© Mark Hertzberg (2024)
Hiring Frank Lloyd Wright to design a building meant more than just a bricks and mortar job. The entire space – interior as well as exterior – had to be cohesive. His organic designs often included furniture and lighting fixtures he proposed for his clients. Examples of his interior designs are now on display in “Furniture Done Wright” in SC Johnson’s Wright Gallery: At Home with Frank Lloyd Wright in Fortaleza Hall on the company’s campus in Racine, Wisconsin.
A dining chair from Taliesin (c. 1925) frames a view of the library table for the Edward C. Waller House Remodeling (1899).
The library table, in turn, frames the Taliesin chair and an “origami chair” from Taliesin West (1946).
Chairs from the David and Gladys Wright House (1950):
Hanging lamp, William R. Heath House (c. 1905) – the lines are distorted by the camera angle.
While many of the pieces were designed specifically for his clients, he also designed the “Taliesin Collection” for the Heritage-Henredon company in 1955. A number of those pieces are included in the exhibit:
In 2017 SC Johnson acquired a collection of two dozen models of Wright-designed homes by retired architectural draftsman Ron Olsen from Janesville, Wisconsin. The pieces remain on exhibit in the Wright gallery as “Model Citizen: Ron Olsen and Frank Lloyd Wright.”
The furniture exhibit is on view until spring 2026.
To schedule a visit to the exhibit:
Ron Olsen’s models, my story from 2017:
https://wrightinracine.wordpress.com/tag/ron-olsen/
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Wright in Racine 