FINE ART LAMPS Villa 1919

The California Mission style drew on the architectural traditions of the Spanish Colonial period. Julia Morgan, of San Francisco, the first woman to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, began the creation of San Simeon for William Randolph Hearst in 1919. Here California Mission Revival met European sophistication. In Palm Beach, Addison Mizner, trained in his native San Francisco and in Spain, in 1919 built the remarkable El Mirasol for Mrs. Stotesbury, reigning grande dame of Palm Beach society. On both the east and west coasts of America, the European Villa Revival was now underway. With romantic balconies, colonnaded loggias, and Moorish courtyards with fountains, the villas offered sanctuary from the sun. The interiors were rich with details in stone, iron, wood and ceramics inspired by Spain and Italy, but imaginatively interpreted by designers, artisans and craftsmen immersed in the Arts and Crafts movement and meeting the needs of a modern lifestyle. Original decorative lighting was created using iron and translucent mica, made from quarried quartz, and one of the favored materials of the Arts and Crafts period. Fine Art Lamps has now created original designs that evoke this unique period in American architecture. It is extraordinary that Julia Morgan and Addison Mizner, both born in the same city, San Francisco, in the same year, 1872, had both launched in the same year, 1919, in California and Florida, the villas that have inspired Fine Art Lamps' newest collection. The name Villa 1919 seems inevitable. The style seems irresistible. read more »