One of a Pair of Casement Windows from the Darwin Martin House, Buffalo, NY
Frank Lloyd Wright
Description
March 28, 2009
The Darwin Martin house in Buffalo, New York, stands as an outstanding example of Prairie School architecture; it was considered by Wright to be one of his most important and satisfying creations from the early part of his career. The design of this pair of windows from the first floor of the house is based on wisteria, seen in abstracted form in the vertical row of chevron-patterned glass. Though they date to essentially the same time as the museum’s windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Wright had a fundamentally different approach to the use of windows and their design. Whereas the bow window from the Havemeyer house employs the curving forms of nature, Wright distills natural forms into geometric patterns, and his windows were considered part of the overall design of the walls in his houses.
Subject Matter:
The Darwin Martin house was considered by Wright to be one of the most important and satisfying houses he built in the early part of his career and stands as an outstanding example of Prairie School architecture. This pair of windows (1968/2.53-53) from the first floor of the Martin house contains an abstracted pattern based on wisteria, seen in the vertical row of chevron-patterned glass. These glass "windows" were used to screen the radiators in the living room on the first floor.
Physical Description:
One of a pair of windows with a highly regular, rectilinear, although asymetric, design in both clear and colored glass. The window has an oak frame. Its design consists of vertical and horizontal bands of green and amber colorerd glass at the top and bottom of window; along one side are colored squares of glass, and along the other is a chevron-shaped column of glass. The overall effect is of colored pieces of glass suspended within a clear window, subdivided by abstract bands and patterns of lead caming.
Usage Rights:
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