Early 20th Century Exterior Plaster Fragment from the Dana House

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Early 20th Century Exterior Plaster Fragment from the Dana House

About the Item

All original museum quality, circa 1902 heavily ornamented cast plaster "sumac pattern" exterior frieze fragment removed from the Susan Lawrence Dana house designed by prairie architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. The badly deteriorated plaster work was removed in 1979 shortly before restoration commenced on the house. The extant replacement consists of vinyl-coated plywood. The restoration involved the recasting of the original frieze in a more durable material and put back into place. A few sections (such as the one shown above) of the original frieze are now in museums and private collections. The Dana-Thomas house or Susan Lawrence Dana house or Dana house (built 1902–04) was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. the extant house - located along east Lawrence avenue in Springfield, Illinois - was built for patron Susan Lawrence Dana. The house reflects the mutual affection of the patron and the architect for organic architecture, the relatively flat landscape of the U.S. state of Illinois, and the Japanese aesthetic as expressed in Japanese prints. In 1902, Susan Lawrence Dana was an independent woman and heiress to a substantial fortune, including silver mines in the Rocky Mountains. Widowed in 1900, Dana enjoyed complete control over her household and fortune. eager to express her personality and to become the leading Hostess in Springfield, Dana decided to completely remodel her family's Italianate mansion located in the state capital's fashionable "aristocracy hill" neighborhood. Susan Lawrence Dana's search for an architect to match her aspirations ended when she was introduced to Frank Lloyd Wright, the rising leader of a new movement in architecture. In 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright left the office of his mentor, Louis Sullivan, and began to practice as an independent architect. Fully agreeing with Sullivan's doctrine of "organic architecture", wright expanded it into a full-fledged system of congruence between the interior of a building and its surroundings, which came to be called the "prairie style." Susan Lawrence Dana's 1902 commission to wright to plan the "remodeling" of the Lawrence’s' Victorian mansion was the largest commission that wright had received up to that time. The architect, who recognized a kindred spirit in Mrs. Dana, expanded the boundaries of his commission to design and build what was, in effect, an entirely new house. This house was a showcase for wright's prairie style. It reflected Susan Lawrence Dana's flamboyant personality and Dana's and wrights mutual love of Japanese prints and drawings. The house was designed for display and entertainment. An arched doorway admitted guests into a series of expanding spaces, the vestibule and reception hall. The concept of "expanding space" was repeated throughout the house, with windows placed so as to continually draw the resident or guest into an awareness of the outside. Wright designed approximately 450 art glass windows, skylights, door panels, sconces, and light fixtures for the house, most of which survive. Much of the art glass, and the mural by George Niedecken surmounting the dining room interior, centered on a sumac motif. A substantial west wing leads visitors through an interior torii gate into two of the largest rooms in the house. The upper-level gallery was used for musical entertaining, and the ground-level library contains special easels designed by wright for Dana to display selections from her collection of Japanese prints, part of more than 100 pieces of free-standing wright-designed white oak furniture in the house. Susan Lawrence Dana lived in the Dana-Thomas house for approximately 24 years, from 1904 until about 1928. At first a successful Hostess and leader of Springfield’s social scene, she later became increasingly reclusive and turned her attention to spiritualism and the occult. Suffering from increasing financial constraints in her later years, she closed the main house around 1928 and moved to a small cottage on the grounds. As Dana struggled with age-related dementia in the 1940s, her home and its contents were sold. Charles c. Thomas, a successful medical publisher, was the second owner and custodian of the Dana-Thomas house in 1944-1975. Charles died in 1969 and his wife Nanette died in 1975. He and his wife are credited with maintaining the house's original furnishings and design, and with selling the home and its furnishings as a unit to the state of Illinois in 1981 for $1.0 million, significantly less than could have been earned had the household been broken up.

Creator:
Frank Lloyd Wright (Designer)
Dimensions:
Height: 2.5 in (6.35 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)Depth: 19 in (48.26 cm)
Style:
Prairie School (In the Style Of)
Materials and Techniques:
Plaster,Cast
Place of Origin:
United States
Period:
Early 20th Century
Date of Manufacture:
1902
Condition:
Minor structural damages. Per the pictures the purple color remains vibrant. The plaster is fragile so needs mounting as it is not structurally sound on its own. Piece remains in fair condition considering removal from an external facade.
Seller Location:
Chicago, IL
Reference Number:
Seller: Dana house 238801stDibs: LU248936525473

Shop All Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright

Without question the greatest architect the United States has ever produced, Frank Lloyd Wright and his philosophy of “organic architecture” — of buildings that exist in harmony with their natural surroundings — had a profound influence on the shape of modern life.

Wright gave us some of the most elegant and iconic buildings in America: residences such as Fallingwater, in rural Pennsylvania, the Robie House in Chicago, and Taliesin, Wright’s own home; and masterful institutional structures that include the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Whenever possible, Wright designed the furniture for his projects, to ensure an affinity between a building’s exterior and interior.

Wright’s wooden chairs and tables for his “Prairie Houses” of the early 1900s have sleek, attenuated forms, influenced by both the simplicity of traditional Japanese design and the work of Gustav Stickley and other designers of the Arts and Crafts movement.

For Taliesin and several residential projects, Wright designed severely geometric chairs that are marvels of reductivist design. He revisited many of these forms in the 1950s in furniture licensed to the North Carolina firm Henredon, adding a decorative frieze-like element to the edges of tables and stools. Owing to a cross-licensing agreement between Henredon and Heritage at the time, Wright's lines of the era are usually labeled Heritage-Henredon.

The works on 1stDibs also show how happily Wright embraced new forms and materials. His desks and chairs for Johnson Wax have a streamlined look and use tubular steel to the same effect as designer Warren McArthur, who collaborated with Wright in the interiors of the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. For the Price Tower (1956) in Oklahoma, Wright designed angular wooden desks as well as upholstered pedestal chairs made of chromed steel — audacious furniture for his tallest completed building project.

The beauty of Frank Lloyd Wright’s furniture designs is that while many of us wish we could live in one of his houses, his vintage sofas, storage cabinets and armchairs connect us directly to his architecture, and to the history he made.

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