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Wright, Frank Lloyd.

A Taliesin Square Paper: Square Paper Number 6, Usonia, Usonia South and New England, Declaration of Independence... 1941.

Spring Green, WI: Frank Lloyd Wright, 1941. Folded broadsheet measuring 17” x 16.5”, with inset map.

An early issue of Wright’s sporadically published series of manifestos; all of which expound his steadfast belief in community and opposition to empire, mixed here with a dash idiosyncratic Anglophobia, implying throughout that America’s impending entry into WWII is the result of a British cabal.

Herein Wright greatly simplifies state boundaries, in an effort to erase English cultural influence on the federal government, reducing their number from 48 to 3: Usonia, Usonia South, and New England. Respectively the three new dominions would comprise the whole of the Midwest (expanded to included Missouri and Arkansas), the former confederacy (with the addition of Kentucky and West Virginia, as well as the exclusion of Arkansas), and finally the whole of contemporary New England plus, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware. Running throughout Wright’s screed is a river of distrust for both the English and their cultural heirs in the North East: “And of our North Eastern States, originally English, this is true in Architecture, habits of thought and at this moment particularly true in world-outlook. All this servile imitation that the English themselves do not really respect but which they are willing to exploit, as usual.” Printed in the fourth and final panel is a map of this redistricted nation illustrating new state boundaries over the old. This example, like another Taliesin Square Paper in our inventory, bears the address of Wright’s client Edith Carlson. Carlson, a schoolteacher in Superior, Wisconsin, commissioned Wright to design a house able to weather the snow and cold endemic to Superior’s shores. “Below Zero,” as the house was known, never saw completion, however it’s plans survived and were used to construct an Ann Arbor residence in 1979.

CONDITION: Very good.

Item #2929

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