My students often complain that it has become more and more difficult to acquire and collect masterpieces of design for reasonable prices. Here is a sale that would enable that. He was a legendary metalsmith, Danish-American John Prip (1922-2009). Born in New York to a Danish family of metalsmiths and trailed in Copenhagen, Prip had become known for bringing the craft skills and the guild traditions of Scandinavian metalsmithing to America. But he was also a legendary educator and in the metalsmithing department, which he had founded at the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in New York, subsequently absorbed into the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1950, he trained such metalsmiths as Paul Evans, and helped setting standards of excellence and innovations for those who became founding members of the American Studio Movement (below with a student). Next week, Chicago-based auction house Wright will present a sale of Prip’s collection. Entitled ‘John Prip: American Metalsmith,’ it comes to celebrate five decades of creative career, with dozens of pieces, boxes, spoons, sculptures, all come from Prip’s own collection. They demonstrate his genius and ability to redefine the medium of silversmithing both in handcrafted and in mass produced objects, traits which had ultimately brought him a retrospective at RISD Museum in 1987, and the prestigious American Craft Council Gold Award in 1992.
