Essay Index

Russel Wright: Living with Good Design
by Robert Stearns

Stearns provides an introduction to Russel Wright's life and career from his childhood in Lebanon, Ohio; to his design business in New York City; and the development of his home and estate in Garrison, New York. Included are discussions of Wright's influential consulting work in Southeast Asia and Japan in the 1950s and the design of Dragon Rock, his home, which Wright carried out with architect David Leavitt.

Russel Wright and the Domesticated Naturalism of Manitoga
By Robert Schonfeld

Schonfeld describes Wright's 80-acre estate, Manitoga, an Algonquin Indian word meaning "Place of the Great Spirit." Over the period of 30 years, Wright transformed the site into a woodland garden that is the finest of its kind in the United States and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006. Schonfeld describes the motivations and the processes by which Wright achieved his goal of creating an apparently natural environment using Western and Eastern techniques combined with his own talents as a landscape designer.

Manitoga: A Photo Essay
Photos and captions by Robert Schonfeld

This photo essay combines photographs of the Manitoga grounds with descriptive text for a beautiful portrait of this National Historic Landmark in upstate New York.

Japanese and American Design through Russel Wright
By Hitoshi Mori

Mori provides an historical background of the development of modern design in Japan from the 1930s through the 1950s when Russel Wright first visited Japan on a contract with the United States Department of State. Mr. Mori describes the "Russel Wright Plan," which served as a blueprint for the establishment of Japan's successful emergence as a producer of high quality consumer products.

Robert Stearns is the curator of the exhibition Russel Wright: Living with Good Design.

Robert Schonfeld is an historian of modern art and design and curatorial consultant. He served as curator of "Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle", presented by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in 2001.

Hitoshi Mori is an historian of Japanese modern design and curator for the Matsudo City Board of Education in Matsudo City, Japan.