Introduction to Greene & Greene
My discovery of Greene & Greene style furniture happened while I was looking for design ideas for a coffee table for the living room. At the time I had this idea to build something with the illusion of a floating top where the connection to the leg assembly was not immediately apparent. I was going through various furniture magazines and books and I came across a picture of an elongated octagonal table with a pedestal base that caught my eye. It did not have a floating top but its curved sided, heavy looking, pedestal and the cross-grain pattern that divided the top into three sections looked like something I could make in my workshop using my limited skills and equipment. As I further investigated this different looking piece, I discovered that it also had some very interesting square pegs and elongated splines that stood proud of the finished surface of the frame and unusual “slots” cut into the pedestal stretchers. This table, I was later to discover, was designed by architect brothers Charles and Henry Greene, who were very sought after in the early 1900s in and around Pasadena, California. The coffee table was designed for the Gamble house (pictured above), one of the architects’ best known works, and still sits in front of the living room fireplace there. I had the great pleasure of visiting the Gamble house in 2010, some 102 years after it was originally built, and seeing that coffee table that has inspired most of my woodworking projects. Greene & Greene style furniture seems to be having a revival as one of the most sought-after Arts & Crafts styles so when it came time to build a bedroom suite for our master bedroom there was only one clear choice – it had to be another Greene & Greene inspired design.
The Greene & Greene style uses some common themes or features in most of their furniture pieces, some inspired by Asian furniture designs that were incorporated into the more functional or austere Arts & Crafts designs of the time. These features include “cloud lifts” where the line of an edge goes through a quick “lane-change” and continues in the same direction, exposed joinery, functional and decorative square pegs and splines that sit proud of the surface, different thicknesses of adjacent parts, rounded corners and edges, scarf joints (very evident in beams throughout the Gamble house), slotted stretchers and aprons, proud finger-jointed drawer fronts, the Tsuba (hand protection guard on a Japanese sword) shape, intricate raised inlays that often used silver and mother-of-pearl as well as exotic woods – the list goes on, but this gives an idea of the scope and detail of every Greene & Greene original and describes the “design language” of their work, some of which I try to emulate in mine.
The Greene brothers were not the woodworkers that built their original furniture, that task was mostly carried out by another pair of brothers, Peter and John Hall. It seems that this was a very cooperative arrangement where the Hall’s really understood the design ideas, language and concepts of the Greene’s and they were able to interpret all those into some amazing furniture masterpieces, often with little more than a hand-drawn sketch or a note on the corner of a drawing. I am the proud owner of a number of books related to Greene & Greene furniture and these are recommended reading for anyone that wants to learn more about these architects and their woodworking partners, the Hall brothers as well as how some of this furniture was made and finished. You will not be disappointed!
“Greene & Greene – Design Elements for the Workshop” by Darrell Peart – Linden Publishing
“Shop Drawings for Greene & Greene Furniture” by Robert W. Lang – Fox Chapel Publishing
“Greene & Greene Furniture – Poems of Wood and Light” by David Mathias – Popular Woodworking Books
I would also recommend that anyone interested in exploring the work of the Greene’s, and visiting the Los Angeles area of California, pay a visit to the “Gamble House” in Pasadena (near the Rose Bowl) as well as the “Huntingdon Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens” in nearby San Marino, which houses an exhibit of Greene & Greene furniture as well as a staircase salvaged from one of their original houses.
The Greene & Greene style uses some common themes or features in most of their furniture pieces, some inspired by Asian furniture designs that were incorporated into the more functional or austere Arts & Crafts designs of the time. These features include “cloud lifts” where the line of an edge goes through a quick “lane-change” and continues in the same direction, exposed joinery, functional and decorative square pegs and splines that sit proud of the surface, different thicknesses of adjacent parts, rounded corners and edges, scarf joints (very evident in beams throughout the Gamble house), slotted stretchers and aprons, proud finger-jointed drawer fronts, the Tsuba (hand protection guard on a Japanese sword) shape, intricate raised inlays that often used silver and mother-of-pearl as well as exotic woods – the list goes on, but this gives an idea of the scope and detail of every Greene & Greene original and describes the “design language” of their work, some of which I try to emulate in mine.
The Greene brothers were not the woodworkers that built their original furniture, that task was mostly carried out by another pair of brothers, Peter and John Hall. It seems that this was a very cooperative arrangement where the Hall’s really understood the design ideas, language and concepts of the Greene’s and they were able to interpret all those into some amazing furniture masterpieces, often with little more than a hand-drawn sketch or a note on the corner of a drawing. I am the proud owner of a number of books related to Greene & Greene furniture and these are recommended reading for anyone that wants to learn more about these architects and their woodworking partners, the Hall brothers as well as how some of this furniture was made and finished. You will not be disappointed!
“Greene & Greene – Design Elements for the Workshop” by Darrell Peart – Linden Publishing
“Shop Drawings for Greene & Greene Furniture” by Robert W. Lang – Fox Chapel Publishing
“Greene & Greene Furniture – Poems of Wood and Light” by David Mathias – Popular Woodworking Books
I would also recommend that anyone interested in exploring the work of the Greene’s, and visiting the Los Angeles area of California, pay a visit to the “Gamble House” in Pasadena (near the Rose Bowl) as well as the “Huntingdon Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens” in nearby San Marino, which houses an exhibit of Greene & Greene furniture as well as a staircase salvaged from one of their original houses.
