PRIMARY GLASS PATTERNS

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Art glass, also known as leaded glass and stained glass, reached its apogee as an artistic medium in the Gothic cathedrals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Europe, fell into disuse in the Renaissance and Baroque eras as platonic geometry supplanted the mystic qualities of light, and was revived in the nineteenth century by a small but ardent group of medievalists that included William Morris, Augustus Welby Pugin, and Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. In the United States art glass was brought to a high level of distinction in the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany and John La Farge. Frank Lloyd Wright began using art glass around 1890 but rejected the opaque pictorial approach of Morris, Tiffany, and La Farge. Instead he favored screens of carefully adjusted thicknesses of metal caming containing generous amounts of clear glass in combination with patterns of opalescent colored glass, creating windows of an unprecedented transparency and abstraction.1 Most importantly, however, Wright made the art glass window a fully integrated feature of his architecture.

The Darwin D. Martin House complex is distinguished as one of just three large-scale, multiple-building estates among the

CHAPTER 3

THE MARTIN HOUSE ART GLASS:

DOCUMENTS AND INSIGHTS

Jack Quinan

Opposite: View from Martin House pergola to conservatory through conservatory-pattern art glass doors. Photograph by Biff Henrich, 2008.

sixty-odd Prairie houses that Wright designed and constructed between 1901 and 1912. The six buildings that composed the estate (including the Gardener’s Cottage, built 1909) contained some four hundred art glass windows, skylights, laylights, and cabinet doors in sixteen distinct patterns, thus making the Martin House complex one of the richest collections of such designs anywhere. These distinctions are further amplified, however, by Darwin Martin’s obsessive tendency to write to Wright almost daily about aspects of the design and construction process and to retain copies of his own letters as well as each letter of response from the architect, thus preserving dialogue that provides ample insight into the design and production of the art glass windows.

The documentation that follows has been selected from the more than seventy letters in the Wright-Martin correspondence within the Martin Papers in the Archives of the State University of New York at Buffalo in which some mention of art glass occurs. These letters provide unique insights into Wright’s methods and intentions and into his ways of dealing with clients and tradesmen. The letters should be understood as fragmentary, however. The conversations between Wright and Martin during Wright’s monthly visits to Buffalo and the discussions between Wright and the staff of the Linden Glass Company in Chicago, the manufacturers of most of the Martin House art glass, were not noted and are lost

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ERIC JACKSON-FORSBERG PRIMARY ART GLASS PATTERNS

These casement panels offer a good example of how Wright’s art glass for the Martin House defies distinctions of indoors/outdoors and how it resists definitions of windows and doors in the traditional sense. With some of the panels opening to the exterior of the house and some to other rooms, they truly demonstrate Wright’s concept of a “light screen,” rather than the tradi-tional aperture of a glazed window.

As the pier clusters concealed the radiators used to heat the unit room, the casements functioned as dampers—allowing or preventing heat to emanate from the piers. In the open po-sition, these casements also allowed for remark-able views through the structural pier units, from one room of the Martin House to another and, ultimately, to the landscape beyond. This also gave the illusion of dematerialization to the pier cluster groups, the main structural support for the second floor.

PIER CLUSTER CASEMENT WINDOWS

This page, from left: Pier cluster window sidelight, interior version, 207/8 x 11/16 in.

Pier cluster window sidelight, exterior version, 207/8 x 27/16 in.

Opposite: Pier cluster windows, exterior face, 241/2 x 14 in. each.

Nineteen pairs of these casements were found in six of the pier cluster units on the main floor of the Martin House. Four of these pier clusters boasted an incredible twenty-one pieces of art glass each, including the casements, ac-companying sidelights, a central laylight, and laylight frames.

One can easily see a pendulous cluster of wisteria blossoms in the geometric abstraction of these panels, following the wisteria motif employed throughout the Martin House unit room. This design is punctuated by jewel-like sections of opalescent, iridescent, and gold-leaf sandwich glass.

