'90'

FRANK lLOYD WRICHT

[55)

1901
Frank lloyd Wriyht, "The Art

and Craft of the Machine"

I~rank

Uoyd Wright (1867-1959), one of the United States' foremost architt'Cts,

was a theorist as well as a creator of buildings and furnishings. Like most
designers and architects of his generation, he had been reared on the writings
of John Ruskin and William Morris, and his ~r1y architectural and theoretical
works, including his renowned "Prairie School~ houses of the early 1900s, were
clearly shaped in large part by rhe TWO Englishmen's ideals. However, in this
well-known essay, Wright declared-in clear opposition to Morris's and Ruskin's
sentiments-that the Machine (a word he deliberately capitalized) wa.~ an inte
gral parr of modern society that had the potential to do great good, both
socially and artistically.
Excerpted from Frank l.Ioyd Wright, "The An and Craft of the Machine,~ an
address delivered to the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, at Hull-Hou.'>C, March 6,
1901, and to the Western Sixiety of Engineers, March 20, 190 I, and reprinted in
the Gualogu( of tb( Four/untb Annual &bibition ofthe Chiolgo ArchitufUrtii Club
(Chicago: Chicago Architcctural Club, 1901).

A.

we work along our various way., there takehape within U', in some
sort, an ideal-something we are to become-some work to be done.
This, I think, is denied to very few, and we begin really to live only when the
thtill of this ideality moves us in what we will to accomplish. rn the years which
hllve been devoted in my own life [Q working out in stubborn materials a feel
Ing for the beautiful, in the vortex of diSTOrted complex conditions, a hope has
K(OWtl stronger with the experience of each year, amounring now TO a gradually
,kc:lx:ning conviction that in the Machine lies the only futute of art and craft
ll~ I helic:ve, a glorious future; that the Machine is, in fact, the metamorphosis
lJf ancient an and craft; that we 3re at last face to face with the machine-the
modern Sphinll-whoSC' riddle the artist must solve if he would that art live
ti,r his nature holds the key. I';or one. I promise whatever gods may be" to lend
Mtch energy and purpose II.' I m:lY poSSCS5 t,o hdp make that meaning plain; TO

....

INt tHDUS1RIH DESIGN REA1HR

reflll'lI ag;lin and ag;lin [0 the task whenever :llld wherever need he; for this plain
(lilly is thus rclemlessly marked OUI for fhe artisr ill Ihis. the Machinc Age.
ahhough there is involved all adjustmeOl f'O cherished gods. perplexing :tnd
painful in thc exneme; the fire of many long-honored ideals shall go down to
:Ishes 10 reappear, phrenix like, with new purposes.
The great ethics of the Machine 3re as yet, in the main, beyond the ken of
lilt: artist or student of sociology: but the artist mind may now approach the
n:lwre of Ihi! thing from experience. which has lx'Come Ihe commonplace of his
fidd, to suggcsl, in time. I hope, 10 prove, that rhe machine is capable of carry
ing ro fruilion high ideals in an-higher than the world has yet seen!
Disciples ofWiJliam Morris ding to an opposite vicw, Yct William Morris
himself deeply sensed the danger to art of the transforming force whose sign and
symbol is lhe machine, and though of the new art we eagerly seek he sometimes
despaired, he quickly renewed his hope.
He plainly foresaw that a blank in the fine arts would follow the inevit:1ble
abuse of new.found power. and duew himself body and soul into Ihe work of
bridging i, over by bringing into our lives afresh the beauty of an as she had
been, rh:u the new an to come mighl lIOt have dropped too many stitches nor
h:l\Ie Ilnraveled what would still bc useful 10 her.
Th:lt he had abundalll ftirh in [he new an his every <.-'S,~ay will tcstify.
Th:H he miscalculated the machine docs nOI marter. He did sublime work
for il when he pleaded so well for Ihe process of elimination its abuse had made
IIl'CeSS:lry; when he foughr the innate:: vulgarity or theocratic impulse in arl as
oppo5C:<1 to democratic; and when he pre:lched Ihc gospel of simplicity,
All artists love and honor William Morris.
He did the beSt in his lime for art and will live in hislory as the great social.
ist, together with Rmkin, the gre:ll moralist: a significant ftc[ worth thinking
about, that the two great reformers or modern times professed the anist.
The:: machine these reformers protcsted. oc'Calise the son of Immry which is
born or greed had usurped it and made of il ~I terrible engine of ensl:tvemenr,
deluging thc civili"'.e<1 world with a murderous ubiquity, which plainly cnough
was the damnation of rheir art and crafl.
It had not then advanced to the poim which now so plainly indicares lhar
it will surely and swiftly, by it... own moment'lIm, undo the mischief it has made,
and the usurping vulgarians as well.
Nor WOlS il so grown as 10 become apparenl 10 William Morris, rhe grand
democrat, Ihat the machine was Ihe gfC3t forerunner of democracy.
The ground plan of this thing is now grown to the:: point where the artist
must rakc it up no longer as a proteSt: genius must progressively dominatc the
work of the contrivance it has created; to lernl :1 useful h~lnd in building afresh
the "Fairness of the Earth."
That the Machine has dealt Art in the grand old sense a death-blow, none
will deny.

