D.D. Martin Mural

Fireplaces are a prominent feature of Frank Lloyd Wright’s residential projects—the symbolic heart of the home. Yet only a few of Wright’s fireplaces ever incorporated mosaic as a design element, and only one at the Darwin D. Martin House transforms tens of thousands of individual glass tiles to create a signature, 360-degree work of art.

The Martin House mosaic covers all four walls of a central, double-sided fireplace that functions as a spatial partition between the entry hallway and the first floor’s main living space. The mosaic is an elaborate composition that depicts the graceful notes of the wisteria—a vine appearing in its natural state as part of the home’s extensive landscape that is also represented in the abstract as a primary pattern of Martin House art glass. The mosaic repeats the wisteria motif in an intricate design of twisting branches with clusters of blossoms and leaves executed in a warm and inviting palette of bronze, gold, and green—a color scheme often favored by Wright.

The mosaic fireplace is the centerpiece of the home, literally and figuratively, and is integral in capturing Wright’s vision of total design as epitomized at the Martin House.