Greene & Greene

Randell L. Makinson, Greene & Greene: Furniture and Related Designs, Salt Lake City, 1979, p. 23 (for a period photograph showing this couble-sconce model in the dining room of the Reeve house)

In the Jennie A. Reeve house of 1904, the Greene brothers found the first opportunity to put into practice many of the contemporary Arts & Crafts principles they had become aware of and readily absorbed.  Charles had spent his honeymoon in England in 1901 and had received a first-hand introduction to the British Arts & Crafts movement.  Here in the United States, Gustav Stickley’s magazine, The Craftsman, and Will Bradley’s articles for The Ladies Home Journal were also influential on the brothers’ developing style.  It is in the Reeve house that the Greenes first took up the challenge of designing interior spaces complete with furnishings and lighting that would perfectly suit the aesthetics of their architecture.

The dining room sconces, made for both gas and electric light, have pegged Port Orford cedar wall mounts.  Each fixture held two square glass lanterns of opalescent glass with blue accent tiles set into the top border band.  The leaded designs of a trailing leaf and vine motif over the lanterns complemented the leaded glass doors of the built-in china cabinet which these sconces flanked.