1901: fRANK lLOVO

W~ICHT

1571

The evidence is 100 substantial.

Art in the gmnd old sense-meaning Art in Ihe sense of 51tuClUrai lradi
lion, whose crafl is filShioned upon the handicrafl ideal, :Incient or modern; an
art wherein this form and that form as structural pans were bboriously joined
ill such a way as to bC:lllt'ifully emphasil.e the manner of t'he joining: the million
:lnd one ways of beautifully s~ilisfying bare structural necessities, which have
COllle down [Q us chiefly through the books as KArl."
For the purpose or suggesting hastily and therefore crudely wherein the
machine has sapped the vil'ality of this art, let us assume Arelliteemre in the old
scnse as a fitting reprcsenlative of Traditional-art. and Printing :IS :1 filling rep
resentation of the Machine,
What printing-the machine-has done for architecture-the fine art
will have been done in measure of time for all art immediately fashioned upon
the early h:llldicmft ideal.

[...I
And. invincible. triumphallf, lhe machine goes on, gathering force and
knitting Ihe m~lIerial nec(:SsitiC5 of mankind ever closcr into a universal auto
matic ftbric; the engine, the momr, and the baltic-ship, the works of art of the
century!
Thc Machine is Intellect mastering the drudgery of earth that lhe plastic an
lllay live; that the margin of leisure and strength by which man's life upon the
earth can be made beautiful, may jmmca.~umbly widen; its function ultimatdy
10 emancipate human expression!
It is a univerul eduatror, surely raising the level of human intelligence, so
carrying within itself lhe power to destroy, by it's own momelltum. the greed
which in Morris' time :lnd still in our own lime turns it to a deadly engine of
enslavement. The only comfort left the poor artist, side-tracked as he is, seem
ingly is a mean one; the thouglu that the very selfishness which man's early art
idealized, now reduced 10 ilS lowcst terms, is swiftly and surely destroying itsclf
through the medium of the Machine.
The artist's present plight is a sad one, bm m:ty he LCulhfully s:IY that soci
ety is less well offbecausc Architecture, or even Art. as it was, is dead, and prinT
iug, or the Machine, lives?
Every age has done its work, produced its art with the best tools or con
trivances it knew, the lools mOSt successful in saving the most preciolls thing in
the world-human effort. Greece used the chattel slave as the csse::ntial tool of
it's arl and civilization. This 1001 we have discarded, and we would refuse Ihe
f('IUtll of Greek art upon thc terms of its restoration, because we insi.H now upon
a b:lsis of Democracy.
Is it not more likely that the: medium of artistic expression itself h:l..~ broad
ened and changl-d until :1 ncw definition and new direction must be given the.
:1tI activity of tbe ruture, and thar ,he:: Machine has finally made for the artist.
whether he will yet own il or nOl, a splendid disrinetion between Ihe Art of old

hel

THE

INDUSTRIAL

DESICN READER

and the Art to comd A distinction made by the tool which frees human boor,
lengthens ana broadens the life of the simplesl man, thereby Ihe basis of Ihe
Democracy upon which we insist,

