ARTISANS: Spotlighting Makers of Hand-Crafted Goods : Decor of Past Brought Artisans Together : Restoration: Two devotees of the American Arts and Crafts movement in the early part of the century have returned homes of that design to their original style.

In the early 1900s, the American Arts and Crafts movement spread west to such diverse communities as Pasadena, Riverside, Redlands and Anaheim.

Laguna Beach, then a quiescent town dotted with a scant number of bungalows along its shore and in its hills, received its share of craftsman-style homes inspired by the movement.

Most of those original beach homes have been razed, replaced by modern structures. But some devotees have refurbished the remaining Craftsman-style homes, filling them with clean-line objects--lamps, bookends, fireplace tools, candlesticks and furniture--from the period.

It was a mutual appreciation for the movement’s emphasis on functional design and quality construction using conventional materials that brought artisans Tony Smith and Greg Bowman together.

Smith, a former home builder, made the nearly lost art of Craftsman-style metalwork his profession a few years ago.

Bowman, owner of Santa Ana-based Buffalo Studios, which specializes in restoring vintage homes, has been creating Tiffany-style lamps and candlesticks for 15 years.

The two men met two years ago.

Smith was strolling with his wife, Barbara, near their Laguna Beach home when he noticed a bungalow “with hanging handmade lanterns, which we noticed were new to that house,” he recalled.

Smith realized he had found someone who “understood and respected the Craftsman period and the art.”

After investigating, he found that the bungalow belonged to Bowman, and a “friendly chat” turned into a “loose partnership,” says Bowman, when Smith agreed to work with him on a vintage home restoration project in Los Angeles.

Working together, they have re-created hand-hewn lamps in the style of Dutch designer-craftsman Dirk Van Erp, copper front-door plates, cabinet fasteners, handles, hinges for wine cellars and garage doors, Tiffany-style lamps and other household treasures in the movement’s style.

“Clients often bring me one or two original handles or hinges and need more just like them,” Smith said. “For a weathered look, I hammer the hardware. Or I oxidize it to produce a patina-like finish.”

Original Craftsman-style pieces honored their creator with the marks of the coppersmith’s hammer clearly visible on serving trays, or on the dowels, tenon joints and mortises fully exposed in a chair.

Bowman enjoys “the technological challenge of recapturing the past using modern means.”

Most gratifying to the team, however, are patrons who appreciate the time and effort it takes to re-create period pieces and are willing to pay the price.

A 6-foot Tiffany-style floor lamp and shade costs $15,000.

“That sounds outrageous to a lot of people,” Smith says, “but what they don’t understand is that in 1910 laborers earned 10 cents an hour. The cost of labor wasn’t an issue then, as it is now.”

Bowman adds: “Everything we make is virtually handmade and labor-intensive. It takes the same amount of time to make a piece now as it did 90 years ago.”