Basin and adjoining areas. (It later became the California Institute of Technology.)
One director of the department, Ernest Batchelder, gained renown as theorist of the design style, publishing two books. He left Throop in 1909 to try out some of his own ideas. Building a kiln behind his Pasadena bungalow, Batchelder began firing tiles with hand-carved Mayan designs and bird, foliage and abstract geometric motifs. The tiles’ inventive designs, earthy coloring and matte finish became popular among the many architects developing Los Angeles, and Batchelder’s business boomed. At its peak, his operation covered 6 acres.
Perhaps the epitome of the Arts & Crafts home is the Gamble House in Pasadena. Designed by architects Charles and Henry Greene, the house was built for David Berry Gamble, a second-generation member of the Procter and Gamble Co. based in Cincinnati, who was seeking a retirement home. The house, with interior teak and mahogany woodwork and filled with custom-designed furniture, was completed in 1908.
The brothers also built two major homes in Northern California - the 1918 D.L. James house on cliffs above the ocean in the Carmel highlands and the elaborate Green Gables for Mortimer Fleishhacker in Woodside. Green Gables was started in 1913, but the Greenes worked on the formal gardens and the Roman pool for the next 22 years.
Among other prominent Bay Area architects who worked in the Arts & Crafts style were Julia Morgan, John Hudson Thomas, Willis Polk, Ernest Coxhead and John Galen Howard.
For more information, go to www.craftsmanperspective.com.