[ ... I
The Art of old idcali'a~d a Structural Necessity-now renaercd obsolete and
unnaTUral by the Machine-and accomplished it rhrough man's joy in the labor
of his hands,
The new will weave for the necessities of mankind, which his Machine will
have mastered, a robe of ideality no less truthful, but more poetical, with a
rational frcl-dom made pO-~sible by the machine, beside which the an of old will
be as The ~wecr, plaimive wail of rhe pipe: to rbe ourpouring of full orchcsrra,
Ir will clothe Neccssiry with the living Aesh of virile imagination, as the liv
ing Aesh lends living grnce to the hard and bony human skeleron.
The nl'W will pass from the possession of kings and classes {Q the every-day
lives of all-from duration in poinl of time to immortality.
This distinction is one to be fdt now ralher than clearly defined.
The definition is the poerry of this M:lchine Age, alld will be wrinen large
in time; but the more we, as artists, examine illto this premonition, the more
we will find Ihe utter helplessness of old forms to s:lIisfy new conditions, and
the crying n(ed of the machine for plastic trealmerll-a pliant. sympathetic
treatment of its needs that the body of structurAl prccedelll Co,nnot yield,
To gain further suggestive evidence of this. let us {'Urn to the Dt'Corative
ArtS-the immense middle~ground of all art now mortally sickened by the
Machine-sickened that il may slough the art ideal of the construclllml art for
the plaslicity of the new art-the Art of Delllocr:lcy,
Here we iind the most deadly pervcr~ion (Jf all-the magnificent prowess of
the machine bombarding the civilized world with the mangled corpses of stren
uous horrors that once stood for cultivatt'<i luxury-standing now for a species
of fatry degeneration simply vulgar.
Without regard to first principles or common decency. Ihe whole letter of
tradition-that is. ways of doing things rendered wholly obsolete and unnatu
ral by the machine-is recklessly fed into iu rapacious maw until you may buy
reproductions for ninery.nine cenlS at ~Thc Fair" I that originally COSt ages of toil
and cultivation, worth now intrinsiC3l1y nothing-th:H arc harmful parasites
befogging the sensibilities of our natures, bclinling and falsifying any true per
ception of norlllal bcallry the Creator may have seen fit 10 implant in us.
The idea of fitness to purposc, harmony berween form and use with regard
to any of these things. is possessed by very few, and utiliZl'<i by them as a protest
chieAy-a protest against ,he macbinc!
As well blame Richard Croker! for the polidal iniquity of America,
As "Croker is the creature and not the crelitOr" of polilical evil, so the
machine is the creature and not the crealor of Ihis iniquiry; and with this dif
ference-that the machine has noble 1>Oli.~ibilities unwillingly forc(.'(11'O degmda

I,or:

