Archive of Past Gamble House Events

The Gardens of Hearst Castle

Victoria Kastner
Saturday, May 16, 2009

Lisa Reitzel

Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California

Victoria Kastner will provide the first in-depth look at San Simeon’s landscape, examining the influence of the Arts & Crafts movement on its design. She will detail the garden’s history as well as discuss its wider meaning in early 20th century California. Specifically, she will:

• Analyze Julia Morgan’s unrecognized work as William Randolph Hearst’s landscape architect
  
• Discuss the contributions of Bernard Maybeck and other Arts & Crafts architects to San Simeon’s garden design
• Link San Simeon to other landscape-related events in California, including the University of California’s campus design, the restoration of the missions, the preservation of the redwoods, and the two 1915 California World’s Fairs

Victoria Kastner is the historian at Hearst Castle and author of “Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House” (2000) and the upcoming “Hearst’s San Simeon: The Gardens and the Land.” She has lectured nationwide on San Simeon.

Garden Tour: The Gardens of a San Rafael Estate

Led by Heather Lenkin, AIA, ASLA
Saturday, May 16, 2009, following the lecture

Jennifer Cheung and Steve NilssonSan Rafael Estate Garden, Pasadena, California. View a Flickr photo slideshow of the gardens »

Indulge in the romance of a bygone era amid the restored grounds of a 1919 Reginald Johnson Mediterranean Revival estate along Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco in the San Rafael Hills. Landscape architect Heather Lenkin will share her insights into the designs, details and plant materials that make up the property’s cultivated spaces including a walled orchard, rose garden, spring garden, desert-inspired “inferno garden” and a delightful secret garden. Refreshments will be served.

Heather Lenkin, AIA, ASLA will discuss her landscape design, renovation and restoration of this 1919 Reginald Johnson designed mansion whose gardens were originally created by renowned landscape architect Paul Thiene. Thiene was responsible for many famous gardens in southern California including the Doheny Greystone garden, as well as the 1915 Panama-California World Exposition in San Diego.

President of Lenkin Design in Pasadena, Heather Lenkin is a two-time winner of the Golden Trowel Award from Garden Design magazine honoring excellence in creating “America's Best Gardens.” Her own gardens were selected by Fine Gardening magazine as “One of the Ten Great Gardens in the United States,” and by Japanese public television as “One of the Great Gardens of the World.”

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Prefab Housing: From Craftsman to Contemporary

Leo Marmol
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Joe Fletcher

Hidden Valley in Moab, Utah, completed 2007

Leo Marmol will provide an overview on the history of prefab architecture and will discuss Marmol Radziner Prefab’s ongoing quest to explore the feasibility of creating modern, well-constructed homes within the constraints of a factory. Highlights will include:

• A look at the history of prefab architecture
  
• An overview of past Marmol Radziner Prefab projects from design to installation
  
• An exploration of the efficiencies gained by building homes within a factory

Leo Marmol, FAIA, is the managing principal of the design/build firm Marmol Radziner + Associates. In 2005, the company launched Marmol Radziner Prefab to create green, modular homes that are built in its factory and delivered complete.

See it now: Prefab in progress

Video from the Los Angeles Times documents how prefabricated pieces came together to form the family residence of  Leo Marmol, managing partner of Marmol Radziner + Associates, on a lot in Venice in June. Marmol and business partner Ron Radziner are on hand to describe the process.

Read the L.A. Times article, Marmol Radziner assembles a Venice prefab, and video captures the coming-together.

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Charles Phoenix’s Southern Californialand!

Charles Phoenix
Thursday, March 19, 2009

Charles Phoenix Collection

Luer Quality Meat rocket, 1956 

A slide show by “histo-tainer” Charles Phoenix celebrates how locals lived, shopped, worked, played and partied in the 1950s and ’60s. Charles’ spectacular collection of Kodachrome slides together with his informed commentary, quick wit and keen eye for detail are sure to give you a whole new appreciation for the place he calls Southern Californialand.

See Pasadena, Downtown L.A., Hollywood, Marineland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Disneyland, Space Age suburbia and more.

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The Women of Tiffany Studios

Margaret K. Hofer
Saturday, January 31, 2009

Collection of the New-York Historical Society

Tiffany Studios, Wisteria lamp; designed by Clara Driscoll, ca. 1901

Margaret K. Hofer will discuss new groundbreaking research on the role of women in the design and manufacture of Tiffany Studios’ famous leaded-glass lamps. The recently discovered correspondence of Clara Driscoll has revealed that it was Driscoll who designed many of the firm’s iconic lamps, including the Wisteria, Dragonfly and Peony. Ms. Hofer will discuss how:

• Louis C. Tiffany believed that women had an innate sense of color and design and relied on the women’s glass-cutting department to select glass for many lamps and windows – and paid them on the same scale as the men.
  
• Rivalry between the men's and women's departments created tension at Tiffany Studios, resulting in a strike by unionized male glass cutters in 1903.

Margaret K. Hofer, curator of decorative arts at the New-York Historical Society, co-curated its 2007 exhibition “A New Light on Tiffany: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls” with Martin Eidelberg and Nina Gray.

