Greene & Greene

Robert Roe and Nellie Celeste Canfield Blacker, Pasadena, California, 1908-1944
Private Collection
Sotheby's New York, June 19, 2007, lot 80
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Timothy J. Anderson, Eudorah M. Moore and Robert W. Winter, eds., California Design 1910, Salt Lake City, 1974, p. 106 (for a related rocking chair)
William R. Current and Karen Current, Greene & Greene: Architects in the Residential Style, Fort Worth, 1974, p. 56 (for a related rocking chair)
Randell L. Makinson, Greene & Greene: Furniture and Related Designs, Salt Lake City, 1979, pp. 63 (for a related chiffonier) and 85 (for related inlaid designs from the Freeman Ford House)
Wendy Kaplan, The Art that is Life: The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920, Boston, 1987, p. 406 (for a related rocking chair)
Leslie Greene Bowman, American Arts & Crafts: Virtue in Design, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 51 (for a related pair of rocking chairs and small table)
Randell L. Makinson, Greene & Greene: The Passion and the Legacy, Salt Lake City, 1998, p. 124 (for a related rug from the Gamble House)
Randell L. Makinson and Thomas A. Heinz, Greene & Greene: The Blacker House, Salt Lake City, 2000, p. 74 (for a related pair of rocking chairs), 75, 82 (for a related chiffonier) and 83
Randell L. Makinson and Thomas A. Heinz, Greene & Greene: Creating a Style, Layton, UT, 2004, p. 76 (for a related inlaid library table from the Freeman Ford House)
Marvin Rand, Greene & Greene, Layton, UT, 2005, p. 199 (for a detail of this inlaid chair splat design misattributed to the Gamble House)
Edward R. Bosley and Anne E. Mallek, eds., A New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene, London, 2008, pp. 10, 131 (for a related chiffonier) and 147 (for the present lot illustrated)

Greene & Greene and the American Arts & Crafts Movement, permanent exhibition, The Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, 1996-2007
A "New and Native" Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene and Greene, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, October 18, 2008-January 26, 2009; Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C., March 13-June 7, 2009; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July 14-October 18, 2009

This exquisitely inlaid side chair embodies the Greenes' key design principles of symmetrical linearity, purity of form and harmonious proportions prized in their mature high style. This rare side chair is one of only two known examples of the form, along with two rocking chairs designed en suite which display similar rear splat treatment. These two chair forms were designed for the Blacker master bedroom suite, and are believed to have been executed in pairs. 

Consistent with the Greenes’ practice of developing unique design programs to distinguish specific rooms within a residence, all of the master bedroom furniture was inlaid with a stylized “tree of life” motif articulated in abalone, silver, copper, and wood. This motif is related to a series of rugs designed by the Greenes for the David B. Gamble House. Three different watercolor renderings for the Gamble rugs illustrate a similar conventionalized device of a flowering tree with roots. The Gamble watercolor renderings are dated 1908, and suggest the Greenes were utilizing this motif at roughly the same time in both commissions. The inlay motifs on the Blacker master bedroom suite also speak to furniture executed for the Freeman A. Ford commission around 1907, which exhibits related linear and abstract inlay compositions. 

In addition to this side chair, several other pieces from the original master bedroom suite are presently accounted for in museum and private collections. A large architectonic chiffonier and dressing table were acquired for the permanent collection of the Museum of the Arts and Crafts Movement in St. Petersburg, Florida, while the mate to this side chair is believed to remain in a private California collection. The two previously mentioned rocking chairs and a small side table are in the collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Additionally, a writing table and sofa are privately owned. All of these designs display obvious associations with the repertoire of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and C.F.A. Voysey, most notably in their abstract inlay motifs, bifurcated chair splats and the stacked linear formations of the larger case pieces. 

This master bedroom side chair is tall, slender, and elegant; at least as much sculpture as it is a chair form. From E.W. Godwin to Frank Lloyd Wright, most designers have reached their purest expressions in creating side chairs, avoiding the compromises often necessary in arm and rocking chair forms. The front legs of the side chair are boldly vertical, softened only by the subtly rounded feet and smart ebony peg punctuations at the seat. The sophisticated tapering to the rear legs creates a dramatic trapezoidal footprint, the effect of which is heightened by the delicate side and cross stretchers. The rear stiles change shape numerous times bulging and tapering, turning and bending, and changing profile from the floor to the crest.

At the crest, we can see one of the ultimate pronouncements of the architects’ idiom as this single piece of mahogany ties together the arced and twisting splats, the resolution of the stiles along its curved plane and its own decorative motif, the double-cloud-lift reminiscent of designs on the first floor of the Blacker House. Edward S. Cooke described these features as “compound curves in the shaping of the crest rails, elaborate wood and metal inlays . . . and leg sections that are rarely rectangular (resulting in complex angles where seat rails and stretchers are joined to the legs).” The gorgeous complexity of this intersection of wood members and their joints and decoration moved Greene and Greene scholar Nina Gray to declare it the “sexiest chair ever made in America.”

Gray also referred to the tactile delight of handling the chair, referring to what Margaretta M. Lovell has termed “their finish meticulously specified to yield a silky smoothness not found in the work of any other designers . . . leaving wood all smooth and perfect.” The importance of touch is further emphasized by Lovell who quotes architect specifications for ebony elements to “project 1/64^th of an inch beyond the surface,” creating a “faint relief.” British designer C.R. Ashbee referred to the “supreme feeling for the material,” specifically calling attention to the “exquisite dowelling and pegging” used for structure and decoration. Gray enumerates the complexity and unity of the Greenes’ inlays on the bedroom side chair: “metal inlays of copper and silver are combined in the Blacker pieces with abalone shell and wood to create a rich palette of materials used sparingly, with the thinnest possible vertical and horizontal lines punctuated with tiny squares of shell.” 

This bold work of modernist design hangs together perfectly; the design is tight, clear, and brilliant, an ultimate statement of the masterful talents of Greene & Greene. 

This side chair is believed to have been removed from the Blacker residence in the late 1940s following Nellie Blacker’s death in 1946 and the subsequent sale of the house. The chair was re-discovered in the mid-1990s, and shortly thereafter was loaned to the Huntington Art Gallery (San Marino, California), where it remained on public exhibition until 2007.