Seeing a Greene and Greene house for the first time may leave one amazed but unquestionably more than a little exalted. Its form is reminiscent of American bungalows, although the bungalow as we know it came afterward. Whispers of the Far East can be heard in the slight rise of the roofline and in a stone lantern on the lawn. The asymmetrical design, the preference for timbers, and the romantic play of shingles and masonry recall the Stick and Shingle Styles popular on the East Coast. Exceptional craftsmanship is apparent: the porch railing has been shaped to convey a lift in its line; the roof's rafter tails, projecting beyond the eaves, have all been rounded by hand. Touches of pure artistry make themselves known at the front door in luminous art glass and a Japanese-style lantern hanging from a bracket. Nature is clearly a part of the design. Stones and bricks and different woods seem to arise from the landscape. Covered porches wrap around the house, and pergolas extend out into the garden, obscuring the line between the natural world and the more refined universe within.

Inside, the use of wood is nearly overwhelming. Mixed together are Burmese teak, Honduras mahogany, Port Orford cedar, floors of oak or maple, friezes carved in redwood. Craftsmanship reigns here as well in meticulous mortise-and-tenon joinery and corbeled beams, embraced in steel straps, that step out from the walls. Motifs are picked out in wood, plaster, and glass&emdash;in one house an owl or a crane, in another a water lily. The oval shape of a Japanese tsuba (sword guard) is inlaid into the furniture and reappears as the form of the dining table itself. The furniture, not surprisingly, is perfectly suited for its room and its exact location in the room. Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene designed each piece for a particular place in a particular house for their clients. A piano against a living room wall is cased in the same mahogany used for the built-in bookcases. A rose made of vermilion wood inlaid in a dressing table is a relative of the rose in the art glass lantern on the wall next to it.