ABOUT ME
Bruce Smith, decorative arts & architecture writer
For over thirty years, Bruce Smith has been writing about early-twentieth-century decorative arts and architecture, with a special focus on the architects Charles and Henry Greene. His expertise spans Japanese influences on American architecture, the Arts and Crafts movement, Japanese bathing culture, and culinary arts.
His book Greene & Greene Masterworks was honored as one of the New York Times Editor’s Choice Architectural books in 1998. His latest collaboration, Six California Kitchens, co-authored with chef Sally Schmitt, was awarded the 2022 Golden Poppy Award by the California Independent Booksellers for best cookbook of that year, followed by the 2023 award for best cookbook in the American cooking category from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
Based in Kamakura, Japan, Bruce continues to write on historical architecture and design, and is also working on a novel.
Latest Articles
Tokyo Meisho: The One Hundred Views
Forthcoming My current book-length work-in-progress is writing about this architect, Charles Sumner Greene, who arrived with his wife and five children to the seaside village in 1916. He came there thinking this to be merely a stopping-over place on his way further north, potentially to Berkeley, or perhaps San Francisco.
Stories from Kita Kamakura
Forthcoming My current book-length work-in-progress is writing about this architect, Charles Sumner Greene, who arrived with his wife and five children to the seaside village in 1916. He came there thinking this to be merely a stopping-over place on his way further north, potentially to Berkeley, or perhaps San Francisco.
Poetry & Architecture
Once, not that very long ago,… …there was a poet who loved to build by placing stone upon stone, first to build a home for his family, and then a tower for his wife. And there was an architect who loved to write poetry, who near the end of his