Garage Bands

Just as Frank Lloyd Wright's design for the Martin's carriage house is no ordinary garage, his windows for the building go well beyond the sort of utilitarian, glazed openings you might expect.  In fact, it's the carriage house art glass design that William Martin cites to his Buffalo brother Darwin when giving a field report on the rigorous, uncompromising work under way in Wright's Oak Park studio:

The labor required from Mr. Wright is simply immense.  You ought to come to Chicago and spend two or three days in his office and you would then better understand how they are able to arrive at, and create such homes.  Mr. Wright showed me several sheets of paper on which he had been drawing designs for the glass for your barn [carriage house], and had only just arrived at what he wanted.  Any one of the designs that he had discarded would have satisfied an ordinary man, and only he knows when the thing is right or wrong, and unless he gets it right he keeps on trying.

This passage is notable for two main reasons:  1) it attests to how Wright was obsessed with "getting it right," even when it came to detail so seemingly insignificant as windows for a "barn," and 2) it refutes the common myth that Wright's "genius" was of the God-given sort, such that every design idea sprang, fully-formed and immutable, from his mind.  This is especially evident when looking at the next line of William's letter:

 It is the same throughout the house.  His tracing cloth shows the results of his labors, as it is ragged in many places where changes have been made repeatedly.

Later, Wright himself would say "an architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board and a wrecking bar at the site."  Fortunately, not all of Wright's experimental sketches for the Martin carriage house glass design were erased:  one variation of the window design remains, on the same sheet with the ultimate design (below).

Behind the Cottage

Architect / artist / author Karen Tashjian has launched her own website, including vivid images of her paintings, set designs and publications - e.g. her book on the the Martin gardener's cottage.

And in Other News...

The Clarkson carriage house window story is also in the Buffalo News.

Will Clarkson posing with the carriage house window that he and his wife gave to the Martin House

Fit to Print

 
Don't miss Eve Kahn's story about our latest art glass acquisition in today's New York Times!

photo:  Biff Henrich

Red, Wright and Blue

Frank Lloyd Wright may not have been the most patriotic of Americans by today's standards, but one incident in the course of hashing-out the details of the Martin House interior inspired a classic quip on the colors of Old Glory:

Dear Mr. Martin - 

When you put in the Blue terra cotta don't forget the red and the white - let us be patriotic - but say, just build the backing and leave the facing to the glass mosaic man. 

  

[letter of 13 October, 1904]

Here, Wright playfully chides Martin in order to dissuade his practically-minded client from finishing the central Martin House fireplace with off-the-shelf blue tile.  The more aesthetically-rich, custom mosaic of intertwined wisteria branches, leaves and blossoms, rendered in lustrous, gilded glass tiles, was more in keeping with the "domestic symphony" Wright sought for the Martins' new home.  But apparently, Mr. Martin thought the tile equivalent of a Sousa march would be just fine.

The Circle Takes the Square

As innovative a designer as Frank Lloyd Wright was, he was not adverse to "recycling" certain motifs from one commission to another.  The prismatic shapes of the Barton House ceiling molding and the second floor scuppers from the Martin House are repeated in the main floor plan of the Robie House (Chicago, 1908).  The wall sconces ordered for the Barton House were identical to those already designed for the Dana House (Springfield, IL, 1902) and also used in various subsequent houses.  Now, another example has come to light: the repetition of the circle-in-square motif from the Martin House to the Larkin Administration Building (Buffalo, 1904-06).

Larkin building wall sconce

Martin Living room table

A Larkin building wall sconce sold recently via Urban Remains of Chicago bears the conjoined circle and square motif familiar to followers of the Martin House:  distinctive tables Wright designed for the Martin living room and reception room have tops of the same geometric configuration.  In the case of the Martin tables, this unusual shape may have been the whimsical resolution of a difference of opinion between architect and client.  As part of his tout ensemble furnishing scheme for the Martin House, Wright proposed square or rectangular tables for the living room and reception room.  Mrs. Martin, however, desired round tables.  Apparently, Wright decided to give her both, resulting in the tables as built.  The reason for transferring the circle-in-square motif to the Larkin building sconces is unclear, beyond the Larkin commission sharing Wright's drafting board with the Martin House in those years in general.

Detail, entry of Williams House

Plan, Temple of Heaven, Beijing

Wright may have employed a circle-in-square motif first in the Chauncey Williams House (River Forest, IL, 1895), where a window of such geometry flanks the Sullivanesque front door.  For that matter,  the circle-in-square motif enjoys a long history in Western art and architecture, from the floor pattern of the Pantheon to da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.  Wright may well have been aware of such examples, at least with their distant reflections in Sullivan's work.  And there's precedent for Wright's combination of the circle and square in the Eastern tradition as well:  in cosmologically-based Chinese design, a square often represents the ideal city or domestic compound designed by man, and the circle represents the celestial realm and the divine (e.g. the Temple of Heaven in Beijing).  Given Wright's burgeoning interest in Asian culture at the turn of the century, such Eastern influences come to bear on his Prairie era designs, alongside Western ones.  By extension, one could read the circle-in-square motifs in the Martin House (in the tables as well as the interior light fixtures and urns on the exterior) as suggesting the sanctification of domestic - elevating the concept of house to that of sublime art, as Wright purported to do in his "domestic symphony," the Martin House. 

A New Type of Martin House

Inspired by Buffalo's wealth of architecture and the upcoming visit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Rich Kegler, Founder and Executive Director of the Western New York Book Arts Center, has created a series of innovative letterpress prints of these landmarks.  The series includes City Hall, Grain Elevators, Kleinhans Music Hall and - hot off WNYBAC's Vandercook press - the Darwin D. Martin House. 

Utilizing the Book Arts Center's extensive (and growing) collection of wood type, metal type and printer's ornaments, Kegler is fast becoming the master of representing architectural forms through the once-utilitarian medium of letterpress.  Familiar characters are re-purposed in surprising ways.  For example: if those urns look familiar, that's because they're sideways parentheses.  The sense of proportion and balance achieved is remarkable, rendered through a nearly-lost art that WNYBAC has made great strides in preserving and reviving.  Kegler commented that these images were inspired by having a "shop full of blocks that beg 2-D 'Lego' assemblages," adding that he was "interested in pushing the boundaries of what can be done using only materials found in the shop itself."

The Martin House print was produced in an edition of 100, signed and numbered on Arches paper.  Fifty will be available soon at the Wisteria Museum Shop at the Martin House Complex.  Call Shop Director Becky Lee at (716) 856-3858 x 405 to inquire.

For other examples of WNYBAC's distinctive architectural prints, visit their Etsy store.