Oral history interview with Mary Ann Scherr, 2001 Apr. 6 - 7

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Mary Ann Scherr, 2001 Apr. 6 - 7, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project For Craft and Decorative Arts in America

Interview with Mary Ann Scherr
Conducted by Mary Douglas
At the Artist's home in Raleigh, North Carolina
April 6 and 7, 2001

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Mary Ann Scherr on April 6 and 7, 2001. The interview took place in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was conducted by Mary Douglas for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.

Mary Ann Scherr and Mary Douglas have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a verbatim transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

MARY DOUGLAS: This is an interview of Mary Ann Scherr conducted by Mary Douglas at Scherr’s home and studio in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, April 6 and 7, 2001.

Mary Ann, I’d like to start by asking you to talk about where you were born and what year you were born.

MARY ANN SCHERR: Afraid you were gonna ask that.

MS. DOUGLAS: [Laughs] Sorry.

MS. SCHERR: I was born in Akron, Ohio, August 3, 1921 [Mary Ann Weckman].

MS. DOUGLAS: Could you describe your childhood and family background?

MS. SCHERR: My dad [Clarence Alexis Weckman] was a natural inventor, untrained, unschooled. His academic elementary education ended with the eighth grade. He was born in Dover, Ohio, and was 16 years old when he moved to Akron, Ohio. His parents were from Alsace-Lorraine, at the time French governed, and Paris, France. My mother’s name was Loretta [Gorbach] Weckman. Her parents were from Berlin, Germany, and Breganz, Austria. They came to this country in late 1800. My mother and dad were both born in this country. Dad, a skilled mechanic, was hired at the B. F. Goodrich Company in the hose-making department. After observing the equipment of the thread-covering machinery of the rubber hose, he decided he had a better idea, and designed and invented a piece of equipment that was eventually licensed by every rubber company in the world. Goodrich bought it from my father for a dollar. New at the job, and just 17 years of age, my dad, unaware of his design-invention potential at that time, was grateful to receive the dollar and especially his new position as foreman in the hose department.

My father met my mother the following year, married, and then they had three daughters. He invented a couple other pieces of equipment, and kept a job throughout the Depression. He lived a frugal, stable life, with enough of a consistent salary that supported our family during the Depression years.

My mother was a talented woman who was never encouraged to pursue any of her abilities. She was a fine classical pianist, interested in art in her own way, and at 16 became an intern with a dress designer who worked each season with Paris couturiers. She draped and completed garments for many influential families. I designed many of my clothes. Throughout my adult life my mother translated my sketches and made the clothes that I designed. We worked together to make up the 1956-57 collection of maternity fashion prototypes for Lord & Taylor, New York City. These designs were first published in a national magazine and were sold to the fashion industry.

When my father retired, he worked with me in my studio, and, as well, taught me many mechanical bench tricks while we completed the Stainless Steel Commission for the United States Steel Company [1965-69]. At that time President John Kennedy asked industry to present an alternative alloy for use in U.S.A. currency. U.S. Steel commissioned me to design and fabricate a collection of jewelry that would illustrate the beauty and durability of their metal, stainless steel. Showcases were added to the contract, and the collection of 32 pieces traveled on a tour of major U.S. cities. While stainless steel was not selected as the new coinage metal, the collection toured throughout the United States for over two years, and was then featured in a solo exhibition in the American Craft Museum in New York City. The exhibition was featured in national news publications.

My parents lived in Akron, Ohio, all of their lives with three daughters.

MS. DOUGLAS: Are your sisters younger, older?

MS. SCHERR: We’re all one year apart. A little bit more than nine months apart [laughs].

MS. DOUGLAS: What were you like as a child?

MS. SCHERR: I was the youngest, so I was able to get away with nearly anything. My sisters were never really interested in any of the arts. We each were given a three-penny allowance; I used my money at the local bakery to buy bakery paper for drawing. I always spent my money on paper. I have one of those bakery scenarios somewhere in my files.

MS. DOUGLAS: Were you always interested in art?

MS. SCHERR: Mother said that I was around five when I first started being totally launched into art. I remember moving into another house, where I had to locate a new bakery. I was nine at that time, and I was still drawing on bakery paper [laughs].

MS. DOUGLAS: Were either of your sisters artistic?

