Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #390075 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 265 pages

Customer Reviews

Another wonderful book for any G&G enthusiast
The essays compiled within this book (11 in total) are broad in scope and represent a thorough cross section of current Greene & Greene scholarship. Everything from stained glass production to garden design is discussed. With many new photographs and new insights represented here, even the most studied G&G enthusiast will certainly gain from reading this book. Recommended!

comprehensive illustrated study of the diverse arts and crafts of the brothers Greene
Though given an award by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1952, the brothers Charles and Henry Greene were and still are relatively unknown in the related fields of architecture and design. The AIA award was long belated and seemingly perfunctory. In 1952, both brothers were near the end of their lives and no longer active. Henry died two years after the award, and Charles was to frail to attend the award ceremony. And for the most part, the style they worked in had been overtaken by an aggressive, international, largely urbanized modernism. One feels the AIA gave the award more out of a sense that the leading organization of architects would be embarrassed if it didn't. One wonders what the organization missed for not having paid special notice to the Greenes while they were active. As evident from this book, after Frank Lloyd Wright, they were the most conceptually gifted architects and most skilled craftsmen of their era. Though their work is somewhat derivative of and reminiscent of Wright's, nevertheless it is plainly distinguishable from Wright's and distinctive, impressive, and accomplished in its own right.

Wright is known as the founder of the influential Prairie School of architecture and design. It would be surprising if the Greenes were not influenced by Wright. If they weren't, they would probably have been marginalized unknowns. The Greenes' works display the natural-world motifs and sharp lines, most notably horizontal, and rich woods associated with the Prairie School. Like Wright, the Greene brothers were open to a Japanese influence in architecture and design. Working in California, the Greenes were more directly in touch with this Japanese architecture and design than Wright was. With respect to the natural-world motifs, the Greenes would include mountains and the layeredness and lushness of California vegetation; whereas Wright's and the Prairie School's natural references were mostly the wide regional flatlands, grassland, and the understated, spare beauty of wildflowers. "The carefree playful feeling of these [Greene brothers'] windows contrasts with the rigidly rectilinear designs of the Prairie School and the ornate flora of Louis Comfort Tiffany's windows and lampshades...," is how one essayist distinguishes the Green brothers particular style.


The Greenes' individualized style carries through their range of projects from houses and public buildings, chairs and bureaus, stained glass, and metalwork. Gardens and walkways and other landscaping features were also included in some of their projects. Often thick vegetation was placed close to the walls of a house so that it mingled with the architecture. This was another difference between the Greenes and the designers of the Prairie School. Whereas the Prairie School designers sought to make the individual parts of a design stand out while making for a harmonious whole, the Greenes were not so concerned about this. Works of the Greene's could thus often be impressionistic even though they held the same basic design principles as those of the Prairie School.

The different facets of the Greene brothers' work in the early part of the 1900s are covered in 11 illustrated chapters. The variety of illustrated matter of period photographs, relatively recent photographs, design and architectural drawings, and photographs of the brothers succeed in not only recording and critiquing their work, but in bringing the brothers as individuals who were artists, their personal touches, and the context and ambiance of their time to life. The essays too, with their expertise and knowledge on the specific topics, freely bring in the biographical for a supple, multidimensional comprehension of the brothers.

At the Huntington Library in California until January 2009, the exhibition of the Greenes' work and life corresponding with this book travels to the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., and in July 2009 to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Disappointing
Coffee table books are for looking at pictures, not reading. The number and quality of the photos in this book is extremely disappointing. It should have been published as a novel.