SAMARA - New Realm of Beauty
As a child working on his uncle's farm, Froebel Gifts manipulated in the hands and mind of Frank Lloyd Wright captured the essence of life in the meadows, streams and hills of Wisconsin, which eventually became Taliesin, Wright's home and studio. Seventy-five years later on a much smaller one acre lot in Indiana, Wright created a new realm of beauty expressed artistically through his design of SAMARA, one of his last Usonian homes.
America's Centennial Exposition undoubtedly set into motion decisions by Anna Lloyd Wright, a devoted mother and teacher, that would influence forever the architectural work of her young son. It appears that Mrs. Wright already knew Ruth Burritt, the teacher selected to demonstrate Froebel's Kindergarten at the Exposition in Philadelphia and who started her teaching career in Wisconsin.
During the early 1870s, Anna lived with Frank and his two sisters near Boston, a hotbed for educational movement and innovation in America. Deciding that Frank would become an architect would seem to indicate that Anna realized that a full set of Froebel Gifts with its well-defined curriculum for teaching and learning suited perfectly what she had in mind for her young son.
While Anna never could have known how great an architect Frank would be, she must have had a keen and clever mind of her own to understand and provide an education for her son based on solids, planes, lines, and points, or simply on the mastery of the pencil and straightedge.