A good case can be made – and in fact has been made, by historian Edward S. Cooke, Jr. – that the decisive moment in the career of Charles and Henry Greene came when they met another pair of brothers, Peter and John Hall.1 Swedish-born and Illinois-raised, these highly skilled cabinetmakers had acquired their training in various millwork shops on the west coast. Beginning with their collaboration on the Henry Robinson House (1905-6) in Pasadena, the Greenes and the Halls forged an extraordinary creative partnership, a marriage of architectural vision and consummate craft excellence.
The present cabinet, made by the Halls for Charles Sumner Greene’s own use in his studio in Carmel, provides a focused encapsulation of their jointly achieved aesthetic. It has several features typical of their work, including subtly shaped handles and gently rounded terminations on the moldings. The material, a Honduras mahogany darkened with fuming (a process involving exposure of the timber to ammonia, which causes a chemical reaction in the tannins), sends quite a different message from the sturdy white oak preferred by the other Arts and Crafts makers like Gustav Stickley. Interestingly, a period photo of Charles Greene’s office shows that the piece stood right next to an oak filing cabinet that he himself had made back in 1903, in the Stickley style.2 The juxtaposition shows the progression of his sensibility, and attests to the all-important contribution that the Halls made to that maturation.
[1] Edward S. Cooke, Jr., “Scandinavian Modern Furniture in the Arts and Crafts Period: The Collaboration of the Greenes and the Halls,” American Furniture (Chipstone Foundation, 1993).
[2] Randell Makinson, Greene and Greene: The Passion and the Legacy (Gibbs Smith, 1998), 125.
GLENN ADAMSON