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The original purchase of the vacant block at 21 Glenard Drive Eaglemont can be regarded as a Burley-Griffin and Lippincott collaboration of sorts. Burley Griffin designed the Glenard Estate near the Yarra River in Eaglemont for developer Peter Keam, with a curved and flowing layout. Burley Griffin then purchased Number 21 Glenard Drive from Keam in May 1917 for sixty-one pounds, twelve shillings and one penny. But he did so only as an intermediary.The land title that bears his signature shows he immediately transferred the property to his sister Genevieve Griffin Lippincott, who was married to Roy Lippincott. Lippincott at the time was working in Burley Griffin's studio, which Walter ran in conjunction with his wife and fellow architect Marion Mahony Griffin.

The site's featured two large river red gums. To date, the one at the front is still alive. The one at the back is now an imposing remnant, its hollow trunk reaching almost as high as the top of the house, and annually serving as a nesting site for wood ducks.

On the site, Roy and Walter – no doubt with input from Marion and perhaps Genevieve – designed the most marvellous two-storey house, with a soaring roof line (dramatically echoed in the living room fireplace), wide eaves, bold and oversized bargeboards, and splayed brick lower walls with patterned brick columns rising from them.

It also has a band of windows running almost the entire length of the house (a design element advocated by Burley Griffin in an article called "Sunshine in the Home"), which provide a strong sense of place from every room.

Although it's called Lippincott House and was first owned by Genevieve, Walter and Marion sometimes stayed there too, including while building their house on the neighbouring site – the tiny, open-plan home called Pholiota.

Pholiota consisted of one room with a number of alcoves that had curtains to separate them from the main room when required, and the flooring was simply bricks on the ground.

The Lippincotts moved to New Zealand in 1921, after Roy won a competition to design the Arts building at Auckland University. Walter and Marion several years later also left Melbourne, heading to Sydney, where they would focus their attention on Castlecrag.

Artist Vaughan Murray Griffin and his wife Norrie Hinemoa – lived in the house for decades from 1939 onwards, raising two sons there – Garry, and his brother Nicholas (who grew up to be an architect). Murray Griffin is best known for his linocuts of Australian birds, as well as his drawings and paintings from his three and a half years as a prisoner of war in Changi, which strikingly capture the suffering of his fellow prisoners.

Walter and Murray Griffin weren't related, despite the shared surname, but they knew each other. They met when the parents of Murray Griffin commissioned Walter to design a house for them in Darebin Street Heidelberg Darebin Street, Heidelberg, when Murray was still living at home. Walter paid particular attention in his design of the Darebin Street house to ensuring Murray's room had plenty of light for his artistic endeavours.

Murray subsequently visited and stayed with Walter and Marion at Castlecrag, and they also had some important common interests including Japanese print-making. For Marion, it shaped her approach to preparing her beautifully rendered drawings and watercolours for Frank Lloyd Wright and, subsequently, her drawings and watercolours for Walter. For Murray Griffin, Japanese prints influenced the design of his linocuts, each of which he produced by gradually carving into a single block of linoleum, rolling on a different coloured ink after each set of cuts, and pressing each iteration of the inked block onto the same run of paper, using the heavy press in his studio upstairs at the Glenard Drive house.

Another common interest was Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy. Marion joined the Anthroposophic Society of Australia in 1930 and Walter joined the following year. Murray Griffin's interest in anthroposophy had started earlier, in about the mid-1920s. Walter and Marion became heavily involved in the Anthroposophic Society during their time in Castlecrag, attending lectures and becoming involved in anthroposophic festivals. For Murray Griffin, anthroposophy triggered the Journey series of prints and paintings, in which he explored the spiritual world that he believed permeated our physical world.

Perhaps the most important shared bond of all was their attitude to nature. For all three – Walter, Marion, and my artist grandfather – nature was the well-spring of human creativity, and connection to the natural world was essential for human happiness. Walter believed the object of design is to "harmonise art with nature", and he and Marion were fascinated by Australian plants. They were also dismayed by the casual lack of regard that Australians often showed to their natural environment.

After Walter had carefully designed the Glenard estate to protect its mature eucalypts in small reserves, they learned when in Castlecrag that Heidelberg's council had sold these trees for a pound each to be chopped up for firewood.

For Murray Griffin, it was essential that art have a link to nature. He loved going out into the bush and "golden paddocks" in the area around Eaglemont, which had earlier been an inspiration for the Heidelberg School of artists, and also took inspiration from landscapes in other parts of Victoria.

Murray Griffin's art studio was located upstairs in 21 Glenard Drive. Both he and Norrie nurtured a large vegetable garden, the seedlings planted according to the phases of the moon, and a large copper vat full of water and cow manure that he'd collected from the river flats stewing on the garden's perimeter. Along with Murray, Norrie loved the unique design of 21 Glenard Drive – reminiscing to one journalist that when they first moved their visitors would "howl with laughter" at the number of windows. She also loved the neighbourhood of the Glenard estate, which at various times counted among its residents mudbrick home pioneer Alistair Knox and his wife Mernda, journalists Fred Aldridge and Alan Nicholls and their respective families, and modern Australian furniture pioneer Fred Ward and his wife Ellinor.

At Norrie's behest, there is a plaque on some rocks on a small, grassy roundabout in front of 21 that reads: "Walter Burley Griffin lived in Glenard Drive. He planned this subdivision in 1916. For this we are grateful."