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!
Each year before my History of American Architecture lecture series, I like to commission Cranbrook Academy of Art student or recent alumni to design a poster to promote the event. This year, I asked second-year 2D Design student Luis Quintanilla to create a poster for this year’s series, Detroit and the World. I am thrilled with how the poster turned out—you can pick one up at the first lecture February 6, 2024—and thought I would share with you some of how it came about.
When I visited Luis’ studio in the Arts and Crafts Court, I was struck by their graphic sensibility combining imagery and text in sticker-like collages. I was also very impressed by a series of stipple drawings in ink on tracing paper, which Luis kept in a shoebox. As we talked about the themes of my upcoming lectures, and what we both admire about Detroit and its architecture, the idea of the poster came about. With Luis’ sketches strewn across the table in their studio, I was reminded of the great tradition of architectural capricci.
Architectural capprici are fantasies, where artists or architects combine buildings from across time in a single image. Traditionally, 18th century capprici could be oil paintings, pencil or ink sketches, or engravings. Joseph Michael Gandy is the most famous painter of architectural fantasies. Here, he is combining the London works of Sir John Soane into a single fantasy, set within the studio of Soane’s own house.
Joseph Michael Gandy, Public and Private Buildings Executed by Sir John Soane between 1780 and 1815, first exhibited 1818. Courtesy of Sir John Soane Museum, London.
If you’ve come to many of my previous architecture lectures, you might recognize my favorite painting: Thomas Cole’s The Architect’s Dream of 1840, a capprici which embodies the mid-19th century debate between gothic and classical styles. Contemporary British painter Carl Laubin creates stunning work inspired by Gandy, using contemporary architects for elaborate capprici.
What might an architectural capprici of Detroit include?
Marshall M. Fredericks’ The Spirit of Detroit, 1958, photographed by Helmut Ziewers for Historic Detroit Area Architecture.
I created a list of forty buildings I thought embodied the best of Detroit architecture. I narrowed it down to twenty buildings for Luis’ consideration, and shared images of each. My only real request: include at least one building from each of the five lectures, and center the poster on John Portman and Associates’ 1977 Renaissance Center.
I don’t think Detroit has a more iconic building than the RenCen, with its piston-like glass towers rising up from the Detroit River. There are better works of architecture, sure, but as far as an associated image of Detroit? Nothing tops the RenCen.
I suggested, too, that Luis include the 1901 St. Josaphat’s church by architects Joseph G. Kastler and William E. N. Hunter in front of the RenCen, to recall the almost too-good-to-be-true alignment of these two structures when driving into the city from the northern suburbs on I-75. After all, by the nature of delivering lectures about Detroit from the distance of Cranbrook, this is the view (from the suburbs, from the car) many of us hold toward the city.
We went back and forth about including the Spirit of Detroit, former Cranbrook Schools faculty member Marshall M. Fredericks’ monumental bronze at the Detroit City-County Building. What attracts me to the Spirit is its iconic status and its graphic replicability: whether on the redesigned city buses or the new city holiday lights, all you really need is an orb and some rays of light to know: that’s the Spirit of Detroit.
What would be the mood of our Detroit capprici?
Inextricably linked to the history of Detroit since 1980 is Detroit Techno, a form of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) that combines synth-pop with African American styles such as house, electro, and funk. For me, Detroit is most exciting, and its dynamism most electrifying, at night. In riding through the city after dark, buildings become speeding landmarks, and its possible to disappear for a time into a former factory or repurposed commercial building for a party or a rave. In these moments, buildings become less defined by their former glory or current decay than by their inhabitation as a dancefloor pulsating with music and lights. It’s a new way of occupying the city’s architecture to unique advantage.
Luis went to work. They began by printing out and arranging the buildings I’d shared. Then, they began overdrawing some of the images—distorting or highlighting certain features.
Layering on tracing paper, Luis dutifully stippled certain prominent architectural elements. I was especially impressed at the beautifully rendered hand, orb, and rays of Spirit of Detroit.
Luis then cut out stars on blue and yellow paper, adding in light sources to the night scene. The Ambassador Bridge, Dodge Memorial Fountain, Penobscot and Fisher Buildings are all recognized for their dramatic nighttime illumination, and Luis captured this with hand-drawn and cut stars.
Fisher Building with Full Moon Eclipse in Nov. 2022
Finally, Luis scanned in the physical elements of the poster and reassembled them in Illustrator, where text was added. Luis took inspiration from Detroit Techno posters for the colors and fonts. I could not be more thrilled with our poster, and the capprici of Detroit at night (with techno).
