Issue Apr 24th 2024  April 24th 2024

Interest In Frank Lloyd Wright Up After "Top Chef" Visit

There’s been an explosion of interest in Taliesin since the April 10 airing of the Frank Lloyd Wright episode of “Top Chef,” partially set at the architect’s estate just south of Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Carrie Rodamaker, executive director of Taliesin Preservation, said Taliesin, an 800-acre UNESCO World Heritage site, had 20,000 new users to its website April 9-17.

Among those users, there were 176 conversions into reservations for tours, totaling $27,000 in revenue, Rodamaker said. Tours are $98, or $93 for seniors, active or veteran military, teachers, students and children 8 to 10. The average purchase is about two tickets, depending on what tour people choose, she said.

“That equaled a 42% increase in sales for that period of time,” Rodamaker said.

In the episode, dubbed “The Wright Way,” the “cheftestants” were told to take inspiration from the work of Richland Center-born Wright, one of the best-known architects in the world.

Host Kristen Kish told the chefs that they’d be driving along the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail, which runs between Racine and Richland Center, making stops at the Wright-inspired Monona Terrace in Madison and Taliesin.

The chefs started at Burnham Block, a collection of six 1916 prairie-style homes in Milwaukee designed by Wright. Kish called them one of the earliest examples of affordable, small-scale dwellings.

At Taliesin, they got tours of Wright’s home and drafting studio. Wright lived at Taliesin for nearly 50 years. Taliesin means “shining brow” in Welsh, in honor of Wright’s Welsh heritage. It is built on the “brow” of a hill in Wisconsin’s Driftless region.

Taliesin Preservation is a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate the public on Wright’s life and ideas, and help preserve the natural and cultural environments.

Rodamaker met the show’s producers in Madison and found out filming would be in August.

She said producers and directors for “Top Chef’s” production company Magical Elves came out to Taliesin to get an idea of what they wanted to showcase. That included the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center, also known as Riverview Terrace Cafe, and the contestants wound up cooking in its commercial kitchen.

Rodamaker said the chefs were at Taliesin for a day and a half. The half day found them touring the building and the grounds and sitting in the drafting studio brainstorming what to make.

Celebrity judge Tom Colicchio called Riverview Terrace Cafe the only restaurant that Wright ever designed. Rodamaker said Taliesin was also a farm and a school. “Because there was a farm, they were self-sustainable. So, the idea of food and farming goes hand in hand with Taliesin.” Rodamaker said she was happy to tell Taliesin’s culinary story. “It’s really is full circle to what Wright was intending to do,” she said.

The show, which airs Wednesday nights on Bravo, generally gets about 600,000 viewers per episode. Rodamaker said the show has “hardcore, serious followers. And you know, the food scene is so big right now — ecotourism, agritourism is so big right now. And so it’s just like this pinnacle of all of these things.”

The nonprofit Taliesin Preservation educates the public on Frank Lloyd Wright's life and ideas, and helps to preserve natural and cultural environments.

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Lovejoy Library, Noise Box Gallery Celebrate Louis Sullivan’s Legacy

Lovejoy Library collaborated with the Art and Design department’s Noise Box Gallery to honor the legacy of architect Louis Sullivan on April 12 with a full day of presentations by guest speakers and tours of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Illinois' Louis Sullivan collection.

Sullivan died on April 14, 1924. For the 100th anniversary of his passing, Fine Arts Librarian and Associate Professor Therese Dickman organized a celebratory day of events to honor his architectural legacy and influence on SIUE’s campus.

“He was known as the father of skyscrapers … He was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, so he was very influential at the time. He's known for his very ornate, elaborate designs, which were often inspired by nature,” Dickman said. “The other thing that he's known for is the phrase ‘form follows function.’ He liked to know what the purpose of each building was, and he would often tailor the design to the purpose of that building.”

Danny Houk is a second-year grad student on the committee at the Noise Box Gallery — the student art gallery in Art & Design East. He said Dickman reached out to the gallery because it was part of her vision for the event to incorporate students.

