Do you love sharing great stories? Are you the person who says “Did you know…?” at parties? When you discover something wonderful, do you instantly need to share it with friends? Do you love art, architecture, and design, and, have you ever mused to yourself, “‘Life without beauty is only half lived,’ and I want to be fully living!“?
Collections Interpreter Diane VanderBeke Mager welcoming guests to the Center’s gala fundraiser, A House Party at Cranbrook Celebrating Loja Saarinen, May 2022. Collections Interpreters are storytellers, teachers, hosts, and style icons! Photography by PD Rearick.
If you answered “yes!” to any of the above, the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research has a place for you on our Collections Interpreter team! As tourism to Detroit grows—and with Cranbrook recently earning a three-star Michelin Guide rating—we are looking for more great storytellers to help us share the magic of Cranbrook’s art, architecture, and design. Read on to learn more, or go ahead and sign up for a Collections Interpreter information session with me (curator Kevin Adkisson) here!
Kevin Adkisson, then the Center Collections Fellow, learning the joy of teaching during a Summer Camp tour of Saarinen House, June 2017. Photography by Cranbrook Art Museum.
Each year from May to November, Collections Interpreters (CIs) lead public and private tours through Cranbrook’s architectural gems. Regularly scheduled public tours focus on two of our historic houses.
First is Saarinen House, the jewel-box Art Deco home of architect Eliel Saarinen and textile designer Loja Saarinen, filled with furniture, fabrics, and works of art made at Cranbrook to the Saarinen family’s own design. As you walk with visitors past the dancing fountains and verdant grounds, tours of Saarinen House also touch on the history of Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Just a short drive away, CI’s lead tours of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House, a 1950 Usonian treasure tucked into the neighborhood. Built for two Detroit public school teachers, it is a masterpiece of modesty—proving that great architecture is not just for the wealthy. Tours talk about Wright’s architecture and its quirks, share the story of how the Smiths’ manifested their remarkable dream, and highlight objects of your choosing from the inspiring (and vast) collection of midcentury studio craft.
Collections Interpreter Lynette Mayman shares one of many tumultuous tales around cooking and dining with Sara Smith, October 2017. Photography by Kevin Adkisson.
Collections Interpreters also lead monthly Japanese Garden Tours, helping guests explore one of North America’s oldest Japanese-style gardens, and the Three Visions of Home Tour. A fascinating look at three famed architects ways of shaping home, this tour connects Cranbrook’s founders’ Albert Kahn-designed home, Saarinen House, and Smith House. The CI’s also help guide and share stories during other Center Behind-the-Scenes Tours or special events.
At A House Party Celebrating Loja Saarinen, Collections Interpreter Matt Horn shares stories of weaving at Kingswood School with Ken Gross and Academy Director Emeritus Gerhardt Knodel, while being serenaded from the accordion of Brookside music teacher Rosalia Schultz, May 2022. Photography by PD Rearick.
CIs may also help lead tours for Cranbrook Schools classes; Academy of Art students, artists-in-residence, and visiting artists; Horizons-Upward Bound scholars; and student groups of all ages and interests.
Matt Horn taught elementary music before retiring and joining the Center as a Collections Interpreter. Here, he teaches our summer Horizons-Upward Bound architecture elective in Smith House, July 2024. Photography by Kevin Adkisson.
You might be wondering: who comes to Cranbrook? People from Birmingham, Baltimore, Bangkok—and just about everywhere in between. As a Collections Interpreter, you help to welcome them all. It’s easy when your setting is Cranbrook, a place The New York Times Magazine famously called “the most enchanted and enchanting setting in America.”
No two tours—and no two visitors—are ever the same. It’s exciting!
I recently found myself at Joann Fabrics five minutes before the store closed, desperately selecting supplies for a project that was, of course, best completed that night. My delay was self-inflicted, but it got me thinking about times when much larger projects have been strained by access to supplies.
Specifically, both Eliel Saarinen and Frank Lloyd Wright created buildings with strong creative vision. Their architecture demanded specific, and sometimes hard to source, materials. Let’s look at two examples and decide if the headaches my favorite architects caused their suppliers and contractors/builders were worth the final product!
