I buy a lot of books, and I get a lot of books as gifts, so they tend to really pile up at home. As anyone who has spent time in a big chain bookstore knows, there are a tremendous number of visual reference and coffee-table picture books on A&C homes and design out now, and a lot of them are pretty mediocre in terms of useability, although usually the photos are pretty decent. I'm going to start a series of regular reviews here, focusing on books a bit off the beaten path - the work of craftspeople, mostly, who might not be seen as directly part of the American and European A&C movements, but who are still important to those of us interested in A&C.

Today I'll write a bit about George Nakashima and a great book on his work that his daughter wrote and which was published a few months ago.

Jane Powell and Linda Svendsen's Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts & Crafts Home is certainly the most attractive in their series (Bungalow Bathrooms, Kitchens, Exteriors) of coffee table picture books / fairy-tale idea books. In this new volume, the author and photographer have composed more of a paean to the Arts & Crafts bungalow than any type of descriptive deconstruction of the style and its endless permutations.

Powell & Svendsen's obvious fondness toward this particular building style is evident on every page, in the images and the descriptions of the many homes chosen. Those homes range from the strictest single-story examples to a wide array of homes imbued with the local style of their own communities throughout the United States, Canada, England and elsewhere in the world.

Part of the book is broken up into sections focusing specifically on regions and neighborhoods that embraced the bungalow and lent their own particular flavor: the suburbs of Chicago and Milwaukee and their Prairie-influenced bungalows; the Mission revival-influenced homes of Southern California (and the famous ultimate bungalows of Pasadena) and the wood-shingled homes of the San Francisco area that blend into that area's redwood and oak-filled hills; the wide-porched and columned stone-detailed homes of Memphis and the ornate and brightly-painted highwaters of Vancouver.

However, the authors do recognize that bungalow style reached its fruition here in California, with such ingredients as clinker brick, the high-grain oaks of the Craftsman furniture movement, wrought iron and hammered copper, decorative stencil and tilework and even Victorian wallpapers all coming together at the right time to truly embody the best aspects of the Craftsman tradition in homes that are far more examples of a philosophy than just places to live.

California, then, offers many of the finest examples of the interiors that fill the latter portion of the book - lush living and dining rooms, kitchens and baths that are sometimes spare and sometimes lavish in their decoration. It is here that the photography really shines: the rich colors, wood grain and other hallmarks of the Craftsman style are all on display, and Svendsen takes advantage of the lushness of these spaces in her well-lit and -composed images.

The book is written with humor and warmth, never taking its subject matter too seriously, which is a welcome alternative to many other books in the genre that treat these buildings as museum exhibits before their original purpose (and, in most cases, only purpose) as homes. The A&C movement is predicated on the usefulness and comfort of these spaces, elements that are wasted on houses that are not actually lived in, and it is wonderful that the authors recognize this and put the vast majority of their attention on structures that have evolved inside and out since their initial construction, constantly changing and becoming even better examples of this last of the humanistic architectural styles.

Certainly the finest examples of bungalow architecture are often well-served today as museums in their own right, and several restored masterworks that are now open to visitors are profiled in the last part of the book. Aside from the wear of years - negated in many cases by excellent restoration efforts - most of these homes did not age after their initial habitation, and have been frozen in time. Not so much examples of the A&C philosophy made alive as so many of the other homes in the book are, these are better seen as snapshots of the movement as it once was, or as some of the early and great architects and designers of bungalows wanted it to be.

All in all, Bungalow: The Ultimate Arts & Crafts Home is a very large volume, perhaps better suited for table than shelf, as it is certainly more fun to leaf through its pages and imagine your own project becoming, over time, the kind of home that is pictured within its pages. It is a good read and an even better picture book, a great tool for planning a home or remodel. I am sure it would make a very attractive holiday gift for anyone even moderately interested in the Craftsman aesthetic.

The only criticism I have is a petty one, something that only a graphic designer could see: with so many great typefaces and layout models coming out of the movement, why choose typefaces and a general style of typesetting that are in many ways the antithesis of the movement? But again, this is petty certainly not something that should detract from your enjoyment of this beautifully-written and illustrated book.

Just got a review copy of Sam Macon (a film director who is producing the film side of this film/book project) & Faythe Levine's terrific new Sign Painters from my friends at Princeton Architectural Press.

If you want the two-word version, it's “Wow - buy!”

This book is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in lettering - either machine or hand-set or painted. It is jam-packed with hundreds of big, full-color illustrations. Each section is an essay by a different contemporary signpainter and letterer, including luminaries such as Nick Barber, Gary Martin, Caitlyn Galloway, Ira Coyne, Josh Luke, and of course my favorite, the great teacher, letterer and typeface designer John Downer, all giving excellent advice to new letterers, rules to live by, and dropping brush-lettering science with every sentence.

An addendum includes plates from Charles Wagner's great Blueprint Textbook of Sign & Showcard Lettering, just as useful today as when it was written at the turn of the 20th century.

I am not a signpainter - in fact, even after taking a dozen lettering courses, trying my hand at various types of calligraphy and showcard lettering and other varieties of hand-work, I'm a disgrace to the entire establishment of alphabetarians - but I am a metal, wood and digital typesetter, and I love letters. Even though I'll never set anything as beautiful as the hand-drawn work shown here, I'm immensely inspired by it, and my own (mostly digital) work will be informed by what I've seen and read in this volume.

I recommend this very highly for everyone interested in display lettering, whether type or handmade. I usually check books like this out from the library, read & digest, and return. My bookshelves are finite and already overfull. But this one is a keeper, and I want to have it around to refer to for many years. Plus, at only $15 on Amazon (marked down from the usual $25), it's cheap for what you get.

I look forward to seeing the film that accompanies the book!

by Trey Ratcliff at www.flickr.com

The third item in our continuing series is Volume 1, number 3 of The Craftsman: December 1901 (3 meg PDF).

The second item in our continuing series is Volume 1, number 2 of  The Craftsman: November 1901 (3 meg PDF).

I've recently been gifted a large archive of every issue (bar two - issues 8 and 9 from the 1916 volume are missing) of Gustav Stickley's The Craftsman, beginning with volume 1, number 1 in October of 1901. I'll be posting one every few days for the coming weeks, starting with the first issue today. 

