Scottsdale, Arizona: Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture / The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1967 and 1968.
Price: $4,500.00
Hardcover. A collection of two bound volumes of the seminar *The Art and Philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright*, taught at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture in 1967 and 1968 by former Wright apprentice Vernon D. Swaback. Quartos. 90pp. and 157pp. Illustrated with photographs and drawings. Photomechanically reproduced sheets. Fine in boards and gilt letters. Each volume was limited to four copies, with the originals being gifted to Mrs. Wright. The volumes are accompanied by an Autograph Note Signed and an Autograph Letter Signed from Swaback to Horizon Press Publisher Ben Raeburn. The letter and note are also fine. Accompanied by two very good copies of a Guggenheim Museum souvenir books for an exhibition of Wright’s Usonian House.
Swaback became Wright’s youngest apprentice in 1957. Following the architect's death in 1959, Swaback was named Director of Planning for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and would serve as the CEO of Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for 20 years. These volumes lay out a course of study taught at Taliesen West in Arizona that, he writes, is not to “elaborate on the educational system employed or to comprehensively illustrate the subject matter covered. It is rather a glimpse into one specific area of the Taliesen education.” The seminars, composed of a small group of new and established architects, studied various Wright projects, stirred conversation about “organic architecture,” featured discussions with both Wright’s wife, and son-in-law William Wesley Peters, and included a number of design exercises and field trips.
Also interesting is Swaback’s four-page letter to Raeburn, an apparent confidant, with whom he openly and honestly discussed his thoughts on the current state of the Wright Organization. He references the organization's competing “positive” and “negative” forces, as he saw it, as well as his own doubts and anxiety about leading, teaching, and truly understanding Wright’s vision: "I tell my students that the only thoroughly honest attack for a young architect is the venture in the unknown and to know what it means to feel at a loss as to how to proceed. That seems like a hell of a sense of direction but maybe for a follower of Frank Lloyd Wright - the most difficult achievement is to inventory what he truly doesn't know."
An interesting collection of material related to transitional period following the death of Wright and the establishment of his legacy by his family and most ardent supporters. We could not locate any copies of these volumes in *OCLC* or online. Rare.
Item #606096
