California in a Container: Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House w Reception $15-$25 March 23, 2007

$25
$20 Members
$15 Students



Daniel Gregory

You could call Cliff May the father of the suburban ranch house as more than 18,000 of them were built using his designs. The best of them managed to be both modern and traditional, celebrating a casually elegant, indoor-outdoor way of life that became synonymous with the California Dream. An early description in Sunset Magazine said it all: Cliff May’s houses “ramble almost to the point of departure, with lines as natural and satisfying as those of the hills.” In other words, the house was actually a landscape. You just had to add water.

Highlights of the lecture will include:

• Cliff May’s early career;
• His evolving brand of regional modernity;
• His inevitable discovery by the press;
• His perfection of what might be called the architectural palindrome.

Daniel Gregory is Senior Editor, Special Projects/Home for Sunset Magazine. He has contributed essays on William Wurster and Thomas Church to several books, and wrote the introduction for Greene & Greene by Marvin Rand. He is at work on a book about Cliff May’s ranch houses for Rizzoli.

Additional tour: Designs on the Good Life Saturday, March 24, 2007, noon to 3 pm; $75 (general admission); $50 for students and FOGH members. In a sylvan Brentwood canyon, just steps from busy Sunset Boulevard, Cliff May created what many believe to be the finest interpretation of the California lifestyle ever realized. Join us for a rare opportunity to enter this private world and experience the ultimate in “Ranch House Deluxe.”

This is part of The Sidney D. Gamble Lecture Series 2006-2007: The Continual Arts and Crafts Connection Lecture Schedule January 25, 2007 William Lees Judson: Craftsman at Heart, Painter by Trade February 20, 2007 Rudolph M. Schindler: Architect, Builder, Theorist, Utopian March 23, 2007 California in a Container: Cliff May and the Modern Ranch House April 28, 2007 Gardens of Intrigue: Greenscapes of Magic and Mystery

Official Website: http://gamblehouse.org/events/index.html#Gregory