Replies

1. 
   pantalones868 | Jul 27, 2022 06:50pm | #1

   Wrights furnishings were mostly designed to be part of a particular building he designed. Can you think of anyway that that double top is an improvement to the functioning of a desk? I cant ,but it does visually follow along the recurring theme of his Prairie Architecture style. An early example of artiture? He was a genius no doubt but a snob of the highest order to boot! There is a house near me that was designed by Wright- right down to and including the doghouse. It was no particular improvement for the dog however. He designed a style of house for the masses, you know , mooches such as myself,called the Usonian house. Wright, not really rooted in reality, designed a house that was very expensive to build thereby completely missing his intended target.
   A guy named Eichler in the 1950s moved into one ,took the basic idea of Wrights Usonian house, figured it out and built thousands of truely affordable houses all over California. I think of them as maybe the perfect California house,entire suburbs sometimes all the same but all different. Cheap then they sell for a premium now. I've been to Fallingwater many times ,it is one astonishing house for sure. 1930's he was so incredibly ahead of the time!
   I live in Marin County and the civic center government building was designed by Wright. It may be his largest building. It's big ,it's pink,and stunning in a lot of ways but he hung a bunch of doodads on it that I don't understand. Big gold hanging balls as you enter that make it seems as if your going into the world's biggest pawnshop! You can spend the night in the drunk tank designed by Wright!
   Marin is the whitest place this side of Windsor Castle but during WWll blacks were imported to load bombs on liberty ships. Who else! After the war many of them stayed. Oh my God, black people in Marin! So the solution was to create sequestered tenement housing and to feel good about it they had Wright design it! Tupac grew up there!

1. 
   ggdevine | Aug 12, 2022 09:05pm | #8

   @Pantalones868,

   Really fun read -- you know your Wright stuff! I used to be a trial lawyer here in NorCal and had many cases in the courtrooms at Civic Center. The whole massive building is awesome in so many ways, but the acoustics in the courtrooms were amazingly clear and sharp. I'm a big FLW fan. One of my life's highlights so far is touring Fallingwater, I agree that it's the ideal house in the setting, and were it not for the strangely low ceilings, it'd be just spectacular. Wright's designs all seem to have some mechanical or structural issues, mostly because he was using materials in unheard-of ways. That's true of the civic center, whose massive roof leaks like a sieve. And BTW: I grew up in an Eichler in the 50s in NorCal....

2. 
   stantheman | Jul 28, 2022 09:38am | #2

   I've visited the house/museum in Scottsdale AZ, and seen other houses, read some books etc. I think he may have been a genius at some things, but furniture wasn't one of them. He was just nuts, and so egotistical that he made stuff just to be different and shocking, whether they were practical or functional or not. Not a hero. People who own his houses say they are maintenance nightmares.

3. 
   vonmagnuson | Jul 28, 2022 11:17am | #3

   More than likely this was a secretaries or administrators desk. The lower area is for seating a typewriter (google it if you are not 50 years old). They lowered that area so the typist could have their hands and arms in good ergonomical positions. The level in between would be like drawers for storing documents and you cigarettes.
   He designed the SCJohnson office building and the furniture. This looks like something they would have had in the secretarial pool.

1. 
   tardigrade | Jul 28, 2022 02:22pm | #4

   I am well over 50 years old, so, since you pointed it out, can see the practical application of having a lower worksurface for a typewriter. But then again, look at this desk:

   https://high.org/collections/desk-and-chair/

   there couldn't be enough space between the two tops for those big typewriters of the period. It is impressive, though, that it looks like the arms of the chair fit between the two desktop surfaces. To catch the arms of the notoriously unstable chairs if they start to tip over backwards? I doubt it as another leg was quickly added to the chair design, but a fun thought.

4. 
   user-1118538293 | Jul 28, 2022 04:33pm | #5

   I am also working on a desk design, and mine will have what amounts to a stacked top. My reasoning is so that I can easily create a clean surface if needed--tuck wireless keyboard underneath to make room for papers, and stuff like that. I doubt Wright had that exact thing in mind of course, but the need to switch tasks and the desire to have a clean desk at the end of the day are certainly not tied to any specific time period. There are many MCM desks (original as well as modern interpretations) that have some version of this feature, often split between an open bay and a drawer. This is the direction I am going.
   Given the aforementioned tendencies of Wright, I am sure that in his mind there was one "correct" way to make use of every little nook. This would also be quite consistent with idea that most of his furniture was designed for a specific installation (in the case pictured, for Johnson Wax).
   If anyone is interested in the history of office furniture, there's an episode of the Quartz Obsession podcast about it: https://qz.com/2084580/how-to-find-the-best-office-chair/
   I see you giving me that look--the same look that other people give me when I tell them about some cool think I heard about on a woodworking podcast. . .

