Larry Zgoda, a great friend and supporter of Edgar Miller Legacy, passed away peacefully on February 9th, 2026. Artist, craftsman, and historian, Zgoda mastered a number of mediums, including stained glass, woodcarving, and mosaic design. Beyond his work as an artist, Larry was a lifelong learner and loved to share his knowledge of many art movements throughout history, in particular those related to the decorative arts. Larry lived his life with a deep respect and admiration for beauty, art, and nature.

For a number of years, Larry was one of only a few artists with a major interest in the work of Edgar Miller, who by the 1970s had fallen into obscurity. Larry eventually met Edgar in the 1980s and developed a life-changing friendship and collaboration with the artist. Larry’s contributions to the compilation and conservation of Miller’s work and story cannot be overstated. Without Larry’s efforts, it is very likely that we would not know as much about Edgar Miller’s work as we do today.

An Artist of Chicago

Born October 27, 1950, in Chicago, Larry’s father was a mailman and furniture maker, and his mother taught sewing. One of five siblings, Larry grew up in a household where attention to craft was important, and he began to develop an interest in making art. He attended Columbia College to study film and art in the early 1970s, and eventually he opened his own studio at 3447 North Pulaski Road on Chicago’s Northwest Side. There, he designed and fabricated artistic work for clients over the decades. This studio would also be the site where he and Edgar Miller collaborated on many projects. 

Larry wore his love of art, design, and creativity on his sleeve in every facet of life. Unconcerned with following the latest trends, Larry found that the greatest art was grounded in an age-old veneration of the beauty of the natural world and our own humanity. Passionate about designing ornamentation for everyday life, he often used recycled and repurposed materials, gaining inspiration from the cyclicality of nature observed from his explorations of breathtaking Midwestern environments, such as the caves of Wisconsin and the Indiana Dunes. In his own arts and crafts practice, he produced hundreds of artistic works, installations, and furniture in stained glass, wood, and metal, many of which still adorn homes and public buildings around Chicago today.

The Historian and Scholar

In his spare time, Larry worked on what would become a lifelong project: collecting art and artifacts and conducting research related to traditional decorative arts and the early modern period. Over the years, he amassed a substantial archive and body of knowledge that he enjoyed sharing generously with other artists. Throughout these decades of inquiry, he uplifted and publicized the work of many prodigious yet underappreciated artists of our past. On the subject of Edgar Miller, he wrote a number of articles for design-focused and stained glass periodicals to help get the word out about this particularly fascinating artist who had almost been forgotten. 

Beginning in the 1970s, Larry began to explore Chicago’s neighborhoods and to photograph intriguing architectural buildings from the early modern period. Gravitating towards homes and apartments built in the Art Moderne, Art Deco, and International styles, he was especially drawn to the Edgar Miller buildings on Chicago’s Near North Side. The Carl Street Studios, Kogen-Miller Studios, Walter Guest Apartments, and Frank Fisher Apartments were all buildings that Larry returned to many times over the years, capturing the details of the embedded art and architectural elements on their exteriors. However, it took some time before Larry realized that the singular artist who led the artistic design of those buildings was still living, ready to be rediscovered once again.

Rediscovering Edgar Miller

In 1983, Larry initiated a correspondence with Edgar Miller, after he was given the artist’s address by the late Lynn Abbie, founder and then-president of the Chicago Art Deco Society, who had recently met and started her own correspondence with the artist. At the time, Edgar was living in San Francisco, and for a year Larry and Edgar exchanged dozens of letters on all kinds of topics including Miller’s biography, his artistic technique and theory, and the different art movements across history—perhaps the most engrossing subject of conversation for the two artists. 

In 1984, Larry finally got to meet his creative hero when Edgar came to Chicago for a visit. It was around then that the two began to formally collaborate on a number of new stained glass projects. Within a couple years, Edgar relocated back to the city when a new generation of fans invited him to help restore the Handmade Homes and to return to his lifelong pursuit of artmaking. Edgar became a partner and a mentor to Larry, and both artists explored a range of styles and techniques together in glasswork during this period. The results of their partnership were dozens upon dozens of new stained glass windows commissioned by various clients. Their most notable collaborations were on a set of windows done for the former Church of the Epiphany (now the Epiphany Center for the Arts) at 800 North Ashland Avenue, multiple new windows for the Carl Street and Kogen-Miller Studios, and a new window for the Ernest Kuhn House in Wilmette, Illinois. All of these new works were produced while Miller was in his late eighties and early nineties. Larry was like a breath of fresh air for Edgar, encouraging his mentor to continue his creative pursuits and providing the support he needed to do so.

After Edgar Miller died in 1993, Larry worked with preservationist Mark Mamolen and others to further document Miller’s body of work. In the late ‘90s he spearheaded several projects and exhibitions to commemorate Miller’s career, including developing a catalog raisonné of the artist’s work with the Chicago architect P.K. VanderBeke. Years later he was the primary resource for archival documents and research that informed the monograph Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams (CityFiles Press, 2009). Since the founding of Edgar Miller Legacy in 2014, Larry was one of the most committed supporters and benefactors of the organization. Over the years, he donated a large amount of papers, photos, art, and ephemera to the organization for its growing archive of Miller’s work. These research materials have in turn informed so much of the Legacy’s ongoing efforts to further explore and interpret Miller’s prolific oeuvre and incredible life story.

Larry Zgoda’s contributions to the preservation of Edgar Miller’s story were unique and profound, and he will be remembered dearly for his own special legacy. Rarely one to talk about himself and his own accomplishments, Larry dedicated his life to celebrating the universal spirit of creativity through his work and to saving beautiful examples of human ingenuity through his scholarship and preservation work. He is survived by his loving wife Joan, his brother and sister, and a number of nieces and nephews, as well as many who counted Larry as one of their kindest and most interesting friends.