Spring Green, Wisc.: The Fellowship,, 1933. Our textbook is the one book of creation itself. Our classrooms are the various workshops of the artist The second publication of this brochure for the Taliesin Fellowship, first issued a year previously. Inscribed by Wright on the front panel of the wrappers to a young architecture student. A typical - quirky - piece of FLW design and fragile. Although institutionally quite well represented with around 25 on WorldCat, it is inevitably scarce commercially with just two copies appearing at auction, neither signed. Taliesin, sometimes known as Taliesin East or Taliesin Spring Green after the establishment of Taliesin West in 1937, was the home and estate of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, developed on land that originally belonged to Wright's maternal family. In 1932, the Wrights established the private Taliesin Fellowship, where 50 to 60 apprentices could come to study under the architect. Students helped him develop the estate at a time when Wright received few commissions for his work. Once he began Taliesin West, a winter home in Scottsdale, Arizona, Wright and the fellowship "migrated" between the two homes each year. Wright did not consider the fellowship a formal school, instead viewing it as a benevolent educational institution. Sold together with an original double-weight photograph of Wright (153 x 203 mm), a little silvered and cracked in the emulsion. The original recipient John Gordon "Jack" Rideout (1898-1950) became a noted industrial designer working out of Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio. Rideout always wanted to be an architect but family circumstance pushed him into more immediately lucrative employment in advertising, but after a series of hard-won ascending career moves he ended up heading his own industrial design firm holding a number of important patents, and with an impressive portfolio of accounts. His papers, held by the Hagley Museum, Wilmington, DE, include a photograph album with images of Rideout at Taliesin with Wright of around this date. Small square folio (220 x 220 mm), pp. 10; 3 illustrations, original wrappers printed in red, contains lists of Friends of the Fellowship and Fellows, and an application form for fellowship, all printed in red and black on one side only, with one exception, and folded variously to form loose, unbound gatherings of two to four pages each. Includes a perspective drawing, a plan and an aerial photograph of Taliesin, together with one of a group of fellowship members. Central fold of the wrappers reinforced verso with Japanese tissue, old glued repair inside back panel - the original pocket for the loose sheets? - toned, edges lightly chipped, a few small stains to wrappers and pages, overall about very good. Sweeney 2036