Example 1: Eliel Saarinen and Pewabic Pottery Tiles
Eliel Saarinen, Kingswood School for Girls Main Entrance Lobby (Green Lobby) plan, section, elevation, and reflected ceiling plan, c. 1930-1931. Ink, colored pencil, and pencil on tracing paper. Approx. 28½ inches x53 inches. Cranbrook Art Museum 1982.35. Photography by P.D. Rearick, Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
When Eliel Saarinen specified thousands of hand-molded, hand-glazed, and hand-fired Pewabic Pottery tiles for use at Kingswood School for Girls, his contractor pushed back. Pewabic was less a tile factory than an artists’ workshop. As supplier of Kingswood’s industrially produced tile for bathrooms and basements, a concerned Mr. Burt of the Detroit Mantel and Tile Company wrote to the contractor, Charles Wermuth & Son:
We are doubtful as to [Pewabic Pottery] being able to manufacture the amount of tile as selected for this job. We raised this question during the course of selections but [Pewabic cofounder and artist] Mrs. Stratton advises that she will be able to produce this tile without any hold-up. We have advised her that any hold-up or delays caused from her material will be charged back to her.
We are writing you this letter merely as a protection against delays beyond our control.
Saarinen wasn’t wrong to select Pewabic Pottery for Kingswood—it’s stunning and perfect in every way—but Burt wasn’t wrong about issues of production. It does appear that delays in the tile making caused delays in construction, raising blood pressure on both ends of Woodward Avenue.
As the first day of classes at Kingswood drew nearer, truck drivers from Cranbrook made near-daily trips to the pottery for small batches of tiles. I imagine the kiln-fresh mini-masterpieces still warm to the touch!
Did the delay in tile delivery keep Kingswood from opening on time? No. An outbreak of polio in metro Detroit meant all schools were closed by state health officials. But Wermuth used the extra time to finish the building—all Pewabic tiles were well-set and grouted for classes to begin September 21, 1931.
Eliel Saarinen and Mary Chase Perry Stratton’s 1931 masterpiece, the Green Lobby Stair. The headache of contractor Charles Wermuth and Son was worth the stress. Photography by James Haefner, 2018. Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Example 2: Frank Lloyd Wright and “The Wood Eternal”
In February 1949, Melvyn Maxwell Smith was ready to start building his long-awaited dream: a wood and brick Usonian house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. With enough money squirreled away to begin construction, Smithy was ready to order materials. Including 14,000 linear feet of clear, old-growth, 16’ x 1’ x 2” boards of Tidewater Red Cypress wood.
Frank Lloyd Wright, detail of House for Mr. and Mrs. Melvyn M. Smith elevation, August 1948. Blueprint. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Wright had built in Cypress since at least 1914, with his first all-Cypress design, the Wiley House, coming off the drafting board in 1932. The iconic Usonian houses of the 30s and 40s are mostly built of this swamp-grown, super strong, rot-resistant golden wood.
Cypress proved to be perfect for Wright’s organic architecture. And by 1949, Cypress was incredibly hard to find.
Smithy wrote to many different lumberyards with his needed material list. Those closest to the swamps where Cypress grows—lumberyards in South Carolina and Louisiana—were unable to furnish the volume of wood needed. Lumber yards in the Midwest simply stated they did not carry Cypress. Chicago-based Hilgard Lumber Company wrote, “We duly received your inquiry…on a carload of Tidewater Red Cypress (clear grade) but clear grade in this species is extremely scarce.”
In February 1949, Fleishel Lumber Company of St. Louis (who had been forwarded Smithy’s large request) agreed to fulfill the order. Smithy simply needed to let the yard know when he wanted the wood delivered. Or at least, that was the idea.
The initial price list for “Tidewater Red Cypress ‘The Wood Eternal'” from Fleishel Lumber Company, sent to Melvyn Maxwell Smith on February 21, 1949, followed by an August disappointment, and then, the packing list of the Cypress shipment sent on September 23, 1949. Cranbrook Archives. Smith Papers, 2017-10, Box 11, Folder 11.
