Florence Koehler
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Florence Koehler (1861 – 1944) was an American craftswoman, designer and jeweler. She was one of the best-known jewelers of the Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


Biography

Florence Cary was born on November 8, 1861 in
Jackson, Michigan Jackson is the only city and county seat of Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 33,534, down from 36,316 at the 2000 census. Located along Interstate 94 and U.S. Route 127, it is approxi ...
to Harriet (''née'' Banker) and Benjamin F. Cary. She grew up in Missouri and moved to
Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...
in 1881. She married Frederick Koehler and was Head of the Ceramics Department at Kansas City Art School by 1893. They moved to Chicago where she exhibited her ceramics at the World's Columbian Exposition. She briefly ran an interior decorating business out of the Marshall Field and Company Building with her friend Mrs. E. W. Sheridan. Koehler was a founding member of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society and taught jewelry and metalsmithing. She also taught china painting to women from the Atlan Ceramic Art Club in the 1890s and was credited with turning the club's technical gifts "to a rare standard of beauty, excellence, and originality." She traveled to London in March 1898, where she studied enamelwork and jewelry with Alexander Fisher. Afterwards her work made reference to historic designs, particularly those of the Renaissance period. Koehler separated from her husband sometime after 1900. She was the traveling companion of Emily Crane Chadbourne and the pair settled in London where Koehler retained a studio in Kensington. There she was acquainted with
Alice Stopford Green __NOTOC__ Alice Stopford Green (30 May 1847 – 28 May 1929) was an Irish historian and nationalist. She was born Alice Sophia Amelia Stopford in Kells, County Meath. Her father Edward Adderley Stopford was Rector of Kells and Archdeacon of ...
,
Arthur Bowen Davies Arthur Bowen Davies (September 26, 1862 – October 24, 1928) was an avant-garde American artist and influential advocate of modern art in the United States c. 1910–1928. Biography Davies was born in Utica, New York, the son of David and Phoe ...
, Augustus John, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Henry James, and Roger Quilter. Beginning in 1912, she moved to Paris and lived in
Place des Vosges The Place des Vosges (), originally Place Royale, is the oldest planned square in Paris, France. It is located in the ''Marais'' district, and it straddles the dividing-line between the 3rd and 4th arrondissements of Paris. It was a fashionable ...
where she befriended Henri Matisse. Koehler met arts patron Mary Elizabeth Sharpe in 1920. She moved to Rome in the 1930s. In January 1944, her health failed and she was taken to a clinic where she was diagnosed with cancer. She died in Rome on May 4, 1944. Koehler left her possessions to Sharpe, who arranged a posthumous exhibition of her work in 1948. Collections of her jewelry and paintings were donated to the Rhode Island School of Design and
Everson Museum of Art Everson may refer to: People with the surname * Ben Everson (born 1987), English footballer * Bill Everson (1906–1966), Welsh international rugby union player * Cliff Everson, a New Zealand car designer and manufacturer * Corinna Everson (born ...
, respectively. A collection of her papers and correspondence is held by the
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director, ...
at Harvard.


Works

Koehler started out as a potter and began making jewelry in earnest following her trip to London. In addition to her jewelry, she also produced a number of drawings and paintings. For her jewelry, Koehler tailored her designs and choice of gemstones to her clients, favoring cabochons over faceted stones. Her "leafy designs set with informal groupings of gems in 18-carat gold" earned her an international reputation. Art critic Roger Fry praised her work, writing in '' The Burlington Magazine'' in 1910 that " is in the imaginative and definitely poetic quality that Mrs. Koehler's jewellery marks such an important moment in the modern revival of craftsmanship."


Notes


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Koehler, Florence 1861 births 1944 deaths American jewelry designers 19th-century American painters 20th-century American painters American women painters People from Jackson, Michigan Artists from Illinois Artists from Michigan Painters from Missouri 20th-century American women artists 19th-century American women artists Women jewellers