Irving Gill Central Presents:
Please see past the frequent redundancy in these quotes and remember that these writers had the gift of seeing what few, if any of us have: many Irving Gill buildings in their new and untouched condition. The fact that these so similar comments appeared in almost every early account shows the importance of the color and surface texture to the total Gill effect.
Regarding the Fannie McKoon Residence, San Diego 1910
In the new home that the McKoons have built in San Diego this furniture of another period is still used because of the old memories and associations. Otherwise the beautiful house on Albatross and Ivy, designed by Mr. Gill, is ultra-modern in the note of absolute simplicity that it strikes. From the outside it suggests the Mexican houses--beautifully proportioned, of cement overlaid with pinkish stucco, with window facings of restful green.
Inside the house is pervaded by a golden glow imparted by the general color scheme. the floors are of polished oak and the flush woodwork is ivory-colored against the mode1 tone of the walls. the hangings are all of warm-toned Copenhagen linen in the natural shade, a peculiar golden color.. In the big drawing room with its soft-toned rugs, prints and books and commanding a splendid view of the bay, stands the Narjot painting in an alcove built for it-- a fit setting for this rich chronicle of the past.
-The San Diego Union. Oct. 7, 1910
1Mode: def 3. A color, of variable hue, of low or very low saturation and of medium or high brilliance, produced by dyeing with a mixture of dyes -Websters New International Dictionary. 2nd ed Unabridged.
Regarding The Henry H. Timken Residence, San Diego, 1911
The inside walls are tinted the most delicate gray, an almost invisible gray and the ceilings chalk white. This gives all possible chance for the reflection of colors on the walls which forms such an attractive feature of all Mr. Gill's houses. The colors of the flowers of the garden, the green of the grass, the varying tints of the sky, are reflected upon the walls of the rooms with the intensified charm of beauty and color always felt in reflections. The flame of poppies, scarlet of geraniums, blue of larkspurs, all the rainbow colors of the garden pass in turn along the walls. A bit of metal, a fold of drapery in the room becomes mirrored softly among the garden colors as the sun enters the room and touches them. This rainbow play of color is especially noticeable in the portico and court where the greater light gives them added brilliance and they can be seen in the shadows. The power of reflection which gives these rooms so great and lovely a charm is brought about by the texture of the surface--- the ordinary white plaster wall does not in any way give the same effect. Because of the treatment, which is distinctly Mr. Gill's own method, there is always a soft glow in the rooms. The rooms seem tinted with delicate pastel shades one hour, become iridescent at another, are dove gray overlaid with rose at another. To live in such a room is almost like living on the inside of an opal or in the heart of a flower.
-Eloise Roorbach in The Western Architect. April 1913
Regarding The Bishop's School for Girls, La Jolla, 1910
With the exception of a mosaic of broken glazed tile embedded in the plaster around the openings of the tower there is no decoration on the building. Even this little band of delicate color is a concession, a decided departure from his usual strict denial of ornament. But the brightness of the California sky and the sparkle of the ocean so near seemed to demand this bit of color, as a sympathetic link.
The interior walls throughout the building are tinted a uniform warm gray and the ceiling white. The effect is by no means monotonous, for they have been treated in a way peculiarly his own, that is, surfaced so that they will catch color from sky and garden, from sunrise or sunset, until they glow like opals. Gardens bloom with reflected beauty upon these walls in a romantic, visionary, ever charming way. Every room is alive, changing constantly with the direction of light. Applied color seems set, stiff and lifeless compared with this shimmering, sensitive, will-o'-the-wisp coloring.
-The Craftsman. Sept 1914
Regarding the Mrs Paul Miltimore Residence, South Pasadena 1911
The exterior plaster is covered with two coats of well-tested waterproof coating. the exterior woodwork is painted a verde green.
As to the shape and color of the exterior-it is of the purest of white stucco in the form of a cube, with no overhang to the roof, windows or doors.
...Oak trees have been allowed to remain in their natural outspreading form, the beams and pillars of the pergola being adapted to their curves. thus they will aid the vines of the future in forming a roof of living green, a grateful protection from the noon-day brightness.
