O Christmas Tree

The Weekly Wright-up editorial staff will be taking a Yuletide break starting next Wednesday, but here's a historic holiday treat before we fire-up the sled dogs and head to northern New York, where a broadband connection is as scarce as a chai latte:

University Archives, University at Buffalo

This holiday snapshot, likely taken by Darwin D. Martin, shows the family Christmas tree near the pier cluster at the southeast juncture between living room and library. The tall, slender tree rises above the frieze rails, reaching almost to the common ceiling shared by the unit room spaces.

An array of presents is piled under the tree, including one that appears to be wrapped in a plaid blanket. The tartan of this wrapping provides a coincidental reflection of the "tartan grid" of Wright's plan for the Martin House itself.

Although the photo is undated, another snapshot of the same tree shows family members assembled in front of it; judging by Dorothy Martin's appearance, the photo should be circa 1920.

I hope you enjoy this memento from a bygone Christmas at the Martin House, and best wishes for the Holidays to you and yours!

Beethoven Shtick's Around...

Here's and excerpt from Jack Walsh's (President, MHRC) comments to the Board of Directors yesterday (courtesy of his ghost writer):

As you may know, in his Autobiography, Frank Lloyd Wright described a steady diet of Bach and Beethoven growing up in his parents’ household, and he professed to hear strains of Beethoven in his head as he composed his own masterpieces of architectural space.

Goethe’s comment on his friend Beethoven could easily have been applied to Wright as well: “I can well understand how hard he must find it to adapt himself to the world and its ways.” Both were mavericks who changed the course of their respective arts, and one of many things we have to celebrate about the Martin House complex is how it defied architectural convention at the turn of the twentieth century.

And, in the seasonal, Dickensian tradition of Marley’s Ghost, this reminds me of the old story about the visitor to Beethoven’s mausoleum: upon entering the crypt, the inquisitive visitor was taken aback to find a dusty, disheveled Beethoven sitting at a small table, still working by candlelight—apparently unaware that he should be inanimate. But rather than producing notes with his pen, Beethoven appeared to be erasing lines from an existing score. Terrified, but still curious, the interloper asked, “my God, Herr Beethoven, what are you doing?” Beethoven slowly looked up and replied, “decomposing.”

But seriously, now that both Wright and Beethoven have shuffled off their mortal coils, it is up to us to preserve, interpret and share with the world their immortal works, of which we have a prime example here in the Martin House. Unlike the posthumous Beethoven, we are in the midst of re—composing Wright’s “domestic symphony,” note by note and line by line.

Chainsaws and Charity

OK, so maybe my tree / Wright / organicism musings here are a bit of stretch, but the students of the Canisius College Video Institute did a great job profiling the "Carvings for a Cause" project (among others, including Frank Lloyd Wright's Rowing Boathouse): http://www.canisius.edu/videoinstitute/carvings.asp

Amazing what you can do with digital video. I'm not even in the conservatory...what's next, holographic curators? I won't even have to get out of bed.

Post-Confessional

Many thanks to all those docents and volunteers who braved an icy evening to attend my presentation earlier this week, "Confessions of a Furniture-Obsessed Curator - or - Mysteries of the Martin House Historic Furnishings Report, Vol. II." Sure, the title was probably more intriguing than the talk was, but one runs out of Wright puns eventually, so I had to go for the sensational.

A section of the unit room from Wright's "tout ensemble" furnishings plan

The talk brought to mind this quote from "Dune" author Frank Herbert:

• The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
• The Grey Art Gallery, New York University
  
• The De Young Museum (San Francisco Art Museums), San Francisco
• The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY
• The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
• The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
• The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (a modified window)

among others...

With ongoing recovery efforts by the MHRC's Artifacts Research and Recovery committee, we hope that some of these "trees" may some day be returned to their original "grove" at Jewett Parkway and Summit Avenue.

History Repeats Itself

In discussing turn-of-the-twentieth-century economic and social conditions, architectural historian Robert Twombley observes:

Few individuals could count on uninterrupted upward mobility, permanent employment or a happy future for their children. Even the upper middle class, especially people like Wright's clients who did not possess inherited wealth, faced the specter of possible downward mobility.
(Robert C. Twombley, "Saving the Family: Middle Class Attraction to Wright's Prairie House, 1901-1909." American Quarterly, vol. XXVII #1, March 1975, p. 59).

Sound familiar?

LOST...

