Look at this brickwork on the fireplace in the Robie House.
Look how wide those bricks are. Now look in the bottom left corner between the yellow stucco column and the plain cement mantelpiece, below the mantel but above the rust colored cushion. Do you see the vertical bit of mortar that shows where two bricks are cemented together?
You aren’t supposed to. Almost all the other joints like that have been tinted to match the brick so you can’t see them.
I am certain Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t like that the vertical piece was not tinted, nor the one above it in the top left across from the other cement detail.
I can only imagine the hell he would summon if his toilet paper point was in the state mine was in last night.
4 responses to “TWIL: Frank Lloyd Wright was really picky”
I think of FLW nearly every day, when I go down our track to the beach. All the branches overhanging it I prune to my height. Whenever visitors have to duck, I tell them that he thought his height ideal, and anything over that was ‘a waste of materials’. His house in Wisconsin has doorways noticeably lower than usual.
Big Dot – He does seem to be very self absorbed. After some preliminary reading I want to read more about his third wife who sounds like a real piece of work, possibly even more arrogant than him.
Have you read Loving Frank by Nancy Horan? It’s historical fiction from the perspective of his second wife/lover Mamah (sp?). I can’t remember her name exactly. He was definitely self absorbed and a bit delusional I think. I did enjoy the book though. Although if you don’t know the whole story (I didn’t) the end is quite shocking and somewhat traumatic.
Yeah – I was about to say – you skipped the ending?