The trunk of the tree is unchangeable, the foliage capricious
VICTOR HUGO

thusiasm was music. He was artistic and moody--
a visionary and a drifter.

Far more dominant in the family was Wright's
mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones, a determined daughter
of a farmer from a Welsh community of pioneers
who had settled in the fertile Wisconsin valley
near Spring Green. The Lloyd-Joneses were a de-
vout, hymn-singing clan that still retained their
Druid motto "truth against the world" and wor-
shiped simply in their own family chapel, adorned
with greenery and bright berries. It was altogether
in character that Anna Lloyd-Jones should have
decorated the nursery with nine wood engravings
of great English cathedrals by Timothy Cole, en-
suring, she hoped, that her first-born would benefit
from his early postnatal influence.

In the 1880s, when machine-made ornament was
piled on with reckless exuberance, the Spartan
quality of the Wright home taught Wright the
virtue of simplicity. (At the same time poverty
built up in Wright a love of luxury that in later
years made him live vastly beyond his means.)
What became Wright's great lesson book was the
common heritage of rural America, the endlessly
changing seasons, the rhythm of sowing and har-
vesting. His was a profound immersion in nature,
and he was to draw from it lessons to apply to
architecture for the rest of his life.

"Architecture is the triumph of human imagina-
tion over materials, methods and men, to put man
into possession of his own earth," Wright later
wrote. ⁴ From time immemorial, the chosen instru-

2·1-2 Frank Lloyd Wright lived the life
of master artist and grand seigneur at
Taliesin, Wisconsin (left). For Wright, the
rolling countryside inspired the architec-
ture, as the architecture inspired the way
of life. "Romeo and Juliet" windmill (left)
was designed by Wright as a young man.
In the center are Taliesin's farm buildings
with pigpens Wright called "Pork Avenue."

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