Lot 424 : FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Frank Lloyd Wright - 1869-1959

Auction Location: United States of America - 2005
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Description:

PROPERTY OF A LADY

CHAIR FROM THE HILLSIDE HOME SCHOOL, SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN

CHAIR FROM THE HILLSIDE HOME SCHOOL, SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN

measurements note
40 1/4 in. (102.2 cm) high

ca. 1904

oak with the original leather upholstery

PROVENANCE

Franklin Porter, nephew of Frank Lloyd Wright
David Henken, former apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright
Thence by descent

LITERATURE

David A. Hanks, The Decorative Designs of Frank Lloyd Wright, New York, 1979, p. 38
Brian A. Spencer, ed., The Prairie School Tradition: The Prairie Archives of the Milwaukee Art Center, New York, 1979, p. 57
David A. Hanks, Frank Lloyd Wright: Art in Design, New York, 1983, p. 18
H. Allen Brooks, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, New York, 1984, pp. 60-61
David A. Hanks, Frank Lloyd Wright: Preserving an Architectural Heritage: Decorative Designs from The Domino's Pizza Collection, New York, 1989, p. 51
Leslie Greene Bowman, American Arts & Crafts: Virtue in Design, Los Angeles, 1990, p. 93
Thomas A. Heinz, Frank Lloyd Wright: Interiors and Furniture, New York, 1994, pp. 80-81, 104-105 and 129
Wendy Kaplan, The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe & America: Design for the Modern World, New York, 2004, p. 266

NOTE

In 1887, Wright built the original Hillside Home School for his two aunts, Ellen and Jane Lloyd Jones. Along with his mother, Anna Lloyd Wright, they founded the country's first co-educational home school to provide a well-rounded education to children from the ages of five to eighteen. In response to the school's rapid growth, Wright designed a vastly larger school building for the site around 1903-1904. The chair presently offered is believed to have been used in the school's library. The dramatic canted board which runs from the crest rail to the rear stretcher serves as the back rest, and provides added strength to a chair that needed to withstand rigorous use. Variants of this iconic model were employed in several of Wright's early commissions, including the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, the Unity Temple in Oak Park, and the Robie House in Chicago. Wright appears to have been particularly fond of the design, as examples were also used in the architect's Oak Park home and studio.

This chair was formerly in the collection of David Henken, one of Wright's Taliesin apprentices who is best known for the progressive cooperative community he founded in 1947 in Pleasantville, New York. Named ''Usonian Homes II,'' Henken's cooperative housing project serves as one of the only applications of Wright's utopian vision for America.