I am on my way back from the Grove Park Arts and Crafts Conference which takes place in Asheville, North Carolina every February. This year was the twenty-fifth anniversary of the conference. We often joke that the Arts and Crafts Revival has lasted longer than the original movement. When the first conference took place in 1988, the revival was still in its infancy, although the seminal Arts and Crafts exhibition at Princeton in 1972 is believed to have sparked the revival, it was not until The Art That Is Life exhibition in Boston in 1987 that it began to take off nationally.
I bought my first bungalow in 1987. I already knew about the Arts and Crafts Movement. I knew who William Morris was. I knew enough that shortly after buying the bungalow I traveled to Pasadena to visit The Gamble House. I also immediately took out a subscription to Old House Journal, and bought a copy of Rehab Right, a book about how not to mess up your old house, published by the city of Oakland in the 1970s before they became completely enamored of tearing down old buildings in the name of “smart growth” and “density near transit” and the other forms of sheep’s clothing used by rapacious developers and embraced by planners who all claimed to have read Jane Jacobs but apparently hadn’t absorbed much. Ah, I do love a run-on sentence, and the advantage (for me) of a blog is that there is no editor to do away with it. For you the reader that might be viewed as a disadvantage…
Anyway, that was the beginning of my Arts and Crafts adventure. In 1988 I joined the Craftsman Homeowners Club that had been set up by Kitty Turgeon and Robert Rust in East Aurora, home of the Roycrofters. The first Arts and Crafts Conference in Asheville was touted in their newsletter, but since I still had my display job at Macy’s I couldn’t go. The first year I did attend was 1994. By that time the first bungalow had been fixed up and sold, and I was in house #2, an architect-designed Prairie house which I was to lose later that year in a divorce. So the first conference was bittersweet for me.
By that time I knew some of the East Bay Arts and Crafts people, since I was asked to join the committee for the 1993 Arts and Crafts House Tour being put on by Berkeley Architectural Heritage. I freely admit that I guilt-tripped the house selection committee into including my house on the tour, saying it would mean so much to me since I was going to lose it in the divorce. I guess they forgave me because we have all remained friends.
So I went to the conference at least knowing a few people. Nonetheless, I was intimidated. But I was also hooked. Since then the conference has become an important yearly event. I have gone even when ill. I went in the middle of chemotherapy, in spite of everyone advising against it. One year I had food poisoning, and spent most of it in my hotel room. But I keep going back.
When I was first contemplating writing Bungalow Kitchens, one day I had the horrifying thought that if the book was published and successful, I might be asked to speak at Grove Park. Having, as most people do, a terrible fear of public speaking, I nearly gave up on the book right then. (As it turned out, I discovered I actually enjoy public speaking, but that’s topic for another time.) As of now, I’ve spoken there twice, although never about kitchens.
It’s exhausting and intense, but I’ve met such wonderful people there. Contacts made at Grove Park led me to bungalows to photograph for the books, vendors to put in the Resources, and many new friends, who are now old friends. This year both friends and strangers signed letters to GMAC asking them to modify my mortgage- I now have over 100 letters. Arts and Crafts people are absolutely the best.
I bought my first bungalow in 1987. I already knew about the Arts and Crafts Movement. I knew who William Morris was. I knew enough that shortly after buying the bungalow I traveled to Pasadena to visit The Gamble House. I also immediately took out a subscription to Old House Journal, and bought a copy of Rehab Right, a book about how not to mess up your old house, published by the city of Oakland in the 1970s before they became completely enamored of tearing down old buildings in the name of “smart growth” and “density near transit” and the other forms of sheep’s clothing used by rapacious developers and embraced by planners who all claimed to have read Jane Jacobs but apparently hadn’t absorbed much. Ah, I do love a run-on sentence, and the advantage (for me) of a blog is that there is no editor to do away with it. For you the reader that might be viewed as a disadvantage…
Anyway, that was the beginning of my Arts and Crafts adventure. In 1988 I joined the Craftsman Homeowners Club that had been set up by Kitty Turgeon and Robert Rust in East Aurora, home of the Roycrofters. The first Arts and Crafts Conference in Asheville was touted in their newsletter, but since I still had my display job at Macy’s I couldn’t go. The first year I did attend was 1994. By that time the first bungalow had been fixed up and sold, and I was in house #2, an architect-designed Prairie house which I was to lose later that year in a divorce. So the first conference was bittersweet for me.
By that time I knew some of the East Bay Arts and Crafts people, since I was asked to join the committee for the 1993 Arts and Crafts House Tour being put on by Berkeley Architectural Heritage. I freely admit that I guilt-tripped the house selection committee into including my house on the tour, saying it would mean so much to me since I was going to lose it in the divorce. I guess they forgave me because we have all remained friends.
So I went to the conference at least knowing a few people. Nonetheless, I was intimidated. But I was also hooked. Since then the conference has become an important yearly event. I have gone even when ill. I went in the middle of chemotherapy, in spite of everyone advising against it. One year I had food poisoning, and spent most of it in my hotel room. But I keep going back.
When I was first contemplating writing Bungalow Kitchens, one day I had the horrifying thought that if the book was published and successful, I might be asked to speak at Grove Park. Having, as most people do, a terrible fear of public speaking, I nearly gave up on the book right then. (As it turned out, I discovered I actually enjoy public speaking, but that’s topic for another time.) As of now, I’ve spoken there twice, although never about kitchens.
It’s exhausting and intense, but I’ve met such wonderful people there. Contacts made at Grove Park led me to bungalows to photograph for the books, vendors to put in the Resources, and many new friends, who are now old friends. This year both friends and strangers signed letters to GMAC asking them to modify my mortgage- I now have over 100 letters. Arts and Crafts people are absolutely the best.
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