The splendid disarray of beauty : the boys, the tiles, the joy of Cathedral Oaks-- a study in Arts and crafts community / Richard D. Mohr.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : An Art School in the Mountains -- The Arts and Crafts Principles of Cathedral Oaks -- The Men of Cathedral Oaks -- The Women of Cathedral Oaks -- The Art of Cathedral Oaks -- Coda : The School's Last Two Years and the Boys' Last Fifty--in Brief.

"This book revives from oblivion the story of two men, Frank Ingerson and George Dennison, who in August 1910 began fifty-five years of love and life together by launching, as a honeymoon project, the first freestanding summer art school on the West Coast. Tucked away in the eastern foothills of California's Santa Cruz Mountains, the men's school, home, and studio, called Cathedral Oaks, was bohemian in lifestyle but doctrinal in aesthetic. It rigorously followed the teachings of the dean of the American Arts and Crafts design, Arthur Wesley Dow. During the second of its four years - it lasted only from 1911 to 1914 - the school produced some of the most mysterious, beguiling, and beautiful art tiles in America. The men went on to lead glamorous lives as interior designers in Hollywood and Europe - hobnobbing with Academy Award winners and dining with the Peerage. In the thirties, they returned to Cathedral Oaks for three decades largely devoted to charitable causes, but eventually their money and contacts ran out and they passed into obscurity. A couple of sweeties, the men married in substance one hundred years to the month before California law caught up with them. They are two of the most fascinating and admirable people you have never heard of"-- Provided by publisher.