American jewellery designer and goldsmith
John Paul Miller
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Born
| (
1918-04-23
)
April 23, 1918
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Died
| March 1, 2013
(2013-03-01)
(aged 94)
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Known for
| Jewelry design
,
goldsmithing
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John Paul Miller
(April 23, 1918,
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania
? March 1, 2013,
Cleveland, Ohio
) was an American jewellery designer and goldsmith, who also produced films, photographs and paintings. Stephen Harrison, decorative arts curator at the
Cleveland Museum of Art
, compares Miller's work with that of
Rene Lalique
and
Louis Comfort Tiffany
.
[1]
Biography
[
edit
]
Miller's mother died when he was two, after which his family moved to Cleveland, where he attended Hough Elementary School and later
Shaker Heights High School
. He then enrolled in classes at the
Cleveland Museum of Art
following this with courses at the
Cleveland School of Art
where he studied
enameling
with Kenneth F. Bates (1904?1994). In 1936, he enrolled in the Cleveland School of Art's industrial design program.
Inspired by the silver jewellery of another student, Frederick A. Miller, John Paul set out to learn the techniques demanded by working with silver. He soon started creating rings and brooches using classical music and the natural world as inspiration. Some of his teachers greatly influenced his work:
Paul Travis
,
Walter Sinz
,
Carl Gaertner
and
Viktor Schreckengost
. John Paul later shared a studio and home with Fred Miller, his wife Mary and two children. After the death of Mary Miller in 1998 and Fred Miller in 2000, John Paul Miller continued living in the house, located south of Cleveland.
On his graduation in 1940, John Paul taught at the Cleveland School of Art for a year. His tour of duty with the Army at Fort Knox in Kentucky found him illustrating manuals on tank tactics. Shortly after resuming his position at the School in 1946 he discovered a document by an archaeologist at the
American Academy in Rome
on the ancient technique of
granulation
, a process which involves fixing minute gold beads to a gold surface without using any form of solder, thereby creating a finely textured coruscating surface. The paper was sufficient to guide Miller in the right direction - gold in the presence of copper lowers the melting point of both metals. By allowing copper to oxidise on the surface of gold globules, Miller rediscovered the ancient process making possible the fashioning of intricate designs.
[2]
His work drew great attention at the Designer Craftsman U.S.A. show of 1953, displays at the
Art Institute of Chicago
in 1957, New York’s
Museum of Contemporary Crafts
in 1964, international acclaim at the
Brussels World's Fair
, the
Objects: USA
traveling exhibition of 1969-1972, the
Museum Bellerive
in Zurich (1971), the Vatican Exhibition of American Crafts, and the Great Jewelry of the Ages exhibition at the
Victoria and Albert Museum
in London.
His work is on permanent display at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the
Renwick Gallery
of the Smithsonian Institution, the
Museum of Contemporary Crafts
in New York City, the
Minnesota Museum of American Art
in St. Paul,
Vassar College
,
Yale University
, and the Fleischman Collection. Despite all this exposure, fame arrived belatedly for Miller at 92 years of age, when curator Stephen Harrison arranged a 2010 retrospective of his work at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
[3]
At once an artist, teacher, and craftsman, John Paul Miller personifies a lifetime of creative expression. The Cleveland Museum of Art celebrates this
living legend
and master goldsmith in an exhibition installation of more than 50 of his incredible works, including sketchbooks and drawings, spanning nearly 60 years of his illustrious career. His two greatest passions?music and art?seemingly converge in work that moves from poetic forms to intensely intricate compositions. His earliest creations are lyrically simple, biomorphic forms characteristic of the modern era. Miller's fascination with technique and process emerged in his groundbreaking rediscovery in the early 1950s of granulation, an ancient, yet forgotten, way of fusing tiny gold beads to a gold surface without solder. The fleeting creatures of earth, sea, and sky?snails, squids, crabs, moths, and flies?became his muse, inspiring a complicated palette of seductive enamels and textured forms. Historical reference and modern abstraction also infuse his designs, bringing together that which he saw and that which he imagined to form a body of work full of curiosity and self-expression.
[4]
Miller was an experienced hiker and outdoorsman who enjoyed hiking trips in the
Rocky Mountains
and the
Tetons
.
Awards
[
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]
In 1961, Miller was awarded the first Cleveland Arts Prize in the visual arts. That same year, his work was shown at an international exhibition at
London
’s
Goldsmiths' Hall
.
In 1994, the
American Craft Council
awarded him their gold medal.
[5]
References
[
edit
]
External links
[
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]
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Honorary Fellows are listed in
italics
.
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