Arts & Crafts Homes Fall 2015

WHEN YOU WERE A LITTLE KID, in the inward years before arithmetic class, did you feel in your heart that there were good numbers and bad ones? For me the even numbers were good, but 3 and 7 gave me the creeps. I think I have that kind of unexamined prejudice about architectural styles. Ironically, I favor the “odd” ones—that long asymmetrical evolution running from Gothic to chalet to Queen Anne and Shingle Style to Art Deco. The nice, even ones—Georgian, neoclassical—leave me slightly unnerved. Do I think they demand obedience? (I also harbor the conviction that just living in a Modern house— say, a Richard Neutra as photographed by Julius Shulman—would cause the inhabitants to be thin and attractive.) Arts & Crafts is, in my private mind, the antithesis…

Leaf and Flower Adapted for a landmark 1891 mansion, the Hill House jacquard fabric in worsted wool and mohair is based on an English Arts & Crafts pattern. Ideal for drapery, the reversible textile is 43" wide. It’s $175 per yard. From Thistle Hill Weavers, (518) 284-2729, thistlehillweavers.com Hands of Love The 6" x 8" Claddagh tile is inspired by the imagery of the Irish ring of love and friendship. It’s available in teal, lime, or leaf for $54. With a quarter-sawn oak frame, it’s $152. From Pewabic, (313) 626-2000, pewabic.org One, Two, Three The Steps necklace takes inspiration from Charles Rennie Mackintosh, transforming the design into a fashion-forward drop pendant. In white bronze with an 18" sterling-silver chain, the necklace is $120. From Roycroft Renaissance Artisan Evelyn Pelati, (877)…

Frank Lloyd Wright was just as particular about the artistic furnishings in his built environments as he was about architectural design. Taliesin, his 1911 National Landmark home in Spring Green, Wisconsin, is no exception: It is here that his collection of Japanese and Chinese painted screens is most abundantly and carefully displayed. Throughout Taliesin, Wright freely adapted panels and paintings to fit his vision for each room. The works that remained as folding screens were secured to the walls and visually integrated by the use of mouldings that repeated the same profile and material used elsewhere in the room. In recent years, though, it became apparent that these treasured works were becoming compromised in appearance, condition, and potential longevity. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has begun a phased restoration of…

INVENTING THE NEW AMERICAN HOUSE Howard Van Doren Shaw, Architect By Stuart Cohen. Monacelli Press, 2015. Hardcover, 256 pp., $65 Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869–1926) was one of the foremost designers of houses in the early 20th century. (It’s been suggested he would be more famous had Wright not been both his contemporary and neighbor.) Shaw traveled to Europe in the 1890s, where he saw the work of Arts & Crafts designers Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Edwin Lutyens, among others. (Shaw’s own 1897 summer house, Ragdale in Lake Forest, Illinois, has been compared to the work of British architect C.F.A. Voysey.) Shaw also became aware of William Robinson, an early proponent of the “wild” or vernacular English cottage garden. Shaw came home to work chiefly in the upscale suburb of…

THROUGH SEPT. 21 Exotic Arts “Passion for the Exotic: Lockwood de Forest and Frederic Church” explores the Middle Eastern and Indian influences on two leading lights of the Aesthetic Movement. Both landscape painter Church and designer/painter de Forest collected decorative-arts objects from India, the Holy Land, Syria, and Egypt. In 1881, de Forest spent his honeymoon year in India, where he employed master craftsmen in Ahmedabad to create teakwood and brass panels for export to the U.S. They were installed in the Andrew Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, in what is now the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. The Teak Room is the most complete existing de Forest architectural interior in America in its original site. (212) 849-8400, cooperhewitt.org OCT. 24 O Canada Art scholar Charles Hill speaks…

The old streetcar suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth are home to a wealth of Arts & Crafts-period bungalows. DALLAS AND FORT WORTH may be separated by just 35 miles of sprawl, but in some respects they’re a world apart. High-end boutiques and a glittering skyline define the big-city glamour (with a Southern twist) of Dallas, as any fan of the 1980s prime-time soap knows. Fort Worth, meanwhile, retains hints of its frontier past, evidenced by the turn-of-the-century buildings at the Stockyards and Sundance Square. What the two cities have in common are older suburbs filled with bungalows, many with Craftsman and Prairie influence. Both cities have been vigilant, for the most part, about preserving their historic neighborhoods. The area broadly known as Old East Dallas is home to a…