Early Tafel Residences

Tafel was an apprentice at Taliesin from 1932 to 1941, after which he began his own architectural practice. There is evidence of a few of Tafel’s early residential projects from the early 1950s in the archive which survive in the slides, photographs, and in some files and drawings. In his early career Tafel’s office was […]

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On Archives Illuminating Archives… and Blogs

Once an archive has been cataloged, the finding aid is released online (and/or in paper) and is an organized guide to helping you find what information you are searching for. The work behind the scenes is lost: questioning the original order (or disorder!) of documents, the process of organization, and identifying the unidentifiable or unique […]

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Unintentional Preservation

Alongside documenting the activities of its creator, a fonds (a collection of records that originate from the same creator or source) will unintentionally preserve artifacts from another time. This is fascinating because an artifact can also provide a history of the particular period of time in which it was made and used. Today’s post reveals […]

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Miscellanea, Comedy, and Archivists

Archivists tend to swerve away from creating the dreaded ‘Miscellaneous’ folder, but there are usually odds and ends that one finds in an archive that just do not seem to fit. Even more feared is the folder labeled “Miscellaneous” by its own creator! Such was the case in Tafel’s archive, where I found dispersed throughout […]

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Life at Taliesin

During the time when Edgar Tafel was an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin was a hub of creativity that accepted students and apprentices with a wide variety of talent in other arts besides architecture. Included in the archive is Tafel’s correspondence around this time to his family and friends, including Robert (Bob) Goodall, a […]

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