Building Taliesin
Building Taliesin

Author: Ron McCrea

Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society

Published: 2013-10-07

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0870206370

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Through letters, memoirs, contemporary documents, and a stunning assemblage of photographs - many of which have never before been published - author Ron McCrea tells the fascinating story of the building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, which would be the architect's principal residence for the rest of his life. Photos taken by Wright's associates show rare views of Taliesin under construction and illustrate Wright's own recollections of the first summer there and the craftsmen who worked on the site. The book also brings to life Wright’s "kindred spirit," "she for whom Taliesin had first taken form," Mamah Borthwick. Wright and Borthwick had each abandoned their families to be together, causing a scandal that reverberated far beyond Wright's beloved Wisconsin valley. The shocking murder and fire that took place at Taliesin in August 1914 brought this first phase of life at Taliesin to a tragic end.

Death in a Prairie House
Death in a Prairie House

Author: William R. Drennan

Publisher: Terrace Books

Published: 2007-01-18

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780299222109

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The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Unaccountably, the details of that shocking crime have been largely ignored by Wright’s legion of biographers—a historical and cultural gap that is finally addressed in William Drennan’s exhaustively researched Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders. In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others). Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull. Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and Taliesin West
Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin and Taliesin West

Author: Kathryn Smith

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 1997-09

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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A special highlight is the chapter on Wright's collection of Asian art, which was reputed at one time to be among the largest and finest in the United States, and today consists of screens, woodblock prints, sculpture, ceramics, rugs, and textiles.

"At Taliesin"

Author: Frank Lloyd Wright

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13:

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Collects newspaper columns written by Wright and his assistants on their work and their ideas.

Famous Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright
Famous Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright

Author: Bruce LaFontaine

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 1996-01-01

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 9780486293622

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For coloring book enthusiasts and architecture students — 44 finely detailed renderings of Wright home and studio, Unity Temple, Guggenheim Museum, Robie House, Imperial Hotel, more.

Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin
Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin

Author: Frances Nemtin

Publisher: Pomegranate Communications

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13:

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Taliesin -- the country estate built by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1911 and 1959 -- has been a self-sufficient farm complex, a boarding school, a world-class architectural studio, and a fellowship for the study of architecture. What was it like to be a part of this vibrant community, to work in close association with the preeminent American architect? Author Frances Nemtin, currently the long-time manager and designer of the Taliesin flower gardens, joined the fellowship in 1946 after she met Wright while arranging a show of his work. Rich in anecdote and precise in description, her charmingly discursive tour of the fellowship includes rarely seen photographs and paintings from the fellowship archives evoking the beauty of Taliesin in all seasons, and the excitement of living in proximity to genius.

Under Arizona Skies
Under Arizona Skies

Author: Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer

Publisher: Pomegranate Communications

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780764959592

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Nestled among the cactus thickets and dry washes of the Arizona desert lies an intriguing landscape of architectural experiments. Sometimes encompassing a paloverde tree or suspended many feet above the desert floor, these small dwellings, conceived by architecture students as alternatives to tents and dormitory rooms, embrace¿and in their own way, celebrate¿the natural, rugged terrain surrounding Frank Lloyd Wright¿s Taliesin West. The earliest shelters were created by adventurous apprentices at the Taliesin Fellowship, a school for architects established by Frank Lloyd Wright in the mid-1930s. After Wright¿s death, a more conventional school¿the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture¿was established, and the practice of designing and building a personal dwelling became a unique feature of the school¿s curriculum. Wright insisted that there would be no armchair architects at his school; apprentices would learn through hard work and first-hand experience. The response to this directive has been astonishingly creative. In addition to honing their design and drafting skills, students comb the desert for dwelling sites; consider the effects of extreme temperature change and winter rain; gather construction materials from surrounding hills and dry riverbeds; and thoroughly explore what Wright termed organic architecture. Collected in Under Arizona Skies are photographs and architectural plans of the most exemplary student shelters built at Taliesin West, as well as personal accounts written by Victor E. Sidy, Dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives.

Taliesin Reflections
Taliesin Reflections

Author: Earl Nisbet

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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During the Great Depression, there were few clients coming to Frank Lloyd Wright for designs, so he turned to writing and lecturing. In 1932, he and his wife, Olgivanna, began the Taliesin Fellowship where 30 apprentices came to live and learn from the most influential and imaginative architect of the Twentieth Century. Earl Nisbet was one of those apprentices and Taliesin Reflections relates some of the day-to-day activities that occurred in the Taliesin Fellowship.

The Fellowship
The Fellowship

Author: Roger Friedland

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-03-06

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 0061875260

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Frank Lloyd Wright was renowned during his life not only as an architectural genius but also as a subject of controversy—from his radical design innovations to his turbulent private life, including a notorious mass murder that occurred at his Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914. But the estate also gave rise to one of the most fascinating and provocative experiments in American cultural history: the Taliesin Fellowship, an extraordinary architectural colony where Wright trained hundreds of devoted apprentices and where all of his late masterpieces—Fallingwater, Johnson Wax, the Guggenheim Museum—were born. Drawing on hundreds of new and unpublished interviews and countless unseen documents from the Wright archives, The Fellowship is an unforgettable story of genius and ego, sex and violence, mysticism and utopianism. Epic in scope yet intimate in its detail, it is a stunning true account of how an idealistic community devolved into a kind of fiefdom where young apprentices were both inspired and manipulated, often at a staggering personal cost, by the architect and his imperious wife, Olgivanna Hinzenberg, along with her spiritual master, the legendary Greek-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff. A magisterial work of biography, it will forever change how we think about Frank Lloyd Wright and his world.