Date: January 14, Wednesday
Time: 10:00-11:30 JST
Speaker: Bruce Smith, Independent Researcher and Writer
Title: From Madama Butterfly to Tea Houses: An American Architect’s Envisioning of Japan
Format: Online via Zoom
Reservation link:
https://cw3saoj.wildapricot.org/event-6448523
Summary
Although the American architect Charles Sumner Greene (1868-1957) never set foot in Japan, working with his younger brother, Henry Mather Greene (1870-1954), he envisioned one of the most enduring and influential visions of Japan ever to be created in America. In this lecture, Greene and Greene scholar Bruce Smith will explore the profound influence of Japanese aesthetics on this early-twentieth-century architect. He will delve into the unique sources of inspiration, tracing how and why this poetic and elegiac interpretation of Japan was created – sources as diverse as the exhibition of Japanese architecture at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, a classic early book by the “Father of Japanese Archaeology,” Edward Sylvester Morse, and a string of Japanese gardens and teahouses built along California’s coast. As Greene absorbed all of these influences, his designs progressed from the imitative to the interpretative, and finally to the inspired. In the end, he created an aesthetic all his own that ultimately reflected his own artistic sensibilities as much as it did any actual Japanese influence.
Profile
Bruce Smith is an independent researcher and writer who has focused on late-nineteenth-and-early-twentieth-century decorative arts and architectural, and occasionally food. He is especially interested in the Japanese influence on American decorative arts, and is a specialist on the life and work of Charles and Henry Greene. His book on their architecture, Greene & Greene Masterworks (Chronicle Books, 1998) was one of the New York Times Editor’s Choice Architectural Books of the Year. He has also written Greene & Greene: Developing A California Architecture (Gibbs Smith, 2011) and contributed essays to A “New and Native” Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene (Merrell, 2008). His most recent book was the award-winning memoir/cookbook Six California Kitchens (Chronicle Books, 2022) that he co-authored with the great chef and founder of the French Laundry, Sally Schmitt.
He has also written with his wife, Yoshiko Yamamoto, The Japanese Bath (Gibbs Smith, 2001), Arts and Crafts Ideals (Gibbs Smith, 1999) and The Beautiful Necessity: Decorating with Arts and Crafts(Gibbs Smith, 1996) as well as numerous magazine articles.
He has lectured widely, speaking in the past for such institutions as New York University’s Programs in the Arts, the University of Southern California Gamble House, the St. Louis Art Museum, Craftsman Farms, The Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Conference, The New England Artisan’s Guild, Missouri Historical Society, The Colorado Arts and Crafts Guild, The San Francisco Arts and Crafts Guild, the Seattle Art Museum, Historic Seattle, and Pasadena Heritage.
Future General Meetings
18 February 2026 GM will be an afternoon tea in hybrid format.
11 March 2026 GM will be a hybrid luncheon presentation.
