Greene & Green article

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The Furniture of Greene and Greene:
Two Brothers Who Made Their Mark on the Craft

By David Donnelly
Reprinted from American Woodworker Magazine, April, 1991

In the early years of this century, when furniture design innovations tended to originate in the East and Midwest , two brothers were breaking ground in the small, Southern California town of Pasadena . Architects Charles S. Greene and Henry M. Greene were best known for taking the humble bungalow to its ultimate artistic heights; but they also designed numerous pieces of highly original furnishings for these bungalows. Their careers stretched from 1894 to the 1940s, but they made the majority of their furniture between 1904 and 1913. Today, their furniture is well respected as a major force in the Arts and Crafts movement. The furniture from this movement, popular from 1890 to 1920, stressed craftsmanship and the relation of form, function, and materials.

As was typical of architects during the Arts and Crafts movement, the Greenes involved themselves in all levels of design. As Randell Mackinson—director and curator of the Gamble House in Pasadena , a living tribute to the Greenes—explains, “It was impossible for them to think of one element of the design and not all the others.” That included the street-scape, landscape, building, furnishings and even decorative arts, such as carpet, lighting, hardware and so on. Early sketches of rooms included furniture design and placement. As they designed their interiors, they could not separate one part from the whole.

The early furniture of Greene and Greene is highly reminiscent of pieces by Gustav Stickley, an early leader in the Arts and Crafts movement who advocated simplicity. Later, the Greenes developed their own design vocabulary—a strong Oriental influence graced with carvings and inlay. Their inlay included semi-precious stones and mother-of-pearl, as well as wood. As their talents matured, their materials expanded to include Honduras mahogany, Burma teak, ebony, walnut, gray maple, cedar, lignum vitae and other exotic species.

The rounded treatment of the edges and corners of their furniture stands in contrast to the furniture of Stickley and others. The Greenes’ work looks sensitive and pliable when compared to the rather spare, straight-lined work of their contemporaries.

A Oneness of Spirit

Unlike many other architects who have designed furniture, Charles and Henry Greene had a background in woodworking. As young men they attended the Manual Training High School in St. Louis , Missouri where they learned the fundamentals of the craft. Afterwards, they studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Though the Greenes designed both houses and the furnishings from within them, they did little of the actual building of these homes and furnishings. Much of this was done by another set of brothers, John Hall and Peter Hall, self-taught master craftsmen from Sweden. Peter was the Greenes’ general contractor, and John was a master furniture and cabinetmaker. The Greenes’ collaboration with the Halls was truly a fortuitous combination of skills and talents.

Charles Greene designed most of the furniture and spent a few hours every morning at the Peter Hall Manufacturing Co., wearing his smock and moving among the craftsmen, sometimes picking up tools and adjusting a detail himself. Makinson claims that, “Charles’ rampant imagination was able to blossom like a flower after connecting with John H all. John had all the technical experience related to joinery, which allowed Charles’ designs to refine at a rapid rate. There developed a great oneness of spirit between them.” Henry Greene designed some furniture as time would permit, and recent research suggests that he was more involved in the furniture designs than previously believed.

Only a few sketchy furniture drawings exist today. John Hall understood the Greenes’ designs so well that detailed drawings were unnecessary. Makinson points out that, “Charles could trust John to carry out his designs with little in the way of detailed drawings. These designs were developed with a full understanding of the craftman’s task and the nature of materials.”

John and Peter Hall deserve much of the credit for introducing new construction techniques and materials to the Greenes’ designs. They had a large talent for turning the Greenes’ designs into living pieces. This fusion of talents was a great blessing for the Greenes as designers. Such collaboration is rare. Frank Lloyd Wright was also designing both houses and furniture at this time, and upon seeing Charles Greene’s living room, asked him, “How do you do it?” As Mrs. Greene explained later to Makinson, Wright was referring to Charles Greene’s ability to get craftsmen to produce work the way he wanted it. Wright apparently had never been able to achieve that type of harmonious relationship.

The Furniture of the Gamble House

The Gamble House was built in 1908 for David and Mary Gamble and later bequeathed to the City of Pasadena in a joint agreement with the University of Southern California. When looking at the furniture on display in the house, one is immediately struck by a number of remarkable features.

The entire house is a matching set, even down to the leaded glass windows, door knobs, lamps, and pottery. Straight-lined tables, desks, chairs and chests reveal a cornucopia of intricate detail. Tenons are exposed and pegged with square-shaped ebony pegs. Exposed ebony splines grace table and chair corners. Subtle, Oriental, floral inlay patterns highlight selected doors and sides of casework. Hand-carved drawer pulls rise up in layers. Box joints with contrasting ebony pegs defy the tradition of dovetails on drawers and chests. Shallow sweeps on chair backs reveal the Oriental influence. Lap joints on end tables catch the eye by accenting and rounding over every component of the joint, rather than blending the pieces together as one. Double L-shaped brackets offer more than support of a chest mirror. And an interlocking maze of intricate detail on a stair landing reveals why Peter Hall had a reputation as the best stair builder on the West Coast.

A common thread through the furniture and architectural woodwork of the Gamble House is a design motif called the “cloud lift.” It is most evident on a chair back, where the crest rail rises in a stairstep pattern toward the middle. Once identified, you can see it on table corner braces, dressing-table mirror brackets, ends of bookcases, and even modest carvings on end tables. In fact, if you look carefully, there are few pieces in the Gamble House that don’t have some hint of the cloud lift.

The Greenes’ exposed, elaborate joinery could be criticized as pretentious, but Makinson thinks otherwise. When he sees exposed splines and pegs throughout, he interprets it as an honest expression—coping with the very nature of pieces that tend to twist, warp, and separate. Breadboard ends on large tabletops, for example, are designed to allow for expansion and contraction without letting joints open or close.

Bridging Past and Present

Along with his interest in furniture, Charles Greene had a personal fascination with carving and inlay. Landscapes and floral arrangements appear on both architectural pieces and furniture. For example, one sideboard has an inlay pattern on the end doors that is banded in ebony, giving the impression of being framed like a painting. Makinson reminds us that clients who could afford a house and furnishings designed by the Greenes generally were not young. Having grown up in the Victorian era, these clients had a different sense of style from the Arts and Crafts period in which the Greenes worked. So the simple decorative touches the Greenes added to their furniture were an attempt to connect the eras—to pay homage and respect to the more ornate styles of the past while keeping their pieces contemporary and progressive.

Robert Ashbee was a major figure in the Arts and Crafts movement in England, writing and commenting on the philosophy of the movement. When he visited America , he was fascinated with the variety of product styles seen in different parts of the country. He saw in the work of the Greenes a design that came from a total understanding of the medium, because they were craftsmen as well as designers.

After a visit to the Greenes, Ashbee said (as quoted in Makinson’s book Greene & Greene—Furniture and Related Designs), “He (Charles Greene) took us to see his workshops where they were making, without exception, the best and most characteristic furniture I have seen in this country. There were beautiful cabinets and chairs of walnut and lignum vitae, exquisite doweling and pegging, and in all a supreme feeling for the material…. Here things were really alive …”

Last modified: December 30, 2006