 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2007) |
The Moulthrop family are three generations of American woodturners, starting with Ed Moulthrop, [1] credited as the "father of modern woodturning". The family has been documented in the book Moulthrop: A Legacy in Wood.
Ed Moulthrop (May 22, 1916 – September 24, 2003) was a noted architect and professor, born in Rochester, New York. He is best known as a wood turning artist whose art helped transform the genre into a widely respected art form. He was also an accomplished architect whose designs were used for several key structures around Atlanta, GA.
Ed Moulthrop attended Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University) and later received a scholarship allowing him to attend Princeton University where he earned a degree in architecture. He traveled abroad during his education, studying architecture in Paris, London and Switzerland as well as watercolor painting in Fontainebleau.
After graduating from Princeton University, Ed moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he taught architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology for five years. When the second World War came along the military needed physics teachers, so he took that on as well. While teaching at Georgia Tech, he found a love of working with wood in the school’s industrial arts shop where he had access to many various woodworking tools.
Moulthrop eventually left Georgia Tech to pursue a career in architecture, later becoming the chief designer for Robert and Company. Although the company was largely concerned with engineering, he provided the non-engineering concepts that they needed. Moulthrop’s work with Robert and Company would prove to be an outlet for many of his modernist designs. Some of these modernist designs even drew compliments from world-famous architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, who once pointed to one of Moulthrop’s buildings and said “I like that one”.
A lot of Moulthrop's architectural designs can still be seen today throughout the U.S. including portions of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Van Leer Electrical Engineering building at Georgia Tech, the Atlanta Civic Center, the Carillon Tower at Stone Mountain, and the Callaway Memorial Chapel at Callaway Gardens.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Moulthrop studied the general arts, including drawing and watercolor painting. He developed an early love for working with wood, which would eventually lead to his most notable successes as an artist. He bought his first lathe when he was sixteen and over the years was able to get his hands on larger ones to turn larger pieces. As he began to refine his turned vessels he began to attract a good size audience, an audience that included well-known people in the art community and even a United States President.
Moulthrop's vessels are admired for a number of reasons. Their scale is larger than most other pieces. It was not uncommon to see him turning a large, 5-foot-tall (1.5 m) piece on the lathe in his home workshop. Because of these large-scale projects, Moulthrop had to invent a lot of his own tools, the same tools that would later be featured in several wood arts magazines. Another innovation of his was his use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) to help prevent cracking in his more advanced pieces. His turned wood pieces would be coated with a clear finish that would be as smooth as glass. This later characteristic helped some of his vessels find their way into collections of well-known glass collectors.
Over the years, Moulthrop developed relationships with several gallery owners, others in the wood working fields and several well-known clients. This helped to spread knowledge of his work and pieces across the country. His work was showcased in several art galleries, which at the time, was a first for wood turning artists, whose art was often viewed as more of a craft than a well-respected art form.
One day, he received a call from fellow wood worker, president Jimmy Carter. President Carter had read about what Moulthrop was doing and anxiously wanted to visit Moulthrop’s home workshop. This led to a friendship that would last Moulthrop the rest of his life and a relationship that would place his pieces in the hands of political dignitaries worldwide.
Today, Moulthrop is recognized as the father of modern wood turning, and credited with moving wood turning from a simple craft to an art form. His vessels have become prized pieces of private collections as well as fixtures in galleries, museums such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Chicago Art Institute, Renwick Gallery, New Britain Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to name a few. One of his pieces was even shown in the White House Collection of American Crafts.
Philip Moulthrop (Born November 12, 1947 in Atlanta, Georgia) is the son of Ed Moulthrop.
Philip graduated with a BA from West Georgia College in 1969. When he left college he had to consider the military draft that was looming about. He enlisted with the United States Navy as part of a two-year active duty program. He was transferred back to Atlanta for a year, where he attended weekly meetings, until he was called up for active duty.
Philip Moulthrop’s active duty took him straight to Vietnam where he was assigned to work as a language instructor in Saigon. During his year-long stay in Vietnam he took up photography to help pass the time. His time spent in the Navy allowed him to see many things & places that he never would have been able to see otherwise.