Here you go: Volume 1, number 1 of The Craftsman: October 1901 (3 meg PDF)

Thanks very much to the archival-minded friend - another big fan of the public domain - who passed these on to me!

Last weekend, the NY Times Magazine included a short excerpt from a terrific new book by Matthew Crawford, a motorcycle mechanic with a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work addresses issues of craft and work that will be important and thought-provoking to anyone interested in the philosophies behind the Arts & Crafts movement, and I look forward to getting my copy as soon as my local bookshop has it in stock.

High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.

This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”

A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.

My colleague Jay Dickenson was kind enough to review Katie Campbell's new book for Hewn & Hammered:

Katie Campbell, Icons of Twentieth-Century Landscape Design, Frances Lincoln Limited, Publisher, 2006

In her new work, Icons of Twentieth-Century Landscape Design, Katie Campbell presents significant landscape designs created during the past century that, she believes, challenged the accepted form, use, and meaning of created landscapes. Campbell describes traditional attitudes toward landscape design, at least before the twentieth century, as alternating between the poles of classical formality and romantic naturalism. Fittingly, each of the twenty-nine sites featured in Icons eschews this rigid classical/romantic dialectic.

As a whole, Campbell’s subjects share neither style, nor location, nor philosophy (though each of the works in Icons emerges from the Western tradition of landscape design). However, Campbell is able to group the sites found in Icons according to broad and sometimes overlapping themes, such as nature worship (Stockholm’s Woodland Cemetery, Wright’s Falling Water, or Portland’s Lovejoy Plaza) and environmentalism (Eggborough power plant); nationalism and anticolonialism (Brazil’s Ministry of Education and Mexican designer Luis Barragán’s Las Arboledas); artistic (the Barcelona Pavilion, Park Guëll, and Bentley Woods); and allegorical (the Kennedy Memorial and Salt Lake’s Spiral Jetty).

Yet the thrust of the book is not thematic. Campbell addresses each site individually through both written description and analysis and through visual imagery. Campbell’s writing is lively an accessible. And, in keeping with Icons’ “coffee table” format, the photographs and illustrations are colorful and, for the most part illustrative. My only complaint is that, in some instances, Icon lacks images sufficiently detailed to match Campbell’s precise analysis. For example, in describing Gaudí’s use of allegorical and ethnocentric imagery at Park Guëll, Campbell references “large stone spheres, suggestive of rosary beads,” and “a red and white band ... which suggests a cigar band — a whimsical reference to Guëll’s interests in the tobacco industry.” Yet, in scanning the full-page prints and inset photos that accompany the essay, one unfortunately finds neither cigar band nor rosary beads.

Campbell acknowledges that her selection of sites to include in Icons was necessarily idiosyncratic, and, certainly, Icons excludes other twentieth-century works that deserve to be called “icons” of landscape design. For this reason, the book is sure to provide grist for the expert to grind. Yet, Campbell’s writing is accessible and oftentimes general. The novice reader, unschooled in modern or contemporary art, philosophy, or design, will surely find Icons a richly educational read.

Craftsman Furniture Projects: Timeless Designs & Trusted Techniques From Woodworking's Top Experts

My colleague Derek Martin, an experienced and very talented woodworker, recently offered to review a book I received from the kind folks at Woodworkers' Journal:

Thank you for the opportunity to read and give my brief review of Craftsman Furniture Projects.

I will start out by saying that I not only enjoyed the easy reading, but I also found myself distracted by the illustrations as I thumbed my way through the book. The book is loaded with diagrams, templates and pictures. Many more visual displays are also included to show exactly what is being done which can be especially useful if it’s your first time trying a particular procedure. Finished products are also displayed to show you what you are working towards at all times. So the use of illustration in this book along with descriptive detail made it an A+ for me.

One of my favorite items was the use of old woodworking tools and the brief explanation of what their purpose was on the project. Some were tools that can still be very useful today such as the wood marking gauge used to drawl more precise lines while performing the layout of a rabbet joint on a piece of stock. Simple tools like this can be found, usually when you’re not looking for them, at garage sales and flea markets and I have developed a habit of collecting and using such items rather than their newer and cheaper counterparts.

Throughout the book you will find sections called Quick-Tips and Technical Drawings. These brief paragraphs are hints and tips that outline safety, accuracy and workarounds for each project.

This issue includes nearly twenty beautiful furniture pieces that can be constructed in any decently outfitted woodshop. I would recommend this book to any beginner who wants to try their hand at building sturdy and eye-catching furniture or any master craftsman who thinks he’s seen it all.

A recent article by Ellen Tomson in Minneapolis' Pioneer Press describes local historian and author Larry Millett's research and subsequent book on Minneapolis' historic neighborhoods. excerpt:

Larry Millett biked the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis for three summers to produce his latest book, (the) AIA Guide to the Twin Cities, the first major neighborhood-by-neighborhood handbook of its kind.

But the foundation of his 665-page book was decades of research and writing about the Twin Cities, first as a Pioneer Press reporter, columnist and critic, and then as author of Lost Twin Cities, Twin Cities Then and Now, and Strange Days, Dangerous Nights, all which focused on local structures and events.

"The book is the result of three years of work and, in a sense, it's the work of a lifetime since I've worked here all my life," says Millett, 59, who grew up in North Minneapolis and has spent much of his adult life in St. Paul.

My single favorite writer on architectural and design issues is Ted Wells. Unlike here, where I'm constantly filling in the space between interesting issues with notes of very minor importance, Ted's  puts articles up on Living Simple only when he has something to say. He's a really good writer and teacher (and designer, of course; that is his primary profession), and in my few conversations with him I've learned a lot about architecture and our responsibility to art.

Living Simple's motto is "Do your work. Be honest. Keep your word. Help when you can. Be fair." Even when Ted is critical - as he sometimes is, especially of communities (and homeowners) who are unable or unwilling to maintain architectural and aesthetic responsibility or historic character through either a lack of education or simple greed, or historic homeowners who are dishonest or inattentive stewards of their homes - he is always fair, and takes his responsibilities seriously. He even writes on his personal website that his "most important job is helping guide the stewardship of notable historic architecture, art, built and natural landscapes, and thought and culture."

