Bernard Pyron
In the summer of 1961 I acquired three Ward Willits high back dining
room chairs, a high back with arm rests, a low back chair and the
Willits dining room table. I was selling pottery at an art fair in
Highland Park, Illinois when a lady came up and talked with me about my pottery.
She invited Clay Bailey and I to her house and gave us each one of the
Willits high back chairs. That summer Bailey traded me his high back
for a Willits lounge chair. Mrs Posner said that in the fifties the
owners of the Willits house threw out the Wright designed chairs and
tables and she got them or some of them. The house of Mrs Posner was
also by Wright, a few blocks closer to Lake Michigan than the Willits
house. .
One of the high back Ward Willits dining room side chairs is or was in the
The Victoria and Albert Museum. I found it a few years ago on this
site: . Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) ...
www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1312_artsandcrafts/ explore/trail/v_
and_a_arts_and_crafts_trail.
pdf - Similar pages
I am not sure if this is one I owned, which was
sold to a private collector in New York in 1979, or an
identical chair to ones I had but owned by someone else. "Dining chair
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) For the Ward-Willitts house, Highland
Park, Illinois USA 1902 Stained oak, with replacement leather
upholstery."
A color photo of a Willits house high-back dining room chair without
arm rests is shown with this article on the chair in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. That chair is identical to the three Willits
high-backs I owned from 1961 until 1979.
The following quote on a Ward Willits high back chair in the St Louis
Art Museum is from:
http://www.stlouis.art.museum/index.aspx?id=139&obj=27 Decorative
Arts and Design Frank Lloyd Wright , American , 1867 - 1959:
Dining Chair designed c.1903 56 x 17 1/16 x 18 3/16 in. (142.2 x 43.4
x 46.2 cm) oak with replacement synthetic leather upholstery Funds
given by the Decorative Arts Society 239:1977 probably made by John W.
Ayers, American, 1850 - 1914 One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, St.
Louis, MO.
I Photographed This Willitts High Back In 1977 On Langdon Street In Madison
I know that the St Louis Art Museum bought one of my high back Willits chairs because in 1977 Lyn Springer of the Museum came from St Louis to Madison to
get it from me. The color photo shown on the Museum site given above site is not the best
photo of a Wright high back chair because its a little too dark.
The following on the sale of another identical Ward Willits high back
dining room chair at Christie's to Tomas Monaghan, owner of Domino's
Pizza is from: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/frank_lloyd_
wright/index .html?offset=190&&& CULTURAL DESK | December 15, 1986
1901 Chair by Wright Sold for Record Price: A high-backed oak dining
chair designed in 1901 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Ward Willits
house in Highland Park, Ill., has been sold at Christie's for a record
price at auction for a 20th-century chair and for any architectural
design object by Wright, ''I've been a Frank Lloyd Wright fanatic
since I was 12 years old,'' Thomas Monaghan said after he bought the
spindle-backed chair for $198,000 on Friday. Mr. Monaghan, chairman
and owner of Domino's Pizza Inc., of Ann Arbor, Mich., acquired the
chair, he said, for the National Center for the Study of Frank Lloyd
Wright, which he is building in Ann Arbor. Mr. Monaghan also owns the
Detroit Tigers baseball team. The chair sold for three times the
expected price and well above the previous high for any
architectural fitting or furnishing by Wright.
On Clayton Bailey's web site: http://www.claytonbailey.com/bettydrawflw.htm
"Frank Lloyd Wright designed this chair in 1901 Watercolor on Paper by
Betty G. Bailey 14" x 20." "Clayton and a friend found a dining set of
Frank Llyod Wright furniture from the Ward Willits house in the
basement of another Wright house in Chicago. Our friend bought the set
of 8 chairs and oak table and Clayton was given this chair for helping
the friend move the set from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin. We enjoyed
living with the chair for 40 years, and recently sold it in a
Christies auction." I wonder who that 'friend" could have been? Betty
Bailey had it partly right. But the first time Bailey and I were at
the Wright designed home of Mrs. Posner she gave each of us a high
back chair. Later in the summer of 1961 Bailey and I were back in the
north Chicago area for another art fair and I bought from Mrs Posner
the Willitts dining room table, another high back chair, that high
back with the arm rests we called the Papa Bear chair, and the low
back chair we called the Jestor's chair.