MS. SCHERR: No. Not at all. Amazing, not at all.

MS. DOUGLAS: What was your early education like, going to grade school?

MS. SCHERR: Grade school? I was invited back to my grade school, Schumacher Elementary School, as one of their outstanding students. For me, that was really rewarding. The school that seemed so large was so small. I guess everyone has experienced the feeling. I had the same experience with high school. I was invited back there as one of their professionally successful students, to give a lecture on “Being Prepared.”

MS. DOUGLAS: Did you take art courses in high school?

MS. SCHERR: High school curricula were very different in 1935-39. “College Preparation” was offered to those preparing for further study in established academic areas. The students interested in music and art or trade-school programs were placed in respective classes. Sam [future husband] and I first met each other in art class. I was two years ahead of him. The teacher asked me to take over the class one day when she had to go to a meeting. He was supposed to be doing art work, but he was in the back of the room writing his next class test answers on his cuff. So I helped him. [Laughs] We later met again in 1940 at Cleveland Institute of Art.

MS. DOUGLAS: So talk a little bit about, after high school, your education, what you pursued.

MS. SCHERR: After high school, 1939, there were few jobs and very little money. I wanted to study art and enrolled in adult education art courses at the University of Akron. To pay for the courses I interviewed at one of the local stores to see if I could work as a clerk. I had made several small mask jewelry brooches with yarn and metal in my garage studio, cork jewelry. The interview was friendly, but he said, “No, I don’t think you should be a clerk and I want to talk to your mother.” My mother and I went back to see him, and he said, “I am not hiring your daughter because if I do, she’ll never go on to study art. I’m telling you to let her go to art school.”

With the Depression still controlling our lives, my parents did not have enough money for tuition at that time. My dad, working as hard as he did, still didn’t have the extra for all three daughters. They respected my dream and mortgaged their home to put me into the first level of art school. I nearly destroyed the dream by being naive, and extremely foolish. This was my first time away from home, 17. Never smoked, never drank. A new life of self-management. My roommate was a wild one, and introduced me to a group of people from the school who were also less interested in art than play. In the first semester I joined many parties instead of art homework -- I learned how to drink practically overnight. I also learned how not to drink. I didn’t realize that the secretary of the school was also my landlady. She reported my behavior, that is, getting home at six o’clock one morning. I was summoned by the dean of the art school. I appeared in his big office, and to my surprise, my mother and dad entered the dean’s office at the same moment. “We are expelling you!”

This shocking announcement was made in those first six weeks of the art school semester. He said, “You don’t belong.” He made me feel horrible. I felt that I had betrayed everyone, after all my dad and mother had sacrificed for me to be there. The dean asked me to leave until the final paperwork had been recorded.

I sobbed. I was sitting alone in that dark auditorium thinking how stupid I had been.
He called me back to his office and said, “We’re giving you another chance, but you must move to a place we approve. I know the landlady. You may stay for one semester on probation.”

At the end of each semester we were assigned what was called “concours” instead of tests, a competitive process among student peers. I won several first and second awards, in each of the art classes. This was an immediate, really fantastic turnaround. I was awarded a scholarship for the following semester. I learned so much about myself and, more important, the need for excellence in every effort. My first semester away from home was grow-up time. The dean was a very wise person. He told my parents that some of the better students have a very difficult time in their adjustment to personal discipline.

MS. DOUGLAS: Were you taking other courses there besides art, or was it all art?

MS. SCHERR: It was all art and art history; the first two years were foundation courses.
Students interested in art education studied at other academic programs at Western Reserve University, a campus in the same area in Cleveland, Ohio.

MS. DOUGLAS: What courses were you taking there?

MS. SCHERR: Basic foundation courses. Introduction to the many possible general art directions. In the two foundation years, we discovered areas that seemed most desirable for a future career. I wanted to do everything. I wanted to be a sculptor and a painter and a designer, and I was interested in everything but metals. I was there on scholarship throughout the two years, and then World War II in ‘42 changed all of us. I had a weekend graphic design job. President Roosevelt’s voice interrupted the radio music with the declaration of war with Japan. I was shocked and scared. The art school emptied; all the male students left to go to the war. Following a first summer job as a cartographer at Goodyear Tire, in Akron, Ohio, I was offered a full-time position as supervisor of the cartography department at Goodyear Aircraft Corporation. This was a war, and I left school, thinking I would return, with the scholarships.

