When a quirky genius who is also the greatest American architect of his time sets out to redesign the way people live, then the results are likely to be at the very least arresting. And Frank Lloyd Wright’s chairs and desks and inkwells are every bit as arresting as his houses.

It would be a shame to raise a handsome house only to fill it with ugly furniture. Wright was well aware of this, and early on he started creating not only walls and roofs but the tables, chairs, and beds that went into his houses. To guard against a distracted householder who might buy less than perfect porcelain or silver, he went on to design a host of implements. Just how well his notions have held up was proved in a recent Christie’s Park Avenue auction: a table lamp in geometric forms with a glass shade, which he designed shortly after the turn of the century, sold for more than seven hundred thousand dollars.

A number of Wright’s designs have survived, some of which were not carried out at the time they were made. Such is the case of the covered sterling silver bowl on the opposite page. Originally conceived in 1930 for the Leerdam Company, a Dutch firm, but not actually produced, it was part of a set of silver and glass ware of which only a flower vase was made. Recently, Tiffany, in New York City, after obtaining permission from Taliesin, the foundation set up by Wright that now owns the bulk of his designs, has begun to make both these and other pieces, such as plates and coffee cups of the pattern once used at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

The covered bowl, in fact, is a direct result of those 1922 Imperial Hotel designs. The hexagonal shapes and diagonal motifs, the sharp angles, and the openwork handles are similar to those of the sugar bowl of a coffee service that was designed for the hotel and used there throughout the twenties and thirties. Even great creators sometimes recycle their own work. The stark, almost Cubist look of the covered bowl and the massive proportions that give it such presence were very much in accord with Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophy. From the very beginning, in his pre-World War I Prairie houses, Wright had shown his fascination with clean, uncluttered, yet expressive forms. Massive beams, wide overhanging balconies, and strong horizontal and vertical elements created majestic volumes in which life seemed both grander and simpler, if sometimes a little austere. To enter a Wright-designed house today is still to experience a lift of one’s spirits, the realization that we can live in surroundings just as beautiful, in their own way, as a Gothic cathedral or a Baroque palace.

Like all great architects, Wright understood that his buildings were part of