Before the Gambles ever traveled to Japan, their house was already speaking the language.
Architects Charles and Henry Greene drew so deeply from Japanese design philosophy — in the joinery, the wood surfaces, the enveloping proportions — that when David and Mary Gamble made a months-long trip to Japan, China and Korea in 1908, while the house was still under construction, they returned home to walls they finally understood differently. The Japanese metalworks and embroideries they brought back with them are still in the house today.
It is that layered history — Japanese influence built into a Pasadena landmark before its owners had set foot in Asia — that makes the Gamble House an unusual and genuinely fitting home for “From Strand to Sculpture: Contemporary Japanese Basketry,” an exhibition of 23 bamboo works on loan from the Thoma Foundation in Dallas that has been on view since February 5. The show closes April 12.
On Saturday, April 11, at 3 p.m., the final expert-guided tour of the exhibition takes place. Leading it is Meher McArthur, a Pasadena resident and Japanese art historian who spent nearly a decade — from 1998 to 2006 — as Curator of East Asian Art at what was then the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. The one-and-a-half-hour tour costs $30 for Gamble House members and $40 for non-members, according to the Gamble House.
The 23 pieces range from tightly contained vessels to what the Gamble House describes as “dramatic sculptural forms that show the expressive power of bamboo.” All were chosen with the theme of the elements — a deliberate echo, the Conservancy says, of nature’s centrality in Greene & Greene’s design. The works are displayed not in gallery isolation but within the house itself, amid the house’s rare-wood surfaces and handcrafted details.
“The richness of the atmosphere will speak to the quality of these baskets,” Jennifer Trotoux, the Gamble House’s Director of Collections and Interpretation, said in a February interview with the Pasadena Weekly. “The Gamble House has so much Japanese inspiration.”
The exhibition is the fourth contemporary art overlay hosted by the Gamble House in the past dozen years — the first since the Gamble House Conservancy formalized as an independent non-profit in 2020. “We’re excited to have an exhibition in the Gamble House again,” Trotoux told the Weekly.
McArthur, who lives in Pasadena and has curated Japanese art exhibitions across Southern California for more than 25 years, published a memoir about her career, “A Japanese Art Journey,” through Tuttle Books in 2025. She has led earlier focus tours for the exhibition; the April 11 tour, which begins the afternoon before the show closes, is the last.
The Gamble House — built in 1908, a Local, State, and National Historic Landmark — is owned by the City of Pasadena and operated by the Gamble House Conservancy.
If You Go: The “From Strand to Sculpture” Exhibition Focus Tour takes place Saturday, April 11 at 3:00 p.m. at The Gamble House, 4 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena. The tour runs approximately 90 minutes. Tickets are $30 for Gamble House members and $40 for non-members. The exhibition itself closes Sunday, April 12. For information and tickets: (626) 793-3334; info@gamblehouse.org; gamblehouse.org.
The house’s wood still carries the grain of it — this art, and the tradition that made it, are not visitors to the Gamble House. They are, in a sense, why the Gamble House looks the way it does.
“From Strand to Sculpture” Exhibition Focus Tour |Saturday, April 11, 2026| Time: 3:00 p.m. | Event Location: The Gamble House | Cost: $30.00 – $40.00 | For more information call: 626-793-3334 | Or click here: https://114058.blackbaudhosting.com/114058/page.aspx?pid=213&tab=2&txobjid=914a1e0f-fcd8-47b0-806c-97e82edda2a6