Being the first in a series of postings on missing Martin House artifacts [not the hapless passengers of Oceanic Flight 815].

The idea is simple: I feature an item sold, lost or stolen from the Martin House (at some point in its past), and you, dear readers, respond to let us know if you have any information on the whereabouts of such items.

No questions asked.

We're interested in identifying and recovering lost pieces of the Martin House, not in pointing fingers.

Maybe you've seen some of these items in local antiques shops, or Grandma's attic, or your living room... maybe you know someone who knows someone whose brother has one of these items.

This week: Tiffany floor lamps


Four floor lamps by Louis Comfort Tiffany with glass shades once graced the Martin House. Some of them appear in a series of family photos taken in 1912. Sadly, all four lamps walked out of the Martin House in January, 1980, when a number of original furnishings were in the historic spaces with little security.

The saving grace may be that various models of Tiffany lamps very similar to these are frequently available on the market - so replacing the Martin lamps with similar pieces is feasible.

We would prefer, however, to track down the originals - and perhaps you can help.

If you have any information as to the disposition of these four lamps, please post a comment, or, alternately, send an email to [email protected], or call (716) 856-3858.

Greatbatch Pavilion Takes Shape

Photos courtesy of Bernhard Wagner, fotoGrafix

That amazing structure emerging from the western side of the Martin House site is the Toshiko Mori-designed Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion, visitor center for the Martin House complex. Slated for substantial completion by the end of 2008, the building is well under way, with foundations, structural steel and dramatically cantilevered roof already in place. Contractors are currently preparing to install large, triple-glazed sections of the building's curtain wall to complete the enclosure. When complete, the pavilion will form a platform for sweeping, horizontal views of the Martin House complex, and a multi-use space for visitor reception, orientation and special programming.

The powerful structure of the building is already evident, demonstrating Mori's great sensitivity to the tenets of Wright's Prairie designs: prominent, sheltering roofs, cantilevers that visually gather outdoor space into the composition, dematerialized walls that foster a connection between site and enclosure, and an open interior plan that promotes a profound freedom of movement and interaction within the building.

Toshiko Mori will speak on "The Integration of Architecture and Engineering in the Eleanor and Wilson Greatbatch Pavilion," in a panel discussion with three of the project's engineering consultants - Dmitri Jajich of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Paul Kreitler of Landmark Facilities Group, and Bruce Nichol of Front, Inc. - at the Albright Knox Art Gallery Auditorium, Wednesday, October 22, 8:00 p.m. Doors open at 7:45. The event is co-sponsored by the UB School of Architecture and Planning. Admission is free, but seating is limited. Call the MHRC at (716) 856-3858 for more information.

Fall "Homecoming"

Last weekend saw a family reunion at the corner of Jewett and Summit -a gathering of descendants of William Martin: brother to Darwin D. Martin and Wright client in his own right. Gathering in Parkside from various corners of the nation were five of William's grandchildren, numerous great-grandchildren, great great-grandchildren and spouses. Many had not visited the Martin House before, and the enthusiasm for family history and ties to Wright was in the air. MHRC Executive Director Mary Roberts and Senior Martin House Curator Jack Quinan led an in-depth tour of the complex, followed by lunch at the Gardener's cottage.

William's grandchildren plan to endow the reproduction of a "Tree of Life" window in honor of the family and William's important role in the Wright-Martin relationship. Our thanks to the family for this wonderful gesture.

Toward the end of the tour, it occurred to me that, with this reunion and many recent visits from other Martin relatives, Darwin Martin's dream of reuniting his family was coming to pass in an unexpected way. It may have been a century late, but I think DDM would have been pleased.

American Bungalow Article Profiles Reception Room

The fall issue of American Bungalow magazine (available in the Wisteria Shop) contains an article by yours truly - with the invaluable assistance of colleague Lesley Neufeld - entitled "The Music of Their Lives: Remembering the Darwin D. Martin House." The article profiles the Martin House reception room as the center of harmonious domestic life fostered by the House's design, building on Wright's own metaphor of the "domestic symphony."

Editorial note for our learned Martin House Docents and volunteers: if you notice some factual errors in text or captions, they are just that, and unintentional. My apologies to all those readers who will no doubt notice these errors immediately.

