Greene & Greene at the Renwick

Two weeks ago, I made it out to the Renwick Gallery to see the Greene & Greene show. After some slight confusion on my part as to where it’s actually located (hint—it’s right behind the Old Executive Office Building), I was quite pleased with the quality of the exhibition, but since I had gotten lost, I didn’t have enough time to read everything before the museum closed for the night.

Not only did they have a great collection of letters and photographs, they also showed some of the original architectural plans. The level of detail the Greenes went to on those plans was quite OCD—plans for all the lighting, furniture, stained glass—very much in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright. These were architects with Vision.

As usual though, my favorite part was the furniture. Of course, pictures can't do it justice. It's so difficult to reproduce the glow of wood photographically, especially when you add 100 years of patina. So here are some of the highlights courtesy of the Gamble House website.

Charles Sumner Greene
Breakfast table, 1899
Douglas fir, cedar, oak, mahogany, and birch
Wedding present for his wife, Alice
Guardian Stewardship
Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, New York

Greene & Greene
Desk chair, ca. 1905
Ash
Adelaide A. Tichenor house, Long Beach, 1904–05
Guardian Stewardship
Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, New York

Greene & Greene
Hall chair, 1907
Mahogany and ebony
Made by Peter and John Hall
Dr. William T. Bolton house, Pasadena, 1906­–07
Guardian Stewardship
Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s, New York

Greene & Greene
Bookcase, ca. 1912
Mahogany, ebony, and glass
Made by Peter and John Hall
Cordelia A. Culbertson house, Pasadena, 1911–13
Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Gift of Linda and James Ries in memory of
Dorothy and Harold Shrier
(AC1997.105.1)
Photography © 2007 Museum Associates/LACMA

Most of these pieces are from their early to mid-career, but what surprised me most about this later piece was how modern it looks. Take away the leaded glass and it really starts to look more like part of the Modernist movement than the Arts & Crafts movement.

All in all, the best way to see these pieces is in person. So if you're anywhere near DC, I highly recommend that you check out the exhibit before it closes on June 7th. Here's the Smithsonian page on the exhibition, with a link to the online exhibition produced by the Gamble House.

Shop Local: Etsy DC

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that I love Etsy, the online marketplace for vintage goods and crafts of all sorts. In the spirit of The 3/50 Project, today I thought I'd share some of my favorite local Etsy sellers and introduce you to a neat feature Etsy implemented a while ago called Shop Local.

Here is Jason McClellan of Sidewinder Studio, who also works here at Hardwood Artisans.


And Annie of imogene., who made the tree-shaped earrings customers always ask me about when I wear them in the showrooms.


And finally, Rania of shoofly, who I have featured before, but is is currently showing some gorgeous Moleskine notebooks.


So not only can you now shop handmade, you can also shop local.

Happy Etsying!

The 3/50 Project

We’ve talked about supporting local businesses here on the blog before. In fact, the business that we originally featured (Black Wolf Coffee in Warrenton) has just announced that it is shutting down for good.
Mark is, to put it mildly, heart-broken.

It’s such a sad fact of this economy that the first to go will not be the local Starbucks or Barnes & Noble, but that wonderful independent bookstore you love (as beloved Washington chain Olsson’s Books and Records closed last year) or the coffee house where they always remember what you order and start making it for you when they see you pull into the parking lot.

Enter The 3/50 Project. Started by Cinda Baxter at the Always Upward blog, the 3/50 Project asks supporters to commit to spending $50 per month at three local stores of your choice. It’s such a simple concept, but look how powerful it could be:

I’ve signed up. So should you.

Time to Step Up

You and I may be doing fine, but with unemployment at over 8%, a lot of people could use a little extra help right now.

An article in our local paper (the News and Messenger, not the Post) down here in Woodbridge underscored the need for giving what you can right now, especially to food banks.

For several months now, Hardwood Artisans has had a partnership with ACTS (Action in the Community Through Service), a Dumfries, Virginia-based non-profit organization. It started with a furniture donation drive over the holidays to support their thrift stores.

Next month, Hardwood Artisans will be hosting the Prince William Regional Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours at our workshop in Woodbridge. We have requested that those attending bring a non-perishable food item for donation to ACTS. It’s a small thing, but every little bit counts.

