Summary
Architects Charles and Henry Greene never visited Japan, yet they crafted one of the most influential visions of Japan ever to be created in America. In this lecture, Greene and Greene scholar Bruce Smith will explore the profound influence of Japanese aesthetics on these early-twentieth-century architects. He will delve into the unique sources of their inspiration to discover how and why they created their poetic and elegiac interpretation of Japan – sources that were as diverse as the exhibition of Japanese architecture at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, a classic early book by the Father of Japanese Archaeology, Edward Sylvester Morse, and a string of Japanese gardens and teahouses that were built along the west coast of California by the earliest importer of Japanese goods to America. As the Greenes absorbed all of these influences, their designs progressed from the imitative to the interpretative, and finally to the inspired. In the end, they created an aesthetic all their own that ultimately reflected their own artistic sensibilities as much as it did any actual Japanese influence.
Profile
Bruce Smith is an independent researcher and writer who has focused on late-nineteenth-and-early-twentieth-century decorative arts and architectural, and occasionally food. He is especially interested in the Japanese influence on American decorative arts, and is a specialist on the life and work of Charles and Henry Greene. His book on their architecture, Greene & Greene Masterworks (Chronicle Books, 1998) was one of the New York Times Editor’s Choice Architectural Books of the Year. He has also written Greene & Greene: Developing A California Architecture (Gibbs Smith, 2011) and contributed essays to A “New and Native” Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene (Merrell, 2008). His most recent book was the award-winning memoir/cookbook Six California Kitchens (Chronicle Books, 2022) that he co-authored with the great chef and founder of the French Laundry, Sally Schmitt.
He has also written with his wife, Yoshiko Yamamoto, The Japanese Bath (Gibbs Smith, 2001), Arts and Crafts Ideals (Gibbs Smith, 1999) and The Beautiful Necessity: Decorating with Arts and Crafts (Gibbs Smith, 1996) as well as numerous magazine articles.
He has lectured widely, speaking in the past for such institutions as New York University’s Programs in the Arts, the University of Southern California Gamble House, the St. Louis Art Museum, Craftsman Farms, The Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Conference, The New England Artisan’s Guild, Missouri Historical Society, The Colorado Arts and Crafts Guild, The San Francisco Arts and Crafts Guild, the Seattle Art Museum, Historic Seattle, and Pasadena Heritage. In the past, he also worked with New York University organizing a series of conferences studying the impact of the Arts and Crafts movement in America. Past conferences took place in Pasadena (2000), Chicago (2001), Boston (2002), San Francisco (2003), and St. Louis (2004).
General Meeting Team
Director: Shigeko Nagaoka
Program Coordinator: Ko Iwata
Meeting Manager: Joan Rodgers Doi and Rina Jiang
Zoom and WA Support: Rina Jiang
