Taliesin (studio)
Taliesin is a house-studio complex located south of the village of Spring Green, Wisconsin, United States. Developed and occupied by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the estate is an exemplar of the Prairie School of architecture. Wright began developing the estate in 1911 close to land that previously belonged to his maternal family.
Wright designed the main Taliesin home and studio with his mistress, Mamah Borthwick, after leaving his first wife, and home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois. The design of the original building was consistent with the design principles of the Prairie School, emulating the flatness of the plains and the natural limestone outcroppings of Wisconsin's Driftless Area. The structure was completed in 1911. The name Taliesin, meaning "shining brow" in Welsh, was initially used for the first building, which was built on and into the brow of a hill; it was later extended to the entire estate.
Over the course of Wright's occupancy, two major fires led to significant alterations; these three stages are referred to as Taliesin I, II, and III. In 1914, after a disturbed employee set fire to the living quarters and murdered Borthwick and six others, Wright rebuilt the Taliesin residential wing, but he used the second estate only sparingly, returning there in 1922 following the completion of the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. An electrical fire gutted Taliesin II's living quarters in April 1925, and he rebuilt it later that year. Wright lost the house to foreclosure in 1927 but was able to reacquire it the next year, with financial help from friends. In 1932, he established a fellowship for architectural students at the estate. Taliesin III was Wright's home for the rest of his life, although he began to spend the winters at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, upon its completion in 1937. Many of Wright's acclaimed buildings were designed at Taliesin, including Fallingwater, the Jacobs I house, the Johnson Wax Headquarters, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Wright, who was also an avid collector of Asian art, used Taliesin as a storehouse and private museum.
Wright left Taliesin and the 600-acre Taliesin Estate to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation upon his death in 1959. This organization oversaw renovations to the estate until 1990, when a nonprofit organization known as Taliesin Preservation Inc. took over responsibility. During the 1990s and 2000s, TPI renovated the estate to repair deterioration that took place over the years., more than 25,000 people visit Taliesin each year. The Taliesin estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, and it was listed as a World Heritage Site in 2019 as part of a group of eight listings known as "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright".
Site
Jones Valley, the Wisconsin River valley in which Taliesin sits, was formed during Pre-Illinoian glaciation. This region of North America, known as the Driftless Area, was totally surrounded by ice during Wisconsin glaciation, but the area itself was not glaciated. The result is an unusually hilly landscape with deeply carved river valleys.The valley, approximately south of the village of Spring Green, Wisconsin, was originally settled by Frank Lloyd Wright's maternal grandfather, Richard Lloyd Jones. Jones had emigrated with his family from Wales, moving to the town of Ixonia in Jefferson County, Wisconsin. In 1858, Jones and the family moved from Ixonia to this part of Wisconsin to start a farm. By the 1870s, Jones' sons had taken over operation of the farm, and they invited Wright to work during summers as a farmhand.
Image:Taliesin600.jpg|thumb|Wright designed the second Hillside Home School in 1901, alongside an earlier school he designed in 1887.
Wright's aunts Jane and Ellen C. Lloyd Jones began a co-educational school, the Hillside Home School, on the farm in 1887 and let Wright design the building; this was Wright's first independent commission. In 1896, Wright's aunts again commissioned Wright, this time to build a windmill. The resulting Romeo and Juliet Windmill was unorthodox but stable. By 1901 the school role was such that the original building was inadequate, and Wright was commissioned to design a replacement. This became Hillside Home School II, and Wright later sent several of his children to the school. Wright's final commission on the farm was Tan-y-Deri, a house for his sister Jane Porter, completed in 1907. Tan-y-Deri, Welsh for "under the oaks", was a design based on his recent Ladies Home Journal article "A Fireproof House for $5000." The family, their ideas, religion, and ideals, greatly influenced the young Wright, who later changed his middle name from Lincoln to Lloyd in deference to his mother's family.
