MANCHESTER, NH.- The Currier Museum of Art recently acquired a rare and important reclining armchair designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Now on view, the chair dates to 1902-3, nearly 50 years before he designed the Isadore J. and Lucille Zimmerman House in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Wright was most noted for his modern architectural designs and put those same concepts of a clean, linear aesthetic into this armchair designed for the Francis W. Little House in Peoria, IL. He would later use variations on this chair in several interiors during the following decade, including in his own Oak Park Studio in Chicago. Visitors to the Currier Museum of Art and the Zimmerman house may now view this classic piece from his early years.

“Paired with Wright’s 1950 Zimmerman House this major example of Wright’s earlier style gives Currier visitors a broader vision of one of America’s most important architects,” said Jane Seney, director of the Zimmerman House tour program.

The chair’s unveiling coincides with the reopening of the Zimmerman House (1950) for the 2013 tour season which began April 11. Wright designed the every aspect of the Zimmerman house: the interiors, all the furniture, the gardens, and even the mailbox. Dr. and Mrs. Zimmerman left the property to the Currier in 1988. In 1990 the house and grounds were opened so that visitors could enjoy glimpses of a private world from the 1950s and 1960s, including the Zimmermans’ personal collection of modern art, pottery, and sculpture. The only Wright home open to the public in New England, it is also one of only a few Wright buildings owned and operated by an art museum.

Public tours of the Zimmerman House are offered ten times a week and begin at the Currier Museum of Art located at 150 Ash Street, Manchester, NH. Reservations are required.