That's not a story, that's a habit; he did it ("this vase will look perfect above the mantle" a month later, a bill) to a number of clients. Back when Henry Ford was just getting started, he paid a pair of young machinists, the Dodge Brothers, with stock. By 1914 Ford was obviously a success but Henry Ford kept rolling all profits back into expansion, rather than dividends as he'd promised the Dodge Brothers. They sued and won and Ford needed to come up with a bunch of cash or go into receivership. So every single dealer got a letter saying "you're a parts and repair center now, pay up" to go along with their massive shipment of spare parts. Of course, the way the world sees that now is "poor Henry Ford couldn't spend all his money on making the lives of his employees better because of those evil Dodge brothers and therefore CEOs should run their damn companies however they want" instead of "Henry Ford would only pay his debtors if he could shaft someone else into doing it." And the way the world sees the vase thing is "lol Frank Lloyd Wright had such attention to detail that he kept tweaking his clients' houses" instad of "lol Frank Lloyd Wright was such a spendthrift and manipulative asshole that you could never be free of being billed at random for shit you didn't want because he was short on cash."
Thanks for finishing my thought. I was interrupted in the middle of writing my comment but I guess hubski automatically 'contributes' it after a while? That's an unfortunate feature. You've got a good point. I always read it as both, 'what attention to detail AND what an asshole'.
I've learned in Hollywood that the people you see over and over and over again tend to be easy to work with. The ones with a meteoric rise and abrupt fall are assholes. Or, not necessarily assholes, but not willing to victimize themselves for their art at which point the conventional wisdom becomes "they're assholes." By all accounts, Frank Lloyd Wright was an asshole. And I honestly wonder what our world would look like if he wasn't. Imagine if that kind of talent was easy to work with. Fuckin' 80 years later and the Usonian plans are still locked down. But you can pay Lindal, sort of.