Plywood

When the Pope-Leighey was built back in the late 30's early 40's plywood was the new kid on the block in terms of construction. FLW made great use of it. He was using a basic sort of plywood, that is seen in the old summer camp cabinetry we remember from our youth. He used it for the kitchen cabinets, the cut out windows and the furniture.

Here is the best link to interior shots of the house and you can see how ubiquitous plywood is therein.

http://www.peterbeers.net/interests/flw_rt/Virginia/Pope_Leighey_03/pope_leighey_03.htm

We're using much more plywood than that. Plywood is encasing our house, both on the outside as well as the in. However, plywood has come into its own, and it can be beautiful. We're using a very pale domestic birch plywood on the interior walls, cherry plywood in the cabinets that Thom and the Brians are building and the brown/black stained cabinets from Ikea are birch (known for it's strength).

The combinations of the wood are beautiful indeed and I believe right in line with what FLW would have liked.

Here's a history of plywood copied from city soup. What about those Pharaohs?

The 1993 Hardwood Plywood Reference Guide, a publication of the Hardwood Plywood & Veneer Association states that, "in 1830, the piano industry became the first North American industry to use plywood. Wood & Wood Products Magazine's Centennial issue (1996) says that, "in 1890, the rotary cutting process was invented," and as a result of mechanization, plywood became increasingly affordable.

In 1929 a pamphlet published by the National Committee on Wood Utilization noted, "Plywood is a modern term describing an old product which did not receive serious technical and economic consideration until its adaptability to airplane and marine consideration was developed during exhaustive tests at the Forest Products Laboratory."

The word "plywood" which was created in America, received official sanction in dictionaries printed a few years later. That's plywood... veneers on the other hand, dated back to the early Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs... about 4,000 years ago.

-citysoup.ca

Hard Headed People Wearing Hard Hats

The Fountainhead was on Turner Classic Movies this week. We dvr'd it so that we could look at it during cocktail hour. As with many novels of ideas, it didn't translate well to the talkies. Too much speechifying, but Patricia Neal's outfits were pretty cool.

This is the book which was based on Frank Lloyd Wright and his work. I know that at some point he distanced himself from the movie, I think he wanted credit for the drawings or something, don't hold me to that.

I like the book and may in fact re-read it while my granddaughter and I take a break from Harry Potter, she's on her first reading, and I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I've read about that kid.

Anyway, The Fountainhead is about sticking to your guns, in the face of adversity, or as the Polonius told Laertes,, "to thine own self be true." And don't forget, Polonius ends up dead shortly after saying that.

If you want to read another book about builders having problems with authority and the ruling mob, The Pillars of the Earth, and World Without End both by Ken Follett are very good too.

But be aware, Ms Rand's writings while dissed by some, are considered among the most influential in the world, based on surveys that rank her Atlas Shrugged up there with the Bible. Our own Alan Greenspan was a follower of hers and was at her deathbed.

Fireplaces.

A quick trip around undeveloped countryside will reveal exposed fireplaces; the lone remnants of former dwellings. The reason for this is that they were the sturdiest bits of the structures that no longer exist.

A hundred years from now, there won't be the same archeological artifacts because we have all gone whole heartedly for gas fireplaces. This is sad because our children won't have the same smoke filled rooms to clog their memories of good times and cursing by parents who forgot to open the damper.

An unvented gas fireplace has no need of a chimney, flue or damper. It just needs a gasline to feed it and can be placed anywhere in the house. You can even replicate the great dining hall from THE LION IN WINTER by placing your fireplace in the middle of the room. All you'd need would be a couple of mangy dogs fighting over the deer haunches and the illusion is complete.

The Pope-Leighey house needed its fireplace to be in the center, creating a wall between the living room and the kitchen. Frank Lloyd Wright used this, the strongest part of the house, to anchor his ceiling joists.

We're using steel instead and have moved our fireplace to the far side of the room because we, non-purists that we are, like a fire every morning by which to read our paper and sip our coffee. We don't have a cackling aroma filled room, but we do have a semblance of that which Prometheus stole from the gods and it's alot easier to flip a switch than chop firewood.