After serving his duty in the Navy Philip went back to college at Woodrow Wilson College of Law where he graduated in 1978 with his degree in law.
Philip originally started his professional life working as a lawyer. Over several years he started to work more and more with wood, much as his father had, and eventually left the law field to work as a full-time wood turner. His career was helped by a number of influential people, one of which was a collector by the name of Bud Jacobson.
Bud Jacobson acquired several of Philips pieces for his own collection, which was later featured at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. Connections like these led to his work being known by many well-known people and featured in very prominent collections.
In 1992 Philip introduced a new style of wood vessel, his mosaic series (see photo at right). These vessels were formed by taking cross sections of various branches and blending them with a dark black resin. The vessel would then be sanded down and polished, producing a unique result. These works are considered by many collectors to be his most prominent contribution to the wood turning field.
In 1993 President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton encouraged the creation of the first official White House crafts collection, which would serve as a tribute to the ongoing tradition of American crafts. Michael Monroe, curator-in-charge of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Art, was chosen to be the curator of this new collection. Monroe, who was already familiar with the work of the Moulthrop family, chose Ed & Philip Moulthrop to be included in the collection.
In June 2004 Philip’s work was chosen to be used as gifts for each of the eight national leaders attending the G8 summit in Sea Island, Georgia. He provided eight bowls, which would travel home to eight nations, helping give worldwide recognition as a prominent wood turner.
Philip’s pieces can be viewed in permanent collections across the world including The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly American Craft Museum) in New York City, The Smithsonian Institution, Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, CT, and many other prominent galleries and museums.
Matt Moulthrop (Born November 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia) is the son of Philip Moulthrop and the grandson of Ed Moulthrop.
Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Matt Moulthrop turned his first bowl at the age of 7. [2] Completing his BBA at the University of Georgia and MBA at Georgia Tech, Matt tried his hand at work in the 9-to-5 world, but ultimately eased into turning wood as a career, making him the third generation of Moulthrops to carry on the craft. [3] [4] [5]
American craft is craft work produced by independent studio artists working with traditional craft materials and processes. Examples include wood, glass, clay (ceramics), textiles, and metal (metalworking). Studio craft works tend to either serve or allude to a functional or utilitarian purpose, although they are just as often handled and exhibited in ways similar to visual art objects.
Judith Schaechter is a Philadelphia-based artist known for her work in the medium of stained glass. Her pieces often use symbolism from stained glass and Gothic traditions, but the distorted faces and figures in her work recall a 20th century German Expressionist painting style and her subject matter is secular. Shaechter's work often involves images that might be considered disturbing such as death, disease, or violence. Early Schaechter pieces, for example, such as King of Maggots and Vide Futentes make use of memento mori, symbols of death found in church architecture during medieval times.
William C. Harper is an NYC based American jewelry artist known for studio craft jewelry. Harper, an expert in the cloisonné technique working in enamelled glass, creates intricate pieces that combine enamel designs with gold, wood, and a variety of other materials, both valuable and ordinary. Instead of using cloisonné in the traditional way to separate areas of color, Harper utilizes silver and gold wires as a form of drawing, creating abstract linear patterns within the enamel. His work often explores the contrast between different elements, such as the beautiful and the everyday, the luxurious and the simple, and the public and the personal.
Robert William Ebendorf is an American metalsmith and jeweler, known for craft, art and studio jewelry, often using found objects. In 2003–2004, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized an exhibition of 95 pieces, titled The Jewelry of Robert Ebendorf: A Retrospective of Forty Years.
Mark Lindquist is an American sculptor in wood, artist, author, and photographer. Lindquist is a major figure in the redirection and resurgence of woodturning in the United States beginning in the early 1970s. His communication of his ideas through teaching, writing, and exhibiting, has resulted in many of his pioneering aesthetics and techniques becoming common practice. In the exhibition catalog for a 1995 retrospective of Lindquist's works at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, his contributions to woodturning and wood sculpture are described as "so profound and far-reaching that they have reconstituted the field". He has often been credited with being the first turner to synthesize the disparate and diverse influences of the craft field with that of the fine arts world.