Etymology
When Wright decided to construct a home in this valley, he chose the name of the Welsh bard Taliesin, whose name means "shining brow" or "radiant brow". Wright learned of the poet through Richard Hovey's Taliesin: A Masque, a story about an artist's struggle for identity. The Welsh name also suited Wright's roots, as the Lloyd Joneses gave Welsh names to their properties. The hill upon which Taliesin was built was a favorite from Wright's youth; he saw the house as a "shining brow" on the hill, in hope of a place of refuge "but I had forgotten grandfather Isiah's punishments and beatings". Although the name was originally only applied to the house, Wright later used the term to refer to the entire property. Wright and others used roman numerals to distinguish the three versions of the house.Early history
The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois, was Wright's residence from 1889 to 1909. He built an architectural studio next to his Oak Park house in 1898. In Oak Park, Wright had developed his concept of Prairie School architecture, designing houses primarily for local clients. In 1903, Wright began designing a home for Edwin Cheney, but quickly took a liking for Cheney's wife. Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney began an affair and separated from their spouses in 1909.In October, Borthwick, having left her husband in the summer, met up with Wright in New York City. From there, they sailed to Berlin, so Wright could negotiate a portfolio of his work. After that, Wright and Borthwick parted temporarily. She had settled in Leipzig, Germany, teaching English, and Wright settled in Italy to continue work on the portfolio. Borthwick joined Wright in Italy in February. He moved his studio to Fiesole, a town within view of Florence. While in Fiesole, Wright was particularly inspired by Michelozzo's Villa Medici because it was built into a hill, had commanding views of its surroundings, and featured gardens on two levels. In 1910, the pair sought to return to the United States, but knew they could not escape scandal if they returned together to Oak Park. Wright saw an alternative—his family's ancestral land near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Wright returned alone to the United States in October 1910, publicly reconciling with his wife, Catherine, while working to secure money to buy land on which to build a house for himself and Borthwick Cheney. On April 3, 1911, Wright wrote to client, Darwin D. Martin, requesting money so that he could "see about building a small house" for his mother.
On the 10th, Wright's mother Anna signed the deed for the property. By using Anna's name, Wright was able to secure the property without attracting any attention to the affair. Late in the summer, Mamah Borthwick quietly moved into the property, staying with Wright's sister, Jane Porter, at her home, Tan-y-Deri. However, Wright and Borthwick's new property was discovered by a Chicago Examiner reporter that fall, and the affair made headlines in the Chicago Tribune on Christmas Eve.
Taliesin I
At Taliesin, Wright wanted to live in unison with Mamah, his ancestry, and with nature. He chose only local building materials. The house was designed to nestle against the hill, in an example of Wright's "organic architecture". The bands of windows, one of his trademarks, allow nature to enter the house, and the fluid transitions from interior to exterior were radical for the time. This was in keeping with Wright's belief that the architecture should be "of" the hill, not "on" it. "I attend the greatest of churches. I spell nature with a capital N. That is my church", he said in a TV interview in 1957.Architecture and layout
Taliesin I was composed of several partially detached structures in an "L"-shaped arrangement, which were connected by pergolas. There were three sections: a long section on the east, which held the residential wing ; a long section on the west, which held the agricultural wing; and an office wing connecting the two other sections. To the southwest of the main complex was a courtyard; there were stables, service functions, servants' quarters, and a garage across the courtyard. The one-story complex was accessed by a road leading up the hill to the rear of the building. The estate gateway was on County Road C, just west of Wisconsin Road 23. Iron entry gates were flanked by limestone piers capped with planter urns.A porte-cochère or loggia, above the main entrance of the living quarters, provided shelter for visiting automobiles. The residential wing included a bedroom and a combined living–dining room, which protruded from the corner of the hill on two sides. The office wing held the drafting studio and workroom, and an apartment for the head draftsman. This apartment may have originally been intended for Wright's mother. Typical of a Prairie School design, the house was, as Wright described, "low, wide, and snug." As with most of his houses, Wright designed the furniture.
Wright chose yellow limestone for the house from a quarry of outcropping ledges on a nearby hill. Local farmers helped Wright move the stone up the Taliesin hill. Stones were laid in long, thin ledges, evoking the natural way that they were found in the quarry and across the Driftless Area. Plaster for the interior walls was mixed with sienna, giving the finished product a golden hue. This caused the plaster to resemble the sand on the banks of the nearby Wisconsin River. The outside plaster walls were similar, but mixed with cement, resulting in a grayer color. Windows were placed so that sun could come through openings in every room at every point of the day. Wright chose not to install gutters so that icicles would form in winter. The hip roof had a wood frame with shingles made of cedar; the shingles were intended to weather to a silver-grey color, matching the branches of nearby trees. The finished house measured approximately of enclosed space.