The Legacy of
Wharton Esherick

Wharton Esherick (1887 – 1970) looms large in our exploration of the Brandywine River Valley and Philadelphia. Join IAC to delve deeply into all things Esherick at the Wharton Esherick Museum, Rose Valley, and the opening of “The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick" at the Brandywine Museum.

One of the most important furniture designers of the 20th Century, Esherick was known in his lifetime as the “Dean of American Craft” and is considered the father of the Studio Furniture Movement. His home and studio in Malvern, PA, a National Historic Landmark for Architecture since 1993, is a testament both to his extraordinary talent and to his stylistic evolution, from the Arts & Crafts, through German Expressionism and Cubism, to the fluid, curvilinear work for which he most celebrated. 

Wharton Esherick,  Spiral Stair in His Home, completed in 1930, red oak. Photo: James Mario.

Esherick studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) and then at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) with the intention of pursuing a career in painting. In 1913, he moved with his wife, Leticia Nofer to a farmhouse in Malvern, PA to paint and raise his family. 

Wharton Esherick, Defense, 1939, painted wood, 21” high, Collection of the Wharton Esherick Museum. Photo: James Mario.

In 1920, he began carving his own picture frames, leading him away from painting to woodcut printing and wood sculpture, then to the design and creation of furniture, furnishings, and interiors. At the Hedgerow Theatre, founded in 1923 in the Arts & Crafts community of Rose Valley—another stop on our tour—Esherick created set designs and carved woodblocks for printing posters and programs and contributed a staircase and table.

Esherick would begin construction of his studio in 1926, up the hill from the farmhouse. Over the ensuing 40 years, the site would come to comprise five structures: the home and studio, the 1956

workshop designed in collaboration with Louis Kahn, the 1928 German Expressionist log garage (which serves as the Museum’s Visitor Center), a woodshed, and the 1927, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-influenced, German Expressionist outhouse. The octagonal, single-room Diamond Rock Schoolhouse, down Diamond Rock Road from the Museum, was, early on, used by Esherick as a painting studio and is also part of the campus.

Esherick’s sculptures in wood were exhibited from 1926 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the “Pennsylvania Hill House,” a room of his furniture, was shown at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He was the first artist to have a solo show (1958 – 1959) at the

View of Wharton Esherick’s Home and Studio From the North, With Mountain Laurel in Bloom. Photo: James Mario.

View of Wharton Esherick’s Home and Studio From the West. Photo: Charles Uniatowski.

Museum of Contemporary Craft (now the Museum of Art and Design). His work is the focus of “The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick,” an exhibition at the Brandywine Museum we will visit on opening day.

Wharton Esherick, Flat Top Desk, 1929 and 1962, walnut and padouk, 28 ×18 × 18 in; Desk Chair, 1929, walnut, padouk, laced-leather seat, 28 × 18 × 18 in; Desk Figure, bronze casting of 1929 cocobolo original, 10 × 5 × 4 in. All works from the Wharton Esherick Museum Collection. Photo: Eoin O’Neill, courtesy of Wharton Esherick Museum.