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Although Hunt
never achieved great national acclaim, his buildings are rightly
admired in the Chicago area, where he lived and worked from 1896
to 1903, and in California, where he spent the remainder of his
career. In Chicago he devoted himself primarily to domestic architecture,
flexibly designing a varied group of suburban homes to suit the
tastes of individual clients. In general, however, his houses were
simple, unpretentious, affordable structures that reflected the
influence of Shingle Style architecture.
Hunt's houses
also shared Prairie School traits: their elevations emphasized the
horizontal line, their exteriors were mostly composed of stone and
naturally finished wood, and they had interiors that were notable
for their open planning, with one space flowing easily into the
next. Hunt and Frank Lloyd Wright were in fact close friends, and
in the late 1890s they shared studio space in downtown Chicago in
the 11-story office tower/theater building Steinway Hall with several
other forward-looking young architects of their generation. And,
like Wright, in 1897 Hunt was a charter member of the Chicago Arts
and Crafts Society. 
But Hunt's trademark
talent was uniquely his own: his plans allowed for the maximum amount
of usable space in houses that had to fit within the typically restricted
boundaries of suburban building plots. In large part, it was because
his houses were so pleasingly functional that he was kept busy with
commissions during his years in Chicago. Before moving to California,
he designed at least 39 buildings in Evanston alone, including a
home for himself and his family. Myron Hunt's houses are much coveted
and rarely come onto the market, because, as Jim McWilliams says,
"they are so livable."
The house the
McWilliamses live in was built in 1898, and Hunt must have considered
it one of his best because he exhibited a rendering of it in the
1899 Chicago Architectural Club exhibition. He designed the house
for a client named Harley N. Higginbottam, who was, among other
things, a partner of the department store mogul Marshall Field.
Higginbottam built this house not for himself but as a rental property;
the first tenant was another department store grandee, Samuel Carson
of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company. Carson's partner Pirie lived
just up the street, also in a Myron Hunt house.
The McWilliamses
bought their house in 1976, and gradually restored it over a period
of about 15 years. Furnishing it didn't take quite that long. Although
Mary's taste ran more toward the Colonial Revival style, the first
piece of furniture she bought for their new home was a $150 Mission
oak rocking chair. It's still in their living room. "I'm not sure
why," she said to Jim at the time, "but this rocker fits in this
house." Shortly thereafter, as their knowledge of the Arts and Crafts
movement grew, they began collecting early-20th-century furniture,
pottery, metalwork and textiles.
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Although
the couple's Stickley furniture collection is not extensive,
it is particularly choice. Their rectangular, circa-1910 dining
table, with boldly expressed tenon-and-key joints at both
ends of its massive medial stretcher, is one of the few exciting
new designs that emerged from Stickley's factory during the
late phase of his Arts and Crafts furniture making. The chairs
around the table are "H-back" chairs, so named because their
wide back slats have cutouts at the top and bottom and resemble
a capital H. They, too, are from the late period -- first
appearing in the firm's 1910 catalog -- but Jim McWilliams
considers them to be "probably Stickley's cleanest designs."
The McWilliamses didn't choose them, however, simply because
they are handsome.
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As Jim explains,
"they are the narrowest chairs Stickley made, and we can squeeze more
of them around a table than would be possible with the earlier, more
massive chairs."
The other most
noteworthy Stickley pieces in this collection come from Stickley's
early period. The couple's 1901 double-door bookcase, with its Gothic-inspired
curves, molded edges and crisply beveled top, is a great rarity.
Stickley used such refined decorative touches sparingly and to great
effect in 1900 and 1901, but then, as his ideas about furniture
design changed, he turned away from this kind of subtle detailing.
The McWilliamses' 1902 double-door china cabinet, a massive piece
with an absolutely straight-lined profile, is equally rare, and
a perfect representative of how Stickley's furniture shifted, in
just one year, from artful curves to bold geometry. They also own
an extremely rare 1902 Stickley fall-front desk that has a fascinating
history: it once belonged to the silent movie star Douglas Fairbanks
Sr., and they were able to buy it years ago, when the contents of
his opulent Rhode Island estate came up for auction.
What truly sets
the bookcase and china cabinet apart from much of the Stickley furniture
seen today is their extraordinary condition. Both of these 100-year-old
pieces of furniture retain their original rich, dark, glowing finishes.
Stickley is generally praised today for the clean lines, good proportions
and meticulous construction of his furniture, but he was also a
master colorist. He gave his cabinet woods complex and subtle hues:
gray-brown, green-brown and a soft, matte near-black. Early Stickley
pieces with their color so intact are, to say the least, very hard
to find.
Besides Stickley
furniture, the pair seek Arts and Crafts objects with a local flavor.
Their Stickley china cabinet, for instance, houses a dazzling collection
of silver and aluminum pieces from the Cellini Shop, a small Evanston
firm that made hand-wrought flatware, hollowware and jewelry beginning
in 1914. Jim and Mary also collect Teco pottery -- sought after
today for its classic architect-designed shapes and silken matte
green glazes -- also made near Chicago. And, as the accompanying
photographs show, this pottery harmonizes not only with Gustav Stickley's
furniture, but also with the interior detailing of Myron Hunt's
architecture.
