Recommended book: Reflections from the Shining Brow
The cover of Amin’s book, and a photo of Wright, Kamal Amin and Wright’s daughter, Iovanna in Taliesin’s Work Court.
The author, Kamal Amin(opens in new tab) was in the Taliesin Fellowship(opens in new tab) from 1951-1977 and finally wrote this book about his life there (and beyond) after being persuaded by a friend.
You’d think a book by a former apprentice would have made it interesting to me when it was published 22 years ago. But I was entirely put off when I saw the title:
You can see my post of all the books (I think?) by apprentices, here(opens in new tab).
The name OLGIVANNA(opens in new tab)1 immediately caught my attention.
I was afraid the book was going to be all about worshipping Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow, or… hating her guts.
After all,
I’d come to the conclusion years before that we’re really not going to get the truth of her—or the Fellowship—until long after people who knew her and her acquaintances have passed away. That’s due in part to some very intense feelings.
Like:
I remember listening to one person filled with Olgivanna-disdain talk so long about how creepy they thought it was that Frank Lloyd Wright called his wife “Mother”
remember, the guy was born in 1867(opens in new tab)
that I eventually said, ” S—: you’ve got such a problem with her, I seriously think you need therapy.”2
But then, for some reason I picked “Reflections from the Shining Brow” years later in our guide library and I really liked it.
In fact, I told Olgivanna-hating “S” that they3 should read it.
Amin is complimentary towards her, but also paints a really honest portrait, along with what it was like with her direction.
And the author wrote something you can’t deny: if Wright hadn’t had Olgivanna, he probably wouldn’t have been able to devote so much time to his design. Like, I’ve come across stories of people visiting Wright at Taliesin in the early 1920s (before the Wrights met(opens in new tab)) and if he couldn’t find things, he’d get pissed off, saying people were “taking things” from him. Then after rampaging, he’d find whatever he was looking for.
Amin writes:
Olgivanna was God’s gift to Mr. Wright. She did everything for him. She spared him all domestic and organizational concerns. She watched his diet and through willing apprentices provided him with constant care and support. He had all the time to work and create without worrying about anything else.
Amin, 65.
Plus, he wrote that:
Many who met Olgivanna disliked her. Many who never met her also disliked her. A number of very close individuals worshipped her…. No one felt indifferent or lukewarm toward her. Nor could anyone simply dismiss her.
Amin, 52-53.
I think the book
Should be read by anyone trying to make sense of the Taliesin Fellowship.
Because as time passes
and he link to the Fellowship isn’t as strong at Taliesin(opens in new tab) in Wisconsin and Taliesin West(opens in new tab) in Arizona, people are still trying to figure out what that group was/is/has been.
Over a year ago I gave a presentation to guides in the Taliesin tour program(opens in new tab) about the Fellowship, because almost none of the current guides gave tours while the School of Architecture(opens in new tab) still lived at the Taliesins.
After all, it took me about three tour seasons to fully understand what the Fellowship was, even when I saw them every summer.
<b>BTW(opens in new tab)</b>: I occasionally read articles online about former apprentices that say, “He/She went to school under Wright at Taliesin West….”
And I always think “NO. They were in the Fellowship.” You didn’t only “go to school” under Wright at Taliesin West.
When you were in the Fellowship, you usually went back and forth between the two Taliesins. There are exceptions, but as students, they usually did “the migration”.
GET BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE SAYING, KEIRAN
I recommend
(before you read every all of the books by former apprentices I linked to above)
reading four books to start to understand the Fellowship:
- Reflections from the Shining Brow
- Working with Mr. Wright(opens in new tab), by Curtis Besinger
which brings you season-by-season through the author’s apprentice years of 1939-55, details changes that were made and special things like movies.
And you also get the opinion of someone who really disliked Olgivanna
- Apprentice to Genius(opens in new tab) by Edgar Tafel,
which is the OG(opens in new tab) of apprentice books, and tells you about the Fellowship’s scrappy beginning
and
- At Taliesin: Newspaper Columns by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, 1934-1937(opens in new tab), edited and with commentary by Randolph C. Henning(opens in new tab)
These were the week-by-week newspaper articles written by apprentices so you can see how nutty it all was in the 1930s.
As I always say: it shows why kids stuck around in the middle of nowhere under an architect who wasn’t really working for the first few years.
Oh, and!
Randolph Henning is publishing his book on Wright and Miriam Noel (his second wife(opens in new tab)) in May of next year!
It’s entitled, Under So Evil a Star: Frank Lloyd Wright and Maude Miriam Noel.
But, Keiran: what about the Fellowship book by Friedland and Zellman?
Oh, yes, I read it over the weekend after it came out 20 years ago.
People always say about that book that, “It has so many endnotes!” Yes, there are over 100 pages of Endnotes. But I soon learned to read the book’s text, and its endnotes, simultaneously.
Because, I mean,
the book’s text glosses over the complexities of the story. It’s like the narrative says 1 + 2 = 3, while the Endnotes say 1 X 2 X 6 ⁒ 4 = 3.
Originally posted September 14, 2026.
The two images at the top of the post come from my searches for the cover of Amin’s book plus the photograph of Iovanna with Amin at Taliesin. The photo with Iovanna appears in Amin’s book in photos published following p. 112.
Notes:
- In my wrote to edit Wikipedia(opens in new tab) pages, I’ve gone over here and think I did a good job on it. But can’t take off the notice myself, since that might be a conflict. I’d appreciate it if one of you regularly edits Wikipedia might had a go at it.
- yeah, it sounds a little weird to us, but after all, I dated someone (who was born 100 years after Wright) whose dad sometimes called his wife “mother”.
- you might have a problem with using “they” instead of a gender but we’re all professionals here and I don’t want anyone else to make assumptions on who the person might be because… I don’t know – might be a fun topic to talk about if I see these Frankophiles out in the wild.
