Philadelphia Chapter Events
A Visit to the Unique Esherick Museum
| Members: | $10.00 |
| Non-Members: | $10.00 |
| Register for this Event | |
Time: 11:00 AM
Contact: Louise Polis
Phone: 610-896-5507
Email: success@wewriteresumes.com
Website: www.whartonesherickmuseum.org
Wharton Esherick ( 1887-1970) has been called the link between the Arts and Crafts Movement and the resurgent interest in furniture making following World War II, the dean of American craftsmen and the foundation of the current Studio Furniture Movement. On awarding him its gold medal for Craftsmanship, the American Institute of Architects noted, “He led, not followed, the Scandinavians.” His legacy lies not in establishing a style, his designs were too unique, but in pioneering the way for successive generations of artists working in wood to exhibit and market their original, non-traditional designs.
Join us Saturday, April 28 for a 90 minute tour ( Start time 11 A.M.) of the unique Wharton Esherick studio and home. Experience his sculpting studio, an excellent example of organic Arts and Crafts movement architecture, his prismatic kitchen, and curvilinear tower to a log garage with curving roof surfaces.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Esherick learned wood and metal working at Manual Training High School, drawing and printmaking at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. American Impressionism was at its height and, with his wife Letty, he joined the flight of painters from the city to the landscape. They were painting, settling in an old farmhouse near semi-rural Paoli – with enough level land to grow their own food in the event the paintings didn’t sell.
His interest in wood began with the carving of simple representational designs on frames for his paintings. This led to carving woodcuts - he carved some 400 blocks, illustrating nine books - and carving on furniture. In the early 1920's he began sculpting in wood, then considered solely a craft medium. His sculpture was then exhibited at the Whitney in New York.
A room of his work, “A Pennsylvania Hillhouse” at the 1940 New York World’s Fair, provided national exposure, but the world soon became more concerned with war than with furniture. Twenty years later his leading role in furniture design was recognized at a retrospective exhibit at the newly opened Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York.
For more information visit www.whartonesherickmuseum.org
Car Pooling is preferred. Directions to Museum from Western Suburbs will follow. Flat shoes suggested.
Tour will be followed by lunch at restaurant in Phoenixville Location TBA .
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