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David Powell
David Powell (1926 to 2001) was an under-recognized yet influential master furniture maker. Born and trained in England, he was an apprentice for the foremost British furniture maker Edward Barnsley, then studied at the Royal College of Art. Powell started several design ventures in London, including making furniture for Queen Elizabeth II, before moving to the United States in 1969. He settled in Easthampton, Massachusetts, where he practiced his craft and started [...] Click here to continue reading.
Edward Henry Potthast (1857-1927)
Edward Henry Potthast, landscape painter and illustrator, was born 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio to a family of German immigrant artisans. At the age of thirteen he was already attending the McMicken School of Design, and at sixteen he was working for the Strobridge Lithography Company. He maintained his interest in lithography and illustration for much of his early career. In 1892 he moved to New York. Like many residents of [...] Click here to continue reading.
Rufus Porter (1792 to 1884),
Rufus Porter, born in Massachusetts, began his career painting houses and signs, as well as making shoes and farming. He began painting portraits in New Haven, Connecticut where he also made fiddles. He traveled throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic painting portraits, landscapes, murals, and creating silhouettes with a camera obscura he designed himself. He established the magazine “New York Mechanic,” which would become “Scientific American.” Though untrained, he [...] Click here to continue reading.
Benjamin Perley Poore
Benjamin Perley Poore (1820 to 1887) was a significant early collector of American antiques. A writer by trade, Poore was born near Newbury, Massachusetts to parents Benjamin and Mary Perley Poore. The family estate called Indian Hill became the showcase for his eclectic assemblage of antiques.
As a youth Poore was influenced by trips to Europe and was especially fascinated by the old Scottish castles and manor houses. He later sought [...] Click here to continue reading.
Arnaldo Pomodoro (Italian, born 1926)
In 1963, the year he produced Piccolo Sfera, the self taught Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro won a major prize at the Sao Paolo Biennial for his highly polished cast bronze spheres whose surfaces he gouges out and scars. The Brazilian award was followed by a top prize at the Venice Biennale a year later, which secured his reputation as an important new talent.
Pomodoro, whose name means “golden apple,” [...] Click here to continue reading.
James Pollard (British, 1792-1867)
James Pollard was the foremost of all coaching painters. He is noted for his renderings of the British mail coaches, and occasionally did paintings of racing, fishing and hunting scenes. He was a popular artist and according to N.C. Selway, author of The Golden Age of Coaching and Sport, about 343 of Pollard’s works were engraved and of these Pollard himself engraved 146.
John Plumbe Jr.
An early practitioner of daguerreotypes, John Plumbe Jr. established the first franchised daguerreian galleries in the United States, with branches in more than fourteen major cities. His international exploits included galleries in Paris, France and Liverpool, England.
Plumbe learned the art of daguerreotypy in June, 1840, in Washington, D.C. By May of 1841, he was listed as a professor of photography at the U.S. Photographic Institute in Boston. Plumbe made many [...] Click here to continue reading.
Ogden Minton Pleissner (1905 to 1983)
Ogden Minton Pleissner was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father was very interested in the arts, especially music and his mother was an accomplished violinist who had studied in Germany. At age 16, Pleissner was sent to a summer camp in Dubois, Wyoming. He spent two summers at with camp with a group of 15 or 20 other boys. A third summer was spent on a dude [...] Click here to continue reading.
Henry Clarence Pitz (1895-1976)
The following was written by Mary “Molly” Wheeler Wood Pitz, widow of the artist, Spring 1988.
Henry C. Pitz was the only child of Anna Rosina (nee Steiffel) and Henry William Pitz. His mother’s close-knit family had emigrated from Lake Constance in southern Germany at mid-century; his father had trained as a bookbinder in Munich, before moving to Philadelphia in the 1880s to open his own bookbindery and leather [...] Click here to continue reading.
William Pitts & Joseph Preedy – Silversmiths
William Pitts (apprenticed 1769, free 1784) was the son of silversmith Thomas Pitts, himself known for his exceptional rococo epergnes, and Joseph Preedy (apprenticed 1765, free 1773) was the son of a Hertfordshire cleric. Although both men are known individually for their exceptional centerpieces and baskets, it is their short-lived partnership, from January 1791 to December 1799, that produced some of the finest silver-gilt epergnes of the [...] Click here to continue reading.
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