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From Britain to Russia: An International View of the Arts & Crafts Movement

Rosalind P. Blakesley
Friday, November 7, 2008

Rosalind P. Blakesley

Teremok, by Sergei Malyutin; Talashkino estate, near Smolensk, Russia, 1901

The Arts & Crafts Movement was one of enormous intellectual ambition, encompassing everything from menus in Moscow to chic domestic architecture in the United States. The lecture will:

• Examine some of the great British figures, including William Morris and Charles Robert Ashbee
• Follow the movement’s little-known but fascinating progress in Russia
• Provide a context for America’s unique contribution, not least The Gamble House

Dr. Rosalind P. Blakesley, senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Cambridge, was a consultant for “International Arts and Crafts” (2005) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and is the author of several books including “The Arts and Crafts Movement” (2006).

Note: This free lecture is the keynote address for a full-day conference November 8 at the Huntington, held in conjunction with the Gamble House Centennial exhibition “A ‘New and Native’ Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene,” at the Huntington’s Boone Gallery October 18 through January 26, 2009.

A “New and Native” Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene

At The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

New Online Exhibit

Click to visit
A “New and Native” Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene

The Gamble House, USC, in partnership with The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, created and presented the most comprehensive exhibition ever undertaken on the work of Arts and Crafts legends Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene — the first such exhibition to travel outside of California.

"A 'New and Native' Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene" opened at the Huntington on Oct. 18, 2008 and was on exhibit through Jan. 26, 2009. This landmark exhibition now travels to the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. (March 13- June 7, 2009), and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (July 14-October 18, 2009).

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Book Signing Day at The Gamble House Bookstore

with essayists Ted Bosley, Anne Mallek, and Ann Scheid

This new book of 11 scholarly essays and beautiful photographs, is the companion piece to the exhibition, A "New and Native" Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene and Greene, currently on display at the Boone Gallery of The Huntington Library, Art Museums and Botanical Gardens. Each essay explores a different aspect of the work and life of the Greene Brothers and three of eleven writers — Ted Bosley and Anne Mallek, co-curators of the exhibition, and Ann Scheid — will be at the Bookstore to sign books and answer questions.

The book is available in hard and soft back editions.

September 28, 2008 - January 4, 2009

Seeing Greene & Greene: Architecture in Photographs

Pasadena Museum of California Art

Historic photo of The Gamble House.

The exhibition interprets the architecture and landscape work of Greene & Greene through the lenses of 20th century photographers. Images, many being seen for the first time in public, span the century from soft-focus pictorialism, to architectural spatial relationships, to fine art photography. Photographers include Leroy Hulbert, Maynard Parker, Minor White, William Current and others.

» More info about Seeing Greene & Greene: Architecture in Photographs

» See the press release from the Pasadena Museum of California Art, August 5, 2008 (with photos)

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August 16, 2008 - January 4, 2009

Living Beautifully: Greene & Greene in Pasadena

Pasadena Museum of History

This exhibition of personal objects, documents, and family photographs explores the lives of Charles and Henry Greene, and their collaborators. Drafting instruments, wood carving tools, shop drawings, and other artifacts of the partnership show how the Greenes worked with their craftsmen, including John and Peter Hall.

» More info about Living Beautifully: Greene and Greene in Pasadena.

ALSO SHOWING: "The Art and Craft of Textile Design 1860-1920," a complementary exhibit in the same building is focused on the design elements which influenced textile productions. Included are household textiles and costume influenced by the new aesthetic.

» More info about The Art and Craft of Textile Design.

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Aesthetes, Bohemians & Craftsmen: Artistic Dress, 1880s-1920s

Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising

A second exhibition, curated by FIDM at their downtown Museum and Galleries, will explore the artistic dress movement over a forty-year time span of changing morals and attitudes relating to dress and positions in society. Examples of Greene and Greene decorative arts and others from the period will set the scene in the galleries. The exhibition will open on May 19, 2008 and continue through July 3, 2008.

A one-day conference hosted by FIDM in conjunction with the two exhibitions is scheduled for May 31.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Make Music Pasadena

Experience the city filled with music. Over 100 free concerts, six main stages, and other small and unusual locations.

The Gamble House will feature two acoustic music groups on the rear terrace:

• From 12:30 - 1:15 — Kaedmon

  "Kaedmon plays sweet and grooving Celtic music with decided Beatle-esque, pop music influences. They craft precise harmonies and instrumental arrangements." The band is made up of songwriters and multi-instrumentalists writing songs with a diverse range of instrumentation ranging from guitar and mandolin to box drum and pennywhistle . . . think Americana with a whistle.

• From 1:45 - 2:30 —  Banna Beag Mall

  Banna Beag Mall is an eclectic Celtic-influenced acoustic band with local roots playing everything from Irish and Scottish music to Italian, Latin American, country and punk rock music. They play fast or slow as the mood strikes them, but always with feeling. Their musical styles cover a thousand years, from medieval harmonics to socially relevant hip-hop. They sing in six languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Cajun French and 2 dialects of Gaelic. There's something for everyone.

Visit the House, stroll the garden, shop in the bookstore and linger on the terrace to listen to vocal harmonies.