Luis Quintanilla, CAA ’24, working on the poster. Luis is from Austin, Texas, and earned their BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Can you identify all the buildings shown? Can you speculate why I chose them?
If you can, you’ll love this year’s History of American Architecture: Detroit and the Worldlecture series! If you can’t, you’ll also love this year’s History of American Architecture: Detroit and the World lecture series! The first lecture is February 6, 2024, at 12:00pm ET online and at 6:30pm ET online and in de Salle Auditorium at Cranbrook Art Museum. Purchase your tickets and learn more on our website. All lectures will be available for viewing after the lecture to ticket holders. See you there!
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Special thanks to Artist-in-Residence Elliot Earls, Head of 2D Design, for suggesting Luis for this project. A perfect fit!
As college students across the country buckle down to study for final exams and finish writing end-of-semester papers, there will be one school where that’s not happening: Cranbrook Academy of Art. Instead, our Academy students are busy making in their studios, and frantically producing work for their semi-regular critiques with Artists-in-Residence. This follows the model set up here by founding president Eliel Saarinen, who famously rejected what he called the “non-creative-school-book-learned-art-teacher” in favor of a method he called “self-education under good leadership.”
While the Academy’s extremely self-directed, studio-based education is proudly traced back to our founding, Cranbrook did, in fact, once offer formal courses in the history of art. These quarterly courses—taught by museum curators, visiting professors, and artists—utilized both slide shows and actual paintings.
Museum Director Albert Christ-Janer teaching his “Survey of the Arts” history class for Cranbrook Academy of Art students, 1945. Christ-Janer arrived at Cranbrook in June of 1945 and left for the University of Chicago in September 1947. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
Here, we see Museum Director Albert Christ-Janer lecturing in the then-new Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum and Library. The classroom is simple, just folding chairs and an illuminated blackboard set up in the lower-level galleries. In front of the students hangs Doris Lee’s Fisherman’s Wife. I admire Christ-Janers books, and imagine it would’ve been very exciting to attend one of his lectures.
Christ-Janer discussing Fisherman’s Wife by Doris Lee (CAM 1945.27). Lee painted the scene of Key West, Florida while she was a visiting artist at Michigan State in 1945. It was purchased by the Cranbrook Foundation that same year. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
In the Academy’s 1945 Course Catalog, Christ-Janer is listed as “Instructor in the Survey of the Arts.” By the 1970s, then President Wallace Mitchell stopped offering anything like a history of art course at the Academy in favor of a history/theory seminar called the Humanities Forum. This evolved into the Critical Studies program today—the only required lecture/seminar for Academy students, but which is, as always, ungraded.
I’d note that Christ-Janer is teaching in a full suit and tie—a sight rarer at the Academy today than a history of art course!
Even though the Academy no longer offers a History of Art course in its curriculum, I like to think that the Center’s History of American Architecture lecture series continues the tradition of art history at Cranbrook. For the past six years, I’ve taught architecture history to interested Academy and Cranbrook Schools students, and open to members of the public.
Kevin Adkisson teaching History of American Architecture: Cranbrook in Context, March 3, 2020. Photography by Daniel Smith, CAA 2021, Courtesy Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
Starting on February 6, 2024, the History of American Architecture lecture series returns. This year’s subject is “Detroit and the World,” and we are offering two ways to attend the lecture: virtually, at noon or 6:30pm EST, or in person at Cranbrook Art Museum’s de Salle Auditorium at 6:30pm. We launched the website and ticket sales on Wednesday, and I encourage you to read more about each week’s topic and consider signing up over on our website. There’s so much great Detroit architecture, and I am excited to share it with you in lectures this winter!
In his unpublished 1950 manuscript, The Story of Cranbrook, Eliel Saarinen wrote of Cranbrook students as “the pupil is like an empty sack to be filled during the school year.” I hope you’ll join me in February as we fill ourselves up with knowledge!
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
HISTORY OF AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE
DETROIT AND THE WORLD
This installment will focus on the architecture of Detroit, studying the buildings, designers, and policymakers that shaped the city’s dramatic transformations from the late nineteenth century to today, and how Detroiters have influenced the course of architecture around the globe.
Consecration of Christ Church Cranbrook, September 29, 1928. Archdeacon Ramsey knocks on the door of the church, accompanied by Mr. Kinder, Bishop Page, Mr. Forsyth.
