Amphora vase - Jesús Torres, Edgar Miller - 1931
Vase in amphora style
Jesús Torres, Edgar Miller
1931
8 inches wide x 32 inches tall
Despite being born only a year or so apart, Edgar Miller and Jesús Torres had very different upbringings. While Miller was part of a family of white settlers in Idaho whose family line traced back to early colonists from Europe in the 1600s, Torres, was a Mexican immigrant who arrived in Chicago as part of a wave of itinerant farmers and workers who came to the United States in the 1920s after the tumultuous years of the Mexican Revolution.
After leaving Mexico with his wife Mariá Francisca Araujo, Torres found his way to the Hull-House. While there he became a star ceramicist for their Kilns program, which educated and employed ceramics-makers as a way of art and cultural promotion, as well as helping to fund the entire settlement house. Edgar Miller's first residence in Chicago in 1917 was in a boarding room at the Hull-House, and even after he left, he would frequently return to the studios and maintain personal and professional relationships with many of the teachers and social workers there.
In 1927, when Miller and Sol Kogen were looking for extra artistic hands to construct the Carl Street Studios, they met Jesús Torres through Hull-House. Torres undertook an incredible amount of labor intensive projects to help complete the Studios. Their collaboration on this vase, however, tells a more personal part to their story, serving as a commemoration in 1931 of their relationship through a magnificent example of pottery that melded both of their unique design and technical prowesses.
Amphora vase details - Jesús Torres, Edgar Miller - 1931 - © Edgar Miller Legacy
Learn more about Edgar Miller’s sculptural works by visiting the lecture “Sculpture as Text” by Marin Sullivan archive page.