Henry Petzal (August 16, 1906 (, archived by

WebCite WebCite was an on-demand archive site, designed to digitally preserve scientific and educationally important material on the web by taking snapshots of Internet contents as they existed at the time when a blogger or a scholar cited or quoted ...

at ) – March 15, 2002) was an American

silversmith A silversmith is a metalworker who crafts objects from silver. The terms ''silversmith'' and ''goldsmith'' are not exactly synonyms as the techniques, training, history, and guilds are or were largely the same but the end product may vary great ...

. He did not begin silversmithing until 1957 at the age of 50.

History

Henry Petzal was born on August 16, 1906, in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. He came to the United States as a German

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

in 1935, settling in

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , also ) is a market town, civil parish, and the county town of Shropshire, England, on the River Severn, north-west of London; at the 2021 census, it had a population of 76,782. The town's name can be pronounced as either 'Sh ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

. For many years he worked in the

textile industry The textile industry is primarily concerned with the design, production and distribution of yarn, cloth and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry. Industry process Cotton manufacturi ...

. In 1963, he started taking classes at New York City YMCA on Fiftieth Street, where he studied with Rudolph Schumacher, William Seitz. And he took classes the Craft Students League, he learned from

Adda Husted Andersen Adda "Andy" Thyra Elise Louise Husted-Andersen (1898 – 1990) was a Danish-born American Modernist jeweler, silversmith, metalsmith, and educator. She was a co-founder and the president of the New York Society of Craftsmen (later called Artist-Cra ...

. His greatest inspiration in his designs was Chinese ceramics. He designed and hand-raised every piece. His works are held in the permanent collections of the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, the Chicago Museum of Fine Arts, the Silversmith's Museum in London, England. The largest collection is at the Mingei Museum in San Diego, and the

Mingei International Museum The Mingei International Museum is a non-profit public institution that collects, conserves and exhibits folk art, craft and design. The museum was founded in 1974, and its building opened in 1978. The word mingei, meaning 'art of the people,' wa ...

References

American silversmiths 2002 deaths American artists 1906 births American people of German descent Artists from Berlin {{US-artist-stub