Frank Lloyd Wright Lamp Lights the Way, Sets $7.5M Record
Wright’s 1904 Double Pedestal Lamp fetches $7.5M at Sotheby’s.
Frank Lloyd Wright is one of America’s most celebrated and innovative architects. The decorative arts he designed for his buildings, including furniture, lamps, and even tableware, embody his unique Prairie style and his philosophical approach to his work as much as the buildings themselves, and they often sell for high prices when they come to auction. An important lamp from one of Wright’s earliest commissions just set a new auction record for his designs, selling for $7.5 million after 11 minutes of bidding at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction in New York on May 13.
The lamp is known as the Double Pedestal Lamp, which Wright designed in 1904 for Susan Lawrence Dana of Springfield, Illinois. Wright’s distinctive approach to design is visible in nearly every feature. It resembles a miniature house with a shade shaped like a peaked roof supported by two pedestals on a rectangular base. The pedestals include movable hinged panels reminiscent of Japanese screens, a major influence on Wright. The lamp is electric, a new technology at the time. Its iridescent glass panes take advantage of this, with their colors and the overall effect of the piece, appearing completely different when the lamp is on than in natural light.
After her father's death, Dana hired Wright to remodel her family’s house in 1902. She famously gave Wright a “blank check” for the project, and he transformed the Italianate structure into a Prairie-style masterpiece. Today, the house is a museum known as the Dana-Thomas House. According to Sotheby’s, Wright and his studio “created more than 100 custom pieces of furniture and over 450 art glass windows, doors, and lighting fixtures, including six Single-Pedestal Lamps and two Double-Pedestal Lamps.” The second Double-Pedestal Lamp is in the collection of the Dana-Thomas House. In 2023, a tall-back chair Wright designed for the house sold for $107,100.
Dana would continue to work with Wright. Her second commission from him was a library for the Lawrence Elementary School, today the Lawernce Educational Center, in memory of her father, who had served on the Springfield School Board. Dana’s patronage of the arts was linked to her support for progressive causes, including education and women’s suffrage. After Wright’s remodel, she hosted events like story hours for local children and meetings for suffragist groups at her house.
Jodi Pollack, chairman at Sotheby’s and co-worldwide head of 20th-century design, says, “This record-breaking sale celebrates not only a remarkable piece of American design but a landmark moment in the legacy of one of the most visionary architects in history.” This is not the only significance of the sale. Pollack told Architectural Digest that it is an example of the growing trend of contemporary art collectors taking an interest in decorative arts and design. Considering Wright’s belief in the importance of a house and its furnishings “being a work of art,” he would probably approve.
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