Today marks ninety-five years since the consecration of Christ Church Cranbrook!
Consecration Service Program for Consecration of Christ Church Cranbrook, September 29, 1928.
Planning for the church began in earnest in 1923, with the cornerstone being laid in 1925. After three years of construction, and countless hours of labor from masons, artisans, and clergy, the church was ready to be consecrated.
Christ Church Cranbrook Consecration–Parish House Recessional, September 29, 1928.
The consecration was led by Charles L. Ramsay, Archdeacon of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, declared the church sacred and ready for services. While the architecture was complete in 1928, it would be several more years before the last pieces of art were installed.
Consecration of Christ Church Cranbrook Recessional, September 29, 1928.
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, and Laura MacNewman, Associate Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
On this, the last day of summer, I thought we’d look back at the Center’s second-annual Architecture Elective for the Horizons-Upward Bound Summer Component. It was a real highlight of my summer!
A grant from the Society for Architecture Historians enabled Nina Blomfield, the Center’s Collection Fellow, and me to co-teach the six-week elective. Each Monday and Wednesday morning from June 28 to August 2, we met in Gordon Hall of Science at Cranbrook with fifteen enthusiastic HUB students, grades 9 through 12. While we started most mornings in the classroom with our textbook or a slideshow of images, the real excitement came on class trips.
I mean, what better way to learn about excellent architecture than to study the buildings of Cranbrook?
Head Archivist Deborah Rice showing our HUB students architectural treasures from Cranbrook Archives. Nina Blomfield, photographer.
To orient ourselves, we started with a morning spent in Cranbrook Archives, studying original sketches, renderings, blueprints, photographs, and even fundraising literature about Cranbrook’s many architectural treasures. We saw the great diversity of how our buildings were imagined, represented, and constructed, and how an architect moves from a loose, gestural sketch to formal construction documents that communicate complex structural systems.
Then, we spent a class period each at Cranbrook House, Saarinen House, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House. In each location, students carried their sketchbooks and made notes and drawings about the architecture. I was especially impressed at the students’ analytical skills. In fact, while I usually love talking about the nitty-gritty specifics of Saarinen House, I found myself sitting much more quietly, asking students questions about what they noticed, liked, or disliked in each room. Listening to their observations and conversation helped me see each space anew.
At Smith House, Nina led a phenomenology exercise, where, instead of telling the students the story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Smiths, she simply asked each student to find a spot in the house to sit in quietly. Then, they wrote or sketched what they observed and sensed. Having such a tactile experience with the architecture and nature proved to be more memorable than a conventional tour.
Last weekend, Cranbrook’s Horizons-Upward Bound program celebrated the completion of its fifty-eighth annual six-week summer residency program. Students and their families spent Theme Day on campus learning about the academic and artistic successes of the summer (including a display organized by the Center about our Architecture Elective, and a performance in the Greek Theatre by students and the Autophysiopsychic Millennium collective).
Rosa Parks addresses Cranbrook’s Horizons-Upward Bound graduation, held at Cleveland Middle School, July 11, 1989. Cranbrook Archives.
But did you know that in 1989, HUB celebrated the end of the summer with a special graduation address by legendary activist Rosa Parks? The “mother of the freedom movement,” Parks spoke to Cranbrook’s HUB students in a ceremony held at Cleveland Middle School in Detroit on July 11, 1989.
A speaker at the HUB graduation stands beneath a banner welcoming Rosa Parks, July 11, 1989. Cranbrook Archives.
While we couldn’t find the subject matter of Park’s HUB address or too many details of the special occasion, I am confident we will learn more about this moment in HUB history (and so many others) as Cranbrook Archives embarks on an exciting, multi-year digitization effort of the Horizons-Upward Bound Records made possible by a grant from the National Archives and Records Administration, through the National Publications and Records Commission’s Access Program.
In fact, the work has already begun! During the summer months, two current HUB students worked in the archives, digitizing more amazing materials like these images of Rosa Parks! Look for more Cranbrook Kitchen Sink posts drawn from the HUB collection in the future!
—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
The Center has made a new film! As part of our recent gala fundraiser, A House Party at Two Cranbrooks, we worked with Elkhorn Entertainment & Media to produce a short documentary about the Booth family’s connections between England and Michigan. Today, we are excited to share the film with the wider world! Watch the film below, or here.
A Tale of Two Cranbrooks
Now that you’ve seen the new documentary, I thought I’d invite you “behind-the-scenes” into how A Tale of Two Cranbrooks came together.