April 13 – June 8, 2008

Fashionable Dress in an Artistic Landmark

For 6 glorious weeks, The Gamble House can be viewed both as an architectural masterpiece and as a private home. 12 mannequins dressed in 1908 fashions and accessories, representing David and Mary Gamble, their children, aunt Julia, household staff, Charles Greene and visitors will be on view inside the House.

This very unusual exhibition featuring the House as a family home, consists of mannequins located in several rooms and placed in vignettes. Mr. David Gamble is in the living room wearing a silk dressing gown along with Charles Greene in a pinstripe shirt with drawings under his arm. Mrs. Mary Gamble can be seen in the dining room wearing an exquisite afternoon frock and her sister, Julia Huggins, is seated in her bedroom in a wicker rocking chair in a slightly out-of-date dress. 2 of the sons are dressed for sport activity, there is a gentleman in the downstairs guest bedroom bathroom less than fully dressed, and a uniformed household member, to mention a few. The House feels as if the family is in residence.

The exhibition is curated by FIDM/Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum & Galleries from their collection of over 12,000 costumes. This exciting partnership is a 3-phase celebration of The Gamble House Centennial 1908-2008. Phase 2 is "Aesthetes, Bohemians & Craftsmen: Artistic Dress, 1880s-1920s. The 3rd phase of the celebration is a one-day Artistic Dress conference at FIDM on May 31. See details below.

To view The Gamble House and the family in their 1908 attire, join one of our regular docent-led tours, Thursday-Sunday from noon – 3 p.m. (last admission). For tour hours and fees, to arrange a private group tour or one of our special Behind The Velvet Ropes tours please visit the Tour page on this website.

Kevin Jones, exhibition curator, commented that the contrast between how the Gambles dressed and what the 30,000 or so annual visitors to the house often wear today serves as a reminder of the age of the House. In 1908 when the house was built by Charles and Henry Greene for David and Mary Gamble it was ahead of the times, but, judging from family photographs, he said, “their clothes were typical, conventional, not haute-couture, and quite comfortable. The Gambles would have found people wearing shorts and T-shirts quite shocking.”

April 24, 2008

Gerard Colcord: Hollywood’s Society Architect

Bret Parsons

Horton Residence, 1932, Bel-Air, California.

From 1924 through 1984, Gerard Colcord created a significant architectural legacy amid the Southern California residential landscape. He worked in a variety of styles including classic Tudor, Country French, Hollywood Regency, Spanish Hacienda and Monterey Colonial and, perhaps his best-known genre, the sprawling gentleman farmhouse.

Parsons will explore the:

• Tremendous architectural variety of Colcord’s work;
• Motion pictures in which his homes played a starring role;
• Anatomy of the beloved “Colcord farmhouse”;
• Keys to the architect’s success.

The author of Gerard Colcord: Hollywood’s Society Architect, Bret Parsons spent 18 years in the architecture and design industry; many in the executive suite at Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. During that time he co-published three design trade books and wrote monthly architecture and design columns.

April 26, 2008

Tour it: Design for Elegant Living

Tour (self-drive) three classic Colcord residences in the Pasadena/San Fernando Valley area. These sprawling country estates feature lavish gardens, half-timbered walls and hand-carved detailing – all throwbacks to an era of style and panache. An elegant, country lunch (available for purchase) will be served in the garden.

March 27, 2008

Christine Casey, Irish Scholar, lectures at The Gamble House

Visit Dublin as an architect, tourist, or armchair traveller under the guidance of noted Irish scholar Christine Casey, as she reveals the City of Dublin’s churches, public buildings, streets, canals and private homes, at an illustrated lecture.

Casey’s views of Dublin from Gothic to 21st century will come to life in the setting of the 100-year old Gamble House in Pasadena. She will feature grand 18th century set pieces, Georgian cityscapes, commercial Victorian architecture, post-war buildings, and a new generation of Irish architects.

This special lecture is co-sponsored by the USC/Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, USC’s Institute for British and Irish Studies, and the Huntington/USC Institute on California and the West, with additional support from The Gamble House, Caltech and the Modern Language Society.

Dr Christine Casey is a senior lecturer in the School of Art History & Cultural Policy at University College Dublin and author of the critically acclaimed Dublin: The City Within the Grand and Royal Canals, and the Circular Road, with the Phoenix Park (Yale University Press, 2005). An honorary member of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland she has served on the boards of the Irish Georgian Society and the Irish Architectural Archive and on the architectural committee of the Heritage Council.

March 20, 2008

Plein Air: From Giverny to the Arroyo

Ronald E. Steen

Developed in late-19th century France by painters who defied convention as they carried their canvases outdoors to interpret everyday scenes shining in a natural light, the plein air technique quickly spread to the East Coast of the United States and on to Southern California.

Ronald E. Steen will chart the progress of the movement from:

• Monet and French Impressionism to
• William Merritt Chase and American Impressionism to
• Southern California’s plein air artists to
• The San Gabriel Valley and William Lees Judson.

Ronald E. Steen, an art historian and educator, has been an instructor at California State University-Fullerton and lectured for the J. Paul Getty Museum Education Department. He is Curator of Exhibitions and Director of Programming and Education at The Judson Gallery of Contemporary and Traditional Art at Judson Studios.

