Expert Appeal: Craftsman
Inside the home of Robert Hause
ROBERT HAUSE, custom furniture maker, Art of the Craft
Design aesthetic:
Robert Hause has been making custom furniture for most of his life, but about fifteen years ago, the Arts and Crafts bug bit him.
The design style, popular in the U.S. around the turn of the 19th century, focused on craftsmanship and rebelled against mass production. It has regained popularity in recent years. Hause attended the Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference in Asheville, which now draws thousands, and was hooked.
Signature elements in both client projects and HIS home: Hause makes reproductions of the period pieces for clients as well as for his own house. For both, he stays true to the style and pay meticulous attention to details.
His house:
Hause bought his current house in 2005. The brick cottage was built in the 1950s, one of the later ones in his Brookwood neighborhood where pre-war bungalows and Tudors are more the norm.
In the details:
The Arts and Crafts movement is evident as soon as one walks though Hause’s front door.
Like other rooms in his house, Hause’s living room is filled with a mix of original pieces from the era as well has his own reproductions.
Hause made his white oak couch based on an L. & J.G. Stickley prairie sofa. The armchair was an original Morris chair he discovered at a local antique store.
One of the changes Hause made to make his house look more like a traditional Craftsman bungalow was to redo the kitchen’s breakfast nook, adding an arched entry, paneled walls, and molding.
He bought a hall bench that sits on one side of the table at an auction in New York. His hunch it might be an original was confirmed when he saw the designer’s burn mark signature under the seat. They didn’t know what they had; he got it for a steal.
“To me, even if I was a multi-millionaire, the best part is sneaking the stuff out from all of the collectors up North without them even knowing about it,” he says.
Many of the accessories around the home are finds from the era, such as these hand-hammered copper plate chargers and a rare humidor by James Lippitt Clark, a naturalist and sculptor. His casting of a rhinoceros sits atop a black rhino foot.
In the backyard, Hause built a carriage house with a motto from Roycroft, a community of craftsmen and artists, carved into the wood.
Hause points out that the Arts and Craft’s revival has now lasted longer than the movement’s initial peak in popularity. One reason for that, he says, is that many of the original pieces were so well crafted they have held up over time and generations.
To view more of photographer Jeff Janowski’s work, go to www.jeffjanowski.com.
