Illuminating the Glass House (Part I)

One of the questions asked most frequently by visitors as they wander through the Glass House is “Where are the lights?”  Some people notice the canister lights on the floor that send illumination upwards, while others find the small lamp on the bedside table. 

Philip Johnson/Richard Kelly floor lamp featured in the Glass House (photo: Eirik Johnson)

Perhaps most unique is the floor lamp in the living area. Designed by Philip Johnson and his lighting consultant, Richard Kelly (1910 -1977)  in 1953, shortly after the completion of the Glass House, the floor lamp is composed of a brass cylinder that offers uplighting, which then reflects back down from an ivory, enameled-aluminum shade. This conical-shaped lampshade creates a soft pool of local light.

The original lamp stood on three legs (the original model housed in the Glass House sold for $63,000 in April 1997), but this unstable version was subsequently improved by adding a fourth leg, like the one seen in the Glass House. Edison Price, Kelly’s long-time collaborator, manufactured this lamp, as well as many other lighting fixtures designed by Kelly; the two partnered in the engineering and fabrication of both portable lamps and permanent light fixtures. (Edison Price Lighting is now run by Price’s daughter, Emma). 

Philip Johnson/Richard Kelly lamp once owned by William A. M. Burden

By the way, you, too, can have a Johnson/Kelly lamp – for the right  price.  In December 2006, Christie’s sold a three-legged version with a wonderful provenance; the lamp was one of several owned by Mr. William A. M. Burden, an influential president of the Museum of Modern Art.  It illuminated his Fifth Avenue apartment, which Johnson designed. This limited edition piece sold for $20, 400 more than twice the price of the four-legged variety!

 

 

 

 

 

RESOURCES:

Richard Kelly, Architectural Lighting Magazine (May 2006)

Richard Kelly in a New Light, Metropolis Magazine (July 2006)

The Great Illuminator, reprint, Lighting, Design and Application

Richard Kelly Selected Works: An exhibition of works presented by IESNY and the Richard Kelly Grant (brochure and pamphlet)

Kelly’s lighting effects in the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, Seagram Building and the Glass House ( images)

Philip Johnson remembers Richard Kelly (Lighting Design and Application, June 1979)

Edison Price receives the inaugural Richard Kelly award (1992) 

Richard Kelly’s statement following his talk at the Garden Club of America Forum in New York City (November 15, 1962)

Richard Kelly Archive is housed at the Yale University Library.

Filed under: It's in the Details, Edison Price, Edison Price Lighting, Glass House, IESNY, Illuminating Engineering Society, Philip Johnson, Philip Johnson Glass House, Richard Kelly, Richard Kelly Grant

Windows, Portholes, or Occuli?

Brick House (photo: Julius Shulman/Juergen Nogai)

When first looking at the Brick House, I didn’t notice the three large windows punctuating the back (or East side) of the building, originally known as the Guest House and an integral part of Philip Johnson’s complete scheme for the Glass House. With its solid brick veneer, this companion building, virtually the same length but narrower than the Glass House, complements Johnson’s iconic home in every way.

Brick House (photo: Petra Mason)

However, from the back, it opens up in a very different manner.  Three large circular windows in a wooden frame, 5 feet in diameter, reveal the interior of the building that was originally designed with a window in each of three rooms, two guest bedrooms at each end and a study in the middle.

However, only four years after Johnson completed his country home, he altered the interior of the Brick House, combining the study and one bedroom into a larger bedroom and converting the other guestroom into a study. The windows remained the same, now with two in the bedroom, and one in the study.

Brick House bedroom (photo: Carol Highsmith)

With the disappearance of one guestroom and his growing dislike for overnight guests (he called them a nuisance and wanted them to take the last train back to New York City), Johnson often used the single bedroom for himself when not sleeping in the Glass House under the stars.  On the contrary, Johnson enclosed his Brick House bedroom with sliding panels covered in a rosy pink and gold Fortuny print fabric, shutting out all natural light from the circular windows. In fact, Johnson went one step further; he installed dramatic and hidden interior lighting that was controlled by a dimmer near the bed. When the panels were not covering the portholes, these giant windows opened up into the room from hinges at the bottom.

