Can you imagine one day purchasing drapes designed by Paul Cezanne? How about bathroom fixtures by Rodin? Flatware by Picasso? (That could hurt.)
Maybe one day. But, in the meantime, there’s furniture designed by legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It turns out that the renowned designer of the Guggenheim Museum, the Johnson Wax Building and the Prairie Style house often created custom-made furniture for the homes he designed. And Furniture By Copeland in Vermont recently entered into an agreement with the Wright Foundation in Arizona to recreate the furniture to Wright’s own specifications.
“The Wright archives has more than 1,000 furniture drawings,” says Tim Copeland, of Furniture By Copeland. “We have access to the archives and we visit homes [with his furniture], so we’re working with a combination of on-site measurements and original plans.”
The result is a complete line of cherry and white oak home furniture — dining room tables, beds, chairs, buffets, dressers, nesting end tables, coffee tables and even a plant stand — crafted with the long lines and gentle curves that you’d expect from the man who coined the term “organic architecture.”
It’s now on sale locally at Circle Furniture locations, where you’ll find signature pieces such as the Barrel Chair ($1,395), Buffet ($4,999) and Grand Extension Table ($5,499).
Those who stop by and check it out may immediately recognize an Arts and Crafts style influence in Wright’s furniture designs. You see it in the use of spindles, the mixing of wood and leather in his living room chairs, and that overall influence of nature that also marked his architecture.
“Wright’s career really started in the early 1890s,” says Copeland. “He had been working in a Victorian idiom, but the Arts and Crafts movement was popular then, and it very much influenced him in this new direction, away from the Victorian style.”
It’s also possible to see reminders of Wright’s building designs in his furniture. The long, low horizontal design of his famed Prairie House is also reflected in his tables and chairs.
But just because Wright is considered an architectural genius, that doesn’t mean his furniture designs can’t be tweaked.
Wright has a reputation for designs that were sometimes a bit more aesthetic than practical. And Copeland admits that occasionally that tendency pops up in his furniture designs as well.
“Sometimes, for Wright, the aesthetic was more compelling than a need for comfort,” he says. And, regardless of the fact that Wright is a legend, if Copeland’s staff found that a slight modification to a Wright design could make a big difference in comfort, then they made the change — always with the approval of the Wright Foundation.
“We make accommodations for today’s sensibilities,” says Copeland, pointing out that the strictly vertical design of Wright’s dining chairs probably pleased the designer’s eye, “but it’s a lot more comfortable when you add a little bit of slope to the back.”


