Arts & Crafts Homes Fall 2016

ON MY WAY TO A PHOTO-SHOOT in New Jersey, I found myself on Route 17, the spine that led to my childhood hometown, where I grew up in a 1951 “colonial ranch.” I took the exit down memory lane. Standing in front of where the house should be, I was momentarily confused, because a twostorey neo-Victorian had swallowed it. Overall, it wasn’t terrible; still, the horizontal ranch was ghosted beneath the new façade. “Well, that’s poetic justice,” I thought, as I had sung the praises of Victorian houses during my tenure at Old House Journal during the 1980s and ’90s. My neighborhood in Gloucester has several neo-Victorians, ranging from a mirror-image duplex that literally came off a truck to a multimillion-dollar neo-Queen Anne tower house on prime Atlantic Ocean real…

Natural and Earthy Hand-formed from NativeStone, a combination of natural jute fiber and cement, the eco-friendly Avalon tub is available in ash, slate, and pearl finishes. The 62" tub (shown in ash) retails for $7,495. From Native Trails, (800) 786-0862, nativetrails.net Neo Tiffany The Aura pendant is meticulously hand-built of ivory art glass tiles soldered into a bronze framework, then finished with an antique bronze patina. The open-center pendant measures either 30" or 36" wide. Inquire for pricing. From Lamps by Hilliard, (707) 826-1545, hilliardlamps.com Textiles with Pedigree Reminiscent of English Arts & Crafts textiles by way of the Italian Renaissance, Venusta is an upholstery-weight fabric from the Hearst Castle Collection. It’s shown with Tulis, a solution-dyed outdoor upholstery fabric from the Doris Duke Collection. Both sold to the trade.…

A new exhibition based on the Batchelder tile collection of architectural historian Robert Winter opens at the Pasadena Museum of History this fall. Winter, a professor emeritus at Occidental College and the author of Batchelder: Tilemaker and other books on the Arts & Crafts movement, has lived for many years in the 1910 Pasadena home where Ernest Batchelder began his first tile factory. Winter recently donated more than 200 Batchelder tiles and accompanying archival materials to the museum. Most of the tiles were made between 1910 and the early 1930s. The collection includes tiles in the Arts & Crafts style (from landscape reliefs to figural corbels) as well as colorfully glazed tiles of later years in the Mayan, Spanish Revival, and Art Deco styles. There are also half a dozen…

OUR FOURSQUARE is in the Central Gardens National Historic District in Memphis, Tennessee. My husband, Greg Gentry, and I bought it almost two years ago, and projects are ongoing: We removed the recent prefab Greek-style front porch columns, and replaced them with 6x6 posts, then custom-built trim to match our interior newel post. We’re planning a detached garage with studio space above, much like historic outbuildings in the area. We haven’t changed much inside, no tearing out walls or woodwork. I’ve decorated in a personal, updated take on Arts & Crafts style. The interior has the nurturing feeling of early 20th-century rooms. The caramel wall color, ‘Brush Box’ [8325D] from Sherwin–Williams, was already on the walls; I like its Arts & Crafts associations and how it complements the painted ivory…

THIS UTTERLY SCENIC part of central New York State is named for eleven freshwater lakes between Lake Ontario and the Pennsylvania border. For Arts & Crafts aficionados, the Stickley Museum in Fayetteville is a must-see. (This new, furniture-centric museum is not to be confused with the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms, located at Gustav Stickley’s log home and family estate in Morris Plains, New Jersey: stickleymuseum.org.) The L. & J.G. Stickley operation just 20 minutes from Syracuse has the longest tenure of all the various Stickley enterprises. Collected there are thousands of items that stretch from Gustav Stickley’s earliest work to furniture just off the shop floor. Today’s Stickley company had long wanted to create a museum showcasing the history of American Arts & Crafts furniture. The idea grew when…

PART OF A WHOLE-HOUSE RENOVATION and addition to a 1905 house, this kitchen is in Deephaven, Minnesota, on Lake Minnetonka. The kitchen had been the worst thing in an otherwise handsome house. It was compact, had suffered a 1980s renovation, and was situated “inland” at the back of the house, away from the lake. Designed for servants, the old kitchen was isolated from main rooms. When she remodeled, Barbara, who is a landscape architect, wanted a kitchen to accommodate large parties, multiple cooks, and ample seating, yet be intimate for her own day-to-day use. The kitchen design is beautifully expressed within period-style cabinetry, glass, and finishes. Many of the decorative details for the kitchen were designed by David Heide Design Studio. Barbara had hired David Heide to help with furnishing…