So if you’re attending, don’t forget to bring that canned good! And if you’re not, consider dropping by a local food bank or church. They’ll be happy to take your donation.

Luxury

My lovely wife, Erika, has been laying her clothes on the bathroom floor for the last few weeks. No, she hasn’t gone insane, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

When we built our home eight years ago, we added a few “luxury” things, like a heated floor system in the master bath. We had some problems with the system initially, so we didn’t use it much until this year.

So, I got up this morning to 12 degree weather, snow and ice everywhere, and winds of 30mph. After taking a ridiculously hot shower – the kind that takes skin off, I hop out to slide into warm socks…and jeans…and shirt. There is very little in this world that is better than the feeling of being engulfed by warmth, especially on a morning like this one.

I felt bad having splurged on a heated floor and the electricity it consumes, until I remember that my lovely wife, Erika, has yet to turn on the heater this year! The wood stove is working overtime for sure. Tabby, our cat, really appreciates the heated floor too.

While it seems like an unnecessary cost, the actual cost of running the heated floor is about the same as leaving on a table lamp. This versus the cost of running a heating system in a house makes the heated floor seem like a good, not so luxurious, item to splurge on.

While many people consider our furniture a luxury, I never have. I consider it a good value. To me this means something that lasts, is appreciated often, and has more value for the purchaser than the cost of the item itself.

The Power of the Internet

The web is a funny thing. Some days I can't find what I want and I think all this online stuff is just a big waste of time. (I sound like Mark, don't I? No, this is Alison.)

But other days, I think it's great. (That's better.)

For those of you who don't know, Hardwood Artisans is also on Twitter. What's Twitter? It's like a blog, but everything has to be said in 140 characters or less. It's an interesting mode of communication because it requires you to be concise. Sometimes I feel like I'm back in 11th grade English with Mrs. Avery telling me to eliminate all flowery language. No adverbs! No infinitives! If you use "however" or "anyway" you will be shot!

Anyway, this week, I sent one of Tom Heath's Washington Post columns over to a guy named Ben McConnell, who wrote "Creating Customer Evangelists". He then sent it out to all the people who read him as a great example of marketing coverage by mainstream media, giving me credit. If you're a rock music fan, this is like being acknowledged by Mick Jagger or Eric Clapton. Wow.

Next, Mark was trying to design a piece of furniture for a customer that involves round legs. Since we don't usually do round legs, we were going to have to buy them from someone who does, but we couldn't find an appropriate supplier. Luckily, I happened to have met someone on Twitter a few weeks ago who does hand-turned wooden furniture legs: Within just a couple of hours, I had a drawing, I had a price and they told me they could mail them out today if I wanted them that fast. Wow again.

Just when my faith is lagging, something like this happens and all is right with the world again.

P.S. You can follow us on Twitter @furnituregirl.

The story of sycamore

For years and years, our founder, Greg Gloor, worked with a lumber mill to purchase quarter-sawn sycamore. Above, that's a picture of what quarter-sawn sycamore looks like at its best. Between us and another manufacturer in Vermont, the mill hoped to be able to sell enough of this not-very-popular wood to make drying it in quantity a profitable operation.

However, sycamore is hard to dry. It is prone to what is called “blue stain”—an infection in the wood that cause the surface of the board to turn, essentially, blue—and a couple of loads of stained wood killed the market. Stained wood of this type becomes virtually useless, as it isn’t pretty enough for anything but painting. The mill couldn’t get the prices they needed as a result and stopped the production of quarter-sawn sycamore.

We went through a period of time trying to cobble together enough stock from other suppliers to keep using it as a secondary wood in our drawers and an accent wood on other pieces, but only about five percent of the mills in the entire country quarter-saw lumber, making it very difficult to secure the quantity we need at a price we could afford.

We tried valiantly, but in the end, we had to give up. Ash is cut by many more mills and is competitively priced so finally, the Board decided to make the switch. We’d been phasing out the sycamore-sided pieces over the last year or so, but it has been taking too long so we finally decided to sell them off all at once.

We've also got a few pieces that have discontinued fabrics on them or that have been in the showrooms for a while. Click over to the floor model list and see what treasures you can unearth for your home!