Wright Chat

Hi all

Hoping someone might be able to help with some information regarding Taliesin III. In the drafting studio (main residence), the vault has a set of stairs going up to what I assume is the top level of the studio.

Can anyone confirm what is actually up the stairs next to the vault??

I've recently purchased the Taliesin CD which has some fantastic panoramas, and some floor plans, but these weren't that helpful.

Thanks in advance!
Craig.

A grand piano. How it was manhandled up there remains a mystery.

The above is a serious, not a facetious reply.

When I saw it the piano it was without legs, being supported on a variety of boxes and pieces of timber. It may well have been in that condition since 1958, altho I doubt that FLLW could have used the staircase at that time.

Surely 'Spring Green' could offer more information. His insights are always extremely valuable.

The presence of a piano at the top of the vault has been noted by several former apprentices, but it is not there now. It is used as storage for miscellaneous items. Nothing worth noting. Anything of importance was probably moved to Wright's archives.

Laurie Virr appears to knows more.

I think the reason FLW built that skinny, steep stair was less to gain access to an area of minimal utility over the vault than just for the look of the stair itself. It relieves the massive stone wall of the vault.

When I went to Taliesin in the fall of 1962 to be interviewed by Olga, I waited in the studio to be summoned by Her Eminence. (We met in the loggia; women were fluttering around tending to Herself, as she sat enthroned, her hair in curlers, her weimaraner Casanova running about.) The Fellowship was getting ready for the trip to Arizona, and there were odds and ends lying about the studio, including a 'cello tossed aside in the fireplace and a small clavichord with a missing leg. I was intrigued by the stairway, but too intimidated to venture into the nether regions of the house without permission.

Roderick Grant wrote:

When I went to Taliesin in the fall of 1962 to be interviewed by Olga, I waited in the studio to be summoned by Her Eminence. (We met in the loggia; women were fluttering around tending to Herself, as she sat enthroned, her hair in curlers, her weimaraner Casanova running about.)

Sounds like you have a tale to tell...

Her hair in curlers! That would have been outrageous to be seen in curlers...the pink foam kind or the black plastic net over thin wire springs? Do tell...

The curlers were the aluminum type cylinders, about the size of a Minute Maid Frozen Orange Juice can in diameter, but not quite so long. Olga was a soft-talker (like the shirt lady on "Seinfeld"). Even though my hearing is excellent, I missed a lot of what she said. It's a control thing. She rambled on about how perfect the Taliesin choir was ("Professional quality, really."), the movement classes, haute cuisine-level dining, her dog and other topics of no connection to architecture or FLW. Finally she said to Dick Carney, who was a bundle of nerves in those days, "I see no reason why we cannot accept him." (Damned by faint praise!) That was it. I went home. Since they were in the process of moving to T-West, I travelled from Pipestone directly to Arizona, and did not make the journey with the lot of them.

In retrospect, taking that trip with the Fellows might have encouraged me to stay awhile, rather than case the joint and leave almost immediately after arriving. Getting to know some of them better may have got me more involved on a personal level. Although I have often been harsh about the place, there really were a lot of very nice people there, many of whom I got to know years later.

Arriving in Phoenix late in the evening, I spent the night at a hotel, and was picked up the next morning by one of the Fellows. On the ride to Taliesin, I asked about the FLW houses I knew to be in the Phoenix area, but he seemed to be unfamiliar with any of them. Once there, I was given a tour of the estate by another man, one of my own age, who seemed to know absolutely nothing of significance about FLW or architecture, nor did he seem to have much interest in it. I thought that if these two represented what I was about to get involved with, I was unlikely to get much out of it. That evening, the weekly formal tux night, I found out just how professional the chorus and how haute the cuisine were. Before long, I was back in Minnesota. I have no regrets.

What a sad story- an audience with m'Lady in curlers and gofers- as a representation of the whole.
Roderick, I don't know what I would have done under those circumstances...but I'm sure you were a gentleman.