Remembering An Architectural Legend: Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

He was considered the greatest architect of the 20^th century with his organic American Modernistic style.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin. Wright’s mother, Anna was a teacher. She purchased a set of Froebel educational blocks for Frank at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Wright was entranced with the geometrically shaped blocks and spent hours building forms with the cubes, spheres and triangle-shaped blocks; blocks he said influenced his approach to design.

Joseph Sillsbee

Chicago architect Joseph Silsbee hired Wright as a draftsman in 1887. Wright described Silsbee’s work as “gracefully picturesque.”  But when he learned that the firm of Adler and Sullivan was hiring, Wright applied and was taken on as an official apprentice of the firm.

Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan became a mentor to Wright, and he quickly learned how to design public and commercial buildings in the Prairie-style, following the famous Sullivan motto, “form follows function.”

Wright’s only problem at the firm was his constant debt. He wanted the finer things in life, even if he couldn’t afford them. Sullivan was constantly loaning Wright money but he never seemed to get “caught up.”

Catherine Tobin Wright

Wright married Catherine “Kitty” Tobin in 1889, and Sullivan loaned him enough money to build a house in the suburb of Oak Park. (Sullivan also gave Wright a five-year employment contract.) But money was still tight.

In order to make more money, Wright began to take on independent commissions without the firm’s knowledge. He continued to design his “bootleg” Prairie houses until 1893 when Sullivan recognized one them as something Wright had designed. The two suffered a major rift because of this breach of contract, and did not speak again for over 12 years.

Wright's Arts and Crafts Interior

Wright left the company and decided to start his own firm. He shared space with three other young architects, all of them designing in the Arts and Crafts style. Between 1894 and 1910, Wright’s firm trained several of the main Prairie School architects.

Oak Park House of FLW

Robie House in Chicago

By 1901, Wright had built 50 structures, many of them homes located in Oak Park, Illinois. Wright’s “Prairie Houses” were becoming popular with their low, horizontal base topped with sloping roofs, and long windows that let in nature. Wright’s interiors encompassed wide-open spaces emulating nature with a nod toward Japanese architecture. Wright’s work spread to include houses and buildings in New York State, Pennsylvania, and throughout the Midwest.

Mamah Cheney

In 1903 as he was designing a house for a neighbor, Wright became involved with the neighbor’s wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Kitty Wright was sure that this infatuation would fade, so she refused to grant Wright a divorce.

Taliesin

Six years later, in 1909, Wright and Mamah moved to Europe together, deserting their spouses and children back in Chicago. Wright returned to the U.S. in the autumn of 1910 and purchased land in Spring Green, Wisconsin, adjacent to land owned by his mother’s family. There he built a home for Mamah, which he called Taliesin, “Truth Against the World” in Welsh.

Taliesin Murders

But disaster struck in August, 1914 when a disgruntled servant murdered Mamah, her two children, and four others at the home before setting fire to it. Wright was away at the time.

Olga Hinzeburg

Eight years later, Kitty Wright granted Frank a divorce, and in 1924, Wright began another wild affair with Olga Hinzeburg. They moved together back to a newly built Taliesin. After more marriage ups and downs, and another fire at Taliesin, Olga and Wright were married in 1928, and Taliesin III was built from the ashes of the second house.

Fallingwater

Taliesin West

During the 1920s, Wright designed his textile concrete block houses in California. And during the 1930s, he honed his organic style creating three of his well-known masterpieces; Graycliff near Buffalo, New York; Fallingwater near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Taliesin West, the Wright complex near Scottsdale, Arizona.

Usonian House

Guggenheim Museum

Wright continued to blaze new design trails well into his 70s and 80s with his Usonian Houses of the late 1930s and '40s, along with major buildings such as the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.

Wright's First Grave

Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959 after intestinal surgery in Phoenix, Arizona. He was 91 years old. Wright was buried in the Lloyd-Jones family cemetery in Spring Green, Wisconsin. But his burial was to be as complex as his life had been.

Wright and Olga

Twenty-five years after his death, his wife Olga requested that Wright’s remains be dug up and cremated along with her and her daughter’s. This was done, and the cremains were interred in the memorial garden at Taliesin West.

~ Joy

Coffin Therapy: Giving Death a Test Drive

Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes yet another bizarre idea concerning death. This one originated in the Ukraine a few years ago, and was the brainchild of Truskavets coffin maker, Stepan Piryanyk.

Stepan Piryanyk

Piryanyk decided that to combat the fear of being buried with “coffin therapy.” (He claims that each coffin has its own aura.) For $25, he’s offered people a chance to hop into a coffin and experience a glimmer of death.

For their money, the customer receives fifteen minutes of lie-down time in a silk-lined coffin. There’s a soundtrack of a babbling brook playing, and it’s the guest’s choice to close the lid – or not. Piryanyk sees it as a way to “get used to the afterlife.”

Several people who tried coffin therapy reported that it was relaxing.

Piryanyk came up with the idea after he and his brother built a coffin couch for their grandmother so she could “slowly get used to eternity.”