At Goodyear Aircraft, along with designing charts, I made graphic war-incentive posters, assisted with a really amazing kind of general activity of visual evaluations relating to the production of Corsair and B-29 aircrafts. I was invited to the Pentagon in Washington to be interviewed by the Navy for a position as illustrator for war posters. I would have had to become a Navy person. This meant six weeks of boot camp. While interviewing in Washington I was embarrassed with my clothing. I didn’t feel comfortable in a red civilian suit with everybody else in Navy uniforms. I declined the offer and returned to a new position at Goodyear, as the Morale Incentive Assistant Director, managing major public gala programs for employees, war heroes, and visiting celebrities. The Japanese war was in the last stages. I moved to Chicago and was hired as a layout graphic designer in the Burton Browne Advertising Agency. That was in ‘43, ‘44.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, these -- these job opportunities that came up as a result of the war seem like amazing opportunities.

MS. SCHERR: There weren’t very many men who were available to work the graphics positions that needed talent. The shortage of men resulted in women being finally considered. Frustrating as it was, the time was ideal for women to be considered for professional positions. It wasn’t easy to get a job as a graphic designer. My timing was perfect, the wars were ending.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, you had studied graphic design at Cleveland?

MS. SCHERR: Yes. When I decided to leave Goodyear Aircraft, I was working in the isometric drawing and engineering department. The war with Europe was over; the war with Japan was slowing; it seemed time to move on. I designed and I sent resumes to many Chicago studios, locating addresses for the Chicago studios from library telephone books. I moved to Chicago assuming I would find work and was offered several jobs. I was hired by the Burton Browne Advertising Agency on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

MS. DOUGLAS: And you -- you didn’t want to go back to Cleveland? To the Art Institute?

MS. SCHERR: Not at that time. A neighbor from Akron, Ohio, was performing in a local theater. I caught his show, and we resumed a friendship. He called one day saying he had just lost his partner, and he was scheduled to start a national tour, a six-week engagement, nightclubs and theaters. We had danced a few times, and he asked me to join him as a partner, “Come on. Just do it six weeks.” I thought, I can do that. I took a leave of absence for the six weeks, but we stayed on tour for a year. We were in different nightclubs and theaters all over the West Coast and Canada. Bob Hope saw our act and recruited us for a part in the movie 42nd Street. We signed contracts with Warner Brothers to participate in the movie. Can you imagine watching reruns of the movie now? We were billed as “Duke Alden and Toni.” I was Toni.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, had you had any background in performance?

MS. SCHERR: No. I loved dancing. My partner, Duke Alden, was a very skilled performer. He taught me ballroom dancing on a train. He also taught me how to dance other unique techniques. We had wonderful reviews all over the West Coast. At a nightclub in San Francisco, a friend from Ohio was shocked to see me on stage. He said, “You’ve got to get out of this; you’re an artist. You’re not a dancer by training. Get out of here.” I considered his words, the strange life I had begun to live, and determined that he was right in his assessment. I left, left Duke, broke the movie contract. I look back on that world; it would have changed my life. One of many decisions that changed my history.

MS. DOUGLAS: And how old were you at that time, when you were --

MS. SCHERR: I was 22.

MS. DOUGLAS: [Laughs] So you went -- where did you go from there?

MS. SCHERR: I returned to Chicago and continued with the graphics position for about a month. I needed to calm down a bit after the excitement of show biz life. I decided to go back to Cleveland/Akron, and perhaps finish my education. Just for the lark, I interviewed graphics and illustration positions. Did I really want to go back to art school? I can draw; I can do all these things. I’m now 22, and maybe it’s time to get a job. I was offered an illustrator position at the William Taylor & Sons Department Store in Cleveland. I learned how to skillfully render any object.

I re-met Sam Scherr, who had returned from WWII and re-enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art, majoring in the comparatively new industrial design program. A year later Sam was hired as a product designer with the General Motors Corporation in Detroit, Michigan. He heard that the Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan, was searching for a designer. I interviewed with George E. Walker and was hired at Ford as an interior and accessory designer. I designed hubcaps, hood ornaments, color, instrument panels, and door escutcheons for all their automotive models; Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, and Lincoln Continental.

