A uncommon Frank Lloyd Wright desk lamp is hitting the public sale block subsequent month in New York. The so-called ‘double-pedestal’ lamp, commissioned greater than a century in the past for the Susan Lawrence Dana Home in Springfield, Illinois, is one among three such lamps ever created – and is predicted fetch as much as $5 million as a spotlight of Sotheby’s Trendy Night Sale on 13 Could.
As Jodi Pollack, Sotheby’s chairman and co-worldwide head of Twentieth-century design, tells Wallpaper*, the lamp is ‘one of many nice icons of design by arguably essentially the most influential architect of our era.’
Frank Lloyd Wright, pictured right here in 1926.
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
The lot, titled Frank Lloyd Wright: A Lamp for the Ages, is a glowing testomony to the architect’s modern method to design: within the early 1900s, electrical lights had been nonetheless a novelty, and Wright was one of many first to custom-design them.
The Sotheby’s instance is only one of three double-pedestal lamps designed by Wright, two of which had been commissioned for the Dana Home in 1903, whereas one other was commissioned a number of years later for the Robie Home in Chicago. One of many unique lamps is within the assortment of the Dana Home museum, which means that the Sotheby’s lamp is the one one that can ever be obtainable for public public sale.
‘It is a once-in-a-lifetime alternative for a serious collector or establishment to accumulate a beacon of design,’ says Pollack.
An exterior view of the Dana Home, in Springfield, Illinois.
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
The Dana Home was designed for Susan Lawrence Dana, an independent-minded heiress who sought to precise her character together with her residence. It was an early instance of Wright’s Prairie model, which emerged in Chicago within the early Twentieth century and took cues from the Arts and Crafts motion. The home contained 100 unique items of furnishings, in addition to 450 artwork glass home windows, doorways and lighting fixtures designed by Wright.
‘Susan Lawrence Dana was the perfect patron, giving Wright a “blank-check” price range and artistic license,’ says Pollack. ‘What he created was radical, experimental and with out precedent.’
So too had been the double-pedestal lamps, which have an architectural silhouette full with ‘eaves’ and inexperienced panels which can be thought to reference the home’s ‘floating display screen’ of glass pendants, or ribbons held on Japanese shrines. (Wright took cues from Japanese structure in his design of the home). The shade’s geometric sample, in the meantime, is believed to have been impressed by the sumac plant, which is indigenous to the American prairies. Relying on the sunshine, the iridescent glass shifts from inexperienced to brown to amber.
‘It manages to distill right down to the essence all of Wright’s concepts about structure and design,’ says Pollack. ‘It’s like proudly owning an ideal little home by Frank Lloyd Wright.’
‘It’s like proudly owning an ideal little home by Frank Lloyd Wright.’
Contained in the spectacular arched sitting room of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Dana Home.
(Picture credit score: Getty Photographs)
Such pedigree will doubtlessly command a excessive value. In 2002, the final time the lamp appeared at public sale, it snagged almost $2 million at Christie’s. In 2023, Sotheby’s set a Wright world report when ceiling gentle from the Francis W. Little Home, additionally in Illinois, offered for $2.9 million. This time round, the Dana Home lamp has a low estimate of $3 million – however has the potential to be offered for in extra of $5 million.
‘Every of us within the public sale enterprise has a want checklist of works that we aspire to characterize. The Dana Home lamp has all the time been on the high of my checklist,’ says Pollack. ‘When this lamp was offered by Christie’s in 2002, across the identical time I had joined Sotheby’s, I instantly recognised it as probably the most gorgeous and profound objects. Once I noticed it on view, it introduced me to my knees.’
For Wright collectors and lovers, this sale is an enormous deal: not solely is the double-Pedestal lamp one among a form, it is usually a bodily relic of the architect’s genius.
‘Wright stays a darling of the general public, and for good cause,’ says Pollack. ‘His works are as timeless and fashionable as we speak as after they had been created.’
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Lamp for the Ages might be a part of Sotheby’s Trendy Night Public sale, happening 13 Could 2025. You’ll be able to view the lamp at Sotheby’s New York from from 2-13 Could.
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