Important Design 
11 December 2014
Important Design 
171

William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie

pair of wickets from the First State Bank, Leroy, Minnesota

USA, 1914
glass, lead, stained glass 44 h × 19½ w × ½ d in (112 × 50 × 1 cm)
estimate: $10,000–15,000
result: $10,000
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provenance: First State Bank, Leroy, MN | Sotheby's, New York, American Renaissance, 9 December 2005, Lot 434 | Important private collection

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Circle of Influence

Frank Lloyd Wright & Chicago Architects

This collection of works by Frank Lloyd Wright and Chicago School architects is unprecedented in the market and is focused on a broad spectrum of chair designs by Wright. Panel-back chairs from the 1908 Avery Coonley Playhouse are offered alongside a seminal chair from the Trier house of 1956, showing variations on a theme of vertical backrest design employed by Wright throughout his career. Sculptural innovation through the use of plywood in the Usonian period is presented in numerous examples ranging from tables and chairs to lighting. Radical departures in the use of metal in design are found in Wright’s use of copper and cast aluminum seating from Price Tower, and earlier precedents of cast iron by Adler and Sullivan contrast with reductivist metalwork by Purcell and Elmslie. This seminal collection of works by Chicago School architects invites study and comparison among a broad range of work from this important period.

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