This Is The Willits Lounge Chair I traded To Clayton Bailey For One of the Willits High Back Dining Room Chairs
Mrs Posner told us that the owners of the Ward Willitts house had in
the fifties thrown out all that Wright designed stuff and Mrs Posner
got much of it and kept it in her basement.
Bailey's Willits lounge chair was sold at auction in
December of 2001 by Christie's for $110,000 (also shown as $127,000). On page 75 Thomas A.
Heinz in his 1994 book Frank Lloyd Wright: Interiors and Furniture
shows a color photo of a Ward Willitts house living room chair
identical to the one above that Clayton Bailey owned from 1961 until
2001. The photo is by him.
Beth Cathers,
of a New York art gallery, told me that the market was off for that December 2001 sale. Maybe it was too close in time to 911.
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=3828630
CHRISTIE'S
"AN IMPORTANT OAK SPINDLED ARMCHAIR FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, EXECUTED BY
JOHN W. AYERS. CO. FOR THE WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE, HIGHLAND PARK,
ILLINOIS, CIRCA 1901
Price Realized $127,000
PROPERTY BELONGING TO CLAYTON AND BETTY BAILEY Provenance Ward W. Willits
Dr. and Mrs. Poser, owners of Frank Lloyd Wright's Mary Adams house,
Highland Park, Illinois, 1905
Bernard Pyron
Christie's has a link to the December 2001 sale of Clayton Bailey's
Ward Willits arm chair, with information on the chair, and a good
photo of the chair. See:
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=3828630
I do not know how the other identical high back chairs to my three
were preserved and eventually - or maybe a couple of them - ended up
in museums or in the hands of collectors. And I am not sure how many
high-backs there were originally in the Willits dining room, perhaps
eight. On the site above for the Wright chair in the Victoria and
Albert Museum there is a small photo of "all" the high back dining
room chairs around the table of the Ward Willits house. Is this
supposed to be the Ward Willits set? A color photo could not have
been made of the chairs in the actual house in the early 20th century.
Probably the chairs and table are replicas. They might be the replicas
created for the restoration of the Willits house by architect John
Eifler.
I also do not know where the Ward Willits original dining room table
went after it was given to Homer Fieldhouse, a Madison landscape
architect. I acquired the table along with the five Willitts House chairs
in the summer of 1961. Homer Fieldhouse of Madison, Wisconsin traded
or gave it to Robert
Graves, a son of Wright's caretakers of Taliesin. Robert Graves sold
the table in the eighties to Scott Eliott of Chicago who soon sold it
to Daniel Wolf of NY. There
the trail of the table grew cold. I had thought Daniel Wolf was a NY
art gallery but apparently the gallery sold only photos.
The Chair On the Right Is My High Back Willits Chair With Arm Rests that I Sold To the High Museum In Atlanta in 1979. Beside It Is One of the Three High Backs Without Arm rests.
Remember that I sold one of the three high back chairs without arm rests to the St Louis Art Museum in 1977. A second high back just like it was sold to the
Metropolitian Art Museum in 1978. The high back chair with arm rests
was sold to the Atlanta Art Museum in 1979. A third high back chair
without arm rests was sold to an unknown private collector in 1979.
Side View of My Low Back Willitts Chair
Several of the seven pieces of the Frank Lloyd Wright Ward Willitts house furnature I got in 1961 have interesting stories about them after I acquired them. The pieces are interesing because they were disigned by Frank Lloyd Wright and are valuable in terms of their money value but also valuable as American art, and their stories are also interesting because during that period of about 1961 to 1985 Wright was not well liked by some people, or unknown by others.