Every month, Smith wrote, called, or telegrammed Fleishel, asking for his order. And every month, the lumber yard replied: we don’t have it all, but we have some. As time ticked by and Smithy’s house waited to take shape, Fleishel offered up concessions. Instead of kiln dried, would Smithy accept natural dried Cypress? No. Recycled or swamp-preserved? No. Smaller boards, but more boards? No.
Smithy needed what Wright specified: long, wide boards. By August 9, 1949, things were looking up, even if Fleishel’s salesman sounds a bit annoyed:
…We are doing all we possibly can to accumulate all the stock to be put in the dry kiln.
As advised several times, we are having considerable trouble in accumulating the 1×12…We cannot, at this time, tell you exactly when shipment can be made. We regret very much this delay, but you must take into consideration this is quite a difficult list of items.
Smithy’s goal of having the lumber on hand during the Summer holiday, when he could be on-site every day, did not happen. His first day teaching his Cody High English class that year? September 5.
Finally, on September 23, 1949, Fleishel Lumber packed a railroad car full of 14,000 linear feet of clear, kiln-dried Cypress and sent it toward Bloomfield Hills. Just seven months and a few days after it was ordered.
Work continues on Cypress boards of Smith House, winter 1949-1950. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
About seven months later, Melvyn and Sara Smith had a Cypress house! When it was completed in May 1950, the Smith House became Frank Lloyd Wright’s last entirely Cypress-built project.
Tidewater Red Cypress with Detroit Common Brick defines the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House, 1950. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
So, did being particular about materials pay off for Mr. Wright and Mr. Saarinen? I think the Smiths and thousands of Cranbrook students would agree: absolutely.
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Note: Oh, and if you want old-growth Cypress today? The current owner of the Frank Lloyd Wright Willey House, Steve Sikora, described the purchasing of Cypress wood in the 2010s as operating among “an assortment of hucksters, charlatans, and petty criminals, or in industry parlance, ‘wood brokers.’” Head on over to The Whirling Arrowblog to read a lot more about Cypress and Wright!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to cook in a kitchen designed by Frank Lloyd Wright? As the summer intern for the Center, I got a taste of the experience.
Clare in the Smith House workspace, August 2023. Photograph by Nina Blomfield.
My name is Clare Catallo and I am a 2020 graduate of Cranbrook Schools and a rising senior at Kalamazoo College. I am a history major and I am hoping to have a career in museum curation. As a Schools student, I had the opportunity to tour Cranbrook House, Saarinen House, and Smith House and learn about the designers and art movements that are intertwined with the legacy of the campus. It sparked my interest in design history and material culture, and I am very grateful to have spent the past two summers interning with the Center.
Studio glass by Sally Kovach (Cranbrook Academy of Art, Sculpture, 1975) comes alive in front of Clare’s camera. Photograph by Nina Blomfield.
Last year, I helped clean the exterior of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House, inventory the books in Melvyn and Sara Smith’s collection, and do genealogical research. This summer, I have been researching the histories of household objects and conducting object photography at Smith House, as well as assisting with the Cranbrook Horizons-Upward Bound Architecture elective course. In August, I assisted the Center team with preparations for “At Home with the Smiths,” an immersive evening program held at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House. Preparing for this event has brought my two summers here together as we work to emulate Melvyn and Sara Smith’s 1970s house parties.
Cookbooks from Melvyn and Sara Smith’s collection. Photograph by Nina Blomfield.
The cookbooks found at Smith House provide a glimpse into the family’s lifestyle and the home cooking trends of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the Smiths’ cookbooks present an image of a modern, working woman who has more to do with her time than spend hours in the kitchen. World War II had made families rearrange their menus and ideas about food, due to rationing and shortages which continued even through to the postwar years. Menus became less formal, and fewer families had maids to cook for them.
These national trends align with Frank Lloyd Wright’s kitchen design, meant to function as a utilitarian, servantless workspace. Combined with the growing numbers of women in the workplace in the 1960s and 1970s, the demand for quick and easy recipes rose. This trend is reflected in the Smiths’ cookbooks like the excellently-titled Dinner Against the Clock (Quick, Sumptuous Meals With the Look and Taste of Infinite Leisure), and The Keep it Short and Simple Cookbook, the latter of which is dedicated to “every homemaker,” whether “housewife, career girl, or bachelor”. These recipes use few ingredients, many of which are ready-made, require a small number of utensils, and demand little time.
