Lot 425 : FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Auction Location: United States of America - 2005
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Description:
PROPERTY FROM A LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK COLLECTION
A RARE HIGH-BACK CHAIR
A RARE HIGH-BACK CHAIR
measurements note
47 5/8 in. (121 cm) high
ca. 1907
oak with leather upholstery
Tod M. Volpe and Beth Cathers, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement: 1890-1920, New York, 1988, p. 53
PROVENANCE
Jordan-Volpe Gallery, New York, ca. 1985
LITERATURE
Grant Carpenter Manson, Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910: The First Golden Age, New York, 1958, pp. 166-167
Frank Lloyd Wirght, The Early Work of Frank Lloyd Wright: The ''Ausgeführte Bauten'' of 1911, New York, reprinted 1982, pp. 100, 104 and 107
Thomas A. Heinz, Frank Lloyd Wright: Interiors and Furniture, New York, 1994, pp. 104 and 112
Julie L. Sloan, Light Screens: The Complete Leaded-Glass Windows of Frank Lloyd Wright, New York, 2001, p. 185
NOTE
When originally discovered in the 1980s, this chair was believed to have come from the Edward Everett Boynton House in Rochester, New York. However, recent scholarship has revealed that the form and construction of this chair is nearly identical to the model designed by Wright for Browne's Bookstore in 1907. Wright designed this bookstore, located in the Fine Arts Building at 410 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, for Francis Fisher Browne. Browne was a successful author and editor of the The Dial, a national literary magazine that served as a companion and guide to book lovers. Period photographs show the impressive, unified interior that Wright designed for the store, which included furniture, windows, lighting, wall mottos and at least one of Wright's monumental copper urns. Although the bookstore soon became established as a literary salon for Chicago's cultured readers, it struggled with profitability and was closed in 1912. At the time of demolition shortly thereafter, it is believed that many of the bookstore's chairs were donated to the Unity Temple in Oak Park. Wright's design in 1908 of a variant of this high-back chair for the dining room of the Boynton House shows significant differences in the seat frame construction and lacks the dramatic cantilivered seat of the Browne's Bookstore model.
Sotheby's wishes to thank David A. Hanks for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
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