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A beautiful, cast concrete “Textile Block” decorative architectural element by Frank Lloyd Wright or a Wright follower, c. 1920’s
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is world-renowned and revered today as America’s greatest and most original Modern architect. Wright was always on the lookout for unique and original materials and methods with which to build and one of his most original ideas and creations was the so-called “Textile Block”, a cast concrete block such as this one made with various Modernist graphic designs and made to be used in multiple quantities to build unique exterior and interior walls in some of his structures.
The most noteworthy of Wright’s “Textile Block” structures are the 1920’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, several c. 1920’s houses in the Los Angeles area of California; the Hollyhock House, the Storer House and the Freeman, Millard and Ennis houses (which used some 27,000 individual textile blocks alone) and also the famed 1929 Arizona Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix where Wright himself was not the lead architect but the general design consultant and contributed the wonderful and creative use of his signature textile block walls to this distinctive structure.
Above center, Frank Lloyd Wright. Below center, The Storer House, Los Angeles.
Above photo source and © Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Below photo source and © Facebook
“The textile block system is a unique structural building method created by Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 1920s. Named for the way the structural elements are "woven" together, the style uses custom-patterned concrete blocks cast on-site and laced with a grid of steel reinforcing rods. While the details changed over time, the basic concept involves patterned concrete blocks reinforced by steel rods, created by pouring concrete mixture into molds, thus enabling the repetition of form. The blocks are then stacked to build walls.”
-Quotation source and © Wikipedia
We have not been able to find the exact design pattern of this particular textile block in photos we have seen of these structures, but that doesn’t mean that pieces of it were not there somewhere, numerous various patterns of textile blocks were used in parts of all of these structures to great effect, so it is impossible to know if this particular block was made for use by Frank Lloyd Wright himself or for one of his architectural followers, but the Modernist design sensibility, graphic appearance and particular manufacturing technique of this textile block is virtually identical to those of the textile blocks used in Wright’s structures.
Frank Lloyd Wright's original Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan which opened in 1929 and was demolished in 1968.
Photo source and © The Imperial Hotel, Tokyo
The block measures a standard 12” or one foot square and it is 2” in depth at its deepest point. It weighs a quite considerable 13.8 pounds. The textile block is in excellent original condition with no cracks or chips and very little wear. It shows some very slight evidence on the back of once having been used.
This lovely decorative architectural design element would work beautifully as a unique stand-alone sculpture mounted on a display stand or not. It could also be most beautifully displayed on a wall using a wall mount or even inset into a wall or floor. How to best display and admire it is up to its next fortunate owner.
This original architectural textile block is a rare and uniquely attractive period piece of American Modernist architecture and design done in the Wright style, made for or certainly inspired by the great master himself.
Price $1,350
Above left, the Ennis House, at right, the Millard House in Los Angeles.
Left and right photo sources and © Los Angeles Times