More On the Story of What Happened To the Frank Lloyd Wright Ward Willitts Dining Room Table. This is part of the story of the Ward Willitts furniture that belonged to me from 1961 until I began selling it off in 1978.
"On Savewright, an Internet site, I found this post from Feb 1, 2011 on the story of the Ward Willitts
dining room table on www.savewright.com:
Outside In. ,Posted: Tue Feb 01, 2011,
Roderick, I'm afraid that the owner was not offered a chance to buy
the table for $15,000. Milt and I visited Graves at his home in
Wisconsin where the table was being stored in a chicken coop. Graves
DID NOT want cash, because of the tax implications, so he asked if he
could trade something for the table, i.e., a car. Milt purchased an
Audi for him, but Graves started getting nervous about the value of
the table and contacted Scott Elliot, who traveled to Wisconsin to
appraise the table with a suitcase full of cash. Elliot later sold the
table to Daniel Wolf in NY for an undisclosed amount, but some say it
was $35k. Milt kept the Audi and drove it for a few years. Luckily I
snapped quite a few photos of the table during our visit, and, with
the drawings on file at the Univ. of Michigan, was able to reproduce
the original table quite accurately."
Who is "outside in?" Is it John A. Eifler, the Chicago architect who
supervised the restoration of the Ward Willitts house.
And who is "Milt" mentioned here? I just dug out my correspondence on
the Willitts stuff and looked at the letters I have from John Eifler.
In an October 24, 1984 letter John Eifler says "Wilbert Hasbrouck has
appraised the value of the table at $35,000, much higher than any of
us expected. Milt is not interested in paying anything near that - so
we have not bought the table..."
Remember that Wilbert R. Hasbrouch was the Chicago expert on Frank Lloyd Wright and the Chicago Prairie School architecture who appraised my Frank Lloyd Wright chairs and the table from the Willitts house. John A. Eiffler and his client he new owner of the Ward Willitts house were looking for the original Ward Willitts dining room able which I had owned. I was also looking for it at that time, after I learned that it was given to Madison landscape architect Fieldhouse,
John Eifler and Milt, the new owner of the Willitts
house in 1984, were at the home of Robert Graves and saw the Willitts
table in the chicken coop of Graves. This is a part of the story I
had not known then.
I am not sure that Homer Fieldhouse knew the table was from from the
Willitts house when it was given to him. Graves might not have known
it either. I wonder how Eifler and Milt found the table?
I have an August 13, 1984 letter from David A. Hanks saying the
Willitts dining room table would bring $15,000 to $20,000 in New York.
I found a "Spring, 1985" letter from John Eifler saying that "The
table and chair were sold to Scott Eliott of Kelmscott Galleries in
Chicago by Graves. He in turn sold it to Wolfe Galleries in NYC for
$45,000. I don't know how he got the chair." Eifler must be
referring to the "lost" Willitts low back chair of mine I was looking
for in Wisconsin in 1984. I got it back in 1985, and getting it back
after it was lost in 1971 is a story in itself, which I will go into
sometime. So I don't know what chair Scott Elliott sold along with the
table.
Here is another part of the story:
I found the letter of Wilbert R. Hasbrouck of Chicago sent along with
his appraisal of the Ward Willitts chairs. The table was not included
since, in 1977, when the appraisal was made, my former wife owned the
table. In addition, the low back chair lost in 1971 was not included
in the appraisal. He said each of four high back chairs were worth
$4,500 in 1977. One of the high backs is wider and has arm rests. It
was sold to the Atlanta Art Museum. One high back was sold to the St
Louis Art Museum, one to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and
the last high back without arm rests was sold to an unidentified
collector.
