If you’re familiar with the Greene brothers and the Gamble house, you’ll see a lot of the design for this book case comes from the smaller of the two living room book cases.
It’s a good size to fit into a guest bedroom. Besides holding books, I also want the piece to hide a small server computer, DSL router, ethernet switch and external hard drive in the bottom. To help hide the computer gear, I merged a design element from another Greene and Greene piece; the lower drawer section from the book case in the Blacker House.

Using a CAD program really helps out with this type of project. Greene and Greene pieces are filled with small details. It’s nice to use CAD to create several versions. By doing this it is easy to compare different ideas to see how scale, proportions and the Greene details merge with the demands of the joinery used to construct the piece.

Below you’ll see a couple of renderings of my final design. The first shows the entire piece and gives a good feel for the overall scale and proportions of the book case. The second is a close up of the right hand corner of the drawer platform. It shows the details of the bridle joint used for the frame and panel top, the placement of the ebony plugs, and the cloud lift detail in the upper rail in the drawer enclosure side.