May 10, 2018 We recommend — Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo Venture

“Between 1906 and 1909 he designed more than one hundred buildings…But after he initiated an affair with one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, he ended up abandoning his family and his practice in 1909. Cheney and Wright traveled to Europe, where the architect produced in 1910 a large portfolio of lithographs entitled Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright [Executed Buildings and Studies by Frank Lloyd Wright] for the German publisher Ernst Wasmuth. That elegant summation of his early architectural production significantly influenced the course of European Modernism…”

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo Venture: From the Larkin Building to Broadacre City, A Catalogue of Buildings and Projects
Jack Quinan
San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2012
NA737 W7 Q56 2012, General Collection, Level 2

Rare Books contributed several images to this book.

We invite you to Special Collections to look at:

Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe…
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1910
NA737 W7 A28

The Wasmuth Portfolio was a collaborative effort between Ernst Wasmuth, a Berlin publisher and Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wasmuth’s idea to publish a complete folio of Wright’s work to date. The project was completed during Wright’s first trip to Europe in 1909 and published in 1910-11. The collection of Wright’s houses and commercial buildings received far more attention and praise in Europe than in the United States. Contemporary architects called it “the most important book of the century.” The portfolio consists of one hundred and thirty-one prints and overlays with accompanying text in English and German. A letter from Frank Lloyd Wright to Taylor Wooley, dated 1911, suggests that six hundred and fifty copies were produced for this edition.

View a digital copy of our portfolio here.

See an article using our portfolio here.

View the original article on the OpenBook Blog