Taliesin Landscape © 2008 Bo Mackison
View of Taliesin in the distance and the surrounding countryside.
Red Taliesin Bus © 2008 Bo Mackison
Jump on this bright red bus, Frank Lloyd Wright’s favorite color, BTW, and it takes you to Taliesin, Wright’s home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. This hillside was Wright’s favorite spot as a child when he lived and worked on his uncles’ farms – he would come here to hide and escape his chores. When he was an adult, his mother bought the property as a bribe to get her son to return to Wisconsin from a long stay in Europe. The bribe worked and FLW returned and built his home there.
Taliesin Apartments © 2008 Bo Mackison
These are the interior gardens; the main house in behind the camera. The long row structure to the right was originally a long string of barns for the family’s animals. They are now apartments for the architectural students studying Prairie Architecture at the school housed nearby.
Taliesin © 2008 Bo Mackison
Wright designed his buildings so that there was not a direct route to the entrance. He wanted you to “have an adventure” before you even stepped into the interior. In the case of Taliesin, one has to go through the garden, around the string of student apartments, and then past his studio, to find the front door. The windows to the left are in the main room of the house, one of the first “great rooms” – a combined living room, dining room, study.
Taliesin’s Interior Gardens © 2008 Bo Mackison
A view of the garden. Wright bought innumerable Asian artifacts to Taliesin, and decorated the interior and exterior with these treasures. No photos of the interior were allowed, though the home tour was in depth and included all of Wright’s living areas and studio. Filled with wonderful Wright designed furnishings, Oriental rugs and Asian art.
Spring Green is about 30 miles west of Madison and Taliesin is truly a national treasure, worth the visit if anywhere in the area.