I am sorry I allowed the chair to be sold to someone whose identity
has been kept secret. The Willitts lounge chair which Clayton Bailey
acquired when he was with me in Highland Park, Illinois in the summer
of 1961 at the art fair was sold by Christie's in late 2001 for
$110,000 to a collector whose name was kept secret. On page 75 Thomas
A. Heinz in his 1994 book Frank Lloyd Wright: Interiors and Furniture
shows a color photo of a Ward Willitts house living room chair
identical to the one that Clayton Bailey owned from 1961 until 2001.
And here is a note from Derry Graves, wife of Robert Graves, dated
August 11, 1984, saying "We have made a decision on the Wright table
and that is not to sell it."
I also have a letter which mentions the Ward Willitts dining room
table in the possession of my former wife. Its dated January 17, 1982
and says the table was in the house at Cabot Lane when he bought the
house. "I saw it when I toured the premises. It was dismantled and
stacked in the shop. However, when I took possession of the house it
was not there."
Cabot Lane is in Madison, Wisconsin.
It was sometime between early 1982 and the summer of 1984 that the
table was given to Homer Fieldhouse of Madison, Wisconsin.
I sold my Ward Willitts Wright chairs at an early time, from 1977 until the mid eighties, but mostly in the late seventies. The price on the few Wright high back chairs of his Chicago area Prairie Period that appeared on the market went up in the eigh ties. A high back Willitts chair identical to my three chairs was sold by Christie's to Tomas Monaghan, owner of Domino's Pizza on December 15, 1986 - for $198,000. The most I got for a Willitts chair was in 1985 for the low back - at $22,000. At that time, though, one of the Willitts high backs might have sold for a hundred thousand. .Some of the people who were art museum curators, dealers and collectors of Frank Lloyd Wright chairs and other decorative arts that I dealt with or knew about in the late seventies might be considered to be part of the LGBT and Left leaning community today. They were not creative people, but were attractedto Frank Lloyd Wright because of Wright's growing image.
The Ward Willitts piece which was probably the less valued by the museums and collecors was the low back chair, which was like the high backs but just not as high. That chair was stored in the basement of 1037 Jenifer street in Madison's near East Side in 1970. When a friend told me in 1971 that my chair and some sculptures were taken I went there and found none of the stuff.
The chair was retrurned to me in 1985 after I ran two ads, one after another in the Madison newspapers showing a photo of the low back chair, and offering a reward for its return. I got it back from the woman who lived in the apartment at 1037 Jenifer where she said the chair was there when she moved in. She put the chair in storage for me in a Madison storage place and Beth Cathers from a New York Art Dedaler came to Madison to see it and bought it from me. It was sold to the Los Anfgeles County Museum of Art in the eighties.
"Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd • Los Angeles California 90036 •
publicinfo@lacma.org
They say "Side Chair from the Ward M. Willits House, Highland Park,
Illinois, 1902." This is the chair that was taken from
storage at 1037
Jenifer Street on Madison's near east side in 1971, but it was left
in the building. When a woman who lived in the apartment where the
chair was when she moved in, moved out, she took the chair.
The Willitts high back chair with arm rests, we called the "Papa Bear Chair,' was one of the Willitts pieces I sold to an art museum through David A. Hanks, who paid the exact appraisal value put on the Willits chairs in 1977 by Wilbert R. Hasbrouch. The chair may have had a greater market value than that in 1979. Remember than Hasbrouck appraised the Willits dining room table at a higher value in the eighties than did Hanks.
Clayton Bailey sent me the link to this drawing of his Willitts chair by his wife Betty Bailey this morning.
"Frank Lloyd Wright designed this chair in 1901
Watercolor on Paper 14" x 20"
Clayton
and a friend found a dining set of Frank Llyod Wright furniture from
the Ward Willits house in the basement of another Wright house in
Chicago. Our friend bought the set of 8 chairs and oak table and Clayton
was given this chair for helping the friend move the set from Chicago
to Madison, Wisconsin. We enjoyed living with the chair for 40 years,
and recently sold it in a Christies auction."
