Furniture, lighting and art glass designed by Greene & Greene resides in at least fourteen major museums in the United States. Ten of those fourteen own pieces from the Robert R. Blacker house and two more have Blacker pieces on loan. Why is it that one commission so dominates the firm's representative work? Even if we restrict the menu to only those houses for which the Greenes designed decorative objects in large numbers, there would be roughly a dozen from which to choose.

There are several reasons for the predominance of Blacker pieces. The number of pieces designed for that house is very large. There are complete suites for the entry, living room, dining and breakfast rooms and the owner's bedroom. The furniture and lighting demonstrate inspired design and excellent execution which, naturally, makes them of interest to museums. However, the primary reason for the presence of many Blacker items in collections, both institutional and private, has to do with a yard sale.

I don't like yard sales. I suppose it has to do with the low hit rate, the unlikelihood of finding anything worthwhile. Or perhaps it's the thought of spending a Saturday morning shuttling from one pile of discards to another. Whatever the cause, I stay as far away as possible. Even so, I suspect that I would have taken great interest in a yard sale at the Blacker house, a sale during which were sold many treasures of American design.

Nellie Blacker lived for forty years in the house she and her husband built. It remained in excellent condition throughout her life. In a 1942 letter to Charles, Henry writes, "The inside of the house is perfect yet; apparently not a scar or shrinkage or blemish." Despite Mrs. Blacker's wishes that the house be kept intact, after her death, the property was subdivided and the furniture, that amazing collection in perfect condition, was dispersed. In terms of eventual value of the pieces sold, this event must surely rank among the richest sales in history. Several years ago, a single Blacker living-room chair sold at auction for over $900,000.

Initially in private hands, Blacker pieces began evevtually to filter into museums, either through loan, as gifts or at auction, as values soared and owners could no longer justify keeping them. It is, of course, tragic that the Blacker house does not contain original furniture. Each piece was designed for a particular location within the house. Ideally, they should be viewed in that context. On the other side of the balance sheet, however, we must recognize that the work of Greene & Greene is much more in the public eye because museums have made them available.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri is one such institution. Among the thousands of paintings, sculptures (including a giant shuttlecock on the lawn) and other objets d'art, once finds here the living-room bookcase from the Blacker house. A relatively small piece, it was designed for an alcove to the right of the fireplace, adjacent to a wall of windows facing Hillcrest Avenue. An exact replica occupies that spot today and the citizens of Kansas City must be thankful for that fact.

Furniture for the Blacker living-room includes several details that appear nowhere else in the Greene & Greene canon: the leg indent, the "Blacker bracket" and an unusual drawer pull design. The bookcase incorporates each of these. It is a stunning piece, as are all of the other pieces in that room. Like Lake Wobegon, everything here truly is above average.



“Blacker brackets,” are nearly ubiquitous in the living room furniture. They appear on chairs, a sofa, tables and a magnificent bookcase with leaded glass doors. So frequently do these brackets appear in the living room that it is somewhat astonishing that they do not appear in any other room of the house. Typically used in the void at the right angle meeting of a leg and a rail, for the bookcase they appear in the frame and panel sides and the leaded doors. These brackets may be the best illustration of the underlying nature of this form: The Blacker bracket is, in effect, a modified, exaggerated form of cloud lift – one that is applied rather than integral to the rail. While the open center of the bracket form is clearly distinct from cloud lifts, the result is the same – a rise in a horizontal line.

Another detail unique to the living room is much more subtle but quite beautiful and clever. Near the bottoms of the legs on every piece of furniture in the room, there is a small indent, nearly as wide as the leg. Several inches in length, the indents increase in depth and stop short of the leg bottom. The surface of the indent is slightly pillowed at the edges, mirroring the eased edges of the legs. The indent detail adds visual interest to the legs by creating shadow lines and texture. In some cases, they also serve to lighten the leg, similar to a slight taper but without the exceedingly traditional appearance that detail imparts.

Photos courtesy of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.