IRAi'll LLOYD WRICHT

h91

tion in the nalne of the artistic; the machine, as f.,r as its ani.Hic capacil'Y is con
cerned, is itself the crazed victim of the artist who works while he wailS. and the
artist who waits while he works.
There is a nice distinction beTween the twO,
Neither class will unlock the secrets of the be:lllty of this timc,
They arc clinging sadly to the old order. and would wheedle the giam framc
of things back to ils childhood or fOlW3rd 10 iI'S second childhood, while this
Machine Age is suffering for the attist who accepts. works, and sings as he
works, with The joy of the /}n-r and 'IOIV.
We want the man who eagerly Sl'Cks and finds. or bl;lIlles himself if he fails
10 find, the bcaury of this time; who distinctly acceprs as a singer :Ind a prophet;
for no ,man may work while he waits or wait as he works in the sense that
William Morris' great work was legitimately done-in the sense that most an
and craft: of to-day is an echo; the rime when such work was useful has gone.
Echoes arc by nature decadent.
Anists who feci toward Modernity and the Machine llOW :IS William Morris
and Ruskin were jus[ified in feeling then, had best distillcdy wait and work
sociologically where great work may still be done by them. In the field of art
:lcliviry they will do distinct harm. Alrcady they have wrought much miscr:tble
mischief.
If the artist will only opcn bis eyes he will s(.'(' that the m:tchine he dre:lds
has made it possible to wipe out the mass of mcaningless lUnure to which
mankind, in the name of the artistic. has been more or lc~~ subjected since time
began; for that maner, has made possible a cleanly strength. an ideality and a
poetic fire that the an of the world ha~ not yet seen; for the rn;lchine, the process
now smoOlhle)s away the necessity for petty structllr:tl deceits, soothes this
wearisome struggle to make things seem wh:lt they are not. and can never be;
...atisfies rhe simple term of the modern art equation as the ball of clay in the
~lllplOr's hand yields to his desirc-cornforting forever thi~ realistic. brain-sick
masquerade we arc wom to suppose an.
William Morris pleaded well for simplicity as the basis of all true an. Let
LIS understand the significance to an of thaI word-SIMPLICITY-for it is vilal
10 the Art of Ihe Machine.
We may find. in place of the genuinc thing we have striven for. an aWccl'a
lion of Ihe na"lve, which wc should detest as we detest a full-grown woman with
h:lby mannerisms.
English arl is saturated with it, from the brand-new imitation of the old
hnuse that grew and ramblcd from period to perio<l to the railHllb standing
heneath the eaves.
In fact, most simpliciry following the doctrines of William Morris is a
prOl'est; as a proI'est, well enough; but the highest form of simpliciry is not sim
ple in the sense that the infAnt inrcJligence is simple-liar. for [hat m;l.ttcr, Ihe
\ide of a banl.

