Artdaily_LONDON (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Frank Lloyd Wright’s lasting fame is owed in part to Fallingwater, a house in rural southwestern Pennsylvania for department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann.

When Wright was hired to design the house, Kaufmann also commissioned him to create something smaller: an office in Pittsburgh.

That office will be a star display in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s East London branch, which is scheduled to open in 2023. Before then, however, the office will be refurbished with help from a grant for 25,000 euros (about $27,000) from the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund.

The fund, which was set up in 2012, awards grants to two institutions each year. The committee tries to select one decorative arts project and one fine arts project. Previous grant recipients include the Denver Art Museum, for a painting by Canaletto; the National Gallery in London, for a royal portrait by Anthony van Dyck; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, for a Rembrandt portrait.

This year’s other winner is “Pietá” (circa 1720), a painting by the Bolivian artist Melchor Pérez Holguín that was recently acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA will analyze and restore the work, which was described as “a very major thing” by Rachel Kaminsky, a New York-based private art dealer and one of five people on the committee that chose this year’s grant recipients.

The eligibility criteria are the importance of the work and the museum, how many people will see the work after restoration, and the cost. TEFAF generally contributes funds that represent a significant portion of the total restoration cost.

The Kaufmann Office “checked a lot of the boxes,” Kaminsky said. “This is a complete room, entirely designed by Wright.”

The office was on view at the V&A from 1993 to 2005, and it was “a mecca for architects to come to,” according to Christopher Wilk, the V&A’s American-born keeper of furniture, textiles and fashion, who led the grant application process.

After the office was removed from public view to make way for the museum’s new educational spaces, many visitors — and not just American ones — came looking for it, he said.

“When we reopen, this will be the only Frank Lloyd Wright interior on public view outside the United States,” Wilk said. He noted that while many museums have period rooms and interiors, “they’re very often not quite what they seem: They’re not complete.”

“This room is very unique, in that everything in it is original: the floors, the walls, the ceilings, the upholstery,” he said.

The Kaufmann Office’s biggest selling point, of course, is that it was designed by Wright, “the most famous, or infamous, of all architects, who had what one might charitably call a colorful private life,” Wilk said. “But all of that is entirely separate from his remarkable work as an architect. He was one of the most prolific, but also one of the most multifaceted, of all architects.”

The other remarkable aspect of the piece is that it marked a turning point in Wright’s career, coming as it did after a decadelong dry period that extended roughly from the mid-1920s — before the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression — to the mid-1930s. During that time, “Wright built almost nothing,” Wilk said, because “he wasn’t really in fashion, and he had a reputation as a difficult man.” He used the opportunity to publish his autobiography, taught, lectured and became regarded as an older architect whose glory days were behind him.

Yet Wright’s very autobiography would be the catalyst for a turnaround. It was read by Kaufmann’s artistically inclined son, who was living in Europe at the time. The book had such a profound effect on the younger Kaufmann that he headed straight back to the United States to introduce his father to Wright. He was convinced that they would get along because they were both “thrusting, ambitious men — alpha males,” Wilk explained.

The chemistry between the two men was instant, especially as Kaufmann had recently become interested in modern design. Wright came up with the designs for a country house on a big site with a waterfall. That house would become Fallingwater.

What Kaufmann did not realize was just how long his office was going to take to complete. “He thought he was going to get an office within a matter of months, just a small room with built-in furniture,” Wilk explained.

Begun in 1934, it was 1938 by the time the last piece of furniture was installed. And there were many frosty exchanges over it.

In May 1936, for example, Kaufmann wrote to Wright mentioning that the young man who was brought in to put the office together was studying his plans. “When will he start, and what will he do?” Kaufmann asked. “In another three weeks, I am going to be without an office, as the furniture in my present office is to be shipped to our New York office. I will be sitting on a keg of nails using a soap box for my desk.”

But Wright would not be rushed. He was wedded to his philosophy of organic architecture: that design was derived from nature, that it needed an underlying structure and unity just as nature did, and that it had to be a harmonious whole. Furniture and wall decorations could not be brought in; they had to be an integral part of the design. Wood was not painted or varnished; it had to be used in as natural a condition as possible.

What kind of a makeover will the office now undergo? “We are not stripping it or making it brand-new. We don’t do that,” Wilk replied. “What we’re aiming for is stability in the object, safety and a good appearance. You don’t want to have one board that looks really dark and one that looks really light.”

When Kaufmann died, the office was moved to his foundation and trust in Pittsburgh, which closed in 1963, and then into a Pittsburgh warehouse.

The younger Kaufmann went looking for a place to put it on public view. After discussions with the Avery Library at Columbia University (which specializes in architecture) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he offered it to the V&A.

“I’m absolutely thrilled that we got the support from TEFAF,” Wilk said, “because the work is so important to getting the office back on view and looking its best.”