Frank Lloyd Wright Archive, ca. 1960
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APPRAISER:
You brought in a number of things from Frank Lloyd Wright and you tell me that you worked at Frank Lloyd Wright?
GUEST:
I joined his fellowship as an apprentice in 1953 and he died six years later, in 1959. And then all of us older senior guys there got together and finished his work. It took us ten years to finish the drawings he had on the table. That's the picture. I helped supervise the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and this is taken on the monitor building of the Guggenheim museum-- Central Park in the background.
APPRAISER:
And this is...?
GUEST:
That's me when I was 23, 24 years old.
APPRAISER:
And obviously, Frank Lloyd Wright. What was he like to work with?
GUEST:
Mr. Wright, he said, "I don't know if you're aware of it, but your drawings have sparkle." That's the word he used. He meant the line weights were such that it snapped out. And he said, "That's a gift." And he said, "You should be pleased because a lot of people don't have any gift at all." I thought, "Wow." (laughing) But this folio is a kind of a modern reprint in 1961 of a folio he had that he worked on and designed in 1910. Whenever Horizon Press published Mr. Wright's books after he died, they always set aside 50 or so to give to us senior apprentices at Taliesin, and that's how I got it. I've had this for 60 years. I mean, it's a long time.
APPRAISER:
This is one of the illustrations that's in the book.
GUEST:
Yeah, this is the Winslow House in Oak Park. The drawings cover the work he did until 1910.
APPRAISER:
And what is this?
GUEST:
Well, in Arizona on the drafting tables, we had this craft brown paper cover. Mr. Wright had an idea for this farmhouse. I was cleaning up the drafting room after he had already gone and I saw this, so I thought, "Well, my God." They take them off and throw them away, so I thought, "What the heck?" So I took a razor and cut that out and kept it. That's all Mr. Wright's... all of his own work. And that's sort of what he used to present to us. He'd do a sketch like that and then give it to us, and we'd use our techniques that he taught us and we'd make the drawings.
APPRAISER:
As far as the value, it's a good book. They printed a fair number of them. The fact that it was given to the apprentices, yourself, retail value, it's about a $1,000 to $2,000 book. So that's very nice. This little drawing that you just razored off, that is an original Frank Lloyd Wright.
GUEST:
Oh, yeah.
APPRAISER:
That is probably worth $8,000 to $10,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my God. Come on. If I'd left it there, it would have just been thrown away.
APPRAISER:
And I think that's even being conservative.
GUEST:
Thank you.
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