Cinematographer Josh Samson and producer Vince Chavez film the Booth-made tea kettle in Cranbrook House. April 6, 2023. Photograph by Nina Blomfield.
As with all Center projects, I started work on the film in Cranbrook Archives. The Booth family records are extensive, and with our archivists Deborah Rice and Laura MacNewman, I spent several afternoons consulting documents (letters, photographs, manuscripts, scrapbooks, etc.) assembled by many generations of Booths to learn the family story. Henry Wood Booth’s handwritten The Annals of Cranbrook were especially helpful.
Detail of a postcard of Cranbrook, Kent with handwritten notes by Henry Wood Booth, from The Annals of Cranbrook manuscript, 1914. Cranbrook Archives.
Then, through the support of Bobbi and Stephen Polk and Ryan Polk, I travelled to England! I visited Cranbrook, Kent, spending time at Cranbrook Museum and Archives and at Cranbrook School. (You can watch a walking history tour I did in Cranbrook, Kent, here and learn more about the Booth family and my trip to England in my virtual lecture, Uncovering Cranbrook: Two Pilgrimages to Kentish Cranbrook.)
Does your family have a certain pose that they always do for a family picture? My cousins and I always had to stand or sit by the same log at our cottage each summer to get a group picture. Even when the log had disintegrated, and we were all adults, we still stood in the same spot to take the picture.
The Swedish weavers of Studio Loja Saarinen were the same way. After every rug was completed, they would unroll it behind the studio, lay it on the lawn, and pose at the end. This not only documented their work, but also served as a record of who worked on each piece. In Cranbrook Archives, we have a few examples of these images.
Cranbrook Academy of Art Rug No. 14
This rug lay in the center of the Studio Loja Saarinen Weaving Room. A flatwoven rug with stylized meanders in the border, and an elegant color scheme of dark browns, blues, and beiges, in form, structure, color, and design it shows the contemporary style of Swedish weaving that would become the foundation of Studio Loja Saarinen’s work.
Cranbrook Academy of Art Rug No. 14, designed by Maja Andersson Wirde and woven by Lillian Holm for Studio Loja Saarinen, 1930. CAM 1955.2. Photographer James Haefner.
This was one of the first rugs executed under the “Design and Supervision” of Maja Andersson Wirde, who was Loja’s right-hand-woman from 1930 to 1933. The rug is actually a variation of a design Wirde made for the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris (the “Art Deco” World’s Fair).
When Wirde wrote to Cranbrook’s secretary from Sweden before immigrating, she said she would bring along prepared designs and wool and linen yarns to be able to get started right away. She certainly did! Below, you can see Wirde and possibly Lillian Holm and Ruth Ingvarsson holding up the rug behind Studio Loja Saarinen just months after their arrival to Cranbrook.
Studio Loja Saarinen weavers with Rug No. 14 behind the Cranbrook Arts and Crafts Studios, 1930. Courtesy Smålands Museum, Sweden.
In 2021, the home of Loja Saarinen at Cranbrook Academy of Art, which she shared with her husband Eliel, was designated as a site in the Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios program. As the team at the Center were going through the process of researching Loja, the too-often-overlooked designer of textiles, gardens, and clothing, we were constantly reminded that the rugs created by Loja and her professional weaving studio, Studio Loja Saarinen, were poorly documented in our records.
Studio Loja Saarinen made rugs, window treatments, wall hangings, upholstery fabrics, and more at Cranbrook between 1928 and 1942. Many of the Studio’s largest rugs were made for Kingswood School for Girls between 1930 and 1932. Because of the fragility of the rugs, and through natural wear-and-tear, almost all of the original Studio Loja Saarinen rugs were put in storage at Cranbrook Art Museum in the 1970s and 1980s.
Loja Saarinen, circa 1934. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.
We have excellent archival records about the operation of the studio, including records of yarn orders and charts of the time spent weaving rugs (it was a lot!). But the rugs are very large, and often, we only had black-and-white photographs of the rugs on the floor in the 1930s. Color photographs were limited to poorly distorted slides, or photographs of portions of the rugs taken on early digital cameras while the rugs were half-rolled-up in storage.
We had almost no ‘born digital’ high-resolution photographs of Loja’s work–these are the best kind of photographs for sharing her work in slides, online, or in print. The lack of excellent, high quality images limited not only how we at Cranbrook understood and shared Loja’s legacy, but also made it difficult for students or scholars researching Loja Saarinen to get a complete sense of her artistic output.
