Richardson and Olmsted's "Stonehurst"

The most famous American architect of the 19th century was H. H. Richardson (think Trinity Church in Boston).  The most famous American landscape artist was Frederick Law Olmsted (think Central Park).  They both worked out of Boston and last week I visited Stonehurst, originally a private residence (now owned by the town of Waltham) designed and built by Richardson and Olmsted for the Paine family in 1883.

(these first two pics are from the Stonehurst guidebook)

The house is a bit of an architectural oddity as the Paines insisted on moving to the site and incorporating into the new structure their twenty-year-old Victorian mansard-roof house.  You can see it on the left side of the house in picture above.  Richardson wrapped the stone towers right around the old house and Olmstead trained wisteria up every side of the old house in an effort to disguise it.

The setting on top of a hill is incredibly naturalistic (Olmsted's hallmark) but, while it looks natural, the landscape was in fact sculpted extensively by Olmsted including scraping bare the large glacially-striated bedrock seen at left.  Here are a few more pictures of the landscape and Olmsted's graceful curving walls that almost remind one of an Andrew Goldsworthy sculpture......

 

All the stone for the house and walls was collected on the estate, partly by deconstructing the older colonial stone walls.

The sundial you can see on the second floor of the tower in the first pic.

A side entrance with a characteristic Richardson "eyebrow" roof line.

The front entrance.

Detail of carving on front entrance.....look at lion carved out of sandstone.  And when the porch starts to sag you prop it up with 2x10s painted to match the house!  Sadly, this place seems like it is barely surviving financially; lots of obvious water damage in house, holes in ceilings, broken windows, leaking chimneys, etc. 

Tomorrow, the interior......

Motion sensors and porch ceilings - electrical, part 3

Having exterior lights on motion sensors is great for a number of reasons, including safety and energy efficiency.  Unfortunately, most exterior lights with built-in motion sensors are ugly.  A solution to this problem is to buy a motion sensor unit (without the light) and install it yourself in some discrete location near the light.  If the walls/ceiling are open this is obviously easy; if they are closed up you will need to snake wires.  It's a little more complicated than installing switches so you might need to call an electrician.

Two earlier electrical posts:
     In praise of push buttons -- electrical, part 1
     In praise of dimmers -- electrical, part 2

FYI:  The porch ceiling is made of 5" x 10 ft lengths of pine beadboard that had three coats of exterior-grade spar urethane applied before being nailed up.

Tile wall, Istanbul

...and a great strip quilt pattern.  There is something profoundly beautiful about turquoise tile.

Marsh Plaza, Boston University campus

Some tiles designed by William De Morgan, one of William Morris's greatest protégés:

Along the silk road....

Yesterday's post reminded me of a visit to an Anatolian rug factory a number of years back where I saw a demonstration of how silk thread is made.  It starts with hundreds of cocoons of mulberry silkworms that are soaked in a vat of water to soften them up.  The dead worm can be heard rattling inside the cocoon if you shake it (silk-wearing vegans take note).  After the cocoon gum softens, a "threader" will use a whisk to "grab" the ends of silk threads off the cocoons and drape the filaments onto a reeling machine.  It seems like this should be really difficult but it happens quite easily.  A single cocoon can give up to 1500 m (almost a mile!) of filament, 4 to 18 strands of which are then twisted together to make a silk thread.

The finished product, a Hereke silk rug with the one of the highest knot counts in the world (wish I had written down the number).  The photo doesn't do the spectral vibrancy of this carpet justice.   This is a rug connoisseurs put on their wall.

Some magic carpets

 ...designed by Wm Morris:

Bullerswood Carpet (detail), 1889

 

Holland Park carpet (detail), 1883

The Redcar carpet, c1880

Drawing Room at Standen with Morris carpet

And, in Morris's own home.....

Kelmscott House dining room decorated with a Persian carpet hung on the wall (photograph taken in the late 1890s)

These last two photos were taken from a lovely book called William Morris Decor and Design by Elizabeth Wilhide.

Some modern-day high end merchants of Morris design carpets: Burrows and Co. and English Wilton.

And on the other end, a good place to find some inexpensive "Arts and Crafty" alternatives: e.g., the McIntosh, Willington, Bishop, and Karaman rugs, among others.....

  

 

You gotta know your Greek myths.....

....to truly appreciate Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites.  I recently finished reading Desperate Romantics by Fanny Moyle (see previous post here).  Ultimately, it was a sad book that reads like an extended Vanity Fair article (e.g. lifestyles of the flawed and famous).  Two of the main protagonists, Rossetti and Ruskin, were particularly screwed-up individuals who brought nothing but grief and misery to themselves and the people closest to them.  Morris is one of the more sympathetic Pre-Raphaelites but, ultimately, his tragedy is his beautiful wife (Jane) loves another (Rossetti). 

And here is where the myths come in.....

In the pic above is one of my favorite references...my Mythology Fandex.  (When that can't deliver, I pull out the biggies, Mythologyby Edith Hamilton and The Greek Myths: Complete Editionby Robert Graves.)   The fandex is open to the myth of Persephone illustrated by Jane Morris in Rossetti's famous painting (reproduced below).   Of course we know she's Persephone because she is holding a pomegranate (okay, I didn't really know that).  When Rossetti painted this picture of Jane she was spending summers living with Rossetti while Morris traveled---read the myth and you'll get it.

