Wright Chat

The Goetsch-Winckler House in Okemos, Michigan will be available for long term (1 year +) rental beginning August 1, 2009.

Please contact me for details.

Heaps of photos of the house up at my domain: http://4sure.co.nz/gw/

If this keeps up, eventually all private residences (I hate to say) will become rentals / bed & breakfasts / & public sites.

dtc

Better than being lost altogether, by exclusive/reclusive private ownership, or worse. . .?


SDR

This is one house that doesn't look good with too much overstuffed furniture in it. It loses its spare, lyrical quality.

To make a broad generalization, if you can't furnish your Usonian-era Wright house with Wright furniture, then all-wood Eames, Aalto, Nakashima, or
some Danish pieces seem the next best thing. We have a photo of Wright sitting in one of his Ralph Rapson webbed rockers at Taliesin West -- if that
was good enough for him, why not for us ? Minimalist or organic modern furniture of wood (not metal), well designed, seems right at home in these
mid-century modern structures, doesn't it ?


SDR

The house currently has 8 dining chairs, 1 studio chair (a larger version of the dining chair), 3 ottomans/stools, and 3 side tables. All of these items were designed by Wright. The furniture in the various pictures is from previous owners.

Thanks, gwdan. I think most or all of the pieces you list have been shown in various postings here.

Do you know if the dining chairs are relatively recently made, or do they survive from the early days of the house ? Is the non-Wright furniture in the house as well ?

SDR

I do not know the exact age of the Wright items, but they appear to be at least 30 years old.

No other furniture is in the house. When you spend any time in the property, you discover the real meaning of "less is more." You need to allow yourself to be enveloped by the beauty of the interior and exterior spaces. Nothing more is necessary. (Well, maybe a bed.)

This favorite Alan Weintraub photo certainly backs you up on that, doesn't it ?

Certainly not overstuffed furniture in bright red!
The value of Wright Retreats is the presentation of space and the representation of the "considered" everyday life in the decades of the 30s, 40s and 50s. The quaint ideas of spending leisure time thinking, reading, writing, drawing and making music in a caring community seem like didactic pablum when visiting a Usonian public space- living it is quite different. Would that everyone from the interested public could find the will and way to experience a refuge without the din and flickering images of digitized nonsense and the serenity of space worth seeing.

We have long had this photo and accompanying note from the Goetsch-Winckler book, Affordable Dreams, showing a chair and hassock given by Elizabeth Halstead to the Kresge Art Museum. Now, Jeff Myers shows us a photo from the January 1948 Architectural Forum with a similar chair in view. And Palli Holubar has recently pointed out the similarity of the cutout "perf" in the Halstead chair to a decoration found on the exterior of the Affleck residence.

Could the chair given by Miss Halstead have come from the Affleck house and not from Goetsch-Winckler -- the assumption apparently made at the time Affordable Dreams was published. . .?

Note that the cutout is reversed in the "G-W" chair, from that in the Affleck images. And the caption in Affordable Dreams does not claim that the chair comes from the Goetsch-Winckler house.


Affordable Dreams

Affordable Dreams


January 1948 Architectural Forum

Palli Holubar graphic

The three notches in the lower part of the cut-out figure should appear on the left side of the figure, to match the Affleck perf graphic. They seem to be on the right side, in the Affleck chair -- but what we see in the photo is the shadow cast on the right side of the perforation by the rear of the left side, with its three notches. Note that the light source is placed behind the plane of the leg, out of frame on the left of the photo.

So, the Affleck post perf and chair are potentially a good match. . .


Aside from being flopped in orientation, left to right, the Halstead chair's perforation is also a bit narrower than the corresponding one on the Affleck chair, it appears to me. Also, the position of the plywood where it attaches to the top of the leg appears to be slightly different on the two chairs.

SDR

gwdan,

Have you made any changes/improvements since you purchased the house? Is the exterior still painted dark brown? If so, any plans to remove the paint? Do you have any pictures since your purchase that you could share?

Thanks,
Jay