Fund the Trust, Frank Lloyd Wright Needs Your Help

Everyone knows conservation is awesome! That's why we were happy to host a tour for the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust this past week. The tour, designed to energize volunteers and members, was given in an effort to kick-off the fund raising efforts for a final group of Frank Lloyd Wright prints. We love our jobs here at Graphic Conservation, so you don't have to ask us twice to spend an hour or two talking about it! We showed our guests around to the different areas of the lab, and enjoyed totally nerding out on all kinds of conservation terms and processes. Of course, no tour is complete without a brief demo and a few before and after treatment examples.



The fund raising efforts are going toward a final group of 17 plates for the FLW Preservation Trust's edition of the Wasmuth Portfolio, which is one of the few complete sets in existence. The publication of Frank Lloyd Wright's 1910 Wasmuth Portfolio, consisting of 100 plates featuring his plans and perspective of buildings from 1893-1909, gave the world it's first view of his dynamic and world changing style. Because of the beauty and desirability of these plates, many portfolios have been dismantled and sold for parts. Both the rarity and the historical importance of this complete portfolio make it one of the prizes of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust's collection.



As many other foundations dependent on donations to fund conservation have done when dealing with huge projects, the Trust opted to break the plates up into groups allowing them to be treated incrementally over a number of years. We've been working on the conservation and preservation of these plates for over a decade and you can imagine how excited we are to have this project almost completed. The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust hope to fund this project completely by private donations. If you would like to take part in this project, please feel free to contribute today!

Interested in more information on the Wasmuth Portfolio? Check out the University of Utah's full online catalog of each plate. These look like they could use a little help from us!