Henry Varnum Poor was an American architect, painter, sculptor, muralist, potter, and architect (1887–1970). He was the grandnephew of Henry Varnum Poor, a founding member of the company that became Standard & Poors.
Early Years
On September 30, 1887, he was born in Chapman, Kansas, to Alfred James Poor and Josephine Melinda Graham.
Poor studied at Stanford University and earned an A.B. there in 1910. He received painting instruction from painter Walter Sickert at the Slade School in London before enrolling at the Académie Julian in Paris. He moved to San Francisco to teach at the San Francisco Art Association after his return to the country in 1911, where he first taught art at Stanford University.
Personal Life
Marion Dorn, a former Stanford University student who became a well-known textile designer, and Poor were married from July 1919 to October 1923. He settled in Rockland County, New York, after serving in the military during World War I, where he concentrated on ceramics. He married author and journalist Bessie Breuer in 1925.
Muralist
Poor began to specialise in murals as his reputation as a painter grew in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was hired to create 12 murals for the U.S. Department of Justice and the Conservation of American Wild Life mural for the Department of the Interior. He oversaw the Corps of Engineers War Art Unit during World War II. From 1944 to 1945, he was a member of the US Commission of Fine Arts.
Poor taught at Columbia University and was one of the founders of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1946. Poor was a resident fellow in visual arts at the American Academy in Rome from 1950 to 1951. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Self-taught Architect
As a self-taught architect, Poor created the “Crow House” on South Mountain Road in New York City for himself, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, John Houseman, Burgess Meredith, and Maxwell Anderson. He also designed homes for himself. He was also a potter, and his ceramics can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as ceramics created specifically for Radio City Music Hall. The Whitney Museum and the Phillips Collection have their pieces in their collections. The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art is where you can find Poor’s papers.
Sources
Henry Varnum Poor (designer) – Wikipedia. (2015, August 17). Henry Varnum Poor (Designer) – Wikipedia. Retrieved December 31, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Varnum_Poor_(designer)
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Ray and Charles Eames a partnership
They were full collaborators as husband and wife. Design is infrequently a solitary endeavour, and husband-and-wife teams are not uncommon. The collaborative nature of the Eames work, on the other hand, was easily obscured by Charles’s widespread public recognition as an individual designer and thinker.Read More →
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John Eberson (1875 – 1954) American Designer famous for the atmospheric theatre
John Eberson was an american designer who was known for his cinema décors. One of his earliest, the 1923 Majestic Theatre in Houston, Texas, was a loosely recreated garden of a late-Renaissance palazzo in Italy. Through his workshop Michelangelo Studios, he was was successful at producing elaborate plasterwork for his theatre décors in Spanish, Moorish,…
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Emeco American Designer Furniture
Wilton C. Dinges founded the Electric Machine and Equipment Company (Emeco) in 1944 with $300 in savings and a used lathe for machine work. He started bidding on government manufacturing contracts out of a loft in Baltimore, Maryland, beginning with experimental antennas and jet engine parts. Read More →
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LaGardo Tackett (1911 – 1992) American Ceramicist
He ran a pottery studio from 1946 to 1954. He taught at Los Angeles’s California School of Design, where he and his students developed outdoor pottery planters, which resulted in establishing the Architectural Pottery in 1950.Read More →
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Arthur J. Pulos (1917- 1993) American industrial designer and educator
Arthur Pulos (1917 – 1993) was a well-known design teacher, promoter, and industrial designer. Arthur Pulos was renowned for his writings, lectures in developed and developing nations, and involvement with important organizations like the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID).Read More →
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Tucker Viemeister (b.1948) American Product Designer
Tucker Viemeister graduated from Yellow Springs High School in 1966, went to two different colleges. He ended up studying industrial design at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, from which he graduated with a degree in industrial design in 1974. Read More →
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Dakota Jackson (b.1950) American furniture designer
Dakota Jackson is an American furniture designer best known for his Dakota Jackson furniture line. He was a magician’s son, and by the time he was six, he became a professional magician. He performed in public until his early 20s.Read More →
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Thomas Molesworth (1890 – 1977) an American furniture designer
Molesworth ranch style furniture has inspired contemporary Western furniture designers such as Jim Covert, Jeff Morris and Marc Tagesger with its large brass pads, Native American motifs and wildfire imagery.Read More →
Amazing art. Happy New Year .