The most original feature of this house is the play of color upon its white surface. Twactman has shown us in his picture of snow that a field of white fairly glows with color and brilliancy. these white walls, as they catch the sun, present the same dazzling kaleidoscopic color seen in a field of snow, but with none of its sense of coldness or hardness. The surface becomes iridescent when the sun moves across it. the texture that makes this charm is Mr. Gill's discovery and secret. An ordinary, painted wall in nowise gives such a display of color. Twilight makes the house a tender mauve, sunset spreads a warm glow of rose, dawn touches with gray, noontide lights with yellow. It seems lit with an inner light at times, as a flame in an alabaster vase. Every color of the garden is in turn reflected against the sensitive surface with the changing position of the sun.
The rich blue of larkspurs, delicate blue of forget-me-nots, yellow of daffodils or nasturtiums, red of poppies or roses are caught in the pure white space created on purpose to receive them and glow with the bewitching magic of reflected color. The house takes on the liquid, luminous quality of a pearl shell. the interior of the house catches and reflects color as marvelously as the exterior with still another quality--that of perspective. Colors run the whole gamut of tones and overtones in the rooms, brilliant near the windows and melting into their own characteristic mellowness in the shadows.
An artist dwelling in such a house would catch graduations of color never dreamed of before. Color runs prismatically over the walls, resolving constantly into ever-changing harmonies--an immense improvement over the usual monotonous wall-papers, tinted plasters and other conventional finishes. This ever-new wall decoration is lovelier than any picture that can be hung upon it. This lovely charm of changing color cannot be dwelt upon too strongly, for it is something entirely new in home ornamentation. A profusion of things pinned or hung upon the walls, centers the mind upon those things and upon all the associations attendant upon the acquiring of them. So the mind continually turns over the emotions and the events of the past. These wall spaces, where new play of color is the only ornament, turn the mind into itself and give it an opportunity for discovery of new realms of thought. A more simple living would result from dwelling for a time in such a house.
-Eloise Roorbach in HOUSE BEAUTIFUL . Sept. 1914
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Regarding the La Jolla Woman's Club, 1912-1914
The floors throughout the club are cement, colored in mottled tones of light red and reinforced enough to prevent cracking; treated with an oil finish and waxed, they make an excellent dancing surface. the interior walls in their usual soft gray color scheme, have been surfaced so that both walls and ceiling reflect the colors of the sky and garden from the outside and the colors of the hangings from the inside. This gives the rooms ever-shifting, ever-moving opalescent tints that are far more beautiful than the ordinary dull opaque one-tone effect. The walls, glowing and changing with the hour and mood of the day, are ethereally lovely. To live in such rooms is like living inside a bubble or in the chalice of a morning glory; delicate pastel colors come and go upon the walls with the witching elusiveness of desert mirage, phantom garden-colors impossible to describe.
-The Craftsman. Aug, 1915
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Regarding the Mary Banning Residence, Los Angeles 1913-1914
Perhaps the most subtle suggestion of the architect's part is in the treatment of the walls. throughout the house they are the same, of no color yet far from colorless. This quality is affected by a mixture of paints of strong primary colors, blended to pregnant neutrality. One by one these colors assert themselves, in the varying lights of day and evening, responsive to the chromatic provocation of a polished mahogany table or a curtain or rug, of a red cement walk outside or of a bed of flowers, or a woman's dress or the shattered rainbows of the west window on the stair landing.
Standing in one room looking into another it seems so incredible that the walls are identical in finish, so varied is the coloring. they have the elusive color of a pearl, at no two moments the same. At night with the diffused light from pearl-like bowls suspended from the ceilings the effect is even more subtly beautiful than by day. There is nothing monastic or severe about it to any lover of color.
-Bertha H. Smith in The Los Angeles Times. Nov. 1, 1914
These walls dare to be plain and unbroken because the man who plastered them is an artist and the plastering in itself is a thing of beauty; because also there is something satisfying in the proportioning of the rooms and of the doors and windows. They dare to be of one finish from drawing-room to farthest servant's chamber because the tinting that seems at first a monotone of grayish, drabish, pearly white is a living sensitive composition of strong primary colors which reveal themselves in the reflection of the red of mahogany or of a tile floor, the blue of an oriental rug, the gold flare of a bed of poppies outside a window or the many hues of a California evening sky. at no two hours of the day are these walls alike in color, nor to the eyes of any two people. It is like living in the heart of a shell. What may at first seem an expression of chronic asceticism proves to be rather the result of a sybarite delight in color that glories not in obvious effect but rather in the occasional moment when the beveled glass of a western window on the stair landing shatters the sun's rays into its primal colors and flings them over the walls and floor, or in the play of light and shadow from a passing cloud or a waving palm frond.
