Home, it’s said, is that place where your soul finds its solace.
No wonder, then, that when it comes to some of America’s most inspired souls — artists and craftsmen, all — the walls, the roof, even the doorknobs and the bathtub become a life-size canvas upon which they paint their wildest dreams.
It is hard to turn the pages of “Artists’ Handmade Houses,” (Abrams, $60), with text by Michael Gotkin, photographs by Don Freeman, and not marvel at the minds and hands that first imagined, and then crafted the breathtaking beauty that were the places where the likes of George Nakashima, Frederic Church and Henry Varnum Poor stirred their oatmeal, laid their sleepy heads, or scrubbed their muddy-kneed children.
That such artistry might be stitched among the quotidian will likely blow your mind, and make you think you really oughta upgrade your leaky, scum-splattered bathroom faucet.
Indeed, for those who spend plenty of daylight hours dreaming about ways to tweak the places we call home, this gorgeous collection of houses handcrafted by some of America’s finest artists is not only must-read but must-examine-closely.
We find, for instance, that Nakashima, one of the great 20th-century furniture makers, used no nails in the construction of his Bucks County, Pennsylvania, house, studio, and assorted outbuildings. We also read this line, as Nakashima wrote of the craft of woodworking: “Hours spent by the true craftsman bringing out the grain, which has long been imprisoned in the trunk of the tree, is an act of creation in itself. He passes his hand over the satiny texture and finds God within.”
All the more beautiful then are the photographs that follow, intimate and soaring views into Nakashima’s home front: the Buckeye burl coffee table, the dove-tailed walnut of a cabinet, the cantilevered stairs that seem to float out from a fieldstone wall.
Again and again — 13 houses in all, from the exotic Moorish-Gothic stateliness of Church’s hilltop manse in the Hudson River Valley, to the Arts-and-Crafts-meets-Modern eclecticism of Poor’s Crow House — we are reminded that we can never put too much imagination into the place we return to at the end of every long and harried day.