EMIL BACH HOUSE DESK COMMISSION: a three piece walnut tansu desk for the Emil Bach House, a Frank Lloyd Wright national landmarked residence in Chicago, Illinois.
The three piece Black Walnut Tansu Desk was commissioned in 2005 and delivered in summer of 2006 to the new owner of the Emil Bach House. As part of a total refurbishment of the residence, the desk was commissioned to fit with “the spirit of Wright’s 1915 design and the use of materials consistent with the overall architectural theme.” The desk is made of air dried black walnut and beech.
The desk is a work of original and contemporary craft, not a reproduction of Wright furniture designs, and yet incorporates the following features as befits the high standards being incorporated in the refurbishment of the Emil Bach House national treasure:
1. Wright’s use of bands of casement windows ‘wrapping around corners’ is reflected in the two checked drawer fronts in that the checks ‘wrap around the corner’ into the drawer sides.
2. The color scheme of the Bach House — cream walls and Cherokee red trim — is complimented in the reddish air dried black walnut and the cream accents of the sap wood and beech sun disk.
3. Matching wood selection: all the interior trim and original built in furniture of the Bach House are walnut; the floors are beech.
4. Walnut folklore: while it may or may not be true that all the walnut was cut from one tree, it is certain that 100% of the walnut for the desk came from a single flitch sawn walnut log. This allowed the boards used in all the major surfaces of the desk to be book matched.
5. The beech ‘sun disk’ can be linked to Wright’s use of a yellow interior paint color he named ‘sunshine.’
6. Wright liked to weave a unifying motif throughout a house, giving them a quality of being ‘cut from one piece of goods.’ The book-matched boards from this desk were literally milled from one tree.
7. The caning on the sliding doors, which conceal files, marries the desk to the chair, a duplicate of a chair from the original dinette set designed by Wright for the Bach house.