Celebrating Artistic License
Collaboration is alive and well in the revival of Arts and Crafts. This installation for a client in Santa Rosa was conceived by Debey Zito, who designed and built the fireplace woodwork, the light fixture, and the chair (with a copper falcon inlaid in the side panel). Her partner Terry Schmitt did the carving.
Paul Duchscherer specified the wallpaper, which was made by Bradbury & Bradbury and installed by Peter Bridgman. Stuart Compton created the tiles around the hearth. Ted Ellison designed and created the art glass in the fixture. Audel Davis did the metalwork. Dianne Ayres (Arts and Crafts Period Textiles) produced the window treatments and pillow. The house itself was designed by architects Steve Rynerson and Pat O’Brien. All are members of Artistic License, a decades-old guild with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area. The project, Zito says, is a tribute to English A&C designers Voysey and Ashbee.
Patricia Poore is Editor-in-chief of Old House Journal and Arts & Crafts Homes, as well as editorial director at Active Interest Media’s Home Group, overseeing New Old House, Traditional Building, and special-interest publications.
Poore joined Old House Journal when it was a Brooklyn-brownstoner newsletter in the late 1970s. She became owner and publisher and, except for the years 2002–2013, has been its editor. Poore founded the magazines Old-House Interiors (1995–2013) and Early Homes (2004–2017); their content is now available online and folded into Old-House Journal’s wider coverage. Poore also created GARBAGE magazine (1989–1994), the first unaffiliated environmental consumer magazine.
Poore has participated, hands-on, in several restorations, including her own homes: a 1911 brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and a 1904 Tudor–Shingle Style house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she brought up her boys and their wonderful dogs.