Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect who designed this chair, said that he favoured 'the clean cut, straight line forms that the machine can render far better than would be possible by hand'. The natural (or in Wright's language, organic) relationship between the machine, honest construction and basic geometrical forms would result in simplicity, one of the designer's highest aspirations.

This oak chair is from a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Isabel Roberts and her mother, Mary Roberts, in River Forest, Illinois. Isabel Roberts served as office manager and bookkeeper at Wright’s Oak Park studio. The house has an expansive, two-story living room with a vaulted ceiling and tall, diamond-paned windows that are evocative of those found at the Walter V. Davidson house (1908). The innovative design breaks down the barriers traditionally used to delineate domestic spaces and activities.

Roberts eventually moved to Orlando, Florida where she established an architectural practice with Ida Ryan, the first female graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s masters program in architecture.