Books and Manuscripts

The first English language edition of Frank Lloyd Wright's highly influential "Wasmuth Portfolio"

New York: Horizon Press Publishers, (1963). First American edition, #273 C/2,600 numbered copies. Foreword by architect William Wesley Peters, Introduction by and plate list with notes by Wright. Illustrated with 100 numbered plates of plans and drawings by Wright, each loose as issued and measuring 25 1/4 x 15 7/8 in. (641 x 403 mm). Plates and booklet housed in original printed paper chemise, within quarter black cloth over grey paper-covered board portfolio, minor wear and fading to boards and spine; original silk ties intact; Plate 1 with offsetting from paper chemise; booklet with offsetting from cloth portfolio, scattered wear to same. Sweeney 1534 and 87

A handsome copy of the first American, and first English-language, edition of Frank Lloyd Wright's influential "Wasmuth Portfolio". This portfolio was originally published in Berlin by Ernst Wasmuth in 1910 under the title, Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright. It was conceived as a collaboration between Wright and Wasmuth to produce a complete portfolio of Wright's work up to that time. Production began in 1909 between Wright and a team of draftsmen, including Wright's son, as well as architects Taylor Wooley, and Marion Mahony Griffin. It proved to be hugely influential to the budding first generation modernist architects in Europe such as Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Theo van Doesburg, and Le Corbusier. The majority of those Berlin sets were destroyed during the tragic fire and murders at Wright's studio, Taliesin, on August 15, 1914, and only a few hundred damaged copies survived.

This first American edition is nearly identical to that German edition, but with several changes to the plates, including the omission of Wright's embossed stamp, the captions translated from German to English, and with the plates printed on tan and gray paper, in gold, brown, and gray inks.