The basic elements of the Greene & Greene furniture vocabulary are relatively simple. Ebony pegs, lifts, shop-made pulls, and breadboard ends are used almost universally. Some other details occur more rarely. Scrolls and corner brackets, as in the Blacker living room, are examples. None of these elements are particularly complex from a design perspective and yet incorporating them well into a piece of furniture requires a surprising degree of sensitivity.

Other factors -- some tangible, others less so -- are at least as important to the look and presence of a piece as is the design vocabulary. Scale, visual weight and proportion, grace and the previously mentioned sensitivity all figure large in the success of a design. Charles and Henry Greene mastered use of their unique and inventive vocabulary as well as these intangibles. The result is furniture that is widely considered to be the best of the American Arts & Crafts era.

This serving table from the Charles Pratt house provides a perfect illustration of the above thesis. There isn't a lot going on. The form is simple, the lines clean. We see a very straightforward application of the lift detail as well as the expected ebony pegs. Drawer pulls are pleasing but also quite restrained. The sole stylistic surprise is found in the breadboard ends.

As is typical in the Greenes' work, the breadboards are proud of the surface of the table top and are longer than the width of the top. Joints on the front and back edges are adorned with ebony splines. None of these details distinguish this piece. The factor that sets it apart is the shape of the breadboards which are shallowly curved along their length and lobed near the ends. The result is a subtle tsuba effect despite the strictly rectangular form of the top's main field. It is restrained and elegant, befitting its station in one of the masterpieces created by Greene & Greene.