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Exhibition of Wright's Lightscreens Travels the US

© Sue Kimbel McGhie

Those of you who love not only glass, but Frank Lloyd Wright's design work will be especially interesting in an exhibition and book that combine both subjects. Lights Screens: The Leaded Glass of Frank Lloyd Wright is the title of of a new book by exhibition curator, glass scholar and conservator Julie L. Sloan. In the book, the author shows how Wright, in her words, "expanded the frontiers of stained glass in both its use and its design."

Decorative glass windows were an essential part of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture from his earliest work in 1886 to their final appearance in the 1923 Ennis House. During those years, Wright designed over 4,500 windows for 160 buildings and 90 of these were completed. His "light screens," as he called them, were designed specifically for each structure and its surroundings. The progression of his thinking about architecture, the integration of ornament, and the relation of interior space to exterior setting can be studied by a chronological survey of the windows he created. Wright rejected the opalescent, painterly effects and glass pictures made popular by Louis Comfort Tiffany and John LaFarge. Using mainly clear glass and geometric shapes Wright's goal was to create screens between inside and outside environments designed to join those spaces together.

There are actually two books: Light Screens: The Leaded Glass Windows of Frank Lloyd Wright and Light Screens: The Complete Leaded Glass Windows of Frank Lloyd Wright. The first book includes a detailed technical history of leaded glass production from 1890 to 1920 and surveys every Wright project in which he is known to have included leaded glass windows. The second book is a complete examination of more than 500 windows Wright designed. Together, the two volumes are the result of 18 years of research by the author.

The exhibition is described at the first ever devoted to the full range of Wright's work in leaded glass. It showcases more than 50 windows, some from private collections that have never been shown before, and includes photographs and lithographs that show the windows in context with the buildings they were made for.

The exhibition has three sections:

o A Vocabulary of Form, 1885-1900 features Wright's earliest glass work as he experimented with a variety of stylized forms inspired by nature.

o A Language of Pattern, 1900-1910 looks at Wright's most fruitful years when he developed his distinctive style. During these years Wright designed some of his most innovative leaded glass beginning with the Bradley House and including the Dana House, the Martin House , and theRobie House.

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