The Florence Sketchbook of Frank Lloyd Wright, 1910. (Served as the maquette for the 1910 Wasmuth Portfolio: Studies and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright) . Deluxe limited edition.

San Francisco, Calif.: Wittenborn Art Books, 2010.. 48 leaves on heavy stock (250 gsm matte paper; 48 leaves; 10-3/4 x 15-3/8 inches [27 x 39 cm]) housed in a cloth portfolio, and custom box. This is a limited edition facsimile of the manuscript sketchbook by Frank Lloyd Wright which served as the maquette or layout for the famous Wasmuth portfolio of 1910 entitled "Studies and Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright." It has never been published before and is presented now in a limited edition of 450 numbered copies. The Florence Sketchbook of Frank Lloyd Wright is the freehand maquette or layout for the portfolio entitled Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Studies & Executed Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright) which was published by Ernst Wasmuth in Berlin in 1910. The Wasmuth portfolio contains perspectives and plans on 100 plates for 66 of Wright's buildings and projects between 1893 and 1909. Thirty-six of the plates are of floor plans, printed on tissue paper. These are attached to the other sixty-four, primarily perspectives and renderings on a thick wove paper. The plates in the portfolios were printed from lithographic stones to which the drawings had been transferred. The plates in the portfolio are formal drawings and were produced by Wright together with his associates in Florence, including his son Lloyd, by tracing or recreating extant presentation drawings to a uniform size (16 x 25.25 inches; 406 x 641 mm). The Sketchbook on the other hand contains the master's own freehand drawings or notations for 42 of the eventual plates. Thirty-four of these have actual drawings. Three of the lay-out pages have titles only and another five have borderlines and titles but no sketches. The Sketchbook also contains the first draft of the text that would accompany the portfolio. This text, in the manuscript writing of the master, is reproduced in this facsimile, accompanied by a transcription. The date for the text is first written as “Florence Italy May 1910” but “May” is covered by “June.” In June or July, 1910 the architect and his lover Mamah Borthwick Cheney, had moved to Fiesole a suburb of Florence. The Sketchbook is an artifact of the master’s year long stay in Europe, from October, 1909 to October, 1910. The first page of the Sketchbook has the stamp of the Berlin firm from whom Wright purchased the then blank sketchbook, probably during November, 1909. The last page with writing has a notation about the S.S. Bluecher. This is the ship on which Wright traveled back to America, arriving in New York City on October 6, 1910 and then 2 days later, in Oak Park, Illinois. There is also a concordance to the plates in the Wasmuth portfolio and to other standard works by Hitchcock and Storrer. New in original shrink-wrap.