Ed Moulthrop

Ed Moulthrop, 87, craftsman and artist
By CATHERINE FOX
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The grandmaster of wood turning is gone.

Ed Moulthrop, a longtime Atlantan known for peerless vessels and platters that showcased southern woods with elegance and deceptive simplicity, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 87.

"Ed Moulthrop was among a small and select group of wood-turners that brought an ancient craft into the sphere of contemporary art," said David McFadden, chief curator and vice president of the Museum of Art and Design in New York. "Today, turned and sculpted wood is one of the liveliest and most exciting mediums due to the standards of excellence set by such artists as Ed."

A Moulthrop bowl is a moment of worldly perfection. Graceful forms polished to a diamond sheen pay homage to the chocolate and caramel tones of figured tulipwood or the black Rorschach splotches on minky brown chestnut. Not surprisingly, Moulthrop garnered a national reputation for his work, which can be found in museums across the country as well as in the White House and the palace of the Netherlands' Queen Beatrix. The High Museum of Art owns pieces, too, but they are not currently on view.

The Signature Shop and Gallery at 3267 Roswell Road has two pieces on display. Examples of Moulthrop's work also can be found in the Galleria in the Memorial Arts Building of the Woodruff Arts Center at 1280 Peachtree St. and in the lobby of Bank of America Plaza at the corner of North Avenue and Peachtree Street.

Wood turning was the New York native's second career. Moulthrop earned an architecture degree at Princeton University and came to Atlanta in 1944 to teach at Georgia Tech. He moved into private practice at Robert & Co., eventually becoming lead designer. He briefly supervised the young Frank Gehry, who went on to fame as the creator of Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.

The Carillon at Stone Mountain and the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center are among his architectural credits. In 1955, he also designed the modern brick building that housed the High Museum of Art; the Woodruff's Memorial Arts Building was later constructed around it. He proudly remembered that his hero, Frank Lloyd Wright, complimented him on a design.

In his spare time, Moulthrop turned wood. The avocation dated from his teenage years, when he graduated from whittling with a penknife to a lathe he had bought with money earned from selling magazines.

The year 1962 was pivotal. Moulthrop won first prize at the Arts Festival of Atlanta for a 6-inch bowl, which caught the attention of Blanche Reeves, Atlanta's late doyenne of crafts. She gave him a show at her Signature Shop the next year, and he had showed there ever since.

Respect for contemporary American crafts was in its infancy back then. Moulthrop wasn't sure he could earn a living making bowls, but he took the leap, resigning from Robert & Co. in 1972. He gave up architecture altogether in 1976.

Moulthrop was a modernist -- one of his biggest thrills was when the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired a piece -- and he applied certain of the movement's precepts to his new métier. One was the directness with which he approached form. No flights of fancy for him -- he created a variety of shapes by subtle adjustment of proportions.

"I like cleanness," Reeves said. "I like what Ed does not do to wood. Others wreck the hell out of it."

Another precept was truth to materials. Moulthrop considered himself a servant of his material. His goal was to give glory to the wood.

Moulthrop never cut down a tree to make a bowl. He had relationships with tree-cutters who would bring him specimens they thought he might like. When ordinary eyes looked at these chunks, they may not have seen anything special. But Moulthrop had a sixth sense. He could look at a block of bare wood and know what the grain was and what he was going to do with it.

A pioneer in his field, Moulthrop had to make many of his own tools, which he forged in the studio adjacent to his northwest Atlanta home. With large-scale works, he solved the problem of the wood splitting or cracking by soaking it in a chemical solution that he had read about in Popular Mechanics magazine -- a preservative for wooden gun handles.

He also developed chemicals that made the wood shine.

In his prime, he spent eight- to 10-hour days in the studio working on objects in various stages of progress. He would rough out a shape on the lathe, refine it, sand it, refine some more, sand again and polish it with a jeweler's compound.

In the last years of his life, his work was selling for $3,000 to $50,000, depending on its size.

Moulthrop was still working in his early 80s, but palsy and failing eyesight took their toll. About 1999, Moulthrop was depending on his grandson Matt to help him out.

"Ed couldn't see, but he could feel," Matt Moulthrop said. "He would tell me when a bowl was too thick or he would just touch it up."

He retired in 2002 and moved into assisted-living care with Mae, his wife of 61 years.

Fortunately, he leaves a legacy not only through the sweet music of his spheres but also new generations of wood-turners in son Philip and grandson Matt, who are taking wood turning in their own directions.

"Dad taught me the basics," said Philip Moulthrop. "I learned by doing, by helping him. But a lot of it is by feel -- how to make certain cuts -- and I kind of feel like I'm still learning."

Ed Moulthrop was a confident man, but modest.

"All artists are in pursuit of beauty," he once told a crowd at an awards ceremony. "I know I am. I don't ever expect to grasp it."

But, of course, he did. Over and over and over again.

Moulthrop is survived by his wife, Mae; three sons, Mark of Chicago, Philip of Atlanta, and Samuel of South Orange, N.J.; and five grandchildren. A memorial service will be held Nov. 30 at Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.