Brick House windows (photo: Steve Brosnahan)

 They provide one of the few ways to bring sunlight and ventilation into the house. Just after the Glass and Brick Houses were finished, a magazine article described the windows from the interior, “their chief merit is that it is more interesting to look at them than through them.” In fact, a headline from the May 26, 1949 issue of Life stated, “…Guest House has Ports, No Windows.”. \And in later years referring to the building’s exterior, Johnson, himself, noted that “a rectangular hole [window] would compete in direction with the shape of the wall itself, here round windows create a totally different compositional effect”.

What was the source of these striking windows?  As an undergraduate at Harvard, Johnson studied history and traveled extensively throughout Europe. He was the first to admit that he borrowed ideas from historic buildings and acknowledged that the Brick House windows were influenced by the eight occuli, or eye windows, found on the Duomo in Florence. The construction of Florence’s great Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, began in 1296 but was left unfinished because no one knew how to build the dome. Finally, the master goldsmith, Filippo Brunelleschi, designed and constructed the highest and widest masonry dome that had ever been built. With its brick veneer dome and round windows, the Duomo surely inspired Johnson’s Brick House.

Filed under: It's in the Details

Heizer Window at Grainger

Philip Johnson loved to call many of the 14 structures on his Glass House property “events on the landscape”. This quote certainly refers to Johnson’s Lincoln Kirstein Tower and the Ghost House, but what about the vernacular buildings on the property?  Johnson and his life-long partner, David Whitney, purchased three buildings, dating from the 18^th to the early 20th centuries and, rather than tear them down, they remodeled or edited them to suit their aesthetic needs. Are these also “events on the landscape”?

Michael Heizer window at Grainger

One such building called Grainger, after David Whitney’s middle name, was purchased by Whitney in 1990 and is across the street from his own home on the GH property, Calluna Farms. This simple 1735 cottage housed Whitney’s collection of pottery and crafts, and was used as a warm-weather retreat, as well as a movie theater.  Painted a custom-color black by Donald Kauffman with a sensuous peony garden planted by Whitney, Grainger also features a playful, graffiti-style-etched window from 1993 by Michael Heizer. These whimsical alterations by Whitney to the antique building certainly made it an “event on the landscape”.

 Before collaborating on the Grainger window, Whitney and Heizer worked together in 1985 when David Whitney curated a show of Heizer’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, entitled Michael Heizer: Dragged Mass Geometric.  The exhibit reconstructed as installation art an earth piece Heizer conducted at the Detroit Institute of Art in 1971.  On the north lawn of the Institute, a thirty-ton boulder of granite was dragged back and forth across the ground, displacing 300 tons of earth. To document his earthwork Heizer created several drawings for the show at the Whitney and gave one to David Whitney as a gift. This colorful and expressive silkscreen, entitled Dragged Mass (Iso/Planar/Section,) 1983 (silkscreen, gouache, oil pastel and pencil on paper) is on view in the Painting Gallery at the Glass House property.

 Could this drawing by Heizer in the Glass House collection have influenced his window for Grainger?  The window etching is composed of graffiti-like abstract lines, swirls, notations and other marks very similar to those in the Dragged Mass drawing, suggestive of a pictographic script.  With this wonderful reference to Heizer’s earthwork, which he often called sculpture, Grainger and it’s etched window takes on a double meaning as an event on the landscape.

 Born in Berkeley, California in 1944, Heizer began to create earthworks on a monumental scale in the desert of Nevada as early as 1966.  He spent time in New York City as a young artist before heading back out west where his intention was to bring art out of the museums. Today he continues to work and live in Nevada.

Filed under: It's in the Details, David Grainger Whitney, Glass House, Grainger, Michael Heizer, Michael Heizer etched glass window, Philip Johnson