Synopses & Reviews
For more than 60 years, passersby have strained to catch a glimpse of maverick architect Harry Gesners houses in Southern California. This is the first book to examine Gesners architecture, tracing his career from 1945 to the present and opening the doors to 15 of Gesners intriguing homes, all located in or near Los Angeles and built in the 1950s and 1960s. An insightful and revealing text accompanies new photography by Juergen Nogai along with historical photographs and Gesners own drawings, floor plans, and blueprints drawn from his remarkably rich archive. Gesners utterly unique, often eccentric and unorthodox designs are outside the canons of doctrinaire modernism, yet he is undoubtedly a Modernist, and one whose romantic, quixotic nature has caused his truly extraordinary body of work to be overlooked by many—until now.
Praise for Houses of the Sundown Sea:
“Harry Gesners life story is so exciting that a new monograph on his work reads like a John Buchan tale, or the next Laura Hillenbrand project, instead of the usual jargon-infested coffee-table book about a venerable architect.” —New York Times
"As soon as design junkies get a glimpse of Gesner's soaring creations, they're sure to be wild about Harry." —Los Angeles Times Magazine
“The stories about [Gesner] lifes adventures are almost as glorious as the nature-inspired homes he builds, and both are detailed in an about-to-be released coffee table book” —The Huffington Post
"A compelling mix of prose and photos" —Los Angeles magazine
Synopsis
Wharton Esherick (1887–1970) lived to create. He found his true voice in sculpture, working primarily in local woods he gathered from the forest surrounding his home and studio in rural Pennsylvania. The spiritual father of the contemporary studio furniture movement in America, he pioneered the way for successive generations of woodworking artists to develop their original designs. His work blurs the traditional distinctions between sculpture and furniture, form and function.
Wharton Esherick: The Journey of a Creative Mind is the first and only comprehensive look at the colorful life and work of this seminal artist. Written by Eshericks son-in-law, and lavishly illustrated, it features photographs of Eshericks most important artworks as well as the woodland studio he designed, built, and furnished over the course of several decades. Now a museum, preserved as Esherick left it, this remarkable structure and its contents are testament to the warmth, poetry, and passion of one of Americas most influential and celebrated craftsmen.
Praise for Wharton Esherick:
"a generous and highly readable narrative that is full of anecdotal detail"
-American Craft
About the Author
Mansfield Bascom, a retired architect and structural engineer, has been married to Wharton Eshericks daughter Ruth for more than 50 years. Bascom served as the Wharton Esherick Museums director until 1990, when he became its curator. He and Ruth live in Eshericks former workshop in Paoli, Pennsylvania.