I belong to a Yahoo newsgroup on Greene & Greene design, architecture and furniture. I have alchoices enjoyed the style of the Greene brothers, and, while not a strict copier, I have often been influenced by their design vocabulary. when working with clients with a fondness for Arts & Crafts style furniture. So, in 2003, while preparing to make a couple of rooms of furniture for one of my local clients, I took a trip to Pasadena to tour the Gamble House, the Huntington Museum, meet with John Hamm about lighting and visit a friend in Huntington Beach ... Good trip.On my choice to the airport, I ran into a friend and told him about my upcoming trip. He told me his sister-in-law, or someone related to him, lived in a G&G house and gave me her number .. I called her when I got to town and she agreed to let me visit her and her house ... Cool neighborhood ... I dont know if her house is a documented G&G but it sure had some similarities ... The whole neighborhood had a consistent Arts and Crafts feel. As I recall, she had some original plans and I glanced at them, but dont remember the details ... Click the photos to enlarge them and leave a comment if you know anything about the houses or the neighborhood ... Thanks ....
My memory is a little sketchy and I didnt take notes, but I think this is the front door of the sister-in-law? Since she met me when I pulled up, I didnt take a lot of photos of the outside of the house ... I think hers was the 2nd or third on the left.
Her front door from the inside ...
She took me to meet her neighbor down the street at #309 ... He was also friendly and gave me a tour of his house ... I dont have a photo, but he had a definite G&G like stairchoice and I also recall some stained glass transom lights ...
The neighbors front porch ...Below I have posted photos of (I think) Charless studio around the corner from the Gamble House .... I would love to know a little about that and what it looked like inside ... Thanks ...
and this is a big one .. probably just under 300 pounds. the stone (another +/- 500 pounds), will be cut and fitted in new york ... 
cherry, walnut and abalone mirror frames ....
what have we here? im going to go out onto a limb and say we have just come up with the definitive best miter gluing and assembly jigs yet. i dont usually make statements like that, as i know there are untold methods to get the same results. but, that said, this ones pretty good. and, over the years, i have tried a lot of choices to skin that cat ... inherent in gluing four sided picture framelike objects is the clamping problem and the moving problem ... how do you keep all four corners of a frame lined up, the miters tight and the frame square? weve glued them up, it seems, using endless strategies and techniques, none of which, in the past, would i have said were easy and 100% successful ... suddenly, friday, an inspiration struck, as inspirations sometimes do, and now i feel we have solved a tricky problem once and for all ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
ok, the challenge ... to help scott with his show, (see the previous post), at the last minute, (thursday night) he needed two sort of large picture frames, (+/- 39 x 60 x 2), painted black ... will said he could do them and we were off.
in the past six months or so we have made at least a half dozen or more mitered frames with abalone details (scroll down), and we 
so, i had this idea ...
works for us .... itll probably work for you ...
the big island is in its new home ... after a month or so of awaiting finish sample approvals and then actually doing the finishing, delivery and assembly, were done ... it was nip and tuck getting it out the front door, but we got it, and, it looks great on site, perfectly proportioned to its new room, which is, actually, quite a bit larger and at present, emptier than our shop ... it was a challenging and engaging project on a lot of levels and i look forward to seeing it with the appliances, sink and granite as well as the rest of the furnishings for the room in place ... onward ...
from the dining room side ...
the piece is lightly distressed at the early stages of the finishing and we sanded the broken edges a little more aggressively than usual as the finishing progressed, creating highlights on the corners and a softness than is often found on well used antiques.
carry it in ... set it down ... perfectly level over the entire 16, both choices ... we jacked the shop floor up to all level before we started because, having worked with this builder for almost ever, we knew it would be this choice ... with the design as it was, there was no place for shimming anychoice ... all good ....
here trevor is installing the steel granite overhang support. its 1 x 3 x 1/4" rectangular tubing stiffened with the box beam cross pieces visible in the photo below.
the finish schedule was a variation of our typical finish process using lockwood dyes, minwax fast dry polys, gel stains and wiping polys. see more finishing posts here ...
we made a couple different sample boards before we got what we wanted ... i cant remember the last time we used stained quartered white oak for a piece and im pretty sure we havent ever done a distressed, stained version of it before ... im happy with the results. on the sample we gel stained before the seal coat which, in my opinion, requires a longer dry time before the top coats and is 
