In 1915 Frank Lloyd Wright began working on his design for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan. He created an entirely unified design for the commission that included furniture, lighting, textiles, carpets, silver, ceramics, and other decorative elements. The ambitious endeavor took two years to plan and another five years to build. The Imperial Hotel finally opened in 1922.¹ Wright’s designs for the hotel included two different sets of dinnerware. One set featured a simple geometric pattern of gilded squares similar to the dinnerware he had designed for the restaurant at Midway Gardens, which featured a restrained geometric design comprising a thin black line punctuated with small red squares at even intervals.² The other set featured two coordinating variations of a dynamic and asymmetrical abstract composition of multicolored, overlapping circles of various sizes, with some arranged in a line. One of the smaller circles within each piece of the dinner service incorporates a stylized rendition of the Imperial Hotel’s logo. The earliest version of this dinnerware was made from a fine, thin porcelain that was unable to withstand constant use, thus forcing the hotel to reorder the dinnerware in a sturdier weight. The manufacturer, Noritake, continued to produce this design through the 1960s, except for the years during World War II. Production was discontinued in 1968 when the Imperial Hotel was demolished. Aside from a few examples of furniture and other decorative elements, pieces of the ceramic dinner service are all that remain of this significant commission.  

 

Wright’s bold geometric design is derived from the murals he designed for Midway Gardens in Chicago. Titled City by the Sea (1913), the murals adorned facing walls in the tavern room. These were abstract compositions with various sizes of colorful overlapping circles, with many forming vertical columns. The mural design similarly evolved from the set of three stained glass windows that Wright had designed for the Avery Coonley Playhouse in Riverside, Illinois (1912). The windows featured colorful abstract compositions of a few circles seemingly floating over a field of many small, scattered squares. Notably, this marked Wright’s first incorporation of the circle into his design vocabulary. However, in City by the Sea he further developed this motif so that the painted circles extend beyond the space of the mural, encroaching upon the frame and architectural molding, so that the painting becomes a part of the structure. The circle designs on the Imperial Hotel dinnerware similarly extend off the sides of their ceramic forms. Moreover, the red circle that is bisected by the rim of the teacup continues over to the inside of the cup, effectively translating Wright’s experimentation with space and framing devices. This bleeding over of ornament, both in the dinner service and in the mural, signifies the unity of the respective spaces they inhabit.³ —Sarah Marie Horne