Friday, December 25, 2009

Reversible Vase

A humorous, brief encounter between Frank Lloyd Wright and young graphic designer Alvin Lustig, as reported in R. Roger Remington and Barbara J. Hodik, Nine Pioneers in American Graphic Design (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 124—

The exposure [of Lustig] to Wright was short-lived. He was soon chafing under the strictures of doing things the Wright way. An anecdote from his Taliesin visit has him being shown into a room and instructed to wait there for Wright. As he glanced around, Lustig noticed that there was a blue vase against a blue wall and a white vase against a white wall. He exchanged the blue vase and the white vase. Wright entered the room, and as he spoke his first words to Lustig, replaced the blue vase against the blue wall and the white vase against the white wall.

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).