MS. DOUGLAS: So you’re both living in Detroit?

MS. SCHERR: We were both living in Detroit at that time. We decided to marry, but faced many basic problems. Sam is Jewish; I was Catholic. There were family conflicts with his parents. Fortunately, my parents really liked Sam. We were far enough away from Akron to avoid ongoing disapproval. We married.

We were both known in the automobile field and were offered dual directors positions with Chrysler Motor Company. Sam had begun to rekindle his dream to build a design business, and the automobile industry wasn’t broad in scope. For me, designing color, interiors, hubcaps, escutcheon panels, and hood ornaments was also limiting. For Sam, his plan to be in a control space of his own took shape. Sam said, “Let’s open our own place. There are no designers in Ohio; let’s go there.”

MS. DOUGLAS: In what town did you locate?

MS. SCHERR: We went back to our hometown, Akron, Ohio. Industrial design was in an infant stage throughout the country. Major designers like Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfus were on both coasts, and new small offices were starting up through the country. There were none in the 100-mile radius of Akron, Ohio, an industrial center. Those were beginning lean years, but we became one of the important, emerging design offices in the country. Fortune magazine named our company [Scherr & McDermott International] as one of the ten new, “best” design offices in the country. We designed the Tappan Range, Hoover Sweeper, [Rubbermaid, and Sun Rubber Co.], to name the caliber of products the office serviced.

In the early 1950s Sam responded to a U.S. government invitation for industrial designers to assist underdeveloped countries, in the quest for the development of export and import products. Three offices were awarded contracts: Jack Lenor Larsen, textiles, Russell Wright, ceramics, and Scherr & McDermott, product development.

Scherr & McDermott designers were awarded additional contracts in Korea, Japan, and later, with the Kennedy Administration. We also worked in South America with the program “Products of the Alianza.” At that time, we opened an office and showroom in the Empire State Building in New York City. Each week, Sam and I, along with his staff, worked in New York designing products that would be made in South America and distributed internationally. I designed clothing, jewelry, and toys.

MS. DOUGLAS: What years were these?

MS. SCHERR: This was from 1954 through 1969. We located many American craftspeople to work in these countries as teachers. During the Johnson Administration, nepotism entered our vocabulary. President Johnson’s brother-in-law, Tony Taylor [Lady Bird Johnson’s brother], imported South American products for his retail shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Because of his close connection to the White House, we were denied the right to hire him as a consultant. This law also denied me the ability to be contracted as a designer and instructor. So my designing remained stateside. Prior to the nepotism fury, I accompanied Sam to our office and studio in Seoul, Korea, where I taught many people unique designing and metal techniques.

MS. DOUGLAS: So in other words, because the two of you were married --

MS. SCHERR: There was a government scandal over inappropriate gifts of alpaca fur, given as incentives related to hiring relatives in special positions. It is labeled “nepotism.”

MS. DOUGLAS: You weren’t allowed to work together.

MS. SCHERR: We worked together on all levels, I just was not permitted to be separately contracted to travel or work in a specific contract because my name was Scherr. But I’m skipping around, I know.

MS. DOUGLAS: No, you’re not, but I wanted to ask you about this program, this [pre-Johnson] government program, a little bit more. Exactly what were you doing? You were providing design services to foreign countries?

MS. SCHERR: We exchanged many teachers and students in Korea, South America, and Japan. We brought artists to the U.S.A. to study specific subjects where they would learn current technology that could be incorporated in producing products for export. We searched for special U.S. talents to teach weaving, metal, glass, and ceramics in both Korea and in the South American countries of Bolivia, Peru, Columbia, and Ecuador. We developed industries using indigenous materials. In Korea, we concentrated on brass, wood, textiles, and metal. Our contracts covered the education of the exchange students. One student, Sung Huon Qwan, became the Seoul University Chair of the Ceramic Department after his study at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

MS. DOUGLAS: Did they work in your firm?

MS. SCHERR: They studied in our firm, and they attended art schools. In 1960 I taught design and metalsmithing. The U.S. instructors taught all techniques in our Seoul, Korea, demonstration center. Any Korean citizen interested in learning was invited to the center to learn techniques and to investigate the processes being demonstrated by the instructors. We researched materials that could be used in the design of the products. As incentive to create a natural image, we used native symbols to illustrate possible design concepts.

