Marie Zimmermann was an American designer and maker of jewelry and metalwork. She is noted for fine craftsmanship and innovative design in a variety of different mediums and styles. Calling herself “a craftsman” rather than an artist, Zimmerman was inspired by Cellini and Michelangelo to master and employ many different crafts in her work such as metalsmithing, carving, painting, and sculpting. A 1926 article in the Brooklyn Eagle by Harriette Ashbrook called her “perhaps the most versatile artist in the country”.
Life and career
Marie Zimmerman was born in 1879, the 4th of five children to Swiss immigrants and Marie Zimmermann. Her family's purchase of a farm in 1882 along the Delaware River strongly influences Marie's creativity and she is inspired to take metal smithing classes at Pratt Institute. The family farm was a weekend and summer home while the family's main home was in Brooklyn New York. Against her fathers desires for her to go into medicine, Marie dives head first in to the world of decorative arts and works towards mastering metalworking. She was educated at the Packer Collegiate Institute, later at the Art Students’ League and Pratt Institute. Over a period of twenty-five years, Zimmerman worked to master all of the different crafts she wanted to use in her pieces. During this period she would work ten to twelve hours a day. The earliest record of her employed work is the annual arts and crafts exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago from December 16, 1902 to January 10, 1903. By 1910 Zimmerman had commissions from around the country and opens up her own studio in the National Arts Club in New York. She lived and ran her studio at the National Arts Club in New York from about 1910 to 1937. At the age of 33, she designed a large familyvacation home in Pike Country that shows the rustic elegance of the Arts and Crafts movement and is now a historic site. Zimmermann designed metalwork in a wide range of media, vessels, daggers and irons, light fixtures, stained-glass windows, garden gates, furniture and jewelry. Much of her eclectic work was inspired by diverse historical precedents, including ancient Egyptian, Classical, and Chinese forms. She experimented freely with materials, surface, color and applied ornament. Many of the pieces Zimmerman created were useful as well as decorative. One example, a candlestick with an electric light in the back, combined elegance with utility. The electric light would provide enough illumination for people to see, and the candles would provide atmosphere. Zimmerman used many of her own pieces in her own home and therefore knew the work from the client/user’s perspective as well as the maker/designer’s. Zimmerman always designed her pieces, but hired six workers to help her in their creation. She trained these assistants herself. In 1940, Zimmerman closed her studio and retired. Her whole family had died during a span of five years. The government was also urging her to do better bookkeeping, especially in regards to the valuable materials she was using. The Marie Zimmermann Farm was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. At the age of 93, Zimmerman died in 1972 on her birthday.
Style
Zimmerman created in many different styles, and her work cannot be confined to one artistic movement. Her works were created within the diverse movements that were common in the United States during her lifetime. Her life in central New York was exposed to the latest stylistic influences and her artistic curiosity. Examples of the Belle Epoque, the Aesthetic Movement, Crafts Movement, the Arts and, Greek and Egyptian Revival, Art Deco, and Modernism can be found in her works. To get inspirations from all over the world, she built an extensive personal library.
Awards and recognition
Marie Zimmerman won the Logan Prize for Jewelry and Silverware from an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1924.
Legacy
After her retirement, Zimmerman lost some of her public recognition. In the 1980s, her nephew decided to continue her legacy by putting her art into various museums. Around this time a book was published by the American Decorative Arts 1900 Foundation entitled The Jewelry and Metalwork of Marie Zimmerman, and the foundation Friends of Marie Zimmerman was formed.
