Samara

[osprey_archer]

I spent a few days this month volunteering at Samara, a local house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in the declining years of his life. A local professor wrote to Wright, saying that he couldn't afford a tenth of Wright's fees but would nonetheless love and cherish any house that Wright designed him. Wright, admiring the professor's boldness and also his beautiful wife, designed Samara.

Wright didn't just design houses. He designed landscapes, furniture, the sort of cutlery that ought to be used, sometimes even a dress for the lady of the house. (He was kind of a control freak.) This wind chime he designed to hang off the gutter, so it would gather icicles in the winter.



The professor still lives in the house (his wife has since died). He apologized for the clutter. On my best days and after a thorough cleaning my dorm room is not so neat.

It seems like an awkward way to live: on display in a part-time museum. It's like living in high society, where life itself is supposed to be art. But it seems to me that being conscious of your life as art isn't a bad thing; that perhaps what you lose is spontaneity you make up in grace.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow, ask and you shall receive! That's cool that he still lives in it.

I like what you say about gaining in grace what you lose in spontaneity; I'm going to think on that--it seems to say something about courtliness.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes! He's quite spry for his age. I think having the house to bring people to him has helped keep him young.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

I can never think of Frank Lloyd Wright without thinking of the massacre that took his wife, kids and several houseguests.

http://socyberty.com/history/frank-lloyd-wright-murder-at-the-taliesin/

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The woman I was working with described Wright as "the Britney Spears of the early 1900s - always in the tabloids." Except nothing quite that tragic has struck Britney Spears.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

I read the book, "Loving Frank," having no prior knowledge of the man beforehand, other than he was a great architect. When I got to that scene in the book, I actually gasped! I never saw it coming.