Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
'Design 706' wallpaper sample
1956
Colour screenprint
Given by Schumacher & Co.
© ARS, New York, and DACS, London 2001 
Museum no. E.582-1966

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most important architects of the early 20th century. He knew of Jones's 'Grammar of Ornament' and had even made tracings from it, as part of some early studies. The idea of constructed architectural ornament was a central element in Jones's theories, and was also crucial to much of Wright's work.

The use of ‘textile blocks’ (pre-cast concrete construction blocks with an ornamented surface) in much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Californian architecture of the 1920s (including the ‘Ennis House’, made famous in Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, Bladerunner) is particularly pertinent when we consider Owen Jones’s belief that architecture and decoration should be intrinsically connected. Lloyd Wright’s designs for the Ennis House, with its Mayan Revival characteristics, are also of interest when we consider that Jones’s Grammar of Ornament was originally to have included a chapter on ‘Yucatan’ ornament.