 

Proserpine (Persephone), 1874,
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

My Makita

Given that it is Black Friday and thoughts turn to Xmas gifts, here's a few words about my cordless drill that I bought 18 months ago after my old drill died.  I love this tool and use it all the time.  I bought it with the two-battery kit (from Amazon) and then got another free battery by sending in a coupon (look for the link on Amazon).  This Makita has fantastic torque for tough jobs but is lightweight and easy to use around the house.  I can't imagine any homeowner not having one of these nearby.

Get organized beautifully....

 

I love my Profolio portfolios  (left side of top pic, before it has been Morrisized).  Inside they have archival quality polypropylene sleeves that are perfect for organizing projects, recipes, house ideas, or any other kind of information you happen to be stockpiling.  You can easily slip whatever paper you choose down the outside spine and above you can see my notebooks with both Wm Morris paper and Art Nouveau paper (the ring binder has a bookmark from the Fortuny Museum).  The Art Nouveau paper appears to be out of stock on Amazon but the Wm Morris paper is a steal at $4.95.  Combine this with the Profolio portfolios (here and here are 8.5" x 11" sized ones) and you can make a lovely gift for someone who likes to be organized.  FYI, the Morris paper pack has four different designs.

Two (R)Evolutionary Giants of the 19th Century

 

             Hi Charlie.....                                         Mornin Bill.......

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s game-changing The Origin of Species.  Less than 50 miles away from Darwin's home, William Morris and Philip Webb built Red House the same year, founding the Arts and Craft Movement in the process.

Morris chairs, a nice place to sit after a long hike

The Highland Center, Crawford Notch

 

Mt. Washington with the Mt. Washington House (1902) in foreground

 A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains (Crawford Notch), Thomas Cole, 1839 (National Gallery of Art)

This past Sunday I was driving through Crawford Notch in the White Mountains and stopped in to see the Appalachian Mountain Club's newest lodge, the LEED certifiable Highland Center.  It was quite beautiful, with siding, shingling, and stick work reminiscent of the architecture of the late 19th and early 20th century.  The main room of the lodge, that looks out over the mountains through two story-high windows, is filled with Morris chairs.  These reclining chairs are the original La-Z-Boy, first manufactured by Morris's design firm and later named in his honor by Gustav Stickley who popularized them in the U.S.  Today, you can spend thousands of dollars buying beautiful hand-made reproductions from craft firms across the country.  You can also find more modestly priced versions at L.L. Bean and on Ebay.  But my favorite place to look for Morris chairs is on Craig's List.  Try it....let me know what you find.

Gesamtkunstwerk.....a word to live by

Original William Morris interiors, including the hallway of his own Red House at the bottom. 

I discovered the word Gesamtkunstwerk a few months ago and came across it again last week while researching the Fortuny post.  It is a German word that translates to "a total work of art".  It came into common usage with the German opera composer Robert Wagner who believed the operatic experience should be the perfect synthesis of all the arts (music, literature, poetry, dance, theater, architecture, painting, etc.)---in other words, a Gesamtkunstwerk.  It is just a small step across the English Channel to find Wm Morris living out his own life of Gesamtkunstwerk epitomized by his most famous quote:  "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

While looking on-line for any discussion of Gesamtkunstwerk and Morris I found this wonderful essay on exactly this topic on the blog of NY artist Doug Blanchard.  And I'll end with the words of my polymath friend Cliff:
 
"All of one’s life MUST be a gesamtkunstwerk, or just phone it in...."

In praise of dimmers -- electrical, part 2

Last week I wrote about push button switches and this week it's dimmers.  Few rooms in my house do not have dimmers (the laundry room comes to mind) and yes, do this yourself, just don't forget to turn off the electricity.  There is no easier way to make a room feel inviting and beautiful than to dim the lights---that pile of tools in the corner fades into the shadows and you look better too.  Like most people I spend a lot of time in my kitchen and put much thought into the lighting in this room while renovating last year.  There are four sets of lights in this room (five if you count the hood light) and all are on dimmers.  This includes six overhead can lights (Lightolier 5" incandescent/aperture cone) spaced over the room on a dimmer rated for multiple lights; three Lightolier 3 3/4" low voltage overhead lights with halogen bulbs and pinhole trim over the sink counter (these are on a special low voltage dimmer); a rewired light found in a Maine antique shop over the table (normal dimmer switch); and two very inexpensive Xenon undercabinet lights from Home Depot under the wall cabinets on either side of stove (they are dimmed with a built-in rocker switch).  Add candles and votives and, voila, you've created an inviting cocoon of gustatory delight.  Salut!

"The Earthly Paradise", A Really Long Poem by Wm Morris

......about the quest for true love.

Cupid Finding Psyche, Edward Burne-Jones (ca. 1865)

An excerpt from: The Story of Cupid and Psyche.....

"Pigmenti per Artisti", a shopwindow in Venice