- Image via Wikipedia
In “Craftsman” architecture we find a very direct and simple expression of a very direct and simple idea.
The “Craftsman idea,” indeed, might better be called a “creed”—the creed of the simple life.
The style is one which, were its origin traced, would lead directly back to William Morris—a style, or a point of view, which decries all adherence to forms which recall the arts of foreign lands or other ages. Its exponents maintain that whatever may be lost in historic association is gained in freedom from constraining precedent, and in actual establishment of a contact with nature itself. It is the architecture of “the simple life.”
Nor need it be supposed that “Craftsman” architecture is necessarily a thing austere and ascetic. The creed is framed to include, necessarily, all furniture, rugs, draperies and other fitments of the home, as well as the color scheme, both inside and out.
Subdued colors of nature are specified as most expressive of perfect and reposeful simplicity, and the element of the primitive, especially in textile textures, is considered desirable. Tones are plain—flat wall surfaces, flat stencil decorations, often symbolic, things of beaten copper or dull faience—dull values of browns, greens, tans, grays and blues. Most commendable of all, the “Craftsman” creed includes honesty of construction and a frank, unashamed expression of construction—a tenet inherited direct from the earlier crusade of William Morris.
A part of the “Craftsman” idea—coincident with it and similarly related to the Morris movement, is the “Mission” scheme of architecture, concerned mostly with interior design. The “Mission Style,” so far as it can be called such, originated from two simple, “straight-line” chairs, rush-seated, designed by a Pacific Coast architect for a small Californian parish church. In that the Mission idea advocated our rejection of all art related to historic “periods,” its aim was identical with the aim of the “Craftsman” idea, while the latter exerted, and still exerts, a widespread influence over the design and fashioning of textiles, ceramics, jewelry and things other than architecture and furniture.
Its definite place in the mosaic of American architecture has yet to be won by the “Craftsman” style, for it is a current style. We are able to perceive that it has been accorded wide and intelligent appreciation, and so far as it sincerely lives up to the creed upon which it is founded, it is not only “safe” but right to accord to it a proper amount of serious appreciation.
In discussing the bungalow as seen in America, there is some danger of discussing a thing which does not actually exist, excepting in rare instances.
The real and only “bungalow” is the one-story dwelling of the Anglo-East Indian, and since this type is peculiar to India, we will, perhaps, do well to forget the absent similarity in type suggested by the identity in name, and look at the American bungalow as a distinct type, unlike any other form of dwelling, and quite often unlike itself.
The American bungalow, in other words, exists in many varieties of small cottage, virtually all of which are unlike the type from which we take the name. Webster defines it: “A lightly built, usually thatched or tiled, house or cottage of a single story, usually surrounded by a veranda”—a definition accurate enough as far as it goes.
The bungalow of to-day may be of field stone, of hollow tile and stucco, of all frame construction, or even of brick, and its roof may be of Spanish tile or of shingles.
If one is invited by a friend to visit him in his “bungalow” at the seaside, one has little, if any, definite idea of what manner of dwelling he may see, from a “portable house” to a substantial two-story cottage.
Often a low-sweeping roof, giving a low appearance to a cottage, will cause the owner to describe his villa as a “bungalow.” Nearly all American “bungalows” are a story and a half in height—that is, a full story on the main floor, and provision by means of dormer windows, for two or more small sleeping rooms under the roof.
A veranda is usually a prominent feature of this type of dwelling, and since it is not a bungalow after the Anglo-Indian fashion, or a cottage of the English ” week-end ” type, it would seem that a new designation were needed. ” Bungalow,” however, is likely to adhere, and may do as well as anything, despite the flexibility, and usually the inaccuracy, of its application.
The bungalow is a distinctly popular type of moderate and low-cost dwelling on the Pacific Coast, where architects have developed it into a thoroughly charming and livable affair, and it is essayed to-day, with varying degrees of success, in nearly every part of the country.
The bungalow is appreciated, in a popular way, more extensively than it is understood, and if architects and prospective builders will take it a little more seriously, and develop it into a miniature all-year-round house (a role it very frequently fills to-day), there may be evolved a highly desirable and essentially American type of dwelling, bearing no similarity whatever to the tropical affair from which its name has come, nor yet to any other architectural type in any other country.
