Taliesin, A Great Birthday Package

The last of the sparkling wine packages is: Taliesin, A Great Birthday Package.  We provide a bottle of our Bin #03 Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut, 2 Keepsake Craftsman B&B flutes and a box of Harry & David Truffles for just $25.00.  That's cheap, I mean inexpensive.  Freixenet is a Spanish bubble so do you remember what that is called?  Cava, baby!  It comes in a bottle that is Mike's favorite color, matte black.  Here is a picture of Mike on his matte black Ducati Monster.

So what or where is Taliesin?  Taliesin was the summer home and studio of Frank Lloyd Wright in Spring Green, Wisconsin and is a National Historical Monument.  He moved there after leaving Oak Park and his first wife for the wife of a client.  A great architect, not a great husband.  The area was originally settled by his mothers family, Welsh immigrants and Taliesin, a name of a Welsh bard, means "shining brow" and he positioned the home on a favorite brow of his childhood.  Wright experimented with Organic architecture by using local stone to mimic sandbars in a river.  Wright and his mistress moved into the house in 1911.

This is where the story of Taliesin gets a little dark.  While Wright was away in Chicago working on the Midway Gardens, one of his staff set fire to the living quarters and murdered seven people with an axe.  The dead included Wright's mistress and her two children.  The murderer died in jail weeks later.

Wright rebuilt the living quarters and renamed it Taliesin II.  Again, another fire.  This one caused by a telephone line that may have been struck by lightning during a storm.  It was rebuilt as Taliesin III.  Wright continued living at the house and acquiring land to grow the estate to nearly 600 acres.  He was always making changes to the house and used his students/ apprentices in his fellowship and other invited artists to do the work.

Taliesin West was the winter home and school for Frank Lloyd Wright and another National Historic Monument.  It was built entirely by students of The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, which still hold classes here.  Mike visited the site a long time ago while in Arizona visiting his grandparents.  Located in what used to be in the middle of nowhere, Scottsdale AZ.  The building is made entirely of stone found on the site.  The canvas roofs provide natural light to the building.  Low linear roof lines provide the buildings to blend in to the natural landscape.  Wright designs morphed from linear prairie school style to more futuristic in the Gammage Auditorium at ASU Tempe, one of Wright's last public commissions.  Wright lost the plans originally for a opera house in Baghdad, Iraq to Grady Gammage, president of ASU in a card game.  Another out of this world design is the Marin County Civic Center.

In 1940, Wright along with his third wife formed the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.  After his death in 1959, the Foundation took over Taliesin and Taliesin West.

OK, that was a lot of history to describe a wine package, but you can see how much thought we at The Craftsman B&B put into a name.  Just think how much thought we have put in to making your stay relaxing and enjoyable.  I am here to make your visit to Pacific City a historic one, oh and the innkeeper does his share too.