Oakland County is decked out in checkered flags this Friday for the annual Woodward Dream Cruise. As the crowds gather in their folding chairs and thousands of classic cars roar past my windows, I’m reminded of a much more serene image from automotive history: the 1960 Plymouth Suburban stretched out on the manicured lawn of the Frank Lloyd Wright Smith House.
1960 Plymouth Suburban, on location at the Frank Lloyd Wright Smith House. Smith Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
In 1959, Chrysler was developing promotional materials for the 1960 Plymouth. Seeking a sleek, modern backdrop for the long lines of the Suburban station wagon, Chrysler’s Public Relations Department contacted Melvyn and Sara Smith about staging a photoshoot at their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Bloomfield Hills. The resulting photographs show the 18-ft long Suburban, not parked in the pea-gravel driveway or the distinctive cantilevered carport, but pulled to the back of the house where it could be reflected in the natural setting of the Smith’s newly expanded pond.
1960 Plymouth Suburban, on location at the Frank Lloyd Wright Smith House. Smith Papers, Cranbrook Archives.
The long, low horizon line of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian architecture, with its stacking roof planes, seems a great fit for the station wagon’s extended style lines and characteristic fins. In a second image, two casually-dressed models (check out those long socks and walking shorts!) lounge in rattan Tropi-Cal armchairs on the living room patio. Designed by Danny Ho Fong, the Tropi-Cal armchairs were recently identified through the diligent research of the Center’s Summer intern Clare Catallo.
My three weeks at the Center for Collections and Research have been an exhaustive tour of all the activities and responsibilities of maintaining Cranbrook’s history. From getting ready for the annual House Party, scanning historical documents, and cleaning the Smith House in preparation for summer, being a member of this community requires one to wear many hats to preserve its history.
Scrubbing the Frank Lloyd Wright Smith House in Bloomfield Township. Photo by Leslie Mio.
During my first week with the Center, I entered into the great anticipation of the annual House Party fundraiser. With this year’s theme involving Cranbrook’s influences from England, many of my projects involved making Cranbrook House a better fit for this theme. As favors for the guests, I assembled nearly 300 pastry boxes to fill with scones and other iconic English treats like tea and marmalade.
My collection of pastry boxes from my week at Cranbrook House. Photo by Grace Quinn.
Following the party, I helped scan many folders of documents from the Archives on George G. Booth and his involvement with the Detroit Arts and Crafts Society and with renowned architect Albert Kahn. Although I knew very little about the Arts and Crafts movements, I came to a much stronger understanding of how the Booths focused much of their wealth and influence on buying and displaying handcrafted goods.
These were not just shows of wealth but were a way of honoring the artisans who built this campus and saying, without words, that a quality place like this will withstand much more than inhuman, mass-produced art and furniture. Even though this notion is not new, rising technological advances seem to only make cheapness and speed priorities in design, rather than beauty or emotional value. The art of patience and supporting artists is a refreshing notion compared to the on-demand nature of online shopping and rampant consumerism.
While scanning documents from the George G. Booth Papers was my main Archives project, I also got to work with architectural drawings of Glen Paulsen from the 1950s. Photo by Deborah Rice.
When reflecting on what I had learned during this internship, I realized that before this I had never given much thought to how this campus came to fruition. I knew that some famous architects built it, but as I scanned archival documents and helped maintain Cranbrook’s houses, I can now fully realize the cultural influence Cranbrook has had in Detroit’s history.
Cranbrook’s inspiration stretches across borders and countries; it has a prominent space in contemporary architecture and in the earlier Arts and Crafts Movement. Cranbrook’s exercises in art and design are on display to inspire others to emphasize detail, quality, and creative talent in designing schools and creating diverse communities.
—Grace Quinn, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School 2023
Editor’s Note: The Senior May Project is a school-sponsored activity that encourages Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School seniors to acquire work experience in a field they are considering as a college major, a potential profession, and/or as a personal interest.
