It’s no secret that the architecture and designs of Frank Lloyd Wright are enjoying a surge in popularity. There have been FLW retrospectives in museums worldwide. There has been a bounty of new books.
And for those who want to bring some of the Wright stuff into their own homes, there now area number of furniture collectio that reproduce or adapt designs from the architect who is, perhaps, the world’s best known.
We found three significant FLW collections available at retail furniture stores in the Chicago area–and three men behind them, each of whom professes a different approach to the FLW design legacy.
One collection is licensed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the owner of the Wright estate and archives. The other two collections are unofficial (“knockoffs” is the industry jargon), although they’re not illegal and are legitimate in their own right.
Prices vary widely.
You decide who has the right on Wright.
FLIPPO ALISON
The “official” Wright guy is probably not who you’d expect him to be–or where you’d expect to find him.
He’s a scholar. He lives in Naples, Italy, and has a Scottish surname. He speaks little English but can offer these words quite proficiently: caffe Americano.
The brew is no this only Americanism.
” Of people outside Taliesin, (Alison) probably knows more about Frank Lloyd Wright furniture than anybody in the world,” says Richard Carney, chief executive officer of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which is based in Taliesin West (Scottsdale, Ariz.) and East (Spring Green, Wis.) and is where the Wright archives are housed.
Alison is the point man for producing the foundation’s authorized collection of furniture. He works for an old-line, Italian-based furniture manufacturer named Cassina, which in 1985 was awarded the exclusive license to reproduce Wright’s furniture.
Alison, an architect by training, is the man behind the scenes.
He plunged into the FLW archives in Scottsdale, which are filled with original prototypes, drawings and sketches, and surfaced with 700 of his own freehand drawings of Wright’s designs.
Back in Meda, Italy, just north of Milan, Italy, he then went to work in Cassina’s factory.
Alison is more than just the “Wright guy,” though.
More than 20 years ago, he came up with the idea of doing a vast reproduction program that resurrects not just Wright’s designs, but those from other world-renowned architects including Charles Mackintosh and Le Corbusier.
In 1974, Alison sold Cassina on his grand plan, and the manufacturer now boasts its distinguished Masters Architects collection of reproduction furniture that is true to the original design, and certified as such. The Wright pieces are part of that collection.
For Alison, 64, who teaches architecture at two universities in Italy, this is not a commercial venture.
It’s not about making furniture. It’s not about a personal fascination with Wright or any other architect.
It’s about looking back-with foresight.
“We’re looking back at designs from the ’20s, ’30s, early 1900s and rethinking them,” says Alison, speaking through an interpreter and like a scholar. “The meaning of doing this project was to rediscover some value that has been abandoned during the historical process.”
Alison believes Wright contributed two values that are worth revisiting: ethic and freedom.
“In a new country (like the U.S.), ethic and freedom are important things,” explains Alison. “It’s important not only to underline them but to make them a part of everyday life (in the forms of furniture and architecture).”
Alison believes Wright expressed “ethic” through his soulful pursuit of good architecture and “freedom” through his respect for nature and in the sense of movement he accomplished in his designs. Even in his most geometric designs, says Alison, Wright established a sense of motion through the repetition of fixed shapes.
Cassina’s FLW collection is manufactured in Italy and numbers 18 pieces of furniture, although only 11 are available in the U.S. Four new pieces are being introduced by the end of the year.
American cherry wood is a distinguishing feature of the collection. According to a spokeswoman for Cassina, the FLW Foundation specified cherry over oak because of its more consistent “grading and graining.”
Because the foundation certifies the furniture as authentic reproductions and seeks to preserve that purity of design, customers cannot request changes in dimension.
Prices: From $745 for the dining chair from the Coonley House, Riverside, Ill., to $6,535 for the dining table from the Allen House, Wichita, Kan.
Pieces that are unique to this collection (and available in the U.S.) include: The desk ($4,660) and chair (starting at $895) from the S.C. Johnson Wax building, Racine, Wis.
Other distinctions: The Frank Lloyd Wright signature trademark and a production number on each piece of furniture.
Cassina’s Frank Lloyd Wright furniture collection is at Luminaire, 301 W. Superior St.; 312-664-9582. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has authorized a range of other decorative designs-from fabrics to china and lamps. For information on these collections, call Archetype Associates, the licenser, 212-777-9080.
THOMAS HEINZ
In the realm of Frank Lloyd Wright fanatics, Thomas Heinz ranks as one of the most devout and accomplished.
An Evanston-based architect who specializes in the Prairie School style and who has done restoration work on a number of original FLW homes, Heinz, 45, is also a noted photographer and author on Wright.
Last year, he penned nothing short of eight books on his hero. Most of the photos in those books are his, too.
Furniture production, though, is Eleinz’s latest “Wright of passage.”
