APPRENTICES

Antonin Raymond     1888 - 1976
Noémi Raymond     1889 - 1980

Antonin Raymond, a naturalized American of Czech birth, and his French-born wife and fellow artist, Noémi Pernessin, first worked with Wright in 1916. At Taliesin, Raymond produced drawings for Wright's economical American Model system-built houses, and perspectives of the Imperial Hotel. When Wright invited the couple to help build the hotel in Tokyo in 1919, they accepted immediately.

But Raymond stayed on the project only a year, leaving to start his own firm in 1920. From Wright, he and Noémi had learned to worship the Japanese aesthetic of elimination and the fluid relationship between man and nature. Like Wright, Raymond always oversaw every detail of his designs, and created his own version of organic architecture principles: a building should be simple, honest, direct, economical and natural.