March 22, 2008

Tour it: The View From Here

See Southern California through the eyes of present-day landscape and cityscape painters in this dynamic group exhibition at the Judson Gallery, 200 South Avenue 66, Los Angeles.

January 26, 2008

Tour It: La Miniatura

Living room.

Cast in Concrete: Frank Lloyd Wright in Pasadena

Here is an extraordinary opportunity to tour Wright’s unique textile-block commission, La Miniatura (1923), originally envisioned as a Mayan ruin set in a jungle ravine. Rarely open to the public, this spectacular private home is a restoration in progress.

Tour the main house, a mysterious and exotic blend of wood, stone and ironwork, and Lloyd Wright’s studio building, added in 1926.

Lunch, available for purchase, will be served in the gardens in the shadow of La Miniatura.

Frank Lloyd Wright said of this commission, “I would rather have built this little house than St. Peter’s in Rome” Join us for this singular opportunity.

January 25, 2008

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright: The Southwest Legacy

Frank Henry

Frank Lloyd Wright discovered the Southwest in the latter half of his life, its vast landscapes inspiring him to produce some of his greatest works. He developed the “Romanza” style, with its unique textured concrete block houses, for Southern California in the early 1920s. While in Arizona in 1929, the drama and beauty of the desert triggered what he called “a catharsis of his spirit” and his winter home, Taliesin West, was born.

Frank Henry will highlight:

• The climatic factors that affected Wright’s organic approach to architecture;
• The biological discoveries he made that spawned new structural concepts and uses of materials;
• The overall effect of his Southwest experiences on his later work.

After meeting Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Henry decided to become an architect. He is currently the Studio Master at The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and gives tours, lectures and conducts research on the architecture of the Southwest.

October 10-31, 2007

Pasadena Skin/Arts & Ideas Festival

The Gamble House, along with 21 Pasadena arts, science, cultural institutions and community organizations, will participate in the 2007 Pasadena Art & Ideas Festival—Skin, from October 10-31, Skin/Art & Ideas 2007 is a citywide cultural collaborative, issue-based arts festival, which will continue for three weeks throughout the city of Pasadena. The goal of the festival is to spark public debate around a theme, and provide multiple perspectives that are innovative and timely, as well as artistically and intellectually resonant to a diverse audience and a changing world.

Skin/Art & Ideas 2007, explores its specific theme, skin, through performances, exhibitions, films, presentations, and public conversations; commissioned, curated, and conceived by 23 of the city’s arts and science institutions and community organizations.

Among the Festival’s programs are: Art Center College of Design’s “In the Dermisphere,” which will study skin as camouflage, cultural symbol, and organ; the Pasadena Conservatory of Music exploring how human skin interacts with musical instruments; the Spitzer Science Center will demonstrate how different the world is when viewed by infrared light (all skin types look the same) with an outdoor, interactive display at One Colorado.

The Gamble House will explore and reflect on the idea of “Architecture as the Third Skin” with two lectures in the Sidney D. Gamble lecture series, sponsored by Friends of The Gamble House. “Like a Third Skin: The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister” by Chris Nichols on Saturday, October 13th, will review the larger-than-life, show-off, mid-century, Southern California and surrounding region architecture from Las Vegas casinos to Bob’s Big Boy drive-in hamburger stands.

“Skin and Body: The Ambiguity of Plane and Space in Vienna 1900 Interiors” on Tuesday, October 23, 2007, when Christian Witt-Durring from Vienna will present a curator’s view of the designs of secessionist architects who set the prerequisites for European Modernism 100 years ago. Their work was later linked to international Modernism, whose high priest, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe called his architecture “skin and bones.”

Save these dates and look for more information in your mail box. For more information on Art & Ideas 2007/Skin, contact the Pasadena Arts Council at (626) 793-8171; or visit the Art & Ideas Festival online.

October 23, 2007

Josef Hoffmann, Bergerhöhe dining-sitting room, 1899, Austria

Vienna 1900: A Most Radical Reinvention

Christian Witt-Dörring
Neighborhood Church
2 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena

Gustav Klimt. Otto Wagner. Gustav Mahler. Sigmund Freud. The explosion of art, architecture, music, philosophy and science caused many to refer to Vienna in 1900 as “the experiment at the end of the world.” Out of this fin de siècle creative chaos emerged a groundbreaking design vocabulary that would set the prerequisites of modernism.

Christian Witt-Dörring will examine:

• Joseph Hoffmann and Koloman Moser’s design process in architecture and the decorative arts;
• The debate between the modern style in Vienna (as created by Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos) and international modernism.

After more then 25 years as curator of the furniture collection at the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (M A K), Christian Witt-Dörring now runs a consulting business and is curator for decorative arts at the Neue Galerie New York.

October 13, 2007

Lawry’s the Prime Rib, 1947, Los Angeles, California. Photograph courtesy of the Chris Nichols Collection from The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister.

A Place in the Sun: The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister

Chris Nichols

Wayne McAllister was an iconoclast; an unlicensed, untrained designer who created an incredible series of hotels, restaurants and nightclubs that epitomized the chrome-and-neon mood of mid-century Los Angeles and defined a fledgling Las Vegas.