Grace’s efforts in making A House Party at Two Cranbrooks a success, her can-do attitude, and her flexibility in tackling projects large and small were much appreciated by the Center staff. We wish her luck as she heads to the Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Art and Design in the fall!
Stepping into the Smith House on a grim and wintry day, one is instantly enveloped in warmth. The warm tones of brick and tidewater cypress walls, and the soft, textured furnishings help to create a cozy atmosphere, but the real effect is felt through radiant heat rising from the pigmented concrete floors.
Underfloor heating was a frequent feature of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses. Concerned with elegant and efficient use of space, these modest buildings for middle-income families utilized radiant heating set into the concrete slab flooring. Warm floors prevented heat transfer from bodies to cold buildings and allowed the air to be kept at a cooler temperature than conventional radiator-heated homes.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas about underfloor heating were adapted from the principles of the Korean heating system called ondol, literally ‘warm stone,’ that he encountered during his time in Japan. While working on the Imperial Hotel project, Wright was invited to visit the Tokyo residence of Baron Okura Kihachiro. After dinner in a freezing cold dining room, the party was invited for coffee in the Baron’s heated “Korean Room.” In his 1943 autobiography, Wright described the shift in temperature in rapturous terms:
The climate seemed to have changed. No, it wasn’t the coffee; it was Spring. We were soon warm and happy again – kneeling there on the floor, an indescribable warmth. No heating was visible nor was it felt directly as such. It was really a matter of not heating at all but an affair of climate.
Frank Lloyd Wright, 1943
Wright was instantly taken with this “indescribable warmth” and immediately specified electric heating in the Imperial Hotel bathrooms. On returning to the United States, he continued to explore the use of heating systems in both residential and commercial projects.
His first private home to incorporate underfloor heating was the Herbert Jacobs House, in Madison, Wisconsin, completed in 1937. The Jacobs House would become a model for Wright’s Usonian houses and an inspiration to architects and homeowners worldwide. By the time that Melvyn and Sara Smith began construction of Smith House in 1949, developers like William Levitt were popularizing the use of radiant heating in tract housing developments across the United States.
The Smiths employed engineer Clarence Toonder to help implement the heating plan designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s office. Blueprints show the copper tubing as it snakes through the L-shaped floor plan of Smith House, ensuring that every room would be warm and comfortable.
In Part I of this post, we explored Cranbrook’s love of the book, from its origins with founders George and Ellen Booth, to the existing special collections at the Archives and Academy of Art. I invite you now to learn of the many rare, valuable, and historical tomes whose existence may be unknown to most or simply overlooked in collections at the Schools, Institute of Science, and two historic homes cared for by the Center for Collections and Research: Saarinen House and Smith House.
Hoey Patch Collection at the Cranbrook School Library. Courtesy of Kate Covintree, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools.
Like the Academy of Art, although not at all on the same scale, books from George and Ellen’s Cranbrook House Library were dispersed to the Cranbrook Schools Libraries, now comprised of five separate spaces. Following the Booth’s example, Cranbrook School Headmaster Harry D. Hoey (1950-1964) and Latin teacher George Patch (1928-1944, Emeritus 1944-1950) donated 120 books from their personal libraries to the School’s library in the 1950s, forming one of several special collections. Known as the Hoey Patch Collection, all of the volumes focus on an aspect of Abraham Lincoln or the American Civil War.
He Knew Lincoln, a fictionalized account written by Ida Tarbell, a progressive journalist, and published in 1907. The book’s custodial history is documented with correspondence from the author, written directly on the inside of the book. Courtesy of Kate Covintree, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper Schools.
Highlights include a First edition of The Life of Abraham Lincoln, the first full-scale biography of the President. Written by newspaper editor J.G. Holland, it was published shortly after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Also included is a first edition, two-volume set of the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Ulysses S. Grant penned his autobiography shortly before his death in 1885 as a means of financial support for his family. It was published with the support of his friend Mark Twain by the Charles L. Webster Company (owned by Twain’s nephew).
When Frank Lloyd Wright visited Smith House in 1951, he affectionately referred to the home as “my little gem.” Over the years, Melvyn and Sara Smith filled up their “little gem” with many treasures of their own. As I continue my detailed research into the Smith House collection, I am learning that even the smallest of these objects has a rich story to tell.
