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Wright Studies
Frank Lloyd Wright's First Published Article
"Art in the Home"
"Art in the Home." Read before the Home Decoration and Furnishing Department of the Congress on May 5, 1898. (Symposium of the Annual Art Congress held in the Art Institute, Chicago, May 3, 4, and 5, 1898.) Published in Arts For America - June 1898, Vol. VII - Nos. 9 and 10. Pp 579-588. 1893 Wright begins his own practice.
1894 (1st), 1895 (2nd) and 1898 (3rd) Wright exhibits his work at the Chicago Architectural Club.
According to Pfeiffer, Collected Writings, V1, pages 20-26, Wright’s first speech entitled "The Architect and the Machine" was written, typed and delivered to the University Guild, Evanston, Illinois in 1894, and first published in 1992 in V1. Excerpts were published in On Architecture 1941, pages 3-4. Though unpublished at the time, Wright used it as a foundation for "Art in the Home" in 1898, and as he did many times expanding, editing and rewriting. Even repeating whole paragraphs at times: "I should like to give you a set of golden rules...; Proportions is the great thing in this fundamental work...; Your fireplace no longer need be an inconsequential piece of wooden furniture...; Make your kitchen fit to live in...; Your second floor is perhaps a truer index...; The closet craze is also an abuse...; Treat your servants as your treat your friends...; Houses are built today on too narrow...; It would take days to consider..." In some respects it became his life long mission statement "Go to Nature, consider her ways. Let you home appear to grow easily from its site, and shape it to sympathize with the surroundings..."
In 1896, according to Pfeiffer, Collected Writings, V1, pages 27-38, Wright’s second lecture entitled "Architecture, Architect, and the Client" was written and delivered to the University Guild, Evanston, Illinois in 1896, and first published in 1992 in V1. Excerpts were published in On Architecture 1941, pages 4-6. This lecture which remained unpublished until 1992, was revised and presented to the Chicago Women’s Club as a lecture entitled "The Modern Home as a Work of Art."
Predating "Art in the Home", Wright’s work had been published in a number of periodicals, but this is the first of Wright’s writings to be published. Wright was thirty years old.
"A ‘Home’ may be the noblest of all works of art, and comprise in its entirety the quality and beauty of the most perfect of its artistic units... Go to Nature, consider her ways. Let you home appear to grow easily from its site, and shape it to sympathize with the surroundings..."
"Notes From the Congress." (Symposium of the Annual Art Congress held in the Art Institute, Chicago, May 3, 4, and 5, 1898.) Published in Arts For America - June 1898, Vol. VII - Nos. 9 and 10. Pp 593-594.
"The closing day of the Congress was a perfect symphony... Mr. Frank L. Wright’s ‘Art in the Home’ was a summary of actual experiences gained, from many years of labor in his chosen profession. Many of us have not learned that architecture means the home and its furnishings, but Mr. Wright opened the doorway into a complete symphony of architectural thought in which the family requirements formed the central force."