In his biography and pop culture history tour of Hollywood
and Las Vegas at their most glamorous, Chris Nichols will:

• Reveal how a high school student was tapped to design a $2-billion dollar project;
• Detail how McAllister “invented” Las Vegas and created the first resort hotel in the desert;
• Visit his “Fred and Ginger” nightclubs, the Streamline Moderne drive-in restaurants and his cool modernism in the hot desert.

Author of The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister, Chris Nichols has helped create conferences and tours for the National Trust, California Preservation Foundation and the Los Angeles Conservancy, where he chaired the Modern Committee.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Museums of the Arroyo Day

On Sunday, May 20, 2007 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) the 18th annual Museums of the Arroyo (MOTA) Day invites the public to tour six museums located along the celebrated Arroyo Seco in Los Angeles and Pasadena for a free day of music, storytelling, art, crafts and entertainment.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

White rose garden, designed by Heather Lenkin.

Gardens of Intrigue: Greenscapes of Magic and Mystery

Heather Lenkin

An architect, and landscape and interior designer, Heather Lenkin will explore the natural splendor found in 21 gardens that surround her 1923 Italianate home. For 18 years she has planted, renovated, restored and rehabilitated the distinctive gardens on the 1-acre, steeply sloping hillside site to complement the home’s architecture and interior design. Multiple outdoor seating and dining areas and water features are incorporated into this plant collector’s garden, which now has more than 1,000 plant species and 10,000 bulbs. Garden Design magazine has called her work “history in the making.”

Lenkin will share her passion and award-winning garden design principles, including:

• Considerations of scale;
• Enhancing existing architecture;
• Looking to historic sources;
• Linking the interior to the exterior;
• Choosing plants sympathetic to the climate;
• Using color, structure and light.

President of Lenkin Design in Pasadena, Heather Lenkin is a two-time winner of the Golden Trowel Award from Garden Design magazine honoring excellence in creating “America’s Best Gardens.” Her alma mater, the University of Arizona, has recognized her with its Professional Achievement Award and designated an area of the Norton School as the Heather Henricks Lenkin Honor Student Center.

Free tour: One acre, 21 gardens

A self-guided tour of Heather Lenkin’s personal gardens will immediately follow the lecture.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Booksigning by California photographer Marvin Rand

Please join us at the Gamble House bookstore where Marvin Rand will sign his two books of architectural photography: the recently published Irving J. Gill, and his classic work Greene and Greene. Both coffee table books are published by Gibbs Smith.

Friday, March 23, 2007

May House, Los Angeles; photograph by Julius Shulman, 1954. ©J. Paul Getty Trust*

California in a Container: Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House

Daniel Gregory

You could call Cliff May the father of the suburban ranch house as more than 18,000 of them were built using his designs. The best of them managed to be both modern and traditional, celebrating a casually elegant, indoor-outdoor way of life that became synonymous with the California Dream. An early description in Sunset Magazine said it all: Cliff May’s houses “ramble almost to the point of departure, with lines as natural and satisfying as those of the hills.” In other words, the house was actually a landscape. You just had to add water.

Highlights of the lecture will include:

• Cliff May’s early career;
• His evolving brand of regional modernity;
• His inevitable discovery by the press;
• His perfection of what might be called the architectural palindrome.

Daniel Gregory is Senior Editor, Special Projects/Home for Sunset Magazine. He has contributed essays on William Wurster and Thomas Church to several books, and wrote the introduction for Greene & Greene by Marvin Rand. He is at work on a book about Cliff May’s ranch houses for Rizzoli.

March 24, 2007

Additional tour: Designs on the Good Life

In a sylvan Brentwood canyon, just steps from busy Sunset Boulevard, Cliff May created what many believe to be the finest interpretation of the California lifestyle ever realized. Join us for a rare opportunity to enter this private world and experience the ultimate in “Ranch House Deluxe.”

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The Rodriguez House, 1942.

Rudolph M. Schindler: Architect, Builder, Theorist, Utopian

Kimberli Meyer

Rudolph M. Schindler left Vienna for the United States in 1914, working first in Chicago for Frank Lloyd Wright, then settling in Los Angeles. Schindler rejected not only traditional styles of architecture but also the dominant form of modernism of his day, the International Style. He believed in the continuity of architecture and life, in the relation between site and building, and in the blending of the indoors and outdoors.

In the lecture Meyer will:

• Examine Schindler’s own house and studio on Kings Road as the purest expression of his ideals and the most radical of his experiments;
• Discuss Schindler’s concept of “space architecture”;
• Explore his most important houses, all sculptural, efficient, sensual and attuned to the climate and the body.

Kimberli Meyer is an architect and the Director of the M A K Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles at the Schindler House. She is co-curator of the exhibition “The Gen(h)ome Project” (October 28, 2006-February 25, 2007) at the Schindler House in West Hollywood.

