Designer Biography

Frank Lloyd Wright

Born: 1869

Died: 1959

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Wright spent two years at engineering school before a brief period with J. L. Silsbee, the Chicago architect. In 1883 he joined Louis Sullivan's office, becoming chief draughtsman. He established his own practice in 1893. Wright was a collector and dealer of Japanese prints, although he was reluctant to admit their influence. He was a founder member of the Chicago Arts & Crafts Society, modelled on London's Toynbee Hall, with which C. R. Ashbee was involved; but unlike them he believed in the advancement of design through use of machinery. Ashbee had met Wright in Chicago and they became friends. Wright's designs were published in The House Beautiful, an architectural magazine which had illustrated work by Morris, Crane, Voysey and Ashbee in its first issue in 1896. His designs for furniture, leaded glass windows and metalwork (much of which was made by J. A. Miller) maintained a consistent abstract structuralism, now seen as an early expression of International Modernism. With Wright the thread of Viollet's and Dresser's architectural theories can be traced through to the concrete buildings of the twentieth century.