This winter, as the Center prepares for our next fundraiser, A House Party at Cranbrook Celebrating Loja Saarinen on May 21, 2022, it has become mission-critical to get better documentation of Studio Loja Saarinen’s rugs.
Enter in our latest project!
Jim Haefner and his assistant set up the camera in Cranbrook Art Museum’s Vault. Photographer Kevin Adkisson, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.Jim Haefner checking his image of Kingswood School Rug No. 31, Reception Hall Rug, Auditorium Lobby Rug. Photographer Leslie Mio, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.Kingswood School Rug No. 31, Reception Hall Rug, Auditorium Lobby Rug. Photographer Kevin Adkisson, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.
On January 7, 2022, photographer James Haefner and his assistant Erik Henderson, with the help of Center Curator Kevin Adkisson, Center Associate Registrar Leslie Mio, Cranbrook Art Museum Registrar Corey Gross, Cranbrook Art Museum Head Preparator Jon Geiger, and Jon’s installation crew embarked on a very ambitious project: documenting all the Studio Loja Saarinen rugs in the Cranbrook collections.
First, we had to take the several-hundred-pound rugs down from racks where they are stored, rolled. Then, we covered the floor in clean plastic drop cloths. With a camera bolted via a vise-grip to the ceiling of the Cranbrook Art Museum Collections Wing, and controlled via computer from a remote workstation, we unrolled, photographed, and rerolled over forty works of Studio Loja Saarinen’s functional art.
Kingswood School Rug No. 3, 1928-1929; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer); Linen warp, wool weft; 66½ x 49 inches (168.9 x 124.5 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Curator Kevin Adkisson and his attention to detail. Photographer Leslie Mio, Courtesy of Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research.Maker’s label on Kingswood School Rug No. 3, 1928-1929; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer); Linen warp, wool weft; 66½ x 49 inches (168.9 x 124.5 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls.
No detail went undocumented, from weaver’s signatures knotted into the face of a rug, to maker’s labels written and sewn on by Loja herself.
Below is just a fraction of the forty-plus pieces photographed:
Kingswood School Rug No. 31, Reception Hall Rug, Auditorium Lobby Rug, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 312 x 144 inches (792.5 x 365.8 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Kingswood School Rug Number 28, Library Rug, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 243½ x 96 inches (618.5 x 243.8 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Kingswood School Blue Rug for Reception Room I, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 183 x 142½ inches (464.8 x 362 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Rug with Animal Motif, 1932; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Linen warp, wool weft, wool file; plain weave with four picks of weft between each row of knots; 151½ x 108 inches (384.8 x 274.3 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Kingswood School Rug No 29 – Rooftops, 1931; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool pile, wool weft, linen warp; 85 x 137½ inches (215.9 x 349.3 centimeters); Cultural Properties Collection, Kingswood School for Girls. Photographer James Haefner.Rug, 1932; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer); Wool and linen; 119 x 98 inches (302.3 x 248.9 centimeters) including fringe; Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Rug with Tree Motif, 1930; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Maja Andersson Wirde (designer), Lillian Holm (weaver), Lilly Bjerken (weaver); Wool and linen; 131 x 54½ inches (332.7 x 138.4 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Detail of Studio Loja Saarinen Rug No. 2, 1929; Studio Loja Saarinen (maker), Loja Saarinen (designer/weaver), Eliel Saarinen (designer), Walborg Nordquist Smalley (weaver); Cotton warp; wool pile; plain weave with ten picks of weft between each row of knots; 110½ x 39 inches (280.7 x 99.1 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.Tree of Life Tapestry, circa 1933; Loja Saarinen (designer/weaver); Linen and wool; 60½ x 54 inches (153.7 x 137.2 centimeters); Collection of Cranbrook Art Museum. Photographer James Haefner.
It was a joy to unroll and see these pieces up close after knowing many of them for years through black-and-white images. While even these photographs do not do justice to seeing their beauty in person, having such high-resolution photography of Studio Loja Saarinen’s rugs means that future scholars and fans of Loja Saarinen will be able to have a richer understanding of her, and Cranbrook’s, remarkable legacy.
For even more Loja Saarinen, join the Center in person or online on May 21, 2022 for A House Party at Cranbrook Celebrating Loja Saarinen. We’ll be premiering a new, thirty-minute documentary about Loja, produced by the Center, at the event–you don’t want to miss it!
– Leslie S. Mio, Associate Registrar, and Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
Cranbrook Kitchen Sink 