Ted has a new book coming out next year with Gibbs-Smith, one of the world's best publishers of books on American architecture and design. Ted and John Ellis are currently finishing up work on the book, which is about the mid-century modernist architect Harwell Hamilton Harris. Twenty-two of Harris' homes will be profiled in the book, which will be published next year.

A number of books which look like they'd be very interesting to Craftsman (and other old-home) aficionados have been released recently. I'll try to get my hands on copies of some of these for full reviews. If you are a publisher and would like to have your book reviewed here, drop me a line.

• Vintage Cottagesby Molly Hyde English
• Dream Porches and Sunrooms by Michael Snow
• The Green Self-Build Book by Jon Broome
• Arts & Crafts Furniture by the editors of Wood Magazine
• Cabinetmaking: Design & Construction by William P. Spence
• The Homeowner's Guide to Managing a Renovation by Susan Solakian
• The Reclaimers: A Complete Guide to Salvage by Sally Bevan
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh: The Complete Furniture, Furniture Drawings & Interior Designs by Roger Billcliffe
• Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings by Edward S. Morse
• California Mediterranean by Melba Levick
• Rustic Fireplaces by Ralph Kylloe
• Wooden Houses by Judith Miller
• The New Bungalow Kitchen by Peter Labau
• Wood: Contemporary Houses in Wood by Joaquim Ballarin
• Creating a New Old House by Russell Versaci
• Craftsman & Other Timeless Dream Homes by Designs Direct Publishing
• California Romantica by D. J. Waldie and Diane Keaton

Sheba Wheeler, a writer for the Denver Post, recently had the opportunity to ask a few questions of Minneapolis architect Sarah Nettleton, whose recent book The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough "argues for need over trends." Basically, she's pushing the continued integration of the basic tenets of the Arts & Crafts movement into contemporary architectural design and redesign.

Nettleton's basic mantra, or "six paths to simplicity" are:

1. simple is enough;
2. simple is thrifty;
3. simple is flexible;
4. simple is timeless;
5. simple is sustainable; and
6. simple is refined.

These bear a remarkable similarity to Edward De Bono's ten rules of simplicity, which certainly do need a wider audience, especially in the world of design - whether it's graphic design or house design. His own book, Simplicity, should be read by all architects and everyone planning any kind of new build project.

an excerpt from Wheeler's article:

Writing a book wasn't on Sarah Nettleton's to-do list.

But when Taunton Press came knocking, Nettleton pushed aside her drafting software.

This 30-year architecture veteran caught the publishing company's attention after winning national praise from the American Institute of Architects for her simple-living aesthetic.

Here, Nettleton shares her theory for getting more out of life with less, which is outlined in her new book, "The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough."

Q: How do you define simple?

A: In conversations I had with my editor, we kept coming back to defining simple by what it is not. It's not a style, it's not a location, not a city or county or price point.

I went to a different place within myself, to a time in my childhood growing up in New England. My father loved the idea of pounding a nail straight, of reusing a nail he'd taken out of something else instead of driving to the hardware store to get new nails. Each person has that opportunity - whether they are remodeling something in their current house or doing a new house - to (determine) what they need and what would really delight them, as opposed to "here's what's in style, we'd better just do that."

photograph by Randy O'Rourke for Taunton Press

Google Print is one of Google's numerous specialized search engines. It lets you peek inside any of several hundreds of thousands of books. You can't download & print, or even read through most books in their entirety (I imagine that would hurt book publishers, but a number of them - mostly out of print texts or those with permissive publishers - do allow you to read through the full text) but you can browse, seeing sample pages that have been okayed by the publishers or authors, or search through them for a particular phrase or word.

There are many book son the Arts & Crafts movement available, including some that are very photo-rich; here are a few dozen that I've found, which I think you'll appreciate.

Greene & Greene specific

• Greene & Greene: Creating a Style
• Greene & Greene for Kids
• Greene & Greene Masterworks
• Greene & Greene: The Blacker House

decoration, design & picturebooks

• Living in the Arts and Crafts Style
• Updating Classic America: Bungalows
• Bungalow Basics: Porches
• Bungalow Basics: Kitchens
• Bungalow Basics: Bathrooms
• Bungalow Colors: Exteriors
• The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live
• The New Bungalow
• Bungalow Style: Creating Classic Interiors in your Arts & Crafts Home
• Beyond the Bungalow: Grand Homes in the arts & Crafts Tradition
• Bungalow Details: Exterior
• Bungalow Details: Interior
• New Built-In Idea Book

essays & history

• Toward a Simpler Way of Live: The Arts & Crafts Architects of California
• Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts & Crafts Home
• The Chicago Bungalow
• Stickley Brothers

plans & remodeling

• Craftsman Bungalows: 59 Homes from The Craftsman
• The American Bungalow: 1880 - 1930
• Stickley's Craftsman Homes
• Japanese Cabinetry: The Art & Craft of Tansu
• More Craftsman Homes
• Blueprint Affordable: How to Build a Beautiful House Without Breaking the Bank
• Bungalow Plans
• Craftsman Style Houses / Fine Homebuilding
• 100 Turn-of-the-Century Brick Bungalows with Floor Plans
• Wardway Homes, Bungalows and Cottages 1925

woodwork & furniture

• Trim Carpentry Techniques
• Mission Furniture: How to Make It
• Illustrated Mission Furniture Catalog, 1912-1913
• Stickley Craftsman Furniture Catalogs: Unabridged Reprints
• How to Make Mission Style Lamps and Shades
• In the Craftsman Style: Building furniture Inspired by the Arts & Crafts Movement
• Arts & Crafts Furniture: From Classic to Contemporary
• David Charlesworth's Furniture-Making Techniques

Douglas Keister's 500 Bungalows ($12.95) is a neat book. A small but hefty soft-bound volume with hardly any text beyond a brief introduction, it is quite literally what it's title says: a photo essay of 500 bungalows, spanning the various permutations of the Arts & Crafts movement.