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PRIMARY ART GLASS PATTERNSERIC JACKSON-FORSBERG

The two pendant lights that accent the Barton dining room and living room ceilings are the result of a protracted discus-sion between Frank Lloyd Wright and his then new client, Darwin Martin. As the Barton House neared completion, and even following its completion, Martin repeatedly called for Wright to resolve the issue of lighting the two main first floor spaces of the house. The house already incorporated a num-ber of wall sconces—a design of Wright’s used previously in the Dana House and later in the Heath House (Buffalo, 1904), among others. But, as Martin observed, “the side lights are no more source of illumination than would be an equal number of chrysanthemums or American Beauty roses.” Thus, the need for supplemental lighting in the Barton House was underscored, and Martin pressed the issue with Wright by threatening to order a couple of Gustav Stickley fixtures to resolve the issue. One can assume that, once Martin threw down this gauntlet, Wright picked it up and soon provided the two fixtures that remain to this day.

The fixtures are of a family of art glass pendant lights that Wright produced in the Prairie period, employing structure, geometry, and colors of glass similar to examples in the Dana and Heath houses. One plausible explanation for these simi-larities is that the art glass pendant fixtures for all three houses may have been designed by Wright’s collaborator in the Oak Park Studio, George Mann Niedeken. This collaboration is documented as early as 1904, and the Barton pendants bear a striking resemblance to a Niedeken drawing for light fixtures for the Lawrence Demmer House, Milwaukee.

The geometric motif of the Barton fixtures is somewhat differ-ent from that of any of Wright’s light screens for the Martin House complex; the origami-like “arrow” motif in the center of each panel has a remarkable pictorial quality, suggesting a group of swallows in flight, or, alternately, tulips in bloom (both appropriate to the Martin House complex, with its ex-tensive gardens and its limestone houses for purple martins on conservatory roof).

Left and Opposite: Barton House pendant light, 201/4 x 201/4 x 51/2 in.

BARTON HOUSE PENDANT LIGHT

When Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) designed the Darwin D. Martin House complex in 1903, he filled the windows, doors, skylights, and laylights with nearly four hundred pieces of his signature art glass. The spectacular designs, abstractions of the architecture and surrounding environment, are among some of Wright’s finest. These “light screens,” as Wright described them, were fundamental to his architectural philosophy of “bringing the outside in” by blurring the line between enclosed and open spaces.

Despite the site-specific nature of Wright’s art glass, nearly three-quarters of the pieces at the Martin House complex were removed in the 1960s and distributed to museum and private collections throughout the world. Today, due to the tremendous reconstruction efforts by the Martin House Restoration Corporation, the art glass designs have been restored to their original home. Only now, in their original context, is it possible to fully appreciate the architectural brilliance of Wright’s masterpieces.

Edited by Martin House curator Eric Jackson-Forsberg, with additional text by Theodore Lownie, Robert McCarter, and Jack Quinan and an introduction by art glass expert Julie Sloan, Frank Lloyd Wright: Art Glass of the Martin House Complex explores the breadth of Wright’s iconic iridescent creations for the Martin House. Full-color images accompany Jackson-Forsberg’s insightful text to provide examples of the major patterns and motifs represented in the Martin House, in addition to an assortment of rare variations and outlying designs. Original drawings, historic photographs, floor plans, and excerpts from Wright’s personal correspondence add to this comprehensive survey of the exquisite art glass designs found at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House complex.

Barton House cabinet door, detail.

front cover: stair landing “tree of life” window.

96 pages, 9 x 9 inches Smyth-sewn casebound, with jacketMore than 50 color and black-and-white photographs, drawings, and illustrations

$27.95 US ($34.95 Canada)ISBN 978-0-7649-5150-3Catalog No. A173Available September 2009Printed in China

Pomegranate Communications, Inc.Box 808022, Petaluma, CA 94975800 227 1428 / 707 782 9000www.pomegranate.com

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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHTART GLASS OF THE

MARTIN HOUSE COMPLEX