Blog
Blue smoke at Taliesin
Reading Time: 5 minutes A photograph I took in 2007 while the Preservation Crew removed the boiler from Taliesin’s living quarters. Taliesin’s living room is one floor up and to the right. Didn’t I write in here about the time there was blue smoke inside Taliesin’s Living Quarters one fall day in 1995? [searches this blog for the words […]
Hey Keiran Q and A
Reading Time: 6 minutes A photograph of me taken by the Executive Director at Taliesin Preservation in 1998. I was giving a lecture on Taliesin’s history. I talked about “Hey Keiran” in my blog post on “How I became the historian for Taliesin.” Back then, the only way people got their weekly schedules was to pick up the printed […]
Julian didn’t seal the entrances
Reading Time: 6 minutes Albert Rockwell took this photograph on August 15, 1914. It shows Taliesin’s burned living quarters. WARNING: My post includes descriptions of the extreme violence that took place during Taliesin’s 1914 fire. Additionally, contemporary news reports often refer to murderer Julian Carlton as “the negro”. I’ve removed that term for Carlton when the sentences are still […]
“Well, the guide told me….”
Reading Time: 5 minutes Screen-grab of actress Bonnie Hunt in the 1993 movie, Dave. The scene shows Hunt as a White House tour guide with a group going through the “People’s House” [the White House]. I guarantee most of you, tour guide or not, have this going through your head right now: “We’re walking… we’re walking….“ In this post, […]
Unfinished Wing
Reading Time: 5 minutes George Kastner took this photograph on November 28, 1928. It’s looking northeast at the far western end of Taliesin. “I don’t know why you say it was a pigsty,” Minerva said to me (Minerva became a member of the Taliesin Fellowship in the 1950s). “It always had goats.” She was referring to a section at […]
Up the Hill
Reading Time: 5 minutes Photograph taken in the American Players Theatre on June 11, 2022, before the start of the show, The Rivals. Members of APT belong to the Actors Equity Association, so photographs are prohibited during performances. I’m not writing this week about Frank Lloyd Wright, the Taliesin estate, or other non-Wright things I’ve delved into. I’m going […]
False Clerestory at Taliesin
Reading Time: 5 minutes The entry to Taliesin’s Living Quarters as seen from its Hill Crown. What’s a clerestory? Clerestory— “1. An upper zone of wall pierced with windows that admit light to the center of a lofty room. 2. A window so placed.” My definition comes from Dictionary of Architecture and Construction, 4th edition (McGraw-Hill, New York, 2006)— […]
Taliesin West inspiration
Reading Time: 6 minutes Looking (plan) southeast from the Taliesin Hill Crown toward the Plunge Pool terrace, with Wright’s newly-expanded bedroom on the left. Most of the landscape you see in the distance is the Taliesin estate. I think something that Wright did at Taliesin West (in Arizona) inspired him in a change he made at Taliesin (in Wisconsin). […]
Found Floor
Reading Time: 5 minutes I took this photo looking (plan) northeast towards Taliesin Entry Foyer after we found a floor during a project. Read about it below. I have written that I need to be careful about what I think happened at Taliesin, because I’ve been wrong on things. This post shows an example of something I got wrong. […]
Wall at Taliesin’s Garden Court
Reading Time: 6 minutes Taliesin’s Garden Court photo taken in August, 2002 by Doug Hadley, then the Landscape Coordinator. In this post I’m going to write about when a stone wall was built at Taliesin’s Garden Court, changing it from an entryway into a private courtyard. The Garden Court used to be the courtyard where people stopped when they […]