I am not usually effusive about books, but this one is terrific. Unlike so many of the big hardbound coffee-table photo books focusing on Arts & Crafts, this one makes no pretensions at all. It is a perfectly simple idea book for painting, landscaping or externally-remodeling your Craftsman or Mission home. If you're contemplating a paint job or adding a bit of "curb appeal" to your home, this may not show you how to do it, but it will certainly give you five hundred ideas. And at less than $15, it's a great gift idea for the bungalow-lover (or anyone eternally working on an old house) on your shopping list.

The only thing that would have made it a little bit better would be perhaps year/architect information on some of the more unique homes - like the amazing Japanese-inspired bungalow (#13) in Pasadena, which looks like Greene & Greene pushed almost to abstraction. Additionally, the form factor of the book suggests postcards; I bet a postcard book, with maybe 50 selected images from this volume, would sell really well. Think about that, Taunton!

Ray Stubblebine, Stickley’s Craftsman Homes, Gibbs Smith, 2006

Ray Stubblebine’s new volume, a lifetime’s magnum opus, provides an exhaustive review of the homes promoted by Gustav Stickley over the years of publication of his Craftsman magazine. Published from 1901 to 1915, The Craftsman was a vital component of the first American Arts and Crafts movement, promoting its spirit, theory, and style in a fashion that was far more democratic — far more accessible, and relevant, to ordinary citizens — than its English counterpart.

While Gustav Stickley will ever be associated with furniture, especially given the auction prices his best pieces fetch, and the high profile of the family brand in recent years, he was also a tireless promoter of arts and crafts sensibility as an approach to building, so much so that his Craftsman nomenclature has become associated with a particular architectural style — the rustic, woody, slope roofed, shingled and porched medium size homes that are so much a treasured part, coast to coast, of the American build tradition. While The Craftsman magazine offered plans and commentary on an eclectic range of vernacular styles, many quite un-bungalow, un-Craftsman-like in outward appearance, his interiors were distinctly arts and crafts, with their paneling and art lamps and cozy fireplaces.

Stubblebine’s great achievement is providing, in one hefty volume, a complete catalog of house designs published in The Craftsman, along with a description of each, floor plans, and photographs, both historical and contemporary.  In his nineteen years of Stickley investigation, Stubblebine located examples of a good portion of the homes, presenting them chronologically from 1904 to 1916 — some 220 separate designs.

Introductory chapters introduce the Craftsman “idea,” provide wonderful photos and detail on the homes Stickley designed for himself and his family, and discuss arts and crafts colors, the missing element, of course, in the mainly black and white magazine layouts of the era. Stubblebine also addresses the question of Stickley’s contribution to the design of the homes presented in his magazine. Not an architect, the author suggests that “design director” would be an appropriate description, as Stickley set the tone and critiqued the work of the many architects who worked for his magazine over the years. The particular contribution of Harvey Ellis in the early years of the magazine is highlighted.

M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman, Updating Classic America: Bungalows, Taunton, 2006

Now available in paper, Connolly and Wasserman’s Updating Classic America: Bungalows (originally published hardbound in 2002) provides a practical guidebook for homeowners contemplating bungalow renovations, remodels, and enlargements. This handsome, well illustrated volume, is full of useful bungalow information and perspectives - a bit of history, a stab at defining the always illusive bungalow concept, useful sketches of the basic “elements of style,” both internal and external, and a sidebar glossary of basic architectural and building concepts.

The heart of the book, though, is a primer for updating bungalows to modern needs and sensibilities - keeping the distinctive and comfortable bungalow essence while adapting for space, light, ventilation, efficiency, and today’s kitchen and bath requirements.  One chapter addresses interior remodeling - particularly the opportunities and challenges involved in converting attics into bedrooms, baths, and studies.  Another describes the overhaul (“frog to a prince”) of a ramshackle 1912 Seattle bungalow with just 900 square feet of usable living space into a modern tiled, floored, and wainscoted 3000 square foot gem, with the formerly uninhabitable attic and basement converted into useable space.

Loaded with bright original photographs, briskly written, with plenty of before and after floor plans and sensible advice, Updating Classic America: Bungalows is a valuable addition to the ever-growing bungalow literature.

My colleague Derek Martin, a woodworker here in Sacramento, was kind enough to review a copy of Aldren Watson's Country Furniture for Hewn & Hammered. The book is a reprint of the 1957 original edition, and includes all original illustrations.

As an avid hobbyist for the last fifteen or so years, I have spent much of my free time focused on wood working. It came as no surprise to me that I would enjoy reading this book after quickly skimming through it to see some wonderful illustrations that would get my immediate attention and spark my interest in reading it as well.

This book not only examined the materials and techniques that were used by master craftsmen of past centuries, but also addressed even the most subtle changes in wood furniture building up to more recent times. Changes to this art form mentioned by Mr. Watson were mainly brought on by wood supply, reengineered tools, and the evolving change in personal tastes.

As a modern day woodworker with fairly modern day tools I now have a greater appreciation for those who developed and made popular the art of crafting wood. I also have a better understanding of how making hand-crafted pieces from wood started out of necessity and not just for the beauty of it’s finished product. All different types of woods from all different places on the map were used initially for their hardness, longevity, availability and then their beauty.

The illustrations in this book alone are worth picking it up for, but just wait until you see and read about joinery that could help you in your next project. I have already experimented with some techniques that I learned in the book and I was fully satisfied with the result.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in woodworking or even collecting antique furniture. I will end by saying that this book was loaded with information and the illustrations were the icing on the cake to say the least.

Judith B. Tankard, Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 2004.

This handsomely produced volume takes us through the theory and practice of the Arts and Crafts Garden from the era of William Morris up to the present in pictures, photographs, garden plans, and text.

For those familiar with the house and home aspects of the English Arts and Crafts movement, Tankard’s book will be a delight, and an education. Gardens, like buildings and furnishings, were a venue for reform and innovation, an opportunity to express integrity and beauty, and a chance to move beyond the artificiality of the dominant Victorian paradigm. For garden design, this meant rejecting Victorian orderliness and ostentation in favor of naturalism and informality. While certainly not “simple” gardens - Tankard’s illustrations portray wonderfully green lawns, orderly hedges, topiary, rustic steps and garden pools and fountains, along with roses and, typically, local flowers - the overall effect is an inviting one of comfort and ease rather than grandeur.