The ceramics
firm that made Teco also produced lamps, and today Teco lamps are
highly prized by the few collectors fortunate enough to own them.
The McWilliamses' Teco lamp is an unusually successful example,
and retains its original leaded-glass shade designed by Orlando
Giannini and made by his partner Fritz Hilgart. Although Giannini
created some designs of Teco pottery, he and Hilgart are best remembered
today for the superb art glass they supplied for Frank Lloyd Wright's
early, precedent-setting Prairie houses.good proportions and meticulous
construction of his furniture, but he was also a master colorist.
He gave his cabinet woods complex and subtle hues: gray-brown, green-brown
and a soft, matte near-black. Early Stickley pieces with their color
so intact are, to say the least, very hard to find.
Besides Stickley
furniture, the pair seek Arts and Crafts objects with a local flavor.
Their Stickley china cabinet, for instance, houses a dazzling collection
of silver and aluminum pieces from the Cellini Shop, a small Evanston
firm that made hand-wrought flatware, hollowware and jewelry beginning
in 1914. Jim and Mary also collect Teco pottery -- sought after
today for its classic architect-designed shapes and silken matte
green glazes -- also made near Chicago. And, as the accompanying
photographs show, this pottery harmonizes not only with Gustav Stickley's
furniture, but also with the interior detailing of Myron Hunt's
architecture.
The ceramics
firm that made Teco also produced lamps, and today Teco lamps are
highly prized by the few collectors fortunate enough to own them.
The McWilliamses' Teco lamp is an unusually successful example,
and retains its original leaded-glass shade designed by Orlando
Giannini and made by his partner Fritz Hilgart. Although Giannini
created some designs of Teco pottery, he and Hilgart are best remembered
today for the superb art glass they supplied for Frank Lloyd Wright's
early, precedent-setting Prairie houses.
In addition to
its impressive Arts and Crafts collection, the McWilliams house
is home to perhaps the most important Jules Guerin collection in
existence. Guerin (1866-1946) is not as widely known today as he
deserves to be, but in the late-19th and early-20th centuries he
was one of the era's most successful architectural delineators and
magazine illustrators.
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He was also
a muralist, a painter equally proficient in watercolors and
oils, and a stage designer. As a creator of architectural
renderings he ranks as one of the finest of his era; Marion
Mahony, best-known for her exquisite presentation drawings
of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses, and Harvey Ellis, who drew
and designed houses, furniture and textiles for Gustav Stickley
in 1903, may be counted among Guerin's peers.
It was as
an illustrator, however, that Guerin earned his greatest acclaim.
Through his friendship with the hugely popular artist Maxfield
Parrish, he began providing illustrations to Century magazine
at the turn of the 20th century, and during the following
two decades created illustrations as well for Harper's, Scrib-ner's
and Ladies' Home Journal. His illustrations for "The Chateaux
of Touraine," published in 1904 as a series of articles in
Century, and then gathered together in a book, brought Guerin
his first real public attention.
This success
led to other magazine series that were also made into books,
including Egypt and Its Monuments and The Near East: Dalmatia,
Greece and Constantinople.
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Guerin knew
how to make his paintings compelling: he exaggerated perspective
for dramatic effect, approached his subjects from an unexpected
point of view and drenched his scenes in glowing colors. "The key
to Guerin," says Jim McWilliams, "is his use of color. He was very
sensitive to natural colors." Guerin traveled widely, often painting
out of doors and capturing in watercolor the distinctive hues of
each place he visited. His Egyptian scenes, for instance, are crisp
and bright in the hot, dry desert air, and, in contrast, the ancient
buildings he painted in Venice shimmer in a faint blue atmospheric
haze. Guerin created vivid, romanticized images of far-away settings,
and American magazine readers, leafing through the pages in the
familiar comforts of their own homes, were captivated by the exoticism
of his work. He also painted stirring vistas of historic buildings
that are icons of the American landscape: Independence Hall, the
Smithsonian Institution, the Capitol Building and the White House.
The McWilliamses
discovered Guerin in the late 1970s. They happened on two or three
of his prints at a local house sale, liked the pictures immediately,
and bought them for a few dollars each. Then a friend found three
original Guerin paintings set out on a porch at another Evanston
house sale, and they bought them as well. With that purchase they
were transformed, no longer casual buyers but determined collectors.
Although some of the paintings they've bought over the years came
from auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's, most were ferreted out
from much more obscure sources. The fact that they were found at
all is testament to Jim and Mary's shared love of this work and
to their persistence and ingenuity.
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Although
the McWilliamses are sophisticated and discriminating collectors,
they cannot be considered Arts and Crafts purists. They live
with Arts and Crafts furniture, but it is leavened with such
touches as the zany 1950s folk art floor lamp that stands
next to a Limbert Morris chair in the middle of their living
room. Their Guerin artwork is of the period, but they also
own a modern reproduction "Winged Victory" statuette.
A classical
object such as this may seem out of place in this environment,
but in fact it is not at all unusual to see such statuary
in period photographs of Arts and Crafts-era houses. Viewed
from the outside, the McWilliams home would not strike anyone
as an Arts and Crafts house, and yet the natural interior
woodwork, living room inglenook and open downstairs floor
plan all fall within the movement's tradition.
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