 

A mental health clinic in China offers “death experience therapy.” The experience lasts from 4 to 5 hours (!) and costs around $320. While the patient is lying in the coffin covered in a shroud, family members read epitaphs and share memories.

The clinic reported that after the event is over, patients write down how they felt while lying in the coffin. Many are so relieved and happy to be alive that they vow to alter the way they live, promising to live life more in the moment.

 

Yet another report from China has psychological counseling patients lying down in a coffin in order to relieve their stress. Supposedly after spending a few minutes covered with a blanket, with the lid shut, they emerge from the coffin feeling “reborn."  Over 1,000 patients have experienced the therapy.

 

In Seoul, South Korea a “well-dying” course is offered for those who have decided not to “take life for granted.”  Customers put on a traditional yellow hemp robe and lie down in a wooden coffin in order to experience their worst fear – dying. Once the lid is put in place, people reported that their attitudes toward life changed; they suddenly realized what was truly important to them and emerged more appreciative of those near and dear to them.

 

A healing center in South Korea offers students the chance to understand the “death experience" by taking a class in it. The students don white robes, then listen to lectures as they sit at a desk next to their coffin. They then compose a farewell letter to their loved ones before posing in the coffin for a funeral portrait. They are then instructed to lie down in their individual coffins and await the “Korean angel of death” who walks by each casket and closes the lid, symbolizing that the student has died. The students spend about 10 minutes in their coffins, left alone to deal with “the nothingness of the afterlife.”

 

When the students “awake,” many have reported feeling liberated from their concerns, and refreshed.

 

In another weird turn of events, a Taiwanese professor reportedly buries his students (alive) in a coffin in the floor of his classroom. This is supposed to make them become more appreciative of their lives; more focused on “living every second.”

 

I have not found where any “death therapy” is offered in the U.S., but if it were, would you pay to try it? With the lid open, or closed? (And seriously, these reports are NOT part of an April Fool's joke. Life, at times, is just this weird ...)

~ Joy

The Legacy of the Daffodils

 

The first time I saw the daffodils blooming by the side of the road was well over 25 years ago. My mother-in-law and I were heading home after a day of shopping when she suddenly veered off the main highway to show me something I’d never seen before.

We traveled about a mile down a one-lane gravel road before turning to the south. And there, in full abundance, was a riot of sunny yellow daffodils, blooming along both sides of the road, as far as the eye could see. She didn’t know the story of who had planted them or why, but she’d come across them years ago and thought I’d enjoy seeing them.

I hadn’t been back that way for years, but I did think of those amazing roadways every spring. Then, last week, as I noticed the bulbs beginning to bloom in my garden, I decided to see if those dancing daffodils were still there, and there was only one way to find out.


Armed with my camera, I headed off, hoping I’d remember where to turn. In fact, I did recognize one of the routes, and there at the intersection of two country roads were the daffys; bright yellow, swaying and bobbing in the breeze, a happy harbinger of spring.

Once again a riot of yellow blooms spread along the road, ending down by a house to the south, but heading off toward a church and more roads to the north. Beautiful and uplifting!

I did some digging and finally discovered the story behind the daffodils from Jo Gardner. Jo’s parents, Ed and Lois Whittaker decided back in the 1940s that they wanted to make the countryside look pretty during these wet, muddy spring months, so they began a two-person campaign to beautify their country neighborhood. They began planting daffodil bulbs.

Each year, they planted more bulbs, and each year the back country roadways heralded in spring with the uplifting glow of yellow daffodils.

Jo said that her dad, Ed would take a spade and make a hole, then her mom would drop in the bulb, and Ed would step on it to cover it up.

Jo isn’t sure where all of the bulbs came from. People began donating them, some bulbs were divided, and sometimes the plants just spread themselves across the countryside.

Pleasant Ridge Church

Once the Whittaker’s had planted their roadside, they branched off to the north and south, lining the roads that led to the Pleasant Ridge Church. Word spread of the spectacular flowers and people drove the roads to see the beauty.

Jo doesn’t know why daffodils were her parent’s flower of choice, but folklore may shed some light on that.

In Victorian times, flowers had meanings – there were actual flower dictionaries with the meaning explained.

According to one description, the bright yellow daffy indicated love, regard and respect. It was also a symbol of hope, joy and new beginnings; the perfect flower for spring, which brings us a new beginning each year.

The daffodil is also a symbol of rebirth, and associated with the spring festivals of Lent and Easter. While we in the U.S. call them Easter Lilies, in Germany they are known as Easter Bells, and in England as the Lenten Lily.

Jo said that her father planted the last of the daffodils in 1989, at the age of 94.

The Whittaker’s life-long dedication to making their ”little corner of the world” more beautiful is a lesson for all of us. Regardless of how busy we are, there’s always time to brighten a little piece of our world, and that, in turn, may give joy to others.

Thanks to the Whittaker’s, the feelings of happiness and joy bubble forth over 70 years later at the sight of those golden daffodils dancing in the prairie breeze each spring, along the gravel roads of Lawrence County, Illinois.