“We did a call for art a little over a month ago. We asked all the Art and Design students [to] propose any piece they wanted inspired by his life, and then we would select it from however many proposals we got. We ended up getting five of those,” Houk said. “A few of the teachers made Louis Sullivan-inspired assignments in their art classes, so they curated some of the strongest pieces from their students.”

The student gallery will remain on display until May 2.

Sullivan wanted to create an American architectural style. His design philosophy was driven by his tendency to initiate repetition, organic and outward movement from a central point.

Built in 1891, Sullivan designed the Wainwright Building in St. Louis — one of the first-ever skyscrapers. He was born in Boston, studied in Paris and brought his talents closer to home when he was drawn to Chicago following the Great Chicago Fire. Architects flocked to the area to get involved in rebuilding a flame-resistant city.

Years after Sullivan’s passing, as demolition projects in Chicago and St. Louis began to remove Sullivan’s buildings, architectural photographer and historical preservationist Richard Nickel began to salvage Sullivan’s ornaments. As a young university in search of art, SIUE purchased Nickel’s collection.

“We bought the original collection of 200 items for $12,000 in 1966,” Erin Vigneau-Dimick, executive curator for the SIUE University Museum, said.

According to Vigneau-Dimick, SIUE currently has 90 Sullivan ornaments displayed on campus.

“The university purchased it for a very reasonable rate … SIUE actually has the largest collection of architectural ornaments in the world,” Dickman said. “We were fortunate to be at the right place at the right time.”

Michael R. Allen, executive director at the National Building Arts Center, said that cycles of change always tend to circle back around to the old look. He said that the preservation of old architecture, and the reincorporation of that architecture into modern work, is a powerful way to contest the erasure of buildings and design history.

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Near San Diego, A Striking Home By A Frank Lloyd Wright Protege Asks $7M

Frank Lloyd Wright mentored over 600 architects at his Arizona studio Taliesin West, spreading his ideas about organic design across the country through a generation of his proteges. Among them was California architect Frederick Liebhardt, who later designed this light-filled pavilion-like home near San Diego, which features a distinctive zig-zag roof.

The Del Mar home was commissioned by businessman Charles Dupont in 1961 on a 3.18-acre plot in the Montecillo neighbourhood, roughly a decade after Liebhardt’s time at Taliesin. And while the California property encapsulates many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas around light and connection to nature, it shows Leibhardt’s own ideas and aesthetic as an architect, straddling California Modernism and organic modernism.

The six-bedroom Del Mar property is on the market for the first time, with an asking price of $6.955m via Scott Appleby and Kerry Payne of Willis Allen Real Estate. It features a distinctive folded plate roof, which gives it a striking modern silhouette, and an extensive use of glass, playing with ideas around transparency.

Inside is a sunken living room with built-in furniture designed especially for the home (another lesson imparted by Frank Lloyd Wright) and a colossal copper fireplace flanked by wood panelling.

Famed photographer Julius Shulman photographed the dwelling in the 1960s. It has been owned by the same family for 58 years, and they have maintained its character and design according to Liebhardt’s vision.

The main house is accompanied by a detached pool/tennis house with a full kitchen, fireplace and a vintage dry sauna that overlooks the tennis court . Kitsch 1970s floor tiling with a tennis ball motif adds to the playful vibe.

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Uncovering Cranbrook: Researching Studio Craft At Wright's Smith House

LIVE VIRTUAL LECTURE Presented by Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

$20 per viewer Lecture will be Password-Protected Advance Registration is Required

Presented by Nina Blomfield, Former Decorative Arts Trust Marie Zimmermann Collections Fellow, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Join the Center on this deep dive into the art and architecture of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House. Developed from the extensive research conducted during her two-and-a-half year Collections Fellowship at Cranbrook, art historian Nina Blomfield will present an intimate look at the fine art and decorative objects assembled by Melvyn and Sara Smith between 1950 and the 1980s.

