Wharton Esherick (July 15, 1887 – May 6, 1970) was an American artist and designer. An artistic polymath, he worked in a wide variety of art media including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. His design works range from architectural interiors to handheld, tactile objects like light pulls and chess pieces. Esherick is best known for his wood furniture, which synthesizes modernist sculptural form with functional craft. His influence was keenly felt within the genre of Postwar studio craft, where he has been called the “father of studio furniture” and the “dean of American craftsmen.” The sculptor and furniture designer Wendell Castle cited Esherick as a formative influence. Castle credited Esherick with demonstrating that "furniture could be a form of sculpture," the "inherent tree characteristics in the utilization of wood," and the "importance of the entire sculptural environment." The most comprehensive realization of Esherick's vision for a sculptural environment is his home and workplace, the Wharton Esherick Studio on Valley Forge Mountain in Malvern,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. The Studio is a total work of art, or

Gesamtkunstwerk A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. ...

, in which hand crafted design elements large and small unite to form a totality. The building is preserved as the centerpiece of the Wharton Esherick Museum, which opened in 1972. It was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

in 1993.

Life and career

Wharton Esherick was born on July 15, 1887, in Philadelphia. He studied painting at the

Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA), also referred to as the School of Applied Art, was a museum and teaching institution which later split into the Philadelphia Museum of Art and University of the Arts. It was chartered b ...

(later the University of the Arts); and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, however he left in 1910 and did not graduate. In 1912, he married Leticia (Letty) Nofer (1892–1975), a dancer, weaver, and progressive educator. In 1913, the couple settled in a farmhouse on Valley Forge Mountain, twenty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia. There, they adopted a back-to-the-land lifestyle, growing their own food and making their own clothing. Letty raised their children in accordance with the holistic ideals of

progressive education Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. T ...

. All the while, Wharton tried to establish a career as a painter, but only sold a very few of his

impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

canvases. Wharton Esherick had a career turning point in winter of 1919-1920. Letty, having attended a lecture by progressive educator Marietta Johnson, led the family to Fairhope,

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

, where she taught at the Marietta Johnson School of Organic Education for one semester. The school had a manual training workshop. There, Wharton used borrowed tools for his first sustained effort in woodcarving: a series of decoratively carved frames for his paintings. Soon after returning to Pennsylvania, he began finding his way as a woodworker using various media: woodblock prints, furniture design, and sculpture. Esherick’s early furniture was derived from the

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

style and decorated with surface carving. In the late 1920s he abandoned carving on his furniture, focusing instead on the pure form of the pieces as sculpture. In the 1930s he was producing sculpture and furniture influenced by the organicism of

Rudolf Steiner Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (; 27 or 25 February 1861 – 30 March 1925) was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century ...

, as well as by

German Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

and

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

. The angular and prismatic forms of the latter two movements gave way to the free-form curvilinear shapes for which he is best known. His work was also part of the painting event in the art competition at the

1932 Summer Olympics The 1932 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the X Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1932) were an international multi-sport event held from July 30 to August 14, 1932, in Los Angeles, California, United States. The Games were held du ...

. From furniture and furnishings he progressed to interiors, the most famous being the Curtis Bok House (1935–37). Though the house was demolished in 1989, Esherick’s work was saved and the fireplace and adjacent music room doors can be seen in the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

, and the foyer stairs in the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami, Florida. In 1940 the architect George Howe used Esherick’s Spiral Stair (1930) and Esherick furniture to create the “Pennsylvania Hill House” exhibit in the New York World’s Fair “America at Home” Pavilion. Esherick’s work was featured in a 1958 retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Craft and in the 1972 “Woodenworks” exhibition at the

Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that ...

. He exhibited hundreds of times during his life, and his work is in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston, and many other museums and galleries. Most of his work remains in private hands. The Diamond Rock Schoolhouse, which served as Esherick's painting studio during the 1920s, was acquired by the Wharton Esherick Museum in 2019. Esherick was the father of Ruth Bascom (wife of architect Mansfield Bascom, curator emeritus of the Wharton Esherick Museum). He was the uncle of American architect Joseph Esherick.

References

External links

Official website of the Wharton Esherick Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Esherick, Wharton 1887 births 1970 deaths Artists from Pennsylvania Sculptors from Pennsylvania American woodworkers American printmakers University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni People from Paoli, Pennsylvania Art competitors at the 1932 Summer Olympics Arts and Crafts movement artists American furniture makers Artists from Philadelphia Architects from Philadelphia 20th-century American architects 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American painters

Life and career

See also

References

Further reading

External links