What a beautiful legacy to be remembered for!

~ Joy

"Daffodils" (1804)

I wander’d lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

~ William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)

Johnny Appleseed Remembered

John Chapman

He was born John Chapman on September 26, 1774, but he became a folk hero who was called "Johnny Appleseed."

Tending the Orchard

Chapman grew up in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, the son of a farmer. During his teens, he apprenticed as an orchardist and nurseryman, thus beginning his life-long interest in apple orchards.

While the legend has Chapman spreading apple seeds on the ground as he walked, he actually planted nurseries. He would fence the trees and leave a local farmer in charge of tending them, coming back every couple of years to check on them. 

Chapman’s first nursery was planted south of Warren, Pennsylvania. At the beginning of the 19^th century, he moved west into Ohio, taking with him apple seeds he had gathered from cider presses throughout Pennsylvania.

Those seeds grew into trees, and many times the fruit was not picked for tasty apples to be made into pies, but to be fermented into hard cider and applejack. Chapman sold his two-year-old apple trees to settlers throughout the region for six cents a tree. When a family could not pay, many times Chapman would give them the seedlings. His kind nature earned him the moniker, “Johnny Appleseed.”

Johnny Appleseed

Chapman traveled throughout Ontario, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, for more than 40 years, planting orchards and selling apple trees. He also took time to educate local farmers on how to plant nurseries, and how to tend the orchards.

Chapman was also a member of the Church of New Jerusalem, a pacifist sect that believed in simple living. He preached that God and nature were entwined. It was said that he dressed in sacks he had fashioned into clothing, and wore a metal pot as a hat, which he could also use for cooking. Chapman advocated that animals should be respected, and was one of the first known vegetarians.

Harper's Weekly

Native Americans believed that the Great Spirit guided Chapman, and he was welcomed into many tee pees to share his knowledge, and preach his Gospel.

The legend of "Johnny Appleseed" came about when W.D. Haley wrote in colorful prose about Chapman’s life, spreading apple seeds across Ohio for “Harper’s Weekly” in 1871.

John Chapman died of pneumonia on March 18, 1845 – 171 years ago, at the home of a friend. On his death, “Johnny Appleseed” left over 1,200 acres of nurseries to his sister, including 15,000 trees located in Allen County, Indiana.

Johnny Appleseed - Spring Grove Cemetery

John Chapman's Grave

John Chapman aka “Johnny Appleseed” was buried near Fort Wayne, Indiana, but numerous markers and monuments have been erected throughout the Midwest in celebration of the man, and his life’s work.

~ Joy

Book Review: Of Statues and Effigies by Adonis Stergiou

Cemetery sculpture is something I never tire of looking at, in person while wandering a cemetery, or in book form on an inclement day at home.

Of Statues and Effigies is such a book. Author Adonis Stergiou concentrates on the faces of the sculptures found in the cemetery of Xiriotissa, Greece. During the Greek War, from 1945 – 1949, this cemetery was also used as an execution site, and for mass burials.

Stergiou tells us “the effigies are representations of people not always well known… It's usually far harder to learn of the person represented by them since they were not “historically” significant. Of most of the subjects I had spotted, those seemed the most neglected.”

But the neglect seems to add another layer of depth to this art. Many appear as though the sculptors caught their subjects amid a “life” moment.

Photo of Actor Thanos Leivaditis

Thanos Leivaditis, a Greek actor and prolific screenwriter who penned thirty screenplays during his lifetime, was sculpted to look every bit the unhurried businessman on his way to an important meeting, sporting a suit and tie with every hair in place.

 Military figures, with uniforms and caps in perfect order, are plentiful here. But look closer and each face will capture your attention. It's almost as if a bit of each individual's personality has been been captured in the likeness.

Two soldiers stand close together, gazing out into infinity, but the elements have left marks. It appears as if each man is sporting long sideburns instead of the rain tracks and erosion that marks each face. The sculptor, Nikos Perantinos, was known for his simplicity and classical form, to which the elements have only add enhancement.

Another face has been weathered in such a way it appears at first glance as if a tear is escaping from the man's eye.

Older statues sport the heavy mustaches and wavy hair of the late Victorian era along with pocking from the elements and a slight cast of mold.

The statue of Anastasia Hatzimitala is amazing. The only woman featured in the book, she wears a covering on her head; what appears to be veil like a nun, or a peasant. Her eyes are lifelike and she looks directly at you, into your soul without reproach.

Drawing of Athanasios Diakos

Stergiou ends his book with a photo at a tilted angle that has us looking up at the statue of Athanasios Diakos, a Greek military commander and national hero. Diakos fought against the Ottoman army in 1821 (and lost). He is remembered as a martyr for the Greek cause.

Adonis Stergiou tells us “This project was about neglected memories which are still visible and present among us.” After reviewing this book, I see those weathered and time-worn faces of cemetery statues in a more artistic light.

~ Joy

Author Adonis Stergiou

Book Details:

Of Statues and Effigies by Adonis Stergiou

Available for purchase at Amazon by clicking this link:

Of Statues and Effigies