Of the many Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes that are now open to the public as house museums, Cranbrook’s Smith House is the only one to display an intact collection of objects assembled by the original client-owners. Nina will share her experience researching the house and collection, including work in Cranbrook Archives and Archives of American Art, and in numerous interviews with living artists whose work remains on view at Smith House. Taken together, the objects and the stories they share reveal the dedication and warmth that Melvyn and Sara brought to supporting their artistic community and decorating their beautiful home.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM In 1950, Melvyn, Sara, and Bobby Smith moved into their dream home: a small but superb example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian architecture for the middle classes. Having exhausted their modest savings as public schoolteachers, the Smiths lived simply for their first years in the house. They decorated with pine boughs and rushes from the nearby pond and used folding chairs and card tables until their custom Frank Lloyd Wright-designed furniture was completed by Melvyn’s brother-in-law as a housewarming gift.

But by the early 1980s, their home was overflowing with art and studio craft by leading makers. Major works by sculptor Glen Michaels, brutalist metalwork by Paul Evans and Silas Seandel, ceramics from Maija Grotell, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, John Glick, and J.T. Abernathy, handwoven textiles from Urban Jupena, Eleen Auvil, and Barbara Wittenberg, among others, still ornament the interiors.

How did the Smiths acquire this astounding collection? For the 34 years they lived in the house together, Melvyn and Sara Smith paid forward the kindnesses that had helped them complete their dream home. They found their own ways of supporting artists, purchasing large works on lay-away and sending small but reliable monthly checks. They asked friends in need to come house-sit, clear brush, and refinish the house’s red cypress siding. They opened their home for exhibitions, allowing students to show their work and avoid gallery fees. They hosted concerts, lectures, weddings, and countless tour groups. As the studio craft movement gained momentum in national exhibitions and publications, Melvyn and Sara Smith showed how it could become an integral part of daily life.

During her 2021-2023 tenure as The Decorative Arts Trust Marie Zimmermann Collections Fellow, Nina Blomfield dusted off not only the objects themselves, but the stories they hold. In this Uncovering Cranbrook lecture, Nina will share how the experience of caring for the Smith House collection has shaped her research. By focusing not only on the works themselves, but on what they meant to Sara and Melvyn Smith and the community that they helped make, this lecture charts an intimate and interconnected history of art, architecture, and studio craft in twentieth-century Michigan.

ABOUT THE UNCOVERING CRANBROOK LECTURE SERIES The Uncovering Cranbrook Lecture Series gives audiences an inside look at the many stories of Cranbrook from the staff of the Center for Collections and Research. The series highlights the people and personalities who helped shape our community and form the rich legacy of art, architecture, science, and education that define Cranbrook.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER Nina Blomfield is the Center’s former Decorative Arts Trust Marie Zimmermann Collections Fellow. During her tenure, July 2021 through December 2023, she assisted with the care and interpretation of Cranbrook’s Cultural Properties and researched the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House and its rich collection of twentieth-century decorative arts. Nina received her BA from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and earned her MA in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, where her thesis focused on the use of Japanese decorative arts by middle-class American women. Nina has worked at the National Library of New Zealand’s Alexander Turnbull Library and has held graduate internships in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and in Bryn Mawr College's Special Collections, where she curated the exhibition “All-Over Design”: Lockwood de Forest between Ahmedabad and Bryn Mawr. Nina has returned to Bryn Mawr to complete her PhD with a dissertation that examines the material culture of domestic space and the global origins of Victorian home decorating.

VIRTUAL LECTURE LOGISTICS On the Friday prior to the program date, registered participants will receive an email with instructions on how to join this virtual experience. As this program benefits the operations of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, we ask that you do not share the login link with others. Registrations are non-refundable. The program will begin promptly at 6:30pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

For additional information in advance of the program, please send an email to center@cranbrook.edu or call the Center at 248.645.3307. The Center’s Administrative Office is open Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm.

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