MS. DOUGLAS: Did you have clients overseas that you did product design for?

MS. SCHERR: Our firm was so determined to develop a Korean program that would re-build a sick economy that finding a viable industry within which to partner was not a consideration.

There were some very small existing industries, especially in the limited production of brass and wood products. The country was so poor and devastated by their history of being occupied by countries -- Mongolia, Japan, and China -- as well as the current war with North Korea, that knowing and practicing their forbidden, original, Korean culture, and their sense of their own historical image, had lost significance. Our involvement as part of their economic recovery was the task of reestablishing their heritage, and providing directions that could generate new industries. The growth potential for individual expression and production, along with the serious requirement to develop and showcase products for foreign markets, was the critical goal of our contract. These were government-sponsored training programs, and we taught them to make products that could be exported, using their materials. The country was so damaged by poverty and the affects of the war from the north. The main street was a dirt road. There was no electricity and only a few buildings, and a few structures had central heat. The people seemed accustomed to having nothing, including spirit.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, this would’ve been right after the Korean War?

MS. SCHERR: ‘55. We managed the program there until 1963.

MS. DOUGLAS: So it was sort of economic redevelopment for them?

MS. SCHERR: Yes. A.I.D., Aid to Industrial Development for underdeveloped countries. The program “Products of the Alianza” was initiated during the Kennedy Administration, and it had the same goals as the Korean program. We advertised for essential talents in all the craft medias, looking for artists hired as instructors. The American Craft Council [ACC] was instrumental in the location of the many crafts people who worked for us.

MS. DOUGLAS: For this project?

MS. SCHERR: We hired them in specific medias in each country. We paid their travel living costs, and salary. Our contract with each covered all levels of their performance.

MS. DOUGLAS: And they would be teaching?

MS. SCHERR: They would be teaching, demonstrating, and designing products indicative of the host country materials and culture.

MS. DOUGLAS: Let me go back and ask you to talk about when you opened -- when you and Sam opened your design studio in Akron. What kinds of projects were you working on? Who were your clients?

MS. SCHERR: At the start, we accepted any and all projects connected with an art requirement -- trademark designs, graphics promotions, murals, book illustrations; and I sculpted small clay prototypes that would be made into rubber toys. Sam designed letterheads and logos; I painted murals in restaurants and private homes, and designed and rendered children’s books and plastic games. Sam searched for any kind of art work. We were commissioned to create toys with Sun Rubber, including the current remake of the “Hoppity Ball.” Sam finally got a large project with the Tappan Range Corporation. The studio/office designed the first eye-level range. He also designed the Hoover Vacuum Sweeper that was shown in the Louvre in Paris for a year as one of the 100 best designs of this century. We were on our way as a major design office.

MS. DOUGLAS: How many people were working in your office at that time?

MS. SCHERR: We started with three and eventually had about a hundred designers [laughs]. Sam had offices in New York, in the Orient, in South America. Our employees included the people who were directing our offices in these other countries. We also designed product displays for international fairs all over the world.

As a team, Sam and I were invited and contracted to survey and evaluate the jewelry industries in Guyana, South America. We were guests of the government and traveled throughout Guyana, viewing both the cottage industries and the large manufacturers that produced souvenirs and boutique jewelry for Trinidad, Barbados, and other islands, providing suggestions for further popular, trendy, products.

MS. DOUGLAS: And what was the name of the firm?

MS. SCHERR: Scherr & McDermott International.

MS. DOUGLAS: McDermott was a partner?

MS. SCHERR: Yes, I was just a designer.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, that’s amazing. So you were considered an industrial design firm?

MS. SCHERR: It was Scherr & McDermott Industrial Design International, with the primary office, in Akron, Ohio.

MS. DOUGLAS: Were there other design firms in Akron at that time?

MS. SCHERR: Not at that time; now there are several.

MS. DOUGLAS: What about Cleveland?