This lovely illustration show Prometheus bound, with his liver being eaten. This was the punishment that the Gods deemed fit the crime.

Bon Appetit mebbe

A friend informed me that BON APPETIT has a holiday article titled, Dreaming of a Wright Christmas complete with recipes. My friend hit on two of my main cylinders. Food and houses. The other four are my daughters, Pat is the chassis.(How is THAT for an off the cuff metaphor?!)

On a run out to the Harris Teeter, braving the throes of Hurricane Ida rains, I bought the magazine and Pat promptly found an error. It is a lovely house, it is a Frank Lloyd Wright house and the recipes look delicious. The people who inhabit the house are young and gorgeous and need to reproduce to improve the gene pool.

HOWEVER, the home, the Charles F. Glore house, was built in 1951, NOT 1954 as stated in the article. We used The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas A Heinz, Regency House Publishing 2005. However, I can see where confusion reigns. A Herbert Angster built a house in LAKE BLUFF around the same time, and our book confuses the two. However, I went to one of my standby sites and they came down on the side of 1951.

http://eng.archinform.net/projekte/13807.htm

and I guess if you're thinking about food, all bodies of water look the same.

And if this same inattention to detail follows through to recipes, well, there you go. Your holiday meal could be a big fat bust.

Pocket Doors and Elegant Hedgehogs

One big difference between our house and the original, Pope-Leighey house, is that we are using pocket doors in all the rooms. We chose this option for space...but tonight while reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbury (Europa Editions, 2009), I found a perfect explanation of the benefits of pocket doors.

In this novel, a Japanese gentleman has bought and renovated a Parisian apartment and installed sliding doors.

"I was fascinated by the way the Japanese use space in their lives, and by these doors that slide and move quietly along invisible rails, refusing to offend space. For when we push open a door, we transform a place in a very insidious way. We offend its full extension and introduce a disruptive and poorly proportioned obstacle. If you think about it carefully, there is nothing uglier than an open door. An open door introduces a break in the room, a sort of provincial interference, destroying the unity of space. In the adjoining room it creates a depression, an absolutely pointless gaping hole adrift in section of a wall that would have preferred to remain whole....Sliding doors avoid such pitfalls and enhance space. Without affecting the balance of the room, they allow it to be transformed. When a sliding door is open, two areas communicate without offending each other. When it is closed, each regains its integrity. Sharing and reunion can occur without intrusion. Life becomes a quiet stroll..."

I asked Pat why he thought Frank Lloyd Wright didn't use pocket doors in the Usonians. He thought it was cheaper to do the other sort. I think it is interesting that a Japanese gentleman introduced the sliding door to this Parisian apartment and we are using them in our little house... after all, Mr. Wright was heavily influenced by the Japanese. A bit of serendipity... we are now thinking of learning how to do bonsai...

That toddlin' town

Whatever that means...

Chicago's Oak Park must have had something in the water. In the latter part of the 19th -early 20th centuries it was a hotbed of ideas and strong mothers. It was home to Ernest Hemingway as well as Frank Lloyd Wright. Both of these men had pretty impressive moms. Frank's mom determined early on he was going to be an architect, even before he was born so the story goes. And in his early childhood, she purchased some froebel blocks for his play.

http://www.architoys.net/toys/toypages/froebel

If you want your child to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright then you can access this webpage

http://www.shopwright.org/blocks.html and nurture her/his interest.

Ernest Hemingway's mother was another force. Just Google Ernest Hemingway's mother and you will bring up tons of really nasty stuff, but the thing that impressed me most about her was her radical kitchen design. If my reading of his biography was correct, she was one of the first people to incorporate built in kitchen cabinetry as well as the idea of a "work triangle" in her home. Her theory was that to be efficient, a kitchen's work spaces should be able to be reached without walking all over a huge room. She was farseeing enough to envision a time when people wouldn't have servants or time to spend trying to locate things.

Of course now, we've gone backwards and our kitchens are looming large again even as we are eating out more.

Here's a link to the tour of Wright's Oak Park

http://www.gowright.org/homestudio/tours.php

And here's Papa's link

http://www.ehfop.org/