“Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day’s work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain,” wrote the legendary American furniture designer and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was born June 8, 1867, just in time for the Arts and Crafts Movement to begin in the 1880’s. The Arts and Crafts Philosophy was centered around going back to basics, creating with organic natural designs and crafting with handmade artisanship. Deemed the father of organic designs, Wright drew from nature and its splendors in all his designs and used elements like concrete and glass to blend his designs into the surrounding environment.

Born into the fussy Victorian era Wright rejected their heavy ornamentation and ostentatious gilding for a more rigid and symmetrical style. He believed so much in blurring the boundaries between interiors and exteriors that Wright once allowed a willow to grow in the center of his own home. So inspired was Wright with nature and organic unity that he became involved with every detail of the project from the architectural design to the furniture to even the most minute interior detail. Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes down to their stained glass windows and dishes.

Glass was favored by Wright as a very important design element. He felt that the quality of glass allowed interaction in his designs with nature because glass permitted viewing of the outdoors while providing protection from the elements. Wright even wrote a comparison essay on glass that compared it to nature’s mirrors like lakes, rivers and ponds. By stringing panes of glass to create light screens that joined together with solid walls the architect utilized large amounts of glass and glass bricks. Wright’s Prairie style is well known for this. The Johnson Wax Headquarters is famous for his use of Pyrex tubes on the ceiling to let in soft lighting.

From geometrically patterned plates to entire hotels, Wrights designs are still collected and studied today from the originals down to reproductions. Wright, who authored twenty books and wrote many articles, was a popular lecturer all around the world in his time. Although the designer passed away in 1959 he was honored in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects. The Institute proclaimed Frank Lloyd Wright “the greatest American architect of all time”. Quite an achievement in the 20^th Century where some of the most famous buildings in history were built like the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and even the World Trade Towers.

Tags: american furniture, Arts and Crafts, arts and crafts movement, Frank Lloyd Wright, furniture design, organic unity, prairie style

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Arts and Crafts, Craftsman, History of Furniture Making, Mission. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.