February 24, 2007

Additional tour: Art and Geometry

The 1942 commission for composer Jose Rodriguez in the Verdugo Woodlands of Glendale pays homage to Taliesin West. Dynamic, exposed roof rafters wrap around walls of glass. The house bridges the gently sloping lot, creating gardens that sweep up, around and beneath the structure, one of Schindler’s least-altered homes.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

The Bridge, circa 1915, by William Lees Judson.

William Lees Judson: Craftsman at Heart, Painter by Trade

David Judson

From the moment his train pulled into Pasadena in December 1893, William Lees Judson knew he would never reside in another place. This pioneering painter came to Southern California to live out his days in a warm climate, only to be reinvigorated by the idealism and optimism of the day. A Civil War veteran, artistically trained in Europe, Judson would become known simply as “The Professor.” Though lesser known, this premier plein air painter would leave an artistic legacy that continues to this day.

Aspects of Judson’s life and career to be discussed include:

• His extensive travels that furthered his career as an art professor and painter;
• Judson’s role as author, professor, craftsman, activist and early environmentalist;
• His contributions to the art world of Southern California as the founder and first dean of U S C’s School of Fine Arts and the founder of the Judson stained glass studios.

Since 1997, David Judson, of the family’s fifth generation, has run the Judson Studios. He joined the firm by founding the Judson Gallery of Contemporary and Traditional Art. David has lectured extensively on Judson and stained glass and is currently working on Judson’s biography.

January 27, 2007

Additional tour: The Art and Craft of Light

The Judson Studios, founded in 1897, is the oldest stained glass studio in the United States still owned and operated by the same family. There artists continue to design, create and restore stained glass nationally and internationally. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Saturday, November 4, 2006

Maslon House, Palm Springs, by Richard Neutra, 1962; Photograph by Julius Shulman, 1963. © J. Paul Getty Trust*

Modernism’s Auteur: L.A. Through the Lens of Julius Shulman

At the Ahmanson Auditorium, Art Center College of Design, 1700 Lida St., Pasadena (Google map; please park in the student parking lot.)

Legendary architectural photographer Julius Shulman will discuss his body of work, including his recent project photographing the newly renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. Since 1936 Shulman has been the visual recorder of modern designs throughout 45 states of the country and internationally. His images promoted the work of numerous visionary architects worldwide.

Highlights of the presentation will include:

• The photographer’s relationship to the development of modern architecture in Los Angeles;
• The tactics, techniques and challenges of architectural photography;
• A question-and-answer session with Mr. Shulman.

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Museums of the Arroyo Day

Five museums located along the Arroyo Seco celebrate by opening their doors to the public free of charge on this special Sunday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free shuttles connect the five museums so that visitors can enjoy a day of exhibitions, special events, crafts and family fun.

October 15, 2005

Architects Conrad Buff III & Donald Hensman Home Tour & Events:

Homes for the upcoming Conrad Buff III and Donald Hensman October celebration have been announced: four homes in Pasadena, and one in Altadena, will be on the tour while another Pasadena residence will serve as the locale for the opening night reception.

Sponsored by USC School of Architecture, the Friends of the Gamble House and the Pasadena & Foothill Chapter AIA, the October 15th tour is part of a larger tribute to Buff and Hensman with events that also include a symposium and an opening night reception. The home tour will feature some of the best work of Buff and Hensman who helped define the ultra cool California modern architecture scene of the 1950-60s, says Edward Bosley, director of the Gamble House.

“Before his death in 2002, Hensman personally selected these homes as outstanding examples,” says Bosley. “They are rich in history and for those interested in modern architecture; this tour will be a great lesson in how master designers worked with materials, the surrounding landscape and the client’s needs.”

Indeed, the influence of Buff and Hensman is significant, according to Barton Anderson, president of the Pasadena & Foothill AIA. “They helped define an era with dynamic designs that are evocative of the quintessential Southern California lifestyle,” he says, adding that Buff and Hensman played an important role in articulating a regional style of “beauty, grace and what have proven to be highly sought after homes.”

Tour Date: October 15, 2005

Scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on October 15th, the shuttle tour will take ticket holders to five private Buff and Hensman homes some never before open to the public.

Opening Reception, October 14

An opening night reception at Buff and Hensman’s Peck (Shiell-Shallack) House in Pasadena at 7:30 p.m. on October 14.

Homes on the October 15 Tour

The Moseley Residence

Situated on a Pasadena hillside, this house features a dramatic 180-degree view of the San Gabriel Valley. The one-story house takes full advantages of its modest size with flowing spaces connecting the rooms. From the motor court, an 8-foot, carved, sliding gate serves as the dramatic entrance to the interior reflecting pool and house

The King Residence

Under the historic Colorado Street Bridge that spans the Arroyo Seco, this sheltered hideaway is true Southern California living that takes advantage of an open atmosphere with no hallways or formal separations. Outside, pathways are defined by gravel, concrete and railroad ties and the terraces are surrounded by the remains of a river-rock wall.

The Hernandez Residence

Built for a large family, this Pasadena house with an imposing view, accommodates three children’s bedrooms each complete with a study, bath and large wardrobe area. Reached by a concealed spiral staircase is an office with a balcony that overlooks the first floor and the stunning views. A spline of tan limestone leads outside to a waterfall and reflection pool.