-Bertha H. Smith in Sunset Magazine. Aug. 1915
Regarding The Lewis Courts, Sierra Madre, 1910
The garden is so essential a feature of his homes that he includes the designing of them in the house plan and this should be the case with every architect. Garden and House are one and indivisible in his mind Not only this, but he makes the garden take a second blooming upon the walls of the rooms. This is accomplished by the quality of the inner wall surface~~his own secret. It catches the garden colors and spreads them out, indistinctly formed, on wall and ceiling until the rooms seem to be overlaid with mother-of-pearl, only softer and shifting, as if sentient. The living and growing garden exists as a charmingly real thing out in the sunshine. Its spirit dwells within the home.
-Eloise Roorbach in The Architectural Record. Dec. 1913
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Regarding His Mature Period Work
Another point on which Mr. Gill bears hard is the delicacy of reflected colors upon a white, unbroken surface. This is too subtle for the average man, to whom a brick house is red and a whitewashed wall is simply white. To the observer of color, the white plain surface is composed of the most delicate and changing hues, taking tints from the green of the lawn, the shade of the tree, the blue of the sky, the crimson of the geranium bed, and with the varied lighting of morning and afternoon, clear weather and cloud, producing effects that are a delight to the trained eye.
-Uncredited writer in The Independent. Aug, 1913
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The wall finish of these interiors was an inspiration. To the color blind it is grayish, drabbish, dun, neutral. To those who have eyes to see, it is like the desert in autumn, without definite color but with a subtle suggestion of all colors. Such an effect is not produced by negative pigments, but a mixture of many strong colors, blended.
Outside a Gill house is always white. He has a delight in color and would teach you to find it as he does, in the reflected glow from the red floor of an open court, a bank of flowers, a green terrace, in shadows cast by a curtain of vines, in all the varying lights of day and evening as they call from those walls the infinite tones of the painter's blending.
-Bertha H. Smith in HOUSE & GARDEN. July 1914
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While Gill will not admit that his primary object was other than the practical one of a positive cleanliness, he could not have been unmindful of the incidental esthetic result of the magic wall tone, which he uses almost invariably in his interiors. This tone is seemingly neutral, but it plays incessantly with the color of every object in the room or outside the windows, it responds to all the varying lights between dawn and twilight, leaving one bewildered by an exquisite sense of elusive coloring. The exterior walls of his houses are sometimes softly tinted, and invariably the trim of the narrow door and window frames is the green of verdigris. at first glance some critics accuse this architect of a chromatic Puritanism. He is rather sybaritic in his joy in the delicacy of reflected color; at heart, he is even a bit barbaric in his feeling for color, as is revealed in his introduction of vivid color effects in his introduction of vivid color effects in the tile mosaic of wall fountains, in the windows on a certain stair landing, where he has used narrow deeply beveled panels of glass that break the suns rays and scatter them in rainbows over the wall.
He hopes gradually to combat our Puritanic fear of color and intends to introduce color more and more into his work. But he would not have color distract the eye from defects in the essentials, but merely enhance the beauty of otherwise perfect details.
-Uncredited writer (Bertha H. Smith?) in Vogue, Oct 15, 1916
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Regarding Cement Use
I have found no cement floor paint that produces a good effect. The hard, monotonous, flat colors are unpleasing, the paint wears off and shows the cement. Instead of using paint I mix color with the cement, usually tones of red and yellow, red and brown, or yellow and brown slightly mottled. tempered by the gray of the cement these colors produce neutral tones that are a splendid background for rugs and furniture. When quite dry, the cement should be cleaned with a weak solution of ammonia and water, given two coats of Chinese nut oil to bring out the color, then finished with a filler and waxed like hardwood. Well done, the treatment gives the effect of old Spanish leather.
-Irving J. Gill in Sunset Magazine, Dec. 1915.
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Regarding the Oceanside Americanization School, 1931
Contrary to the old ideas of coloring for school rooms, the new unit is decorated in bright colors. A color scheme of blue was used for interior work, ranging from a dark to a pale shade. The exterior is finished in white with bronze shades for the woodwork.
-Oceanside Blade Tribune, March 17, 1931
(editors note-this blue scheme was not present when color documentation was done for the recent restoration. The interiors were repainted their original colors.)
I would like to supplement this page with "as built" color information.
If you have any paint chips, Munsell numbers, old paint cans, or can offer access
to any under-studied Gill building please write me.