1601

1905: JOSIF HOFFMANN & KOLOM"N MOSl~

THE INDUST~IAL DESICN ~E"DER

A natural revulsion of feeling leads us from the meaningless elaboration of

today to lay lOO great suess on mere plalitudes, quite as a clean shecf of paper
is a relief affer looking at a series of bad dr:awings-bul simplicity is not merely
a neutral or a negative qU:llity.
Simplicily in art, rightly understood. is :1 synthetic, positive quality, in
which we: may see evidence: of mind, breadth of scheme, wealth of derail, and
wilhal a sense of complcfencss found ill a rree or a Rower. A work may have the
delicacies of a rare orchid or thc stanch fonitllde of fhe oak, and srill be simple.
A fhing to be simple needs only 10 be true ro iuclf in organic sense.
With this ideal of simplicity, let liS glance hastily ar a few innances of the
machine and see how it has been forced by false ideals to do violence to rhis sim
plicity; how it has made possible the highest simplicity, rightly understood and
so uscd. All perhaps wood is most :wailable of all homely materials and lhere
forc, naturally, Ihe mosr abused-let us glance at wood.
Machinery has been invcnlcd for no orhcr purpose lhan lO imilatc. as
closely as possible. the wood-carving of the early ideal-with the immediate
rc:sulr thai no ninety-nine cent piece of furniture is salable withoul somc horri
ble bOlchwork meaning nothing unless if means that art and craft h,wc com
bined to fix in the mind of the masscs lhe old hand-carved chair as the lit plus
ultm) of l'he ideal.
The miserable, lumpy rribllle fO this perversion which Grand Rapids4 alone
yields would mar the f.tce of Arl beyond repair; to S<1Y nothing of the e1abonuc
:lIld fussy joinery of posts, spindles, jig s,1wcd beams and braces, butted and strut
lcd, [0 outdo lhe sentimentality of the already over-wrought antique product.
Thus is the wood-working industry glutted, cxcept in rarest instances. The:
whole scntiment of early craft dcgenerated to a sentimentality having no longer
dccent significance nor commerci:ll inttgriry; in f.,Ct all thal is fussy. maudlin,
and animal, basing its cxisttnce chiefly on vaniry and ignorance.
Now ICI us learn from th~ Machil\~.
It f~aches us thal Ihe bC:luty of wood lies first in its qualities as wood; no
treatment Ihat did not bring our Ihcse qll:lliries all the rime could be plastic, and
therefore not appropriate-so not beautiful, the machine tcaches us, if we have
lefl it 1'0 the machine that certain simple forms and handling are suitable to
bring OUt thc beauty of wood and cenain forms are not; thal all wood-crving
is apl 10 be a forcing of the material, an insult to irs finer possibilities as a male
rial having in itself intrinsically artistic properrics, of which its bcauriful mark
ings is one, its texlUre another, its color a third.
The machine, by its wonderful cutting, shaping, smoothing, :md repetitive
capacity, has made it possible to so usc il without waste that the poor as well as
the rich may enjoy to-day hc:wtiful surface treatmcnts of dean, strong form.~
that the branch veneers of SheratOn and Chippendalc only hinted at, with dire
extravagance, and which the middle ages uuerly ignored.
The machin!' has emancipalcd thcS<.' beauties of nature in wood: made il

161]

lJl}ssible to wi~ Olll' the mass of meaningless torrure to which wood has been
.ulJjcCled since Ihe world began, for il has been universally abused and mal
UCJted by all peoples bUl the Japanese.
Rightly appreciatcd, is not lhis the very process of elimin:llion (or which
MMris pleaded1
Not alone a protest, morcover, for the mach inc, considered only tcchnically,
If yOll please, has placed in .mist hands fhe means of ide:1lizing (he true nature
111 wood harmoniously with man's spiritual and material needs, without waste,
wlrlJin reach of all.

[ ... I
NOT !

I. The 1893 WorlJ', Cultllnbi~n E.xlx,~ition in Chkago. Wright detem...J il~ uniform. d;wici1,
ing architectore:. feeling il w.u an inappropriate rorm uf nl'rusiun for lhe modem United
SlaiCS.

2, Richrcl Crvker (1841-1922) was an Irish-burn N~ York City polilician who was a nlem
her of the OOrtllpl M'l:lImnany Hall- eily govcrnmc11l, ~nd who Ix-co.rnl ridl from lhe \'ribes
~'Ht -prOtection" money he eollt,clcd whik in officc.
J. Culmination or U!m()jit lillli!.
4, Cr:lnd lUrid$, Michig.UI, w.o~ Ihe center of the U.S. furniture illdll~lry in Ihe laiC ninetttmh

and c:lrly Iwcmil.'fh centuria.

1905
Josef HoftllaM and Kolollan Moser,
"The Work-Pro'Jram of the Wiener Werkstitte"
'I'he Austrian architcct-designcrs Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) and Koloman
Moser (1868-1918), both membc-rs of the VielUla Secession movemcm oflhe
1890s, cofounded thc Wiener Werlmanc (Viennese Workshop: 1903-1932)
with the industrialist :\nd collcctor I~ritl Warndorfer, who provide(l financial
hacking for the endeavor. I MoJeled on C. R. Ashbee's Guild of H:1l1dicraft (sec
next selcction), the Wiener Werkstatte was an enterprise dediclted to realizing
lhe idc3S of John Ruskin and William Morris by producing exquisitely hand
c('.fftc<! furnishings, decof:lIive objecls, lex tiles, jewelry, and bookbindings. l