Bass Residence, Case Study #20

Using several, innovative and prefabricated Douglas fir plywood products as part of its structural concept, this newly restored Altadena house (built from 1958-60) is based on a structural grid module of steel columns and plywood box beams. All major rooms open directly into a garden court. Diffused and cove lighting are used throughout creating warm and intimate spaces.

Conrad Buff III (Zendle/Hanson) House

Built in 1977 for himself and his wife, Buff called this modest 1,600 square-foot house Rapor. Perched on a private knoll and with views of the entire San Gabriel Valley, the house is a peaceful, secluded retreat. Materials used here are simple but elegant: redwood, teak, stucco, glass and quarry tile. Natural and artificial light are essential components of the design that includes 75 light sources in the living room alone.

About Conrad Buff III and Donald Hensman

Born in Nebraska in 1924, Donald Hensman graduated from Hollywood High School, served in the navy during World War II and entered USC School of Architecture on the GI Bill in 1948. At USC, Hensman met his collaborator of 40 years, Conrad Buff III. Born in Los Angeles, Buff also arrived at USC after wartime service in the Navy. Both were elevated to Fellowship in the AIA: Buff in 1980 and Hensman in 1982.

Like other architects who participated in the Case Study program of the '50s and '60s, Buff and Hensman were partial to post-and-beam construction, glass walls and floor plans that often served as elegant solutions to difficult sites. Producing an impressive body of work during their long partnership, Buff and Hensman contributed to the innovative and transformative architectural styles that were to define an era. They designed homes for many celebrities like Joan Collins, James Garner, Steve McQueen, Frank Sinatra and Paul Anka as well as the Governor’s Mansion for Ronald Reagan.

Hensman continued to work after Buff died in 1988, creating designs into the dawn of 21st Century. Hensman died in 2002 at the age of 78.

About James Steele

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Steele received his Bachelor and Master Degrees in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He practiced architecture in and around Philadelphia prior to teaching in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1980-1990.

Steele served as the Senior Editor at Academy Editions from 1990-1991 and has been an associate professor at USC since 1991. His publications include: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy; Los Angeles: The Contemporary Condition, Architecture Today and Architecture and Computers.

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Transylvania! Arts and Crafts Movement in Hungary?

A Gamble House lecture by Anthony Gall, author and preservation architect specializing in the work of Kos and Hungarian Arts and Crafts.

The Gamble House will present a special lecture on March 31st, by Anthony Gall, on the inspired architecture of Hungarian-Transylvanian architect/craftsman Karoly Kos and the Hungarian Arts and Crafts movement.

Gall’s illustrated lecture will discuss works of major Hungarian architects and applied artists from this period as an introduction to the work of Kos who created some of the most important vernacular-inspired masterpieces of the Hungarian Arts and Crafts period. The Budapest Zoo Pavilions, Kos’s studio home in Transylvania, and other important projects will be presented in the context of Transylvanian folk architecture, which inspired it, and emphasis will be placed on the beautiful craftsmanship and detailing which resulted from this connection. Recent renovations of the pavilions of the Budapest Zoo will also be described

At the turn of the Twentieth Century, the twin-capitals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna and Budapest were significant centers of art and architectural production. The Viennese Secession and the Hungarian "Szecesszió" both describe a new beginning, and a break with the past. Exquisite examples of work from this period can be seen at the Los Angeles County Art Museum exhibition: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and America, 1880–1920: Design for the Modern World

Lecturer Anthony Gall

Anthony Gall is a Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Queensland and principal of Gall and Associates Architects in Budapest. An award-winning architect, he was Chief Architect for the Restoration of the Budapest Zoo and Botanic Gardens (a National Monument) and was awarded one of Europe's most prestigious awards for Heritage Reconstruction (Europa Nostra) in 2000. His extensive monograph on Károly Kós, was published in 2002.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

What Did They Hear?: The Musical Landscape of the Early 20th Century

Charles McKnight

The first decades of the 20th century were teeming with innovations in musical style. Russian, German, French and American composers sought to find new ways to express the dynamic nature of modern society. At the same time, many composers were taken with a nostalgia for the past. The variety of approaches to musical style, some of which will be sampled during this lecture, created an excitement about contemporary developments that is unparalleled in musical history.

McKnight will explore some of the styles and their affinities with the visual and literary arts including Impressionism, Expressionism, Primitivism, and Nationalism.

About the lecturer: Charles McKnight is associate professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He holds degrees in music performance and music history from Stetson University, Yale University and Cornell University. A specialist in the history of Russian music, he has done extensive research on the interaction of music and politics in the early Soviet period.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

William Henry Gummer, Tauroa, Havelock North, New Zealand, 1916.

Architecture and Identity in the Southern Pacific: The New Zealand Contemporaries of Greene and Greene, 1885-1915

Ian Lochhead

At the beginning of the 20th century, progressive New Zealand architects, like their American contemporaries, were searching for ways in which to express an emerging sense of national identity. As they sought to break free from the twin shackles of a dominant English tradition and 19th century historicism, they discovered in the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement a means of expressing both national and regional identities. Drawing inspiration from the work of colonial architects as well as from their British and American contemporaries, architects such as Samuel Hurst Seager, Basil Hooper and James Chapman Taylor developed a regionally distinctive Arts and Crafts architecture as yet little known beyond New Zealand.