Garden design evoked considerable discussion during the height of the Arts and Crafts period, especially given the fact that the famous architects of the day (C. F. A. Vosey, M. H. Baillie Scott) viewed house and garden as a unified whole. As Tankard says, the Arts and Crafts movement “gave gardens a new definition as a harmonious component of the house. Gardens … were never an end in themselves, but were intertwined with the house like ivy growing on a wall, blurring the distinctions between indoors and outdoors.”

Tankard’s volume focuses on the homes and gardens of England, with modest attention given to the United States (and none at all to other countries). This I think is appropriate given England’s preeminent gardens and landscapes. The reader is given an extensive tour of over a hundred gardens, with full commentary on their design as well as the garden philosophy of their architects.  The contributions of Gertrude Jekyll and Thomas Mawson, the most distinguished landscape architects of the era, are given especial attention, and an entire chapter is devoted to the renowned English gardens created by the collaboration of the architect Edwin Lutyens and Jekyll.

Architecture Radio is a wonderful online lecture series and covers an enormous range of topics - and I am ashamed to write that I did not know about this terrific resource until today. A relatively recent lecture (mp3; recorded at the Boston Public Library on 05.05, published 09.05) by Maureen Meister, author of Architecture and the Arts & Crafts Movement in Boston: Harvard's H. Langford Warren (the first full-length study of this very important turn-of-the-century architect, educator and movement leader) and editor of H. H. Richardson: The Architect, His Peers and Their Era is devoted to the Arts & Crafts Movement in Boston.

Old House Interiors writes of her book on H. Langford Warren that “(she) makes the point that some architects are influential because they have a lot of clients, while others exert their influence less directly - but more widely - through students… Warren's own blend of Gothic, Georgian, and Colonial forms was perceived as the proper New England style long after his death in 1917. In serving the Society of Arts and Crafts for longer than anyone else, Warren further imprinted area taste.”

Paraphrased the jacket of her most recent book: 'Maureen Meister has taught art history courses at the Art Institute of Boston, Lesley University, Northeastern University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston since 1982. In recent years she has lectured on American architecture at Tufts University.' And she has a very nice voice, too.

Just got the premiere issue of Arts & Crafts Homes, a new magazine from the same folks who make Old House Interiors. Several things recommend it over American Bungalow, which I do also enjoy - better quality printing and sharper photographs; far better typography and better laid-out pages (in fact, generally better art direction than most home magazines, and more sensitivity to the subtleties of type); a wider range of subject material - they are not quite as orthodox as Style 1900 and American Bungalow; and a better article-to-ad ratio. Of course, that last one could simply be a symptom of this being the firsts issue, so I'll have to keep reading to find out if it stays true.

It's definitely worth picking up a copy; the current issue has extensive articles on Chicago bungalows, new work from a California artisans guild (including Debey Zito) and lots (really!) more.

Pamela Todd, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Home, photographs by Chris Tubbs, Chronicle Books, 2005

Pamela Todd and Chris Tubbs have compiled a welcome overview of the life, the philosophy, the works, and the influence of William Morris, the English 19th century polymath who is universally considered the father of the Arts and Crafts style. Morris (1834-1896), best known as a designer of floral textiles and wallpapers, promoted an arts and crafts aesthetic even before the appellation was invented, opening his London shop 1861 to sell hand crafted furniture, stained glass, and miscellaneous decorative products to the modestly avant guarde consumers of the period, upper middle-class consumers disgusted with mass produced products and Victorian excess. In the years that followed he and a range of talented associates pioneered new design principles that powerfully influenced English, and later American, architecture and interior furnishings.

This book focuses on the Arts and Crafts home, devoting text and pictures first to the homes Morris himself lived in (Red House in Kent and Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswolds) and then presenting six “case studies” of Morris principles applied to a manor house, a country house, a town house, a mansion, a farm house, and a late-Victorian terraced home.

All of these homes, handsomely photographed, share Morris’ distinctive style - handmade crafts; natural colors; a tendency toward the gothic; furniture that, by the standards of the period at least, were simply designed; painted and papered walls; richly floral rugs.

While a bit elaborate for American Arts and Crafts sensibilities - here the style associates more with middle class bungalows, wood shingles, paneled walls, and Stickleyesque furniture - Morris’ principles set the tone for design conscious homeowners then, and now. His legacy - homes and furnishings that are simple, solid, beautiful, and functional - carries on.

Leslie M. Freudenheim, Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Home, Gibbs Smith, 2005.

Leslie M. Freudenheim’s Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Home, is a reworking of her earlier (1974) Building with Nature, Roots of the San Francisco Bay Region Tradition, written with Elizabeth Sussman. Her new book has two objectives - one descriptive, one argumentative.  Freudenheim, first, presents a thorough overview of the first three decades (1880-1910) of the California Arts and Crafts movement, especially in terms of its architecture. Second, she argues a thesis - that the Reverend Joseph Worcester, known best as the leader and first minister of San Francisco’s famous Swendenborgian church, was the central instigator, advocate, and proponent of the movement.

The book excels as a general introduction to the Bay Area’s pioneering Arts and Crafts community - its practitioners, its theory, its practice, and its influence.  With an engaging and conversational tone, Freudenheim traces the work and interactions of the movement’s founders - Bernard Maybeck, Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, John Hudson Thomas, John  Galen Howard, and others who created the Craftsman aesthetic - simple structures, unpainted shingles, wood interiors with furniture built in, overhanging eves, and (relative) affordability. The text is wonderfully supplemented with sepia photographs.

The less successful element of Freudenheim’s book is her thesis giving Joseph Worcester central position as inventor of the Bay Area style. Speculating broadly from private correspondence and scrapbooks, she portrays Worcester not only as the most influential advocate and disseminator of the arts and crafts philosophy but also as the hidden intelligence behind much of its noteworthy architecture.

The 1976 Piedmont bungalow Worcester designed for himself,  for example, she anoints as the Ur-cottage, the shingled bungalow prototype for all that was to come. His rustic cottage, she posits, so impressed his young neighbor, Bernard Maybeck, that Maybeck emulated its principles in his own Berkeley buildings. The Worcester designed homes on San Francisco’s Russian Hill, build some 10 years later, brought Arts and Crafts across the Bay, establishing a model that then spread through California, and beyond.

