WRIGHT, Frank Lloyd . Wendingen: The Life–Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

[MOman2]

https://hindmanauctions.com/items/10614 ... -1925-1926

[Tom]

Wonder what this will end up going for?

[SDR]

For the rest of us, there's this handy substitute.

https://www.amazon.com/Frank-Lloyd-Wrig ... 0486272540

Hoffmann's introduction reminds the reader that, while Wright was 55 and at a low point in his professional and personal lives in 1922 (between 1920 and 1925 only a third of his output was built, amounting to seven houses in the Los Angeles area and two larger buildings in Japan), his first "In the Cause of Architecture," appearing in the 1908 Architectural Record issue and "happily" reprinted in the Wendingen "book," was written at the prime of his life and "proved to be as fine a statement as he was ever to make." ". . .a close reading can yield greater dividends than almost everything else that has been said about his architecture."

Of course, the Dover reader will have to live without H Th Wijdeveld's glorious cover color and page decorations (the large Dover paperback is not square but rectangular in format). According to the colophon at the front of the edition, "The contents page originally appearing on page 163, has been moved to the frontmatter [sic] . . . The original text has been left untouched."

S

[Roderick Grant]

I can understand the irreplaceable art glass marvels fetching high prices, but Wendingen has been replicated explicitly down to the double pages as well as in a cheaper form. The only reason to pay up to $1,500 or more is to have a first edition, the value of which is defined by the sellers, rather than having any intrinsic added value itself. The one artifact of FLW's career that I would love to have had is the 1894 copper urn, but originals are outrageously expensive. I saw one in a Madison Avenue shop for $500,000 in 1983. In 1994, MoMA had replicas made to perfection, cost: $4,800. I could have afforded that, and I was in NYC for a FLWBC conference at the time they went on sale. I didn't buy one, and I have regretted it ever since. It wouldn't be an original and was undoubtedly labeled as a replica, but was just as handsome, and by now, 29 years later, would have been well on its way to developing the patina of age. Wendingen? I've got one.

[SDR]

The three papers by Wright titled together "In the Cause of Architecture," published respectively in 1908, 1914, and 1925, contain between them two footnotes added by the author, one each in the 1908 and 1914 essays.

The first follows this passage, one of several outlining Wright's desiderata or "propositions" concerning the design of buildings, specifically residences:

III. A building should appear to grow easily from its site, shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there, and if not try to make it as quiet, substantial and organic as She would have been [sic] were the opportunity hers.*

*In this I had in mind the barren town lots devoid of tree or natural incident, town houses and board walks only in evidence.
__________________________________________________________________________

The second author's footnote occurs in Paper 2, very near the beginning, when he is gathering steam for the furious assault on his imitators. The footnoted sentence reads:

I still believe that the ideal of an organic* architecture forms the origin and source, the strength and, fundamentally, the significance of everything ever worthy the name of architecture.

And the footnote, perhaps Wright's earliest definition of the term:

*By organic architecture I mean an architecture that develops from within outward in harmony with the conditions of its being as distinguished from one that is applied from without.

S