Craig Ellwood: Life is a Bottomless Barrel

Craig Ellwood: Life is a Bottomless Barrel, the third in a trilogy on Ellwood by author/publisher Keith York collects, for the first time, Ellwood’s autobiographical essays written between 1978-1992. While a few of these chapters have been used as research source material for biographies on Ellwood, York was able to work with the family to retrieve all the drafts manuscripts the late architect was writing prior to his passing. While not an autobiography in the traditional sense, the book sees Ellwood sharing a variety of vignettes he found salient to share towards the end of his life. The book is illuminated with a number of never-before-published images of Ellwood, his projects and companions.

In the years following World War II, Craig Ellwood, alongside other progressive architects in Southern California, sought innovative architectural solutions to meet the rising demands of homeownership in the postwar era. His early career was propelled by his participation in John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture Case Study House program, for which he designed Case Study Houses 16, 17, and 18. Over time, Ellwood’s firm expanded its scope, evolving from designing small private residences to producing large-scale commercial, civic and educational buildings before closing in 1977.

Ellwood wrote Life is a Bottomless Barrel between 1978-1992, intensifying his efforts in the months preceding his death in hopes of securing grant funding from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, an organization once led by his friend John Entenza.

Just days before his death, Ellwood sent his friend and former employee, Ernest Jacks, seven chapters to edit, with the intention that they form the basis of a recommendation letter to the Graham Foundation. Shortly after the package arrived in Arkansas—where Jacks was retiring from his position as Associate Dean of the University of Arkansas’s School of Architecture—he received word from Ellwood’s widow that Ellwood had died suddenly on May 30, 1992.

These seven chapters were later donated to the University of Arkansas Special Collections following Jacks’ passing in 2020 and were transcribed from typewritten pages into Word format during the research for Craig Ellwood: Remembering the Thin Man. Ellwood’s widow, Leslie, and daughter, Caitlin, unearthed the remaining chapters, and work began in earnest to present the author’s autobiographical vignettes as referenced in the chapter “Serious Book.” While portions of this manuscript were referenced in the book California Modern: The Architecture of Craig Ellwood, this books follows Ellwood’s original intent.