Lambri's Slices of Art Glass on View at the Albright-Knox

Captivating, minimalist photographs by Italian photographer Luisa Lambri are now on view at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, part of the REMIX exhibition "Inner Space: Photography from the Collection" (in the Link gallery, through 1/4/09). Lambri's Untitled (Darwin D. Martin House) images (#04 shown at left), taken in the master bedroom of the house in the Spring of 2007, show the "slot" art glass windows in the space literally in a whole new light. The glowing bar of art glass slices through the darkness of the room like a miraculous, liminal parting of heavy curtains of masonry. Many of Lambri's images of architectural interiors feature windows, which seem to become luminous apertures in the plane of the photograph itself. At the same time, they are meditative essays on the nature of enclosed space. As Brian Sholis put it in Artforum, "Lambri's idiosyncratic documents, often depicting individual windows or glass curtain walls, are more somatic than panoramic, attending closely to the phenomenology of the built environment." (Artforum, Summer 2006, pp. 352-353). Viewing Lambri's work at the Albright-Knox is sure to enhance anyone's perception of Wright's equally idiosyncratic windows in the Martin House master bedroom.

This Just In...

I recently returned from a trip to Florida, where I met with Martin family descendents in the Tallahassee area and followed up on some long-standing leads on family artifacts. Mark Armesto, son-in-law to Darwin R. Martin, welcomed me into his home in Havana, FL (largely spared by tropical storm Fay), where I also met Alex Martin, Darwin R. Martin's son.

Mark presented the MHRC with this beautiful Japanese woodblock print, passed down from his father-in-law to his late wife, Pattie Martin Armesto. Its original location in the Martin House is yet to be determined, but there's no doubt that it was part of the Martins' complement of prints obtained through the auspices of Wright.

Mark also gave us a copy of the booklet "The First to Make a Card Ledger / The Story of the Larkin Card Indexes," by Darwin D. Martin (1932). The booklet tells the story of the innovative Card Index system, first developed at the Larkin Company. Martin was evidently proud of this major contribution to the history of business systems, writing "...I think the card-ledger was born in the Larkin office, and the fact deserves its honored place in future encyclopedias."

I had an intriguing conversation with Alex Martin, who related a number of anecdotes about his father, Darwin R. Martin. One of the most amusing involved the discovery of a case of Civil War era whiskey (complete with Confederate trademarks) under the floorboards of a former Pony Express depot behind the former Stuyvesant Hotel. The final disposition of the finely aged spirits is lost to history...

From Tallahassee, I drove down to the Orlando area to make an eyewitness inspection of the original Martin House dining room buffet doors held by the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, Winter Park [www.morsemuseum.org]. Collections Manager Jennifer Thalheimer allowed me to "commune" with the impressive art glass doors, and later gave me a wonderful insider's tour of the Morse Museum collection which features the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. The doors are finely preserved examples of Wright's interior art glass for the Martin House, and access to them is crucial to our long-term restoration efforts, as this is the only known example of this particular pattern. For enthusiasts of Turn-of-the-Century American decorative arts, the Morse is a must-see.

Upon my return to Buffalo, Mark Armesto had another surprise in store. He found in his collection an award - in the form of a large, engraved silver cup - to Darwin D. Martin from the Larkin Company, given upon Martin's retirement in 1925. The inscription reads: The Directors of Larkin Co. Inc. to Darwin D. Martin, with affectionate appreciation of his valuable services to the company for forty seven years, and as Director and Secretary. Mark thought that this award should be added to the Martin House collection as an impressive piece of Martin family history.

Who needs a gold watch anyway?

Remembering George Purington

I am saddened to report that Martin House benefactor George Purington died on Sunday, September 21. A veteran of World War II, George will long be remembered for his gentle, generous spirit and his love for his late wife, Nancy.

Personally, it was a blessing to know George, and to work with him in making the art glass doors in the Martin conservatory a reality.

This is an image of the stunning new art glass doors, connecting the Martin conservatory and pergola.

These reproduction doors were funded through the generous gift of George Purington (on the right) and fabricated by the craftsmen at Oakbrook Esser Studios, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. Jamie Robideau of Hamilton Houston Lownie Architects created a precise drawing of the door pattern, based on photographs of the now-lost originals, and existing examples of the conservatory pattern art glass.

The only known original door of this type was sold at Christie's in 2007, and now resides with a collector in Japan.

Mr. Purington made his remarkable gift to underwrite the reproduction of these doors in memory of his late wife, Nancy. Mrs. Purington loved the Martin House and gardens, so the abstracted floral motif of these conservatory door panels seemed a perfect memorial.