One such detail is a yellow enamel butterfly. For over 50 years, the butterfly has rested its wings on an artificial ivy vine in a small corner between the Smith House living space and dining room.
Albert Weiss, Butterfly Brooch, 1964. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
The butterfly is in fact a brooch, manufactured by costume jeweler Albert Weiss & Co. Albert Weiss began his career as a designer for Coro Jewelry before breaking off to start his own firm in 1942. Better known for elaborate rhinestone creations, Weiss also produced jewelry featuring enameled flowers and animals. My research has revealed that the Smith House brooch was part of a 1964 collection described in the New York Times as “a flock of butterflies that are meant to settle – one at a time – on the neckline of a dress or coat.” An advertisement for the collection shows the brooches pinned, labeled, and framed as if specimens in a natural history display.
“Albert Weiss presents the Butterfly Pin Collection,” New York Times, February 23, 1964.
It is no surprise that the Smiths were drawn to the butterfly form, as these flying jewels have captivated artists as diverse as Vincent van Gogh and Damien Hirst. The Smiths’ collection no longer includes the Knoll BKF ‘butterfly’ chairs seen in family photographs, but there are still other butterflies in the house.
Smith House interior, c.1950. Seen in the foreground, the BKF “Butterfly” chair manufactured by Knoll.
Silas Seandel’s sculptural butterflies were formed form torch-cut metal and their craggy brutalist forms are attached to flexible wire that give them movement and life. On a windowsill in the guest room, real butterfly specimens take flight in a Perspex cube. Given the dynamism of these other butterflies, it makes sense that the Smiths used the enamel pin to adorn their home rather than allowing it to languish in a jewelry box. Instead, this ivy-clad corner created a kind of habitat for the butterflies.
Across Cranbrook’s campus are eleven different spaces, including the Archives, that house book collections – some 110,000 physical items. Several of these spaces are typical school or academic research libraries, where students, faculty, and staff can check out the majority of these books. As a library and information science professional, I champion the importance of these lending libraries and the egalitarian access to information they provide.
In this post, however, I’d like to focus on Cranbrook’s non-circulating book collections – those rare, historic, or valuable tomes that, in many cases, hide in plain sight in public areas. With help from colleagues at the Academy of Art, Schools, Institute of Science, and Center for Collections and Research, I’ll highlight some of these gems that promise to delight the bibliophile, art appreciator, historian, or simply the Cranbrook curious.
Cranbrook’s special book collections are carefully preserved as both informational and evidential artifacts, and many are housed within cultural heritage areas. Valued not only for research purposes, they also serve as historical objects which help individually or collectively to tell the Cranbrook story.
South end view of the newly completed Cranbrook House Library, 1920. John Wallace Gillies, photographer. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.
The origin of book collecting at Cranbrook actually predates any of the current collection spaces and begins with Cranbrook founders George and Ellen Booth. George, in particular, was an enthusiastic collector, and started acquiring volumes in 1900, commissioning purchases of William Morris works and other fine books in London. As George explained, “I am not a millionaire and cannot pay the big prices now prevailing in New York.” His strategy allowed him to accumulate 1,000 books by 1916, effectively seeding the Cranbrook House Library Collection when construction of the library wing was completed four years later.
Melvyn and Sara Smith filled their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home with a fascinating mixture of objects. Over three decades in the house, they collected everything from finely crafted ceramics, handwoven textiles, and original sculpture to the kinds of reproductions one might find in a museum gift shop. This eclectic blend of mass-produced décor and unique art objects can be seen on the hallway shelves, where two sets of plates demonstrate two very different engagements with the artistic legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Gallery shelves in the Smith House hallway, November 2021. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
The center shelf displays a reproduction of the dinnerware used in the cabaret of the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. The Imperial Hotel was a monumental project, commissioned in 1916 and completed in 1923. Frank Lloyd Wright conceived the hotel as a total aesthetic environment, a space in which all decoration was unified: from the carved Oya stone of the exterior structure all the way down to the coffee pots and sugar bowls on breakfast tables. Famously, the structure survived the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, although it was not completely undamaged as Wright proclaimed.
