I think that Jackson Browne's grandfather built this:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g156030-i66459581-Highland_Park_California.html
The Abbey San Encino in Highland Park. Knocked on the door there maybe 26 years ago and got an informal private tour. They were fixing it up a bit. While the most familiar symbols of Southern California's Arts and Crafts movement remain architectural -- the Gamble House of Pasadena being the most prominent of examples -- fine printing was a craft that flourished among the movement's adherents. One such adherent, Clyde Browne, was a self-identified printer and Arroyo culture character who combined both architecture and fine printing to express his deep regard for the movement's principles.
Here is an internet article on this:
Clyde Browne is not typically recognized as a Southern California fine printer along the lines of Ward Ritchie or Grant Dahlstrom, although he certainly acted as a mentor to those who are considered exemplary craftspeople of fine print. In a telling recollection appearing in a 1948 Book Club of California newsletter, the author recalls asking an unnamed director of a California library that collected fine printing if his institution held Browne imprints. The director haughtily replied, "Heavens no! He never made the grade." 2 Although Browne's printed work might not be found in collections of fine printing, evidence of his determination, creativity and craftsmanship can be located at North Figueroa Street, boarded by Marmion Way to the north and Arroyo Glen Street to the south, where his Abbey San Encino, built by his own hands, stands in a neighborhood that used to be the old Garvanza section of Los Angeles.
Browne was a fortunate man who was able to make his living off of what he loved to do -- printing. He started his life in printing when he was only 15, working with the Petaluma Imprint for about one year before taking on a position as an apprentice cabin boy on a Pacific Mail steamer, and then as a seaman for the Oceanic Steamship Company. Upon returning to San Francisco in 1893 Browne served with a number of Bay Area newspapers, including the Marin County Tocsin, the San Francisco Call, Bulletin and Examiner, the Sausalito News, and the Petaluma Argus and Courier, leaving printing shortly to make a living as a piano player on San Francisco's Barbary Coast. In 1902 or 1903, he moved his wife and small son, Laurence, to Los Angeles. His wife died shortly after the relocation, and soon after her death Browne took a job in the press room of the Los Angeles Examiner. While working there Browne met Grace Wassum, a typesetter who worked in the proof room of the newspaper. The couple married in 1907, settling for a short while on Fifth and Hill Streets, before purchasing a large piece of land nestled in the rocky hills of the Arroyo Seco. Leaving behind his job at the Examiner after a labor dispute, Browne began to concentrate on his goal of creating a "studio of fine printing", envisioning "a print shop with numerous real old-time printers hand-setting type, each printer adorned with whiskers or a full beard." 3
Abbey San Encino
http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/history/the-bohemian-brownes-of-the-arroyo-seco.html
I post this to demonstrate that the spirituality of the Browne family is not something new. This song by Jackson Browne is one of my favorites.
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