Dining Room Side Chair
Frank Lloyd Wright, American, (1867-1959), architect
Dining Room Side Chair, c. 1895
Oak with leather-upholstered seat
57-3/4 x 19-1/4 x 17-3/4 in.
Gift of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1977.06.01
Photographer: Philip Mrozinski
Wright's dining room addition of 1895 featured tall-back side chairs that would become the seminal designs for his renowned Prairie style dining room furniture ensembles. The architect designed a set of eight chairs and a child's high chair to match the quarter-sawn oak table for his growing family. The wide crest rail and slender vertical spindles combine to provide a portrait frame for the seated person's head at the same time that they serve to create a visually unified and intimate dining space.
Originally these chairs had straight back legs and spiral spindles. Historical documents and evidence obtained during conservation treatment reveal that the chairs were remade sometime around 1903. At that time, the spiral spindles were replaced with the square spindles characteristic of the geometric vocabulary of Wright's Prairie style period. These were the first of many designs for tall-back dining room chairs that Wright would create for numerous clients during his early career.