Frank Lloyd Wright, manufactured by Noritake Porcelain Company, Place Setting for the Imperial Hotel, 1979 (designed c.1922). Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
The porcelain cabaret service was designed by Wright and manufactured by Noritake Porcelain Company. Its pattern served both an aesthetic and practical purpose. The floating bubbles not only reinforced the festive atmosphere of informal cabaret dining (Wright had designed more conservative gilt porcelain for the banquet hall), the red circle at the lip of the teacup would also conveniently disguise any inelegant lipstick marks. Noritake produced replacement pieces for the hotel while the service was in use and continued to reissue the original designs for sale to consumers.
Books from the Smith Collection, from left: Frank Lloyd Wright, The Japanese Print: An Interpretation. New York: Horizon Press, 1967; Cary James, The Imperial Hotel: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Architecture of Unity. Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1968; Newspaper clipping of Ada Louise Huxtable, “Anatomy of a Failure,” The New York Times, March 17, 1968, p.35. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
By 1968, the original design for the hotel had been significantly compromised and the building was demolished to make space for an expansion. Cary James captured the hotel in its final years in his book The Imperial Hotel: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Architecture of Unity. The Smith House library includes this volume and, slipped inside the front cover, a clipping from Ada Louise Huxtable’s New York Times article “Anatomy of a Failure,” a lament of the hotel’s destruction.
Imperial Hotel teacup showing “The Oak Park Collection 1979” mark. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
In the late 1970s, architect and Frank Lloyd Wright scholar Thomas Heinz began selling Wright furniture designs and reproductions of the Imperial Hotel porcelain. Although produced by Noritake, the original manufacturer, the legitimacy of the reissued dinnerware was contentious, and the service was the subject of lengthy legal disputes between Heinz and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The Smith Noritake is from “The Oak Park Collection,” dated to 1979. As a mass-produced reproduction issued a decade after the Hotel’s demolition, the acquisition of the service gives a small glimpse into the Smiths’ devotion to everything Frank Lloyd Wright. Along with copies of work by Marc Chagall and Auguste Rodin in the Smith House collection, the Imperial Hotel dinnerware speaks to a mode of collecting that was perhaps less concerned with authenticity than with aesthetic appeal and personal taste.
Val M. Cox, hand-painted teak plate, 1982. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
On the shelf above the Imperial Hotel dinnerware, a painted teak plate tells a very different story. This plate is one of a set of twelve that were designed and hand-painted for the Smiths by artist Val M. Cox. Each plate features a unique design of rhythmic arcs, segments, and overlapping circles in gold leaf, red and green enamel, and dark stain.
The geometric forms belong to a tradition of abstraction developed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the community of architects and artists that gathered around him at his homes in Wisconsin and Arizona. This community was formalized as the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932, an educational program for those interested in furthering Wright’s theories of organic architecture and “learning by doing.”
Books on the Taliesin Fellowship from the Smith House Library. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
The Smiths maintained a lifelong connection with the Fellowship. It was a Taliesin apprentice who invited Melvyn and Sara Smith to first meet Frank Lloyd Wright. Members of the Fellowship aided in the 1950 construction of the house, designed the 1968 Garden Room addition, and continued to correspond with the Smiths about future projects (including an unbuilt teahouse and jacuzzi). The Smiths brought the set of undecorated plates with them on a visit to Taliesin in 1982 and asked Cox, then a fellow, to develop an original design for their table.
Val M. Cox, hand-painted teak plates, 1982. Photograph by Nina Blomfield, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Although the geometric patterns of the teak and the porcelain plates harmonize, the circumstances of their production are quite different. One, a personal commission from an artist with an intimate connection to Taliesin, represents the meaningful artistic relationships that the Smiths cultivated throughout their lives. The other, a mass-produced reproduction from one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most well-known designs demonstrates the breadth of their lifelong interest in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. These two sets of plates symbolize the varied ways that the Smiths acquired art and filled their home with beauty.
—Nina Blomfield, The Decorative Arts Trust Marie Zimmermann Collections Fellow for Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, 2021-2023
Cranbrook Kitchen Sink 