Similarly, she credits Worcester with inspiring the famous “mission” styled chair built for the Swendenborgian church, and with working behind the scenes to bring John Galen Howard to Berkeley as campus architect. According to Freudenheim, Worcester felt that Howard was likely to be far more sympathetic to the Arts and Crafts orientation than the Beaux Arts architect who actually prevailed in Phoebe Apperson Hearst’s famous campus design competition of 1899. “Worcester engineered Howard’s selection,” she writes, implying that he also powerfully influenced Howard’s own plans for campus buildings.

As history, Freudenheim’s speculations concerning Worcester’s preeminence rarely rise beyond the level of conjecture, and Freudenheim does hedge her thesis with myriad “we can speculate’s,”  “it is likely’s,” and “perhaps’s.”  While her hypothesis remains shaky, the book as a whole provides a refreshing retelling of Bay Area architectural history, and the valuable contributions of one of its lesser-known participants.

One of my favorite publishers, Gibbs Smith, has put out number of books on Arts & Crafts cabins and associated styles of rustic homes in the last few years and I've had a few weeks to read through all of them. They're all by two people, both of whom must be especially attached to this particular style of home, and here in part 1 I'll write a little bit about the two books by Robbin Obomsawin, a general contractor and the construction manager at Beaver Creek Log Homes in Oneida, who has 20+ years of log-joinery experience.

My favorite of the bunch is Robbin Obomsawin's The Arts & Crafts Cabin, which is jam-packed with Roger Wade's photographs of high-style rustic cabins. Unlike so many architecture picturebooks that I've been unhappy with this past year, here most of the photos are cropped to give you the context of a full room or larger space which makes the details pictured make a lot more sense. A lot of these homes really stretch the definition of "cabin" - these are big, beautiful Arts & Crafts homes that happen to be in (mostly) rural areas and make use of lots of rough-hewn exposed wood, earthtones and hammered metal. As the owner of a 1920s California bungalow myself, I tend to look at books like these as idea sources for my own endless remodeling and restoration projects, and just because these homes are more ultimate cabins than classic bungalows, there's still plenty useful here.

The author's attention to cabin-specific features - components like outdoor fireplaces, overhanging eaves, exposed beams, etcetera - will be useful for those building one of these moutain castles. One section on space-saving techniques is slightly laughable, given the immense square footage of most of these places, although I suppose its lessons extend to smaller homes. Overall, I found it an interesting and useful introduction to the style, and it certainly bridges the gap between city bungalow and the rustic aspects of the early Arts & Crafts movement.

Obomsawin also wrote The Adirondack Cabin (with photographs by Nancie Battaglia), which is a gallery of much smaller homes - definitely more in the direction of what you'd imagine a cabin is, and many of which are what a cabin was well over 100 years ago. These modest homes dot the crests and valleys of the Adirondacks; some are lakefront vacation retreats, others simple small-town homes, and a few are true mountain-man retreats, deep in the woods. All have a tremendous amount of character - less evocative of a philosophy or movement, as the homes in the former book did, and more a reminder of the survival needs of the settlers of this beautiful but hard region; Obomsawin pays a lot of attention to this history, though, and much of the book is about the evolution of the Adirondack style (or anti-style) and the common features of these structures.

Battaglia's photography is attractive and there are plenty of shots of exteriors, although i do wish that the author and photographer had included more interior shots. One particularly nice feature are the simple line drawings showing different design motifs - various types of rails; door, window and shutter designs, and types of trusses and rooflines. The author's experience and profession comes out in the clear and well-illustrated section of sample plans and a discussion of building materials and wall construction which rounds out the book.

Beyond the Bungalow: Grand Homes in the Arts and Crafts Tradition, Gibbs Smith, 2005.      

Paul Duchscherer's latest foray into bungalowbilia doesn't really deal with bungalows at all.  His Beyond the Bungalow (brightly photographed by Linda Svendsen), on the heels of his earlier The Bungalow (1995), Inside the Bungalow  (1997), and Outside the Bungalow (1999), examines, as its subtitle explains, grand homes in the Arts and Crafts tradition. An effort at nomenclature as well as explanation, this latest volume classifies and describes those larger-than-bungalow homes that share, in their design principles and philosophy, at least a family resemblance to the, if you will, basic bungalow.

While some might question denying big homes the bungalow rubric (Duchscherer recognizes the problem given the majestic Greene and Greene "ultimate bungalows"), he makes a strong case for recognizing separately the relevance and beauty of those two and three-story large footprint houses of the 1900-1930 era that so impressively remind us of the best of American pre-Depression residential architecture. His typology of the big home is fourpart - The American Foursquare, The Rustic Home, Craftsman (which he describes as classic Arts and Crafts), and Craftsman Crossovers, with its own nine subcategories: Swiss Chalet, Oriental Style, Prairie, Shingle, Colonial Revival, Mission, Spanish Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival, and English Cottage Style. Each type is described generically and illustrated with exemplar cases.

The book, certainly a handsome volume, is saddled with an unfortunately undersized type, and a rather abrupt ending. A useful list of open-to-the public historic homes is appended.

Author and very accomplished furnituremaker Darrell Peart wrote up a short note about his new book, Greene and Greene: Design Elements for the Workshop, which will be released by Linden in April 2006. You can preorder Darrell's book now from Amazon using the preceding link, or find it at your local bookstore after that date. Just as Darrell's advice is invaluable to the woodworkers on the Greene & Greene furniture listserv that I subscribe to, this book promises to be a tremendously useful (and very affordable!) resource to any furnituremaker interested in Greene & Greene style and techniques:

With a series of fully illustrated step-by-step procedures my book offers the reader instructions for producing the essential Greene and Greene details.

• cloud-lifts
• Blacker leg indent detail
• ebony buttons (plugs)
• exposed ebony spline and breadboard construction
• Blacker Pull
• Blacker brackets
• relief detail

The book also includes background information on the designers of the furniture, Charles and Henry Greene, and the craftsmen who built the furniture, Peter and John Hall. Just as Charles and Henry (Greene) were in many ways opposites, so it was with Peter and John (Hall). Their strong and weak points complimented one another. I have included examples of personal work by the individual Hall brothers. Some of my thoughts on the design process are included as well as examples of G&G inspired work by contemporary furniture makers.

