FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT | "WISTERIA" WINDOW FROM THE DARWIN D. MARTIN HOUSE, BUFFALO, NEW YORK

Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York, circa 1903-1905

Richard Feigen Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner, 1968

David A. Hanks, Frank Lloyd Wright: Preserving an Architectural Heritage, Decorative Designs from the Domino's Pizza Collection, New York, 1989, p. 60 (for a related "Wisteria" window from the Martin House)

Frank Lloyd Wright: Windows of the Darwin D. Martin House, exh. cat., Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, New York, 1999, p. 13 (for a related "Wisteria" window) 

Julie L. Sloan, Light Screens: The Leaded-Glass of Frank Lloyd Wright, New York, 2001, p. 80 (for a drawing of the present design)

Julie L. Sloan, Light Screens: The Complete Leaded-Glass Windows of Frank Lloyd Wright, New York, 2001, p. 165 (for related "Wisteria" windows from the Martin House)

Jack Quinan, Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House: Architecture as Portraiture, Princeton, 2004, p. 132 (for a related "Wisteria" window from the Martin House)

Eric Jackson-Forsberg, ed., Frank Lloyd Wright: Art Glass of the Martin House Complex, San Francisco, 2009, p. 85 (for a related "Wisteria" window from the Martin House)

George Lois, The Art of Collecting Art, 2020, pp. 32-33 (for the present lot illustrated) 

The living-room/dining-room and hall areas of the Darwin D. Martin house comprised an open-floorplan space in the massive estate designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Buffalo, New York in 1903-1905. It was illumined by a series of art-glass windows in a rectilinear design now called a “wisteria” pattern of which the present lot is one of the narrower lights. Wright himself called it the “first-floor pattern” to distinguish it from the “second-floor pattern” that today is more commonly known as the Tree of Life. The long, pendant-like rectangles of iridescent glass are set within a trellis-like structure, with the density of lines and rectangles at the top, similar to the basic form of a wisteria vine. Wisteria was more realistically portrayed in the iridescent-glass mosaic surrounding the living-room fireplace, and it later grew in profusion over the pergola and porches surrounding the house.

Like the windows of the Susan Lawrence Dana house in Springfield, Illinois (1902-1904), the Martin windows were fabricated by the Linden Glass Company of Chicago, using brass-plated zinc came that aged to a warm brown tone, harmonizing well with the iridescent amber cathedral glass and rectangles of gold leaf. Wright was ever conscious that his windows would be seen in the reflected light of interior lamps in the evening and the shadows cast by the large eaves of the roof during the day. In order to provide additional color and sparkle in those darker environments, he employed glass types that would reflect color. The amber glass mirrors the myriad tints of the rainbow. The gold leaf sandwiched between two thin pieces of clear glass glints warmly when light hits its surface.

The basic design is similar to that in the house designed by Wright in Oak Park, Illinois, for Martin’s brother, William, in 1902. William’s windows had very little color and heavy, dark leadlines, and Darwin did not particularly like them. In Darwin’s house, Wright lightened the trellis by employing smaller, more delicate cames and enlivened it by the addition of colored and gilded glass. Walter Burley Griffin, Wright’s project architect for day-to-day management during construction, described the design as “a uniform texture given by the bands, enlivened by the sprinkling of fallen golden flakes.”

—Julie L. Sloan, Stained-Glass Consultant, North Adams, MA