Mel Lindquist was an American engineer and woodturner. He was a renowned pioneer of the American studio woodturning movement.
Dan Owen Dailey is an American artist and educator, known for his sculpture. With the support of a team of artists and crafts people, he creates sculptures and functional objects in glass and metal. He has taught at many glass programs and is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he founded the glass program.
Fritz Dreisbach is an American studio glass artist and teacher who is recognized as one of the pioneers of the American Studio Glass Movement.
Gary Lee Noffke is an American artist and metalsmith. Known for versatility and originality, he is a blacksmith, coppersmith, silversmith, goldsmith, and toolmaker. He has produced gold and silver hollowware, cutlery, jewelry, and forged steelware. Noffke is noted for his technical versatility, his pioneering research into hot forging, the introduction of new alloys, and his ability to both build on and challenge traditional techniques. He has been called the metalsmith's metalsmith, a pacesetter, and a maverick. He is also an educator who has mentored an entire generation of metalsmiths. He has received numerous awards and honors. He has exhibited internationally, and his work is represented in collections around the world.
Kay Sekimachi is an American fiber artist and weaver, best known for her three-dimensional woven monofilament hangings as well as her intricate baskets and bowls.
Binh Pho was a Vietnamese-American artist best known for his pierced and painted works in wood.
Norm Sartorius is an American woodworker who carves fine art spoons in many styles including natural, biomorphic, abstract, symbolic, ethnic, and ceremonial. His works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other public and private collections. He is a frequent participant in woodworking and craft shows in America, and won the Award of Excellence in Wood at the 2015 American Craft Council show in Baltimore and the 2015 Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, DC. Since 2008, he has co-directed a grant-funded research project on the life, work, and legacy of American woodworker Emil Milan.
Harrison Edward McIntosh was an American ceramic artist. He was an exponent of the Mid-century Modern style of ceramics, featuring simple symmetrical forms. His work has been exhibited in venues in the United States including the Smithsonian and internationally including at the Louvre in France.
Michelle Holzapfel is an American woodturner and a participant in the American Craft movement. She has five decades of experience turning and carving native hardwoods in Marlboro, Vermont, where she has lived her adult life. Holzapfel fits the definitions of both Studio artist and Material movement artist. A product of the revolutionary back-to-the-earth movement of 1960s and 1970s, she attributes the expressiveness of her turned and carved forms to the idealism of those years. Raised in rural Rhode Island, she has worked alone in her Vermont studio—shared only with her husband, the furniture maker and educator David Holzapfel—since 1976. Her wood pieces which feature intricate carvings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the U.S., Australia and Europe. Publications featuring her work include but are not limited to House Beautiful, American Craft, Woodworking, and Fine Woodworking.
Frank E. Cummings III is an artist and professor of fine arts at California State University, Fullerton. Cummings makes wood vessels and furniture using precious materials, inspired by spiritual meanings of objects in Africa.
Donald Lester Reitz was an American ceramic artist, recognized for inspiring a reemergence of salt glaze pottery in United States. He was a teacher of ceramic art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1962 until 1988. During this period, he adapted the pottery firing technique developed in the Middle Ages, which involved pouring salt into the pottery kiln during the firing stage. The method was taught in European ceramic art schools, but largely unknown in United States studio pottery.
Lloyd Eldred Herman (1936-2023) was an American arts administrator, curator, writer, museum planner and acknowledged expert on contemporary craft. He was known for being the founding Director of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C., from 1971 to 1986.
Ron Fleming also known as Ronald Franklin Fleming was an American woodturning artist whose pieces featured foliage motifs. His works are in the permanent collections of American museums such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery and the White House Permanent Collection of American Craft.
Bert Marsh was a British woodturner, known for his beautiful forms and technical mastery. He was raised in Hove, England. "Bert was known throughout the woodturning world as a talented turner, inveterate story-teller, and mentorfor many of today’s top turners." He has been called "the king of British woodturning."
John Jordan was an American woodturner, known for his textured and carved hollow vessels and small necked bottles, his teaching and demonstrations around the world, and his tool designs.