Wright's Color and Magic at SAMARA
First and Second Gifts
Learning as a child on a grid-lined table and designing as an architect on a four-foot square module has plenty in common. With Froebel Gifts in hand and mind, as a child and architect, Frank Lloyd Wright discovered new realms of nature, knowledge and beauty.
The colors of the First Gift abound at SAMARA. While Wright tended to use more subdued color schemes in his original designs of upholstery, drapes and rugs for his Usonian homes, the pillows and cushions at SAMARA capture the spectrum of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo of the six colored balls of Froebel's First Gift.
The Second Gift with its wooden-shaped cube, cylinder and sphere, when rotated about their axes on dole rods, are transformed from one shape to another in time and space. A spinning cube appears as a cylinder, while a spinning cylinder appears like a sphere. In this way, SAMARA's straight-lined and angular design can be transformed into repeating patterns of curves, arcs and spheres.
This must have been an astounding discovery for a young boy, who later as a great architect turned Froebel's Gifts into something magical at SAMARA. It would be analogous to spinning the cube-shaped hassocks to form cylinders, and rotating the cylinders to produce spheres.