Bernard Maybeck: Visionary Architect

New York, New York: Abbeville Press, 1992. Hardcover. VG/VG (light foxing to upper text block, pages are otherwise clean and bright). Navy cloth boards with gilt spine lettering, color illustrated dust jacket, 247 pp.; 241 color and bw figures. Gracefully written and brilliantly illustrated, this handsome new volume captures the vision, the wit, and the down-to-earth inventiveness of one of the most influential and beloved architects of the early twentieth century. Raised in Greenwich Village and trained in Paris, Maybeck spent most of his long career in northern California. An irrepressible bohemian with no desire to run a large office, he spent much of his time designing houses for friends and family, as well as for other patrons so loyal that they often hired him to design more than one house. Maybeck also created two of the most beautiful buildings in all of California: the exhilarating Church of Christ, Scientist, in Berkeley, and the gloriously romantic Palace of Fine Arts, in San Francisco. This incisive overview - the first to feature color reproductions of Maybeck's exquisite interiors and exteriors - analyzes every aspect of his life and work. Not only is his architecture thoroughly discussed and illustrated but also his furniture, his lighting designs, and his innovations in fire-resistant construction. The book is also enlivened by documentary photographs, by clearly drawn plans, and by several of Maybeck's dazzling, previously unpublished visionary drawings. Bernard Maybeck is a major study of an internationally significant architect whose environmentally responsive work has much to offer today's designers and whose houses have given enormous pleasure to those fortunate enough to visit or dwell in them.- dust jacket.