Early Years

Russel was born in 1904 in Lebanon, Ohio, and reared in a civically active family with ties to founders of the American republic. His grandparents and their families were Abolitionists, active in the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, and served as lawyers, judges and public educators. Hence, Russel absorbed a sense of public obligation. Russel was attracted to the arts, which he expressed through drawing, painting, and theater events. He was also captivated by the farmland and hardwood forests near his home. These forces-public service, family, the arts and nature-became the defining elements of his personal and professional life.

Russel's parents, Willard (Jurey Wright) and Harryet (Morris Crigler Wright) were from quite different backgrounds. Harryet's was considered the "fancy" side of the family.[3] Her father was a Lutheran minister and her mother, Elizabeth Longworth Morris, was a niece of Nicholas Longworth (1783-1863), a renowned lawyer, wine grower and arts patron of Cincinnati whose home now serves as Cincinnati's Taft Museum. Another Longworth niece, Marie Longworth Nichols, founded the Rookwood Pottery in 1880 on Cincinnati's Mt. Eden. Thirty-five years later, the young Russel would attend classes at the nearby Cincinnati Art Academy.

Like Russel, his father, Willard was also born and brought up in Lebanon. Educated at Princeton University, he rose to prominence in the Ohio Bar Association and was one of the most respected judges of his time. It has often been reported that Russel's family were Quakers, but Willard Wright's obituary cites his church affiliation was Presbyterian.[4] However, Russel's paternal grandparents, Lot and Louisa Jurey Wright, set high ethical standards that deeply influenced him throughout his life.

Lot Wright was born in 1839, near New Garden in Columbiana County, Ohio, only 20 miles from Steubenville, where a century later, Russel would begin production at the Steubenville Pottery of his American Modern, his most commercially successful dinnerware design. Lot was educated in public schools in Alliance, Ohio, and at National Normal University in Lebanon, where he met Louisa Jurey, whom he married and where they settled following the Civil War.[5] During the Civil War, Lot was attached to many regiments and battalions; he was an ardent Abolitionist, and it is believed that his family was involved in the Underground Railroad. As they established themselves in Lebanon, both Lot and Louisa built their lives around public service. Lot held posts as a US Marshal, Treasurer of Warren County and Probate Judge. Louisa served as principal of the Lebanon Public Schools, the first woman in Ohio to hold such a position.[6] Lot Wright died in February, 1900, four years before Russel was born. Louisa, however, lived several years longer and was an important guiding influence on young Russel's life.

Growing up in Lebanon, Russel was known as a studious and serious if, at times, mischievous boy. He had a close and, like many young boys, an occasionally scrappy relationship with his younger sister, Lizbeth Lou, known affectionately as Libby Lou.[7] Russel's daughter, Annie, relates a story that Russel told about convincing Libby Lou that he had a new toothpaste that was supposed to be very good. Unfortunately, it was rat poison, and Libby had to be rushed to the hospital.

An illness at a young age affected Russel's health and eyesight, and although he lost nearly a year of school, he made up for it, and graduated from high school two years early, at the age of 16. Despite his unquestionable intelligence, Russel never completed a college degree. In his essay on this Web site, Robert Schonfeld reports Russel's early ambitions to be, at one time, a priest, and at another, a farmer. However, his talent and love for drawing and painting was evident as early as ten, when his mother enabled him to take drawing lessons. In the conservative environment of Lebanon, Russel's artistic interests were not widely supported. To justify his pursuits, he chose religious subjects taken from the Bible, and worked at the local department store dressing display windows. A close family friend relates how Russel enjoyed the brightly colored Sunday-best clothes worn by parishioners at Lebanon's African-American church.[8] While in high school, he began classes at the Cincinnati Art Academy, studying under the renowned American painter Frank Duvenek.

Graduated from high school at the age of 16, Russel was too young to enter Princeton, a family tradition that his father insisted he continue. To take up time before entering college, Russel's parents agreed to let him travel to New York and study at the Art Students League where, they reasoned, he could "get this art out of his system."[9] His experiences, of course, only confirmed his passions. For a year he took up the Bohemian life in a garret apartment near Union Square and met artists and others who would later become central to his life and career. After his year of freedom, however, he dutifully began studies at Princeton in the fall of 1922. According to Wright's unpublished biography,

His father installed him in one of the tower rooms at Pine Hall, Princeton's newest and finest dormitory. But compared to the 13' x 13' windowless, waterless, heatless garret on 14th Street that he had financed himself, this luxury was completely cold, false, miserable and inadequate. He felt confined. There were no cows to paint in the fields-as there had been in Lebanon, and no Union Square bums to sketch, as on 14th Street. The campus depressed him.[10]

Russel poured most of his time and energies into productions of Princeton's theater group, the Triangle Club, and failed most of his academic courses for two years. In an unusual gesture, Russel's college advisor, recognizing his creative talents, wrote to his parents and relayed his opinion that the young man's future more probably laid in the arts than in the legal profession.[11] He left Princeton at the end of his sophomore year in 1924.

Russel moved back to New York where he contacted people he had met during his first visit and during weekends while at college. These included the leading theater designers and producers Norman Bel Geddes, Aline Bernstein, Max Reinhardt and George Cukor. In the spring of 1927, shortly after the February death of his father, Russel gathered a group of actors and designers to work with him at the Maverick Theater in Woodstock, New York. Among these was Mary Small Einstein, who was studying sculpture with Alexander Archipenko.[12]

Mary and Russel married in New York City in the fall of 1927, and Russel was hired to work for theater productions under Rouben Mamoulian and Lee Simonson and, later, for George Cukor's company in Rochester, New York. Working for Cukor was exhausting and paid little. Mary and Russel often worked for days without sleep. They resolved to return to New York to look for an easier way to live.[13] Wright's biography comments on his transition from theater to design,

In the late 1920s, industrial design was unheard of; there were no schools to train designers for industry, unless the theatre could be classified as such. For Russel, the transition from the theatre to designing products was a logical one, however. The theatre employs all of the crafts; it teaches the participants a special sensitivity to texture and color as he seeks to establish a mood whereby the emotions of the stage are transmitted to the audiences. In addition to its technical training, Russel feels that the theatre further qualified him for industrial design by its demand for intense application to work. The curtain had to go up on opening night and the production had to be finished.[14]

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