I encourage readers of my book to use the information given as a starting point to create their own designs using the G&G vocabulary. Some of my thoughts on the Design process are included as well as examples of G&G inspired work by contemporary furniture makers. I encourage readers of my book to use the information given as a starting point to create their own designs using the G&G vocabulary.

Last year, Keith Wiesinger of the Wilson Crafts Guild had the opportunity to see the Byrdcliffe traveling exhibit and wrote up an excellent review for us. I was recently given a copy of the book Byrdcliffe: an American Arts & Crafts Colony, produced by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art as a catalog for the exhibit, and have spent the past few days reading it.

To call it simply a catalog of a museum exhibit, though, is to do a disservice to the book and its authors. An ethnography of the Byrdcliffe community, a personal history of its founders, and a very thorough meditation on what drew them together and the philosophy that informed their work - that's a far better description of this book. Editor Nancy Green is the Senior Curator at Cornell's Johnson Museum, and she's assembled a number of extended essays here: a very complete history of Byrdcliffe, by Tom Wolf; her own essay on "the Reality of Beauty," tying Whitehead to Ruskin, Morris and their reactions to Victorian culture; Heidi Nasstrom Evans' inquiry into the life and work of Jane Byrd McCallWhitehead, the cofounder of the Byrdcliffe school and backbone of the community itself; Robert Edwards' excellent and well-illustrated dissection of Byrdcliffe furniture; Tom Wolf's general discussion of art at Byrdcliffe; a catalog and examination of Byrdcliffe ceramics by Ellen Denker and a very thorough analysis of Byrdcliffe architecture and its relationship to the natural landscape of the Catskills.

I myself had seen Byrdliffe furniture before, but had no knowledge of the utopian community that spawned the movement, or the art school that generated the simple and subtle Byrdcliffe glazes and White Pine(s) pieces. The beautifully rustic handpainted tiles, bowls, vases and other usefully everyday objects are relatively rare today, of course, and there were never many made to begin with, but I was still surprised that I didn't know much at all about such an important part of American A&C ceramics history.

The book is well-illustrated but is by no means a "coffee table" picturebook; while it's more than a catalog, it is a catalog, too, with pages upon pages of accessioning data relating to the hundreds of items in the exhibit and their provenance. The essays are not too dense to pick up and read for pleasure, though, unlike many such books, and I think anyone interested in the roots of American A&C - or looking for new inspiration in their own work - will find quite a bit worth reading and looking at in what has been until recently a relatively forgotten corner of the A&C world. I'm glad that Byrdliffe is getting its due in the publication of this book and the production of the exhibit, which I suggest you see when it comes to a museum near you.

My only problems with the book are aesthetic. Perhaps it would have been slightly more accessible if it were a bit more of a "coffee table" gift book. I don't think the essays should be reduced in length, but higher quality printing, better paper (the softcover shows wear within a few hours of reading), a bit more editing of the photographs, and inclusion of more of them - and larger use of the best! - as well as a less-dense layout would have improved it tremendously. However, I hope that doesn't dissuade anyone who is interested in the philosophical underpinnings of the movement and the history of A&C in this country from reading the book; it provides a glimpse into the transferrence of English A&C to American that is missing (obviously) in the recent catalog of the V&A show, and takes a backseat to the objects themselves in the catalog of the LACMA show. It is very much worth reading.

This 12-page PDF is excerpted from Taunton's Updating Classic America: Bungalows by M. Caren Connolly and Louis Wasserman. It details a particularly interesting remodel / restore of a Seattle bungalow with great external stone features and a terrific kitchen.

Christian and Christen Gladu, Bungalow Plans, Gibbs Smith, Salt Lake City, 2002.

The second coming of the arts and crafts movement brings with it a revival of many of the aspects of original era. In Bungalow Plans, Gladu and Gladu continue the tradition of disseminating house plans originally promoted by pioneers like  Gustav Stickley who, through magazines and catalogs, offered the broad middle class architectural drawings - plans of simple, affordable, well designed homes - that incorporated the Arts and Crafts ideals of John Ruskin and William Morris.

The Gladus offer 25 bungalow plans in their book, each accompanied by photographs, text, and information on designers and builders. Their aim is not only to show different kinds of  homes - everything from 600 square foot garlows (not yet in my on-line dictionary, but apparently garage and other "accessory" units) to 4000 square foot "ultimate" bungalows - but to provide practical advice on adapting stock  plans to modern, especially environmental, concerns. Introductory chapters put the plan book approach in historical perspective and offer useful context on "bungalow anatomy" and building costs. A section on resources concludes the volume.

Linda Parry, Textiles of the Arts & Crafts Movement, new edition, Thames and Hudson, 2005.

Parry, a Deputy Keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, completed the original version of this book to commemorate the centenary of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, the organization that from its founding in1888 to 1916 provided the primary British venue for showcasing the range of the new decorative art - furniture, rugs, metalwork, textiles - that so influenced the fashion, furnishings and architecture of the era. The Society not only gave us the term - "arts and crafts" - that has come to encapsulate the movement, it provided respectability to an alternative art and design form built upon craft, modest studio and workshop production, and sympathetic retailers, an art form that enjoyed broad public success then, and now, in  revival for the past 30 years.

Parry's focus on textiles shown in the Exhibition Society shows limits her survey of course, not only by geography (the exhibitors were all British), but by period. While she provides an introductory chapter on arts and crafts principles and reviews the work of early practitioners including William Morris, the major contribution of the book, and what gives it its uniqueness, is the detailed and comprehensive description of the exhibited textiles in terms of design, materials, production, technology, and sales. Parry’s thesis, so far as there is one, is that the exhibitions, by giving extensive space and attention to textiles, provided a new legitimacy for the medium, moving it, along with the other decorative arts, toward greater parity with painting and sculpture.

This book, one of a recent spate of specialized volumes on textiles, is  probably more for the specialist than the general interested reader. While the text is on the clunky side, the book’s extensive color illustrations of rugs, wallpapers, woven and printed fabrics, lace, and clothing are wonderful. Parry also provides a useful directory of textile designers, craftsmen, manufacturers and retailers.

