Monday, February 28, 2011

MISSION MANIA

When I was a kid, the height of furniture fashion was a style called “Danish Modern”.  It wasn’t very comfortable--nor, it turns out, was it even all that Danish.   The chairs were linear, with big slab-like cushions that did a lousy job of conforming to your gluteus maximus.  The tables had a lot of nasty, smack-your-knee-and-see-stars kinds of corners.  But we gladly put up with such discomforts because the stuff was, after all, called “modern”--and in the 1960s, modern was the only way to be.

Today, of course, we’re much more discriminating.  We admire furniture of the 60s as an appealingly naive emblem of the Jet Age, but by and large we’ve concluded that an older, more storied look is the way to go.  So what do we do?  We adopt yet another style of furniture that’s linear, uncomfortable, and not all that attractive, and which, even though it’s called Mission, has nothing whatever to do with missions.  But it’s got the stability of long history, and that’s the thing we pine for in these scary times.

Mission furniture has more to do with the late-19th century English Arts and Crafts movement and such proponents as Gustav Stickley and William Morris than it does with the California Missions or Mission Revival architecture.  Early mass marketers of the style, however, preferred to present it as a rough-and-tumble American phenomenon rather than a snooty British one.  

Regardless of Mission’s murky heritage, one thing is crystal clear:  With its sharp corners and church-pew surfaces, it’s certainly among the most uncomfortable furniture styles of the last ten centuries.  It gives Danish Modern and even Frank Lloyd Wright’s diabolical chairs a run for the money.  

I know that at this point a lot of designer types will start sputtering in their caramel lattes about what a pioneering concept the Mission style was, what geniuses the Arts and Crafts folks were, and how dare I, a lowly architect and even lowlier writer, criticize such brilliance?  Actually, I agree--the Arts and Crafts folks were indeed geniuses, and if you’ve ever seen the refined artistry of an original Morris or Stickley piece, you’re no doubt as certain as I am.  

Trouble is, the vast majority of Arts and Crafts, er, rather Mission furniture was not made by Morris, Stickley, or any of the other craft studios whose work is rightly coveted these days.  Adhering to the highest standards of craftsmanship naturally made for miniscule production, which in turn ensured that only the wealthy could afford their work.  

At any rate, by the time Mission furniture caught on with the masses, the craft studios had already moved on to other things, leaving the ordinary Joes and Josephines of the early century to settle for knockoffs from Sears and Roebuck.  Now, while using mass production to make products more affordable is a great American tradition, it also brings about an inevitable dilution of quality that eventually saps the artistry from any design.  That’s why a Model T is not a Rolls-Royce.  For the same reason, most of the Mission furniture that’s come down to us is clunky, pedestrian, and literally run-of-the-mill.  

Which brings me back to the current encore of Mission mania.  The style has already become ubiquitous in the media, appearing not only in print but in movies, commercials and sitcoms.  Spindly Mission knockoffs are now standard fare in those giant discount furniture stores.  

You may wonder how long this can last.  For me, the sure sign that a style is on its last legs is when it starts appearing in the lobbies of chain motels.  Well, guess what?

Have a seat in the lobby, folks.  Just mind those sharp corners. 


Monday, February 7, 2011

A GREEN GIANT

If you think today’s “green” architects are pioneers, take a look at the work of Carr Jones.  An obscure engineer-builder, Jones clung stubbornly to environmental priniciples we’ve only lately come to cherish--and he started doing it back in the Teens.    

Jones was born in Watsonville, California in 1885.  He attended the University of California at Berkeley and received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1911.  Around this time he designed and built a simple redwood cottage for his parents in Berkeley, kicking off a long and colorful career as what we’d nowadays call a “design-build contractor”. 

But Jones was ahead of his time in other ways.  He worked in large part with recycled materials--brick, slate, timber, scrap steel and bits of salvaged ornament--from which he managed to conjure lyrically beautiful homes that transcended their humble origins.  

Jones’s houses are almost invariably built of roughly-laid bricks left unfinished to show their natural range of colors; many have a gently curving floor plan embracing a central courtyard.  His unmistakable elevations are graced by an array of turrets, dormers, and chimneys.

Interior walls are of exposed brick as well, enlivened by a variety of arched openings.  Overhead, massive, exposed roof trusses of salvaged timber provide dignified drama.  The genius of these houses lies in their perfect balance of the familiar and the unexpected--on the sense of calm lent by an ancient palette of materials, played against the builder’s continual ability to surprise.  In a Jones house, every window frames a charming vista; every room is a spatial banquet; every corner holds architectural delight.

Though Jones’s houses share many traits with the Storybook Style homes of the 1920s--aged appearance, serpentine curves, and whimsical details--in his hands these features are organic rather than superficial.  It’s a happy result of building in a true medieval vernacular, without undue concern for perfection or popularity.  Jones chose his materials and designs not because they were fashionable, but because he believed in their absolute fitness for domesticity. 

Just where someone trained as a mechanical engineer acquired these refined sensibilities, we may never know.   There’s no doubt, however, that Jones would have been quite comfortable working in today’s dawning era of earth-friendly architecture.

Like many pioneers before him, building with an unwavering conscience brought Jones neither financial success nor even much recognition during his lifetime.  When Revival styles lost favor after World War II, the demand for his lovely and personal works became even more modest.  He completed a scattering of postwar commissions in the San Francisco Bay Area and designed his final residence in 1966, dying on the morning that its foundations were being chalked out on the site.  Jones’s stepson, Doug Allinger, completed the project following his death, and has admirably carried on Jones’s building philosophy in his own work.

Alas, Jones didn’t live to see the birth of the ecology movement in the late 60s, nor the subsequent rise of green architecture--events grounded in the very ideas he’d been practicing for half a century.
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