Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Finding Aid for the Cliff & Lou Sawyer papers, circa 1930-circa 1979 0000174
0000174  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Access
  • Custodial History note
  • Preferred Citation note
  • Biographical/Historical note
  • Scope and Content note

  • Title: Cliff and Lou Sawyer papers
    Identifier/Call Number: 0000174
    Contributing Institution: Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design & Architecture Museum
    Language of Material: English
    Physical Description: 13.0 Linear feet (2 record storage box and 3 flat file drawers)
    Date (inclusive): circa 1930-circa 1979
    Location note: Box 1-2/ADC - regular 3 Flat File Drawers/ADC - flat files
    creator: Cliff and Lou Sawyer.
    creator: Sawyer, Cliff, (Clifton Howard), 1896-1966
    creator: Sawyer, Lou, 1905-1995

    Access

    Partially processed collection, open for use by qualified researchers.

    Custodial History note

    Gift of Henry Mazur, 1996.

    Preferred Citation note

    Cliff and Lou Sawyer papers, Architecture and Design Collection. Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.

    Biographical/Historical note

    Cliff and Lou Sawyer were a husband and wife design team whose work consisted primarily of designing and decorating food and beverage establishments in southern California. Lou Sawyer was born in the Basque country in the Pyrenees between France and Spain in 1905. Cliff Sawyer was born in Boston in 1896. Lou met her husband Cliff Sawyer in Paris, where he was studying art and design. The two left France for California in the early 1930s. Once in California, the two began an interior design business together. In 1966, Cliff Sawyer died and Lou Sawyer carried on the business, completing her 368th job by 1968. Lou Sawyer died in 1995. Over the course of their careers some of their more notable projects include: the original Luau in Beverly Hills, Don the Beachcomber in Palm Springs, Pago Pago in Long Beach and Tucson, Arizona, and the Reef in Casper, Wyoming.

    Scope and Content note

    The Cliff and Lou Sawyer papers span 13 linear feet and date from circa 1930 to circa 1979. The collection is primarily composed of architectural drawings and reprographic copies of restaurants designed by the Sawyers as well as project notes, ephemera, newspaper clippings, small sketches of restaurant exteriors, and disbound scrapbook pages which document the many restaurants designed by the husband and wife team.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Cliff and Lou Sawyer.
    Sawyer, Cliff, (Clifton Howard), 1896-1966
    Sawyer, Lou, 1905-1995
    Architectural drawings
    Photographic prints
    Presentation drawings (proposals)
    Scrapbooks
    Sketches