Our friend Richard Kegler of P22 (who sell some very detailed and well-designed Craftsman typefaces) is one of the instructors at the following Roycroft workshop, which should be of interest to our readers in the northeast, Roycroft fans throughout the country and anyone interested in fine printing and bookbinding:

The Roycroft Crafts community of Elbert Hubbard circa 1896-1915 produced astonishing amounts of hand crafted items that have become highly collectable and highly regarded. The Roycroft Campus Corporation presents a weekend workshop series which allows participants to work as artisans did 100 years ago.

A collaborative workshop series will take participants through all facets of book production. Participants will work on components of one of three books throughout the weekend. Workshops include:  papermaking, paper decoration, hand set type, hand printing, printmaking, illumination, and various binding techniques. Each participant will take home new skills in the book arts as well as a copy of one of the three books. These will be the first Roycroft books to be made at the Campus in over 60 years!

Roycroft Book-Arts Weekend: Oct 14 - 16, 2005
Roycroft Campus Coppershop South Grove at Main, East Aurora NY

Jaap Eerland and Marx Warmerdam's Delta 98 buys and sells items of decorative art - "art and applied art" - located in Den Haag, Netherlands. Their large stock of (mostly) small items includes objects from the Nouveau, Deco, Arts & Crafts, Jugenstil, De Stijl, Bauhaus and Modernisme movements, and their stock ranges from glass, ceramics and metalware to books, furniture, posters and plenty more. Their current stock of books - including a number of volumes of especially rare or otherwise notable Arts & Crafts-related volumes - is especially impressive. They will be exhibiting at the 2006 Art Deco Fair in The Hague, and are also standholders at the regular summartime Den Haag Antique Market, May 12 - September 25, at the Lange Voorhout.

+ Delta 98 Den Haag: van Leeuwenhoekstraat 65, 2516 GH Den Haag, The Netherlands
+ t 0031.70.388.79.18 (from abroad)

essays by Matthew Bialecki, Christian Gladu, Jill Kessenich, Jim McCord, Su Bacon

"Could anyone have predicted in the early 1920s, when the original Arts & Crafts movement died out, that it would enjoy a revival that would start some fifty years later and last longer than the original movement?" So begins architect Matthew Bialecki's introduction to Gibbs-Smith's The New Bungalow. In this and other essays, the authors investigate not so much the classic designs and styles of the American Arts & Crafts movement, but rather their modern and contemporary reinterpretations in architectural, interior and furniture design.

As Bialecki points out, A&C style "has evolved into a national style phenomenon," where cheap and often poorly-made "Mission-style" furniture is available even at big-box retailers, and local restaurants and hotels across the country are designed in modernized variants of the Prairie, Craftsman and Mission aesthetic. Bialecki, in the first essay, proposes that a modern proto-luddite rejection of the mass-produced-in-appearance (which also, ironically, drives sales of mass-produced faux-Craftsman goods) might be promoting the increasing popularity of nature-based architecture, specifically the Craftsman-styled open plans that emphasize natural materials, light and landscape. (read the rest of the review after the link, below)

This year's calendar: 12 months of William Morris textile and wallpaper designs. I'm looking forward to hanging this in the kitchen. The printing is unusually good and the paper nice and glossy, and the unorthodox narrow vertical shape will fit the odd space I want to hang it in.

Suzi Moore McGregor & Nora Burba Trulsson's Living Homes profiles the design and construction of twenty-two homes - all constructed using the various principles and techniques of sustainable building - throughout the Western United States. 7 adobe homes, 5 rammed-earth houses, 5 straw bale structures and 4 reinvented / recycled / high-tech material buildings are examined. The homes are built in a wide variety of architectural styles: contemporary steel and earth constructions, pueblo and spanish revival rancheros, mission and craftsman cottages. All are both an expression of their owners' and builders' character and the philosophy of the green building movement made real.

This is not a book review, per se, but rather a publisher review. I've got a stack of relatively recent books on the Arts & Crafts movement in general to review, and this is sort of an appetizer for the many upcoming book reviews that we'll be printing throughout the next several weeks.

Gibbs-Smith, located in Layton, Utah of all places, give their corporate motto as "to enrich and inspire humankind." This may be the kind of thing you expect to read on the letterhead of a big art book publisher, but they do strive to meet these lofty goals.

pictured: one of Yoshiko Yamamoto's letterpress-printed cards

Heather and Earl Adams' Designing a Home with Wood is more an homage to the world's most versatile and expressive building material than a builder's instruction manual, but it certainly offers plenty of examples and good advice for those contemplating novel and attractive uses of a wide variety of woods (and wood-based or related building materials).

The past month has been a good one for those of us with a bit to spend on new books; of the various review copies I've received and the books I've bought and browsed, these are a few of the past month's highlights. I'm also including a few that won't see wide distribution until later this month or early November.

I saw this book over on House in Progress and had to have it - it was published by Taunton in 1997 but I hadn't seen it at Builder's Booksource and had no idea it existed. Tolpin's excellent idea book on built-ins of all types covers period and modern creations, and addresses both the planning and building of new built-ins in existing and new spaces, and the restoration of older woodwork.

As our friends at HiP noted in Tolpin's text,

The Bungalow Philosophy emphasized creating a space that was easier to clean and keep organized. Built-in furniture played a large part in accomplishing these goals.

It's an excellent reference & the wonderful illustrations should be helpful to anyone wanting to insert this kind of detail into a new project, or to restore older built-ins to their original glory. I'm hoping to use Tolpin's advice in the planning of my new kitchen, the execution of which will be detailed here on Hewn & Hammered.

This is awfully pretty - Douglas Keister and Paul Duchscherer (the pair responsible for many books on the subject) have collaborated on a 2005 calendar full of photographs of great American bungalows.

Bill Ewald's Argus Books & Graphics carries the largest stock of antique & otherwise rare books and ephemera related to the Arts & Crafts movement that I have ever seen. I've bought a few things from him, including a few excellent type specimen books, but after browsing much of his stock that he brought to the SF A&C show this past weekend, I can't wait to see a bit more of it. Bill's shop in Sacramento closed a few years ago and now he is selling primarily via mail order and at shows and fairs. It would be difficult to find a kinder & more helpful person with the knowledge of the field that Bill has; if you are looking for something in particular, please write him an email.