Arts And Crafts Movement

When you think of the Southern California's arts and crafts movement, you probably think of Pasadena, home to architects Charles and Henry Greene and tile maker Ernest Batchelder. But don't overlook the small community of Garvanza just to the southwest of Pasadena in Highland Park. This unassuming neighborhood, named for the garbanzo beans that once covered its hills, also played a vital role in the craftsman craze of the early 1900s. A group of artisans known as the Arroyo Guild plunked down their creative roots and joined together there to design and build "useful things of superlative excellence and beauty.

ROBERT WINTER doesn't hesitate when asked if he feels the presence of famed tile maker Ernest Batchelder and his wife in this Pasadena home. "Oh my, yes," says Winter, chuckling. "The fireplace reminds me the Batchelders are here. Alice's piano still echoes through the house, even though it's on a phonograph record. So far they've been awful nice to me." As they should.

Los Angeles paper artist Anna Bondoc can make a graphic statement at practically any scale. Take handmade place cards for the Thanksgiving table, for example. “It's a nice alternative to thinking big and florid,” she said. “It's thinking small and repeated.” Bondoc draws from influences that include the Arts and Crafts movement, Japanese printmaking traditions and the midcentury textiles of the likes of Marimekko to create one-of-a-kind pieces. She's a master of the X-acto knife, using a layered paper-cutout technique for her work.

Look deeper. There's always more. Father Fred Bailey often challenges his Aliso Viejo parishioners to do that when examining their faith, but come Nov. 5 he'll be directing their gazes toward a more material wonder: a new $13-million Craftsman-style church.

They say that when couples remodel or redecorate, the strain is often enough to cause them to break up. Sure, living with daily invasions of workmen and chaotic surroundings drives anybody crazy, but the real tensions may come from psycho-artistic problems caused by differences in taste. Fred wants to go High Tech. Ginger loves French Provincial. He thinks that if she adores that corny stuff she must not be the person he fell in love with.

Robert Winter's new book, "The Architecture of Entertainment: L.A. in the Twenties," details how advertising and movies introduced eclecticism and exoticism to Southern California architecture. Passages from the work: BY 1929 an estimated 20 million to 30 million Americans were watching movies every week, and the film industry was claiming the largest portion of the average American's recreation budget.

The sky is dark, the freeways are empty, and the birds are still yawning in their nests. But for a swap-meet aficionado such as Janeen Marrin, it is an hour to be as alert as a general preparing for combat. From the entrance of the Rose Bowl, where 1,500 vendors gather to sell their wares one Sunday a month, Marrin surveys her field of action.

No-frills mission oak furniture, expensive green pottery and hand-hammered copper lamps--symbols of America's Arts and Crafts Movement from the turn of the century--share an honesty of design and workmanship that appeals to today's country collector. According to Country Home magazine, no longer does Arts and Crafts furniture languish dusty and unnoticed in the back of junk stores and antique shops.

To say Steve Weaver is a Greene & Greene fan is an understatement. His two-story Craftsman in the Belmont Park neighborhood of Long Beach is a hybrid of classic Arts and Crafts styling and modern function. Portions look like they are straight out of Greene & Greene's Gamble House in Pasadena. On the exterior, Craftsman clues are abundant: low rooflines, exposed and cantilevered rafter tails, tapered columns and casement windows. Inside, crisscrossed planks of quarter-sawn Honduran mahogany from which period pendant lights hang are duplicated in several areas.