Issues to be examined include:

• Links and parallels with contemporary British and American architecture;
• Samuel Hurst Seager’s independent development of the timber bungalow from 1900 on;
• The use of motifs derived from indigenous flora and fauna;
• Architects’ attitudes toward the art traditions of the Maori.

About the lecturer: Ian Lochhead is associate professor of art history at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the history of New Zealand architecture, with particular emphasis on the Gothic Revival and Arts and Crafts movements. In 2000 he was Laing visiting professor of architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Marsh Moon, circa 1925, by William Seltzer Rice.

The Color Woodcut and American Arts & Crafts

David Acton

From the 1890s through the 1930s and beyond, the craft of color woodcut flourished in the United States as never before. Inspired by longtime European traditions, professional artists and amateurs explored the medium as a way to multiply their designs. In New England and in Northern California, others explored Asian printmaking, combining their techniques and styles with those of European art. Vivid in hue and consciously aesthetic in style, these works were immensely popular as decorative accents in Arts and Crafts-style architecture. The simplicity of their facture encouraged innovation, and the most skillful artists developed their own, highly individualized modes of working. Thus the diversity of this fashion made it distinctly American.

In a broad, lavishly illustrated survey of this period, Acton will discuss the art and its innovators:

• The technical rudiments of European and Japanese color woodcut;
• Intrepid female printmakers;
• Arthur Wesley Dow, Ernest Fenollosa and Japonisme;
• The Provincetown Print;
• Western dissemination of color woodcut;
• Gustave Baumann and the Southwest.

About the lecturer: David Acton is curator of prints, drawings and photographs at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Among his books are A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890-1960, and monographic studies of Arthur Wesley Dow, Blanche Lazzell and Gustave Baumann.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

The Joshua Melson house in Mason City, Iowa.

Building for Nature: The Architecture of Walter Burley Griffin

Paul Kruty

Walter Burley Griffin (1876-1937) was the most international of the early 20th century American Modernists, with careers successively in America, Australia and India. Surpassed only by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in importance among Chicago’s Prairie School, his achievement exceeded theirs in its great breadth. His organic approach to design, materials and the environment—as revealed in two of his most complete projects, Rock Crest/Rock Glen in Mason City, Iowa, and Castlecrag near Sydney, Australia—were remarkably ahead of their time and continue to serve as model solutions for many contemporary problems of context and sustainability.

Among Griffin’s achievements:

• Uniting architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning into a single discipline;
• Creating an alternative organic form of modern American architecture to those of Sullivan and Wright;
• Combining the Arts and Crafts values of materiality, craftsmanship and place with modern technology and systems of construction.

About the lecturer: Paul Kruty teaches the history of Modern and American architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The author of Frank Lloyd Wright and Midway Gardens and Walter Burley Griffin in America, he has published numerous articles on the architects of Chicago’s Prairie School, including Wright, Griffin, Robert Spencer and George Elmslie. His lecture venues have included the Griffin Society of Australia, the Frank LloydWright Home & Studio Foundation and the Arts and Crafts conference in Perry, Iowa.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

A 1910 landscape design for the N. Lee Stary house in Los Angeles.

Organic Beauty: Japanese-Style Gardens for Arts & Crafts Houses

Kendall H. Brown

In the first decades of the 20th century, Japanese-style gardens were built across North America. Popularized at world’s fairs and other commercial venues, these gardens were soon used residentially, adorning the great estates of the wealthy and the humble bungalows of the middle class. Yet nowhere did the Japanese garden find a more congenial setting than at Arts and Crafts houses, where Japanese aesthetics and motifs were integral to the design.

Characteristics of these gardens include:

• Integration of the garden with the residence;
• Dramatic use of architectural and ornamental elements;
• Emphasis on organic, “natural” features;
• Conception of Japanese culture as an antidote to industrialization.

About the lecturer: Kendall H. Brown is associate professor of Asian art history in the department of art at California State University, Long Beach, and adjunct curator of Japanese art at the Pacific Asia Museum. He has published widely on the subject including the book Japanese-Style Gardens of the Pacific West Coast. He is currently a fellow in landscape history at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., where he is writing a book on the social history of Japanese-style gardens in North America.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Radical but Reserved: The Englishness of English Arts & Crafts

Alan Crawford

The Arts and Crafts movement got its start in England, with the writings of John Ruskin and the example of William Morris, and we often think of it as having spread from England to other countries. But, as the forthcoming Arts and Crafts exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will make clear, the movement was not simply an English export: It was Belgian in Belgium, Finnish in Finland, American in America. It was also peculiarly English in England, and Crawford will explore its main features there including:

• A vague but powerful anti-industrialism;
• An emphasis on method and substance in design, reacting against the superficiality of commercial decorative art;
• Love of the countryside;
• Close links with the upper and upper-middle classes.

About the lecturer: Alan Crawford lives in London where he is a freelance historian specializing in British architecture and decorative arts in the decades around 1900. He is the author of C.R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and is currently working on a book about the Arts and Crafts movement in England.