A double-pedestal lamp designed by the Frank Lloyd Wright Wright was the most valuable part of the famous American architect to sell at an auction when it reached $ 7.5 million at Sotheby’s modern art evening sale last night, May 13. After a lively 11-minute bidding struggle, the piece both exceeded both his high estimate and more than tripled it Previous selling price of 2002 of $ 1.98 millionCountries with a telephone provider via Sotheby’s chairman Jodi Pollack.
The selling price can lift eyebrows, because those figures are generally reserved for Wright -designed orientation points, residences and other properties that arise on the real estate market. But the high hammer for the 23-Bij-32-inch lamp may have something to do with Wright’s unique creative ethos.
“Frank Lloyd Wright was not only an architect; the total environments he designed included furniture, lighting, textiles, artificial glass and more,” said Eric Rogers, a spokesperson for the Frank Lloyd Wroyd Wright Building Conservancy, said Hyperallergic In an e -mail.
The lamp, which Opalescent has grid-like glass panels, a widely explained overhanging shade, and figures of local sumak on its pedestals, comes from a monumental residential project that Wright undertook at the beginning of the 20th century for Progressive Socialite Susan Lawrence Dana.
“When Susan Lawrence Dana Wright commissioned to supervise the transformation of an existing house in Springfield, Illinois, the result was not just a building – it was a complete work of art,” Rogers said.
What started as a renovation project by Dana’s deceased father’s house in Springfield, became Illinois a two -year reconstruction project that was completed in 1904. The resulting 12,000 square foot house, decorated with more than more than more than more 100 adapted furniture and more than 450 pattern windows, doors and lighting fixturesIs now one Museum Maintained through the historical conservation division of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Wright in particular designed a few double pedestal lamps, one of which was sold at an auction and another That was bought in the late 1980s by the Dana-Thomas House Foundation and can be found in the museum today. The lamps share natural motifs and earth tones in harmony with the glass paneling in the house, which may have been inspired by traditional Japanese people Shoji Screens, Sotheby’s said in one catalog note. Wright was famous by the art and architecture of Japan, by seeing his many trips to the country and his book from 1912 The Japanese print: an interpretation. Although the Dana house dates from his First visit to the country in 1905It follows his first meeting with Japanese architecture and artworks in the pavilion of the country in the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, which had a recreation of an 11th-century Buddhist temple outside Kyoto.
Rogers said that “there is an active market” for objects designed by Wright, making it all the more important to carefully document their origin. The Conservancy has one Returning trend of adapted furniture and luminaires are removed from Wright Homes To then be sold for financial gain. The conservancy, he explained, was partially established to promote the preservation of “Wright’s complete visions while they were performed.”
‘[It] Our hope remains that Wright-designed items will continue to be returned or the buildings for which he designed them, “Rogers continued.” Our vision is that the remaining built works designed by Frank Lloyd Wright are appreciated and stored-in their whole-as a vital part of our artistic, cultural and architectural heritage. “
