8/14/2023 0 Comments Ccat house cincinnati![]() ![]() It is now time to put to rest the Frank Lloyd Wright association with this design. ![]() No one wants to believe they have been duped with misinformation. Apparently that refutation was never transmitted to either the seller or the buyer. When it appeared for sale on eBay I wrote to eBay to refute their statement that it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. ![]() Later the house was resold for a fraction of what Mr. The purchaser from Christies was Tom Monahan of Dominoes Pizza who was amassing an enormous collection of Wright related objects. Now it has grown legs and is once again being presented as a FLLW original. I should have refuted the assertion at that time, but thought the story so ridiculous it could never be assume to be true. Wright’s name to something to elicit an inflated price at auction. That story was a fabrication of the seller who had apparently made a new version of the original or else spent an inordinate amount of time restoring the wreckage of the original – anything to attach Mr. Over this i had a good laugh and thought, “How absurd.” That NEVER happened. Imagine my surprise when the former apprentice, Mark Heyman called to tell me the cat house was for sale at Christies Auction House. Years after I did the drawing I was walking around the Tonkens’ house and saw the decrepit, delaminated cat house on a trash heap near the lot line. The only drawing which exists (unless someone has made copies) is the one shown, which I did. This design did not come from him and will not be found in his archives. I am not trying to steal any thunder from Mr. The only relationship to FLLWright was/is that I was an apprentice at the time, and his aesthetic had become a part of my creative psyche. The FLLW office was NEVER consulted about this drawing and it did NOT come from Frank Lloyd Wright. My dyslexia and difficulty with spelling manifests in the incorrect spelling of residence. One day Gerry asked me to design a cat house for his daughter. Wright had sent his grandson, Eric Wright, and me to waterproof the exterior of the Tonkens residence so I was familiar with and became even more friendly with Rosalie and Gerald, even occasionally “house sitting” for them. WOW! Has everyone been hoodwinked about the source of this design done when I was an Apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright in the field supervising the construction of the Boswell house in Cincinnati, OH. More information about the CFA Foundation and the Feline History Museum at. I can’t think of a more perfect place for this cat house to live! If you’re ever in Ohio, please make sure to pay the museum a visit. ![]() The new acquisition was unveiled at a reception and tested by some lovely Maine Coon cats. The museum is a project of the CFA Foundation and houses a large collection of historical feline artifacts. This important piece of feline design - along with the original rendering shown above - has passed through the hands of various auction houses and antique dealers until recently being acquired by The Feline History Museum in Alliance, Ohio. Tonkens’ daughter, Nancy, had a cat named Felinus and she requested an appropriate residence for the cat as well, so the office designed this modern cat house in Wright’s favorite color, Cherokee Red. In the early 1950s, Gerald Tonkens commissioned the office of Frank Lloyd Wright to design and build his family’s residence, The Tonkens House, in Cincinnati, Ohio. ![]()
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