The Art and Craft of the Border: Reginald W. Machell’s Theosophical Woodwork

Abstract This article examines the occult underpinnings of British-born craftsperson, artist, and devout Theosophist, Reginald W. Machell’s designs for woodwork between 1895 and his death in 1927. Machell’s theory of the hand-carved picture frame invoked Theosophical concepts of the passage between material and spiritual realms. He described the frame as a liminal borderland, replete with spiritual meaning inexpressible in the figurative scenes he painted on canvas. Examining his pictorial works and woodwork together, I extend this understanding of the frame to his carved furnishings and architectural features at Lomaland—the sprawling San Diego headquarters for the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. Machell’s woodwork at Lomaland functioned as “frames” for the lived experience, realizing Theosophy’s core belief in transcendence to the spiritual. Machell navigated the hierarchical duality of matter and spirit underlying Theosophy and its many related religious movements. In doing so, his work and practice also typified a larger dilemma of occult art and design: any image’s or object’s materiality, visibility, and didactic aims risked contradicting esotericism’s fundamental belief in the invisible, non-material, and mysterious.