Fascinating! Some things Lloyd Wright could not foresee.
Kathryn Slater and Serendipity
Sort:
Dec 9, 2016
0
#3
I thought this was a pretty big upset for a club championship. Something Karl Stano could not foresee.
Dec 9, 2016
0
#5
N.B. ,
Don't confuse George D. Sturges - Selma's husband- with George Sturgis, the first president of the USCF.
Dec 9, 2016
0
#6
I had inadvertently omitted the paragraph which now now immediately follows the photo of the house - the serendipitous part, no less.
CBS News Sunday Morning once reported that while Frank Lloyd Wright may have been a gifted visionary genius, his designs have not proven very practical over time. In fact, there is an architectural firm that specializes in correcting his design flaws.
Dec 9, 2016
0
#8
It was stressed in several articles about the Geo. Sturges House that the Hollywood couple who lived in the house for nearly a half century were an anomaly and attributed the longevity to their particular/peculiar artsy natures. Most owners of Wright designed homes tend to find them inhospitable and sell after a short time.
"Architects may come and
Architects may go and
Never change their point of view.
When I
run dry
I'll stop a while and think of you."
Dec 9, 2016
0
#9
Yes they are. This particular home is in the same style, and same time, as the famous Fallingwater House in Pennsylvania, but it's only 1200 s.f. and lacks the waterfall of course.
Dec 10, 2016
0
#11
True, Karl Stano must have so regretted missing ... Bg4 and things only got worse from there, a huge upset in the tournament.
Serendipitous indeed, it's been said that synchronicity is the external form of intuition.
Llloyd Wright commisioned chess piece sculptures for his Midway Gardens project, sadly gone - I haven't been able to find pictures of them though small replicas are being sold online.
Dec 10, 2016
0
#12
Thanks. I've been reading up on Midway Gardens.
These figures incorporated into the design seem similar to the chess pieces - as seen in replicas:
What?
Dec 10, 2016
0
#14
It seems, in fact, that the chess pieces were designed during the demolition of Midway Gardens and were indeed modeled after the figures (Sprites) in the above photos.. the FLW site explains: "These chess set pieces were adapted from the multiple "sprites" and other distinctive design elements Mr. Wright commissioned designer and sculptor, Alfonso Iannelli to create for the Midway Gardens, a cultural and entertainment complex built in Chicago, Illinois, in 1914."
Amazing. Thanks once again for bringing this into the thread.
Dec 11, 2016
0
#15
And thank you for the images and clarification of the origin of the chess pieces, which comes after Lloyd Wright. Alphonso Ianneli was an interesting artist I had never heard of; the first video here mentions the Midway Gardens project. The sprites do look like chess pieces, perhaps because of cubism influence. I saw what looked like a chessboard motif in one of Ianneli's paintings.
Dec 12, 2016
0
#16
According to wiki, FLW became acquainted with Ianelli through Wright's son, John and Ianelli had trained under the man who sculpted Mt. Rushmore. His sculptures seem to lean towards tall and slim.
Mother Mary, Chicago (Immaculata H.S.)
Church of St. Francis, Kansas City
Sioux City Courthouse
A watercolor beta design for a mural
So, I'm not sure about any Cubist connection, at least it's not obvious to me. The figures remind me a bit of Phoenician, Egyptian and/or other African sculptures.
Translating them into chess pieces was a marvelous idea.
I stumbled over an article by Kathryn Stater that led me through a series of serendipitous connections. For the record, Kathryn Slater has been involved in organized women's chess in the U.S. almost from the beginning. She and her husband Bill founded the London Terrace C.C. in the Chelsea district Manhattan and operated the Marshall Chess Club for a period of time. Both she and her husband contributed to "Chess Life" magazine sporadically.
Kathryn Slater, 1962
The article appeared in "Chess Life," Aug. 1967. It concerns Selma Sturges, a person I'd never heard of. As the article notes, she was the wife of George Sturges. It seems George, who was an engineer for Lockheed Corp., married Selma in 1937 and they toured Europe for their honeymoon. Upon returning, they saw the January 1938 issue of "Architectural Forum" magazine which featured the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. They contacted Wright and commissioned him to design a house for them. The house was completed in 1939 and today is still referred to as the George Sturges House. However, while they loved the house at first, they soon became disillussioned. I found two stories as to why. The first story claims they started having trouble with a poorly designed water drainage-
"As a result of the innovative wood roof and canted walls ... the house leaked so severely on its completion that Sturges, an engineer for the Lockheed Company, 'was forced to install a series of rain funnels, which later had to be reinforced by metal flashing. Worse yet, the living room ceiling was so low that the 6-foot Sturges had to stoop when he walked through it.'" ...
"The family soon asked another architect, a woman, to design a larger house for their growing family. She replicated Wright's design for the living room, 'but with a higher ceiling.'"
The second story, told by the last owners was "the Sturgeses were told that it was medically impossible for them to have children and how, as a consolation, they decided to commission a house by Wright, whom they had long admired. It was an ideal cottage for two people, but soon after they moved in, Mrs. Sturges realized that she was, in fact, pregnant. Wright altered the house design to accommodate a nursery. But after another child came along, the couple gave up their dream house and moved around the corner to a larger residence."
In 1967, the year this article was published, the house was bought by a couple who would own it for the next 48 years: "Jack Larson, the actor who played Jimmy Olsen on the 1950s Adventures of Superman TV series" and Jim Bridges, an actor/writer/director. Bridges died in 1993, but Larson only died in Sept., 2015. In his will Larson left the proceeds from the intended sale of the Wright house to go to charity. The house wen on the auction block on Jan.15, 2016 but failed to sell for the hoped-for $2,750,000 value. However, after nearly a year, the house sold just the other day, Dec. 6, for $1,850,000.
The article, followed by a charming game:
Selma Sturges, wife of Santa Monica Chess Club's Secretary-Treasurer, George Sturges, recently celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of her marriage.
"On our wedding trip in Europe," Selma reminisced, "we decided at the last minute to tour Russia. The purges were on, and anti-foreign and anti-American feeling, especially, ran high. W'd have been more aware of the atmosphere in Moscow, - but we entered through Odessa, which was quieter, and headed for Tiflis. George bought a chess set and insisted on teaching me the game on the train. He claimed this was a big deal in Russia. So we played chess, in a car full of Red Army soldiers, sailors, Cossack, and workers of all sorts. Before we knew it, everyone was leaning over us, pushing the pieces and kibitzing. It was wild. When we got to Moscow, we met a friend and told him what happened. He held his head. 'I don't believe it,' he said. 'You're supposed to be hated here!'"
Anyone who has seen Selma Sturges in action finds her not only unhateable, but somewhat unforgettable. She is probably the only pipe-smoking mother of two grown children in the entire USCF. Standing or sitting, a tall four foot nine, she is a fabled giant killer, despite her modest rating.
Here is an upset victory in the first round of the recent Santa Monica Bay Chess Club Championship. Though the opponent were separated by an astronomical number of rating points it was a bad day for the Expert, who failed to achieve any momentum, and finally made certain of his downfall by contributing to the entrapment of his Queen. . . Into each life some rain must fall.
Vienna Game