Journal of Student Research 2014

Journal of Student Research

apprentice in charge of the Taliesin drafting studios. He rendered the ideas that Wright created, supervised the work of the apprentices and traveled to oversee various building sites. Howe worked so closely with his mentor that his desk was adjacent to Wright’s and they often shared drafting tables, taking turns working on the same drawing. He learned to work very quickly in order to keep up with Wright. It is said he could create finished drawings more quickly than drawings can be created with computer assistance today. 7 John Howe produced many of the beautiful drawings associated with Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture. He worked with Wright on hundreds of projects, including the senior architect’s most famous and influential works. Howe was the draftsman for Wright’s masterpiece, Fallingwater (1934) in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, the Johnson Wax Building (1936) in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (1943). Frank Lloyd Wright was an excellent draftsman and taught Howe the style and drawing technique that Wright had perfected under his teacher Louis Sullivan, an influential architect known as the “father of modernism”. With Wright’s guidance, Howe refined his skill at producing pencil and ink plans and perspectives. Howe created two sets of hand colored drawings for each project, often drawn directly onto the blue line drawings. His hallmark technique involved many perfectly rendered parallel lines, illustrating planes in color. Howe was known for his unique, stylized way of rendering vegetation, showing the integration of the design into the site, a cornerstone of organic architecture. 8 These drawings distinguished Howe throughout his career. The excellence and speed at which he could render was truly remarkable. This skill undoubtedly aided him in the second chapter of his career, his architecture practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. John Howe’s Life After Taliesin In April of 1959, at the age of 91, Frank Lloyd Wright passed away while undergoing surgery in Phoenix, Arizona. Howe continued to work at Taliesin, helping to complete projects that were in progress and starting new commissions, running the Taliesin studio along with Wes Peters, Wright’s engineer and son in-law. They completed projects that were started under Frank 7 Myron A. Marty & Shirley L. Marty, 1999, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press. 8 Jane King Hession & Tim Quigley, The future imagined: John Howe in Sandstone, 42.

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