Marion Mahony Griffin, Prairie School Architect

[Paul Ringstrom]

https://daily.jstor.org/marion-mahony-g ... architect/

[Roderick Grant]

The architecture and delineation of Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffen and Marion Mahony Griffen can be easily differentiated at a glance. The few architectural designs that are attributable to Mahony in their entirety reveal a very limited talent for design presented in glorious delineation. That was her talent. The Amberg House, for which she is most often cited as the architect, was ~80% FLW with substantial contributions (mostly decorative, such as the mural over the living room fireplace ... which is long gone) by Mahony. Her contributions to Irving were fewer. Mahony showed her limitations when Robert Mueller asked for alterations to the design his house late in the design stages. The end product on the interiors barely resembles anything FLW had done on the project before going to Europe. Robert's brother, Adolph, got a certifiable Mahony which shows even more pointedly the limits of her abilities.

She could draw, however! FLW drew Hardy looking up from the lake, but it was MMG who added the magnolia.

[SDR]

There was a time when it was reasonable to conclude that Marion Mahony was responsible for much if not most of the decor at Amberg. In 1999 Cheryl Robertson published her research on Wright and post-Wright commissions in connection with Niedecken-Walbridge, relying on company records and the FLW archive. Here is what she wrote on Amberg.

The Amberg mural is included in the list of objects the company supplied. See second paragraph, right, immediately below. The thoroughness of Robertson's research, as sampled here, seems beyond reproach. There are many interesting facts about George Niedecken's contributions to Wright's work. She wrote or contributed to two books about the designer; the 1999 volume is titled Frank Lloyd Wright and George Mann Niedecken, Prairie School Collaborators.

[Reidy]

When the Conservancy visited Amberg in 2002, the occupants told us that the mural is still there under the paint and that they were leaving it there until technology finds a way to restore it.

[SDR]

Robertson writes (note 139, p 70, ...Collaborators):

"As a result of Mahony's assertion in 'Magic of America' [her unpublished memoir--see references below], the Irving furniture designs have been ascribed to her by Van Zanten, 'Marion Mahony Griffin,' p 16; Pregliasco, 'Life and Work of Marion Mahony Griffin,' p 168; Donald Kalec, 'The Prairie School Furniture,' Prairie School ReviewI (1964): 7; and Anne Watson, 'The Inside Story: Furniture and Lighting,' in Beyond Architecture, pp 126-27."

A similar case of misattribution, in work at other Wright or post-Wright buildings, could have resulted from assertions by Mahony in her manuscript---which it appears may have been taken at face value by some scholars.

https://www.griffinsociety.org/the-magi ... ed-online/

https://daily.jstor.org/marion-mahony-g ... architect/

According to descriptions given in Robertson, the Amberg mural was (is) a "tripartite composition of pine trees above the living-room fireplace"; on the second page above it is further described as having "crossed, upward-sweeping branches." I wonder where an image of it was published, allowing her to have made those remarks (?).

S