California’s Landscape in Lighting: The Works of Elizabeth Burton

Published by the Two Red Roses Foundation, November 6, 2019

In the spring of 2020, when guests visit the third floor lighting gallery of the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement (MAACM) in St. Petersburg, FL, they will be greeted by a striking, three-foot tall, hand-wrought lamp featuring a Japanese abalone shell shade supported by a slender leaf-like base with a green patina (Fig. 1). Given the evocative title Medusa by its designer, Elizabeth Eaton Burton (1869-1937), this lamp is one of four works by her that will be on view.

Born in Paris to expatriates Charles Frederick Eaton (1842-1930) and Helen Justice Mitchell Eaton (d. 1895), Burton spent her childhood in Europe. In 1886, her family emigrated to Montecito, CA, four miles outside Santa Barbara, where her father designed Riso Rivo, a palatial estate with lush, verdant gardens. Charles established an Arts and Crafts studio on property and created lamps, furniture, and leather goods inspired by the California landscape. His designs and California’s landscape would be extremely influential on his daughter’s work.

The very beautiful gardens of Riso Rivo offered Burton a wealth of plants, hues, and textures to study. In 1904, Arts and Crafts artist and promoter Gustav Stickley (1858-1942) visited the estate and was so taken by its splendor that he published a twenty-page article on the gardens in his magazine The Craftsman. He described the grounds as “a spot where the intentions of Nature, instead of being thwarted, have been studied and developed with most gratifying results.” Stickley expounded on the sumptuous assortment of vegetation and range of vivid colors, including golden browns, greens, yellows, and reds. Both Charles and Elizabeth replicated Riso Rivo’s tones and diverse botanicals in their designs.

Elizabeth established her own studio in Santa Barbara in 1896. First experimenting in leather, she created boxes, cushions, and screens dyed in rich colors and studded with shells and semi-precious gemstones. By 1900, she was designing light fixtures inspired by Riso Rivo’s gardens. One lamp is reminiscent of its lake, which was noted to have beautiful water lilies (Fig. 2). Made from patinated brass, the lamp’s lily pad base is mounted with a matching chased shade and accented with a hand-wrought lily. Finished with pierced punch work, the shade evokes glistening water when lit. Another table lamp’s shade depicts pine branches, needles, and cones (Fig. 3). Translucent shell lines its underside, defusing the electric light. The California landscape’s dense foliage provided infinite sources for her designs.

Elizabeth frequently utilized abalone, melon shells, and Philippine shells culled from the Pacific Ocean. Her Five-Shell lamp, evocative of a bouquet of flowers, features a repoussé copper lily pad base supporting five individual, flower-head shades composed of iridescent shells (Fig. 4). Advertising a similar lamp in her c. 1905 sale catalog, Hand-Wrought Electric Lamps and Sconces, she promoted “the combination of Shells with their beautiful natural coloring and opalescent tints, and hand-wrought Metal, [as] particularly effective in Decorative Lighting.” The natural material diffused the harsh rays of the electric bulb into softened, reflected light. Additionally, when lit, the shells’ red and golden tones recall colors in California’s landscape.

The motifs and materials employed by Elizabeth Burton exemplify the goals of Arts and Crafts artists working in California – to capture the state’s natural beauty in their art. The publication Beautiful, Useful, Inevitable: Arts & Crafts Lighting from the Two Red Roses Foundation, with essays by renowned Arts and Crafts scholar David Cathers, provides additional information on Elizabeth and her lamps. These lamps are just a few of the many California works that will be exhibited in the MAACM’s galleries for the enjoyment of visitors.