Greene & Greene Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene - Design Masters New York Tuesday, December 15, 2015 | Phillips

Design Masters

New York Auction 15 December 2015 5pm

  • Provenance

    Robert Roe and Nellie Celeste Canfield Blacker, Pasadena
    Sold at the Blacker House lawn sale, circa 1947
    Private collection, Arcadia, California
    Christie's, New York, "Masterworks: 1900-2000," June 8, 2000, lot 222
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Literature

    Wendy Kaplan, “The Art that is Life:" The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987, p. 403 for the smaller example
    Randell L. Makinson, Rebirth of a Landmark: the Robert R. Blacker House of Greene & Greene, Pasadena, 1998, p. 6 for the smaller example
    Thomas A. Heinz and Randell L. Makinson, Greene & Greene: the Blacker House, Salt Lake City, 2000, pp. 48, 77, 79 for the smaller example and drawings for the living room furniture
    Edward R. Bosley and Anne E. Mallek, A New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene, exh. cat., The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, 2008, p. 239 for the smaller example

  • Catalogue Essay

    Greene & Greene designed two known sofa models for the living room of the Blacker House. The furnishings for the living room were distinguished by several decorative and material features seen in the present lot: the use of ebony inlays, softly arched crest rails, lily pad motifs, inverted corners of the armrests and straight legs with U-shaped depressions above the feet. The first, slightly smaller sofa, was created with the other living room furnishings circa 1908. The present sofa was likely conceived and produced circa 1913 at time in which several other modifications were made to the house by the Greenes at the request of the Blackers. The two sofas share the same form and decorative vocabulary, however the double bracket motif used at the corners of the aprons where the seat meets the legs is reticulated in the smaller sofa and executed in relief in the present example. Like the wardrobe, the present lot is believed to have been sold at the Blacker House yard sale, circa 1947, a fact which the house inventory from the 1940s appears to confirm.

Property of an Important American Collector

320

Greene & Greene Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene

Sofa, from the living room of the Robert R. Blacker House, Pasadena, California

circa 1913
Honduran mahogany, ebony, silk.
87 3/4 x 34 1/2 x 34 1/4 in. (222.9 x 87.6 x 87 cm)
Produced in the workshop of John and Peter Hall, Pasadena, California.

Estimate
$300,000 - 500,000 

Contact Specialist
Meaghan Roddy
Head of Sale
New York
+1 212 940 1266

Design Masters

New York Auction 15 December 2015 5pm