Two years ago, he introduced the Heinz & Co. collection of furniture that copies FLW designs. Four new pieces will be added to his 35-piece collection by early next year.
“Duplicates of the originals” is Heinz’s bold description of his furniture.
“These are as close as humanly possible to what the originals were,” says Heinz, noting that new glues, finishes and construction techniques are used, but that the shape and proportions re-create the Wright originals almost precisely.
How do you know that? we asked.
“I had access to the original pieces, which I photographed and measured,” says Heinz, who got “hooked” on FLW as an architecture student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and who believes the work of FLW is like great art. “It keeps saying something to you over and over again.”
Heinz says it took him 20 years to research this collection, because he insisted on a touchy-feely approach to the duplication process.
He physically examined, measured and photographed the original Wright pieces, after scouring them up in private homes and collections across the country. Then he went to work on his own drawing board.
The Heinz & Co. collection is made in two furniture factories in Grand Rapids, Mich. In addition to furniture, it includes copies of several Wright lamps, a plaster frieze from the Dana House, Springfield, and a 32-inch-high print frame with a spindle base that Wright designed for an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1908.
The collection is done in oak, although customers can specify other woods. There are five standard finishes available, plus custom colors.
Dimensions can be altered on some of the furniture-a longer table, a taller chair-although Heinz says this is not the bulk of the business.
Prices: From $383 for a hexagonal occasional table that copies one in the Hanna House, Stanford, Calif., to $15,810 for a copy of the cantilevered couch from the Robie House, Chicago.
Pieces that are unique to this collection include: The geometric-looking, upholstered chair from the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo ($3,848 in leather); a rhomboid cocktail table from the H.F. Johnson House, Wingspread, Racine, Wis. ($1,372); a side table with a cantilevered middle shelf from the Boynton House, Rochester, N.Y. ($1,923).
The Heinz & Co. collection is available at Porters of Racine, 301 6th St., Racine, Wis.; 800-558-3245 or 414-633-6363. Currently, the FLW pieces are 30 percent off the prices mentioned above.
HOWARD NELSON
Howard Nelson believes in flexibility. He believes Frank Lloyd Wriht was a flexible kind of guy, too. Nelson believes if you want a copy of FLW’s Dana House (in Springfield) dining table, for instance, but you want it made in walnut–not the oak that he shows on his sales floor and-the wood that Wright specified for this table–and you want it with a red-brown finish and a foot longer, you should be able to get it.
“Basically, every order I take is custom,” says Nelson whose shop, Right at Home, is in downtown Highland Park. “We can change the design. We will make something out of walnut, quartered oak, cherry. And if(customers) want to change the dimension, I’m not a purist. Frank Lloyd Wright did the same thing–took a basic design and changed it to fit the room or environment.” Not a purist, not the licensed-maker of FLW -designs and not a gigantic furniture operation, Nelson has turned all that he is not into his specialty.
He gives customers what they want.
A practicing certified public accountant for 15 years, Nelson, 42, claims a longtime fascination with FLW, a collector’s sensibility (he looked long and hard for Wright furniture for his home), a design course from the Illinois Institute of Technology and several woodworking classes from local community colleges.
Four years ago, he decided to claim a new career.
He saw “a niche available” in furniture that copies the designs of FLW but is popularly priced, made in the U.S. of oak, which is the wood Wright preferred, and in a collection that is flexible to the needs of today’s consumers.
Thus, the birth of Right at Home, which Nelson describes as “a one-man operation.”
He decides which pieces to include in the collection. He pencils shop drawings of the furniture, using as his models pictures of FLW pieces or originals that he’s seen in person. And he runs the store.
Currently, Nelson’s collection, which is produced in two small woodworking shops in Michigan and Wisconsin, numbers more than 20 pieces, although he takes requests for furniture not in the collection. Also available: several lamps that copy Wright’s designs and a reproduction plaster frieze from the Dana House.
Quarter-sawn oak is his standard, but other woods can be specified. There are nine finishes to choose from, plus custom colors, which proved a godsend to Martin and Patti Petroviak of suburban Milwaukee. They filled the living and dining rooms of their new Prairie-style home with furniture from Nelson’s shop. While they chose a standard black stain for their Dana House dining table, they had a special golden oak finish concocted for their living room pieces to match the woodwork in the house.
Prices on the collection: From $295 for a hexagonal occasional table that copies one in the Hanna House, Stanford, Calif., to $4,595 for a copy of the cantilevered couch from Chicago’s Robie House.
Pieces unique to this collection include: a rectangular, Usonian-style coffee table ($850); a ladder-back armchair from Taliesin ($695); and a tall-back, spindle, Usonian-style dining chair ($525).
Right at Home, 603 Elm Pl., Highland Park; 708-926-0026.