5. 
   pantalones868 | Jul 28, 2022 09:02pm | #6

   I see it as a study of Wrights obsession ( if that's the right word) with juxtaposing horizontal and verticle lines in his work. It looked good and looked better properly placed in a building that it was designed for and was part of the design. The practicality of some of his work I am somewhat critical of but taken as a whole ,visually ,his work is stunning. While I say that about practicality:
   Wright understood that he was designing a building in an earthquake zone. How he knew it would happen so soon ...well...? Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was designed with reflecting pools that were built in series like a giant chain and anchored to the buildings in some kind of way. They were all part of the chain. In the Tokyo earthquake the chain rode out the quake and stabilized the hotel so that it survived and one of the only large buildings to do so. The reflecting pools were anchors and he knew to weight the anchors with water( cant break). The reflecting pools provided the only fresh water available and possibly saved thousands of lives. That's practicality!
   He was constantly bumping up against engineers that disagreed with him and didn't believe that his designs would work. On Fallingwater they didn't think the cantilever would work and extended the wall underneath against Wrights wishes. The story goes that Wright under cover of night came back( probably with a crew, i doubt he ever got dirty) and undermined the extended wall in such a way that it was no longer functioning but visually looked like it was still there. When he met with the engineers at some point they pointed out how their version of the wall was the correct thing to do and showed it to him as proof. At that point he showed them what he had done and had them take it down.
   I've heard stories of problems with maintaining his buildings. But then they were luxury items. Do you complain when you take your Ferrari for a tune up and it costs $8500? I can only wish that I could have that complaint!
   Like the engineering story his buildings were so outside the norm it must have been difficult to find workman that understood what they were doing and all kinds of materials like polymers and adhesives,concrete pumps etc that we would use to solve structural situations ,joint situations,flashing etc. didn't yet exist. The solutions that the did come up with were probably refined and incorporated in countless buildings after that. I'd bet that there were leaks a plenty!
   I doubt that is a unique problem to Wright. I'd think visionary architects and designers from the very beginning would encounter those problems and still do to this day. I watched a documentary about the construction of a Frank Gehry building. Gehry's conceptual design and then the army of engineers,computer programmers etc. that try and figure out how to build the thing. Inventing whole new technologies, having manufactures make things that have never been made before and then crossing their fingers that it will work! It would really be easy to hand off a picture of a mobious strip and then someone has to figure out how to get plumbing in or a HVAC system,elevators -all so it doesn't show,all so that it works! These astonishing constructions are all a one off. That they work as well as they do is pretty amazing!

6. 
   tardigrade | Aug 12, 2022 08:30am | #7

   I want to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses to my question. Very thought provoking and an impetus for further research.

7. 
   pantalones868 | Jan 24, 2023 03:52pm | #9

   Tardigrades are one of my favorite things in the world...or are they from out of this world? No fossil record and its now proven they can survive the vacuum of space!

8. 
   cl810 | Jan 27, 2023 09:41am | #10

   I haven't had a chance to watch it yet but there is a documentary on Acorn TV titled, "Frank Lloyd Wright: The Man Who Built America."

9. 
   joeleonetti | Jan 27, 2023 01:27pm | #11

   I'm guessing it was just a design style he used a lot. Something to also look at, back in 2017, I visited the Rhode Island Musme of Design (likely getting name wrong). In it, I recall seeing a Frank Lloyd Wright designed library table. I liked it lot. If I were building a desk or dining table, it is one design I would consider using.

10. 
    user-7363197 | Jan 27, 2023 10:27pm | #12

    I believe that desk came from the Johnson Wax Building - one of Wrights most iconic commercial projects.

    
1. 
   joeleonetti | Jan 28, 2023 12:09pm | #13

   Shortly after I posted, I googled images. FLW made a lot of desks and other tables. I like many of them. One of the cool things about being a woodworker is that I can "collect" cool iconic furniture by making it myself. I have a Limbert book shelf on the list for this year as well as Christian Becksvoort's iconic 15 drawer chest. Next year, I'd like to get a pair of Morris chairs made. Right now building that classic small Shaker table/nightstand.