Violeta Autumn née Eidelman (May 20, 1930 – February 5, 2012) was a Peruvian-born, naturalized American citizen, who became a noted architect and artist in the San Francisco Bay Area, based in Sausalito, California. She was best known for her works in Organic Architecture, the home she built for herself, and her winery designs with her associate John Marsh Davis as licensed architect in the firm Davis-Autumn Architects Planners. In addition to architecture, Autumn served on the Planning Commission and City Council for Sausalito from 1965 to 1980. She wrote cookbooks, designed murals, and illustrated books for other authors, as well. Early life Violeta Eidelman was born in Chiclayo, Peru to Russian Jewish immigrants, whose father was artist Alberto Eidelman. She lived in Peru until she was fourteen, when she and her brother moved to the United States. Eidelman completed her elementary schooling in Lima and began her high school education in Panama, before moving to the United States to complete her secondary education at Norman High School. Her parents remained in Panama so that they could earn money for the children's education. Eidelman studied architecture at the University of Oklahoma under Bruce Goff, graduating in 1953, the third woman to graduate there with a Bachelor of Architecture, having also taken two years of engineering. After graduation, Eidelman traveled in Europe over the summer, meeting her future husband on the return trip. In 1954, she married Sanford Autumn, a psychologist from Cleveland and relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, obtaining her California architect's license in 1957, earning license number 2209. Career Her first experience in architecture was preparing construction drawings for Harold Dow, an architect in Palo Alto, California. She also illustrated renderings for other architects and authors, and designed murals. In 1959 she designed and built her home and architectural studio on Sausalito Boulevard in Sausalito, California on the up-slope of a narrow winding street with a unique structural system on a vertical "cliff" site with structural engineer Haluk Akol. The building features a two-story copper hood to vent the fireplace, exposed concrete buttresses to stabilize the hill, and unpainted redwood stressing the theory of organic architecture taught by Goff and Frank Lloyd Wright and the truth in materials. uilt This project was featured in Progressive Architecture magazine May 1964, in an article entitled "The Private World of An Individual" and Look magazine on July 13, 1965. Autumn