MS. SCHERR: The designers in Cleveland were also the faculty of the CIA. Victor Schreckengost was the first industrial designer to deserve the identification. In 1946-47, I believe, we spawned the first authentic design office in that area. When our office closed in 1976, two of the men that worked for us moved to Cleveland and opened their design office. Our office had hired a whole generation of industrial designers from a small, a very small core. I think Sam and I opened the fields of metals and product packaging. I backed into becoming a metalsmith. At that time, I was interested in creative everything, anything two- and three-dimensional. I’m most comfortable in most areas. I loved drawing, painting, sculpting, and then metal.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, maybe this is a good point to talk about how did you get into metal?

MS. SCHERR: After working professionally in the field, and then full time in the studio, our first child, Randy, required that my creative work become a half-time, home studio. The other half was divided between our child and the hated housework routine, an attitude that has been in affect since we married. We then had another son, Scott, now a music and sound director; a daughter, Sydney, a fine metal and enamel artist; Randy, the oldest, industrial designer, turned real estate developer. And that’s when I did the cookie jars. I did a full series of cookie jars for the company, and I did them at home because I needed to be with the baby --

MS. DOUGLAS: You designed the cookie jars?

MS. SCHERR: Sam’s studio acquired the cookie jar project and turned it over for me to design and sculpt the originals in full-scale plastiscene. I designed the nursery rhyme series, the cookie jar beginnings. That project became famous, not because it was a good design; it became collectible because it was part of the Andy Warhol collection. When first produced by Robbinson-Ransbottom Clay Manufacturer Company, in Ohio, I kept the first two samples of The Cow Jumped Over The Moon. I hid them away; they seemed so trite [laughs]. I designed several others using nursery rhyme themes. The cow became special, as history proved.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, so you were making the prototype.

MS. SCHERR: [Laughs] Yes.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, that’s wonderful.

MS. SCHERR: Well, at that time the role of product designer in the world of contemporary art implied sleek, minimal, current design thought. When the first cookie jars came to market, I felt embarrassed with my childlike effort. Thirty years later, the photo of the cookie jar The Cow Jumped Over The Moon was pictured on the front page of the New York Times and Newsweek magazine. I was awed! Andy Warhol had included two of them in his remarkable collection of everything. Imagine -- the cookie jar I was so ashamed of all those years. A cookie jar that originally sold for $2.99 auctioned off at Sotheby’s, New York, for $19,000. The full collection was purchased by the Movada Watch Company for over $250,000 [laughs].

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s wonderful.

MS. SCHERR: I had two of the first sample cookie jars. I had given one to my son, and I had one. Recently, a friend, an antique collector, called to advise me that the Cow was pictured in a cookie jar auction in Ohio. It has become a desirable collector item, with the Cow in all the cookie jar books. While I did not pay $19,000, I did pay a large sum to purchase two more, so that each of us in our family has one in our collections.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s wonderful. Well, we got into the cookie jar because we were talking about how you got into metalsmithing, and what happened to Sam’s design firm.

MS. SCHERR: He had sold it and opened a gallery in Ghent, Ohio. This period, 1975-76, was a very troubled, changing time in the design field. Industrial design was being invaded by interior designers, decorators, and any person who assumed the label. There were no established boundaries or credentials related to the necessary training. Major industries at that time were aware of the high cost of consultant designers and developed internal design divisions. They had begun to lure designers from prior consultants’ studios.

Sam was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. The salary level was remarkable. He became the designer with a company called Kromex in Cleveland, Ohio; tabletop products. He disliked the nine-to-five conformity and the kind of squelching atmosphere of not being self-regulated. He resigned and opened the gallery of ethnic art and sculpture in Ghent, Ohio. Around this time, the national organization, American Craft Council and American Craft Museum, was in search of a director. Barbara Rockefeller, the board president, invited Sam to be interviewed. He was hired, sold his gallery, sold everything, and we moved to New York.

[END TAPE ONE SIDE A.]

MS. DOUGLAS: Do you remember what year that was?

MS. SCHERR: 1976. He moved from Akron to become director of the American Craft Council and president of the American Craft Museum. That’s when they were still combined on 54th Street.

MS. DOUGLAS: What were you doing at the time?

MS. SCHERR: I was teaching at Kent State University. I was chair of the metals graduate program and head of the undergraduate program as well. I moved to New York City in 1979. I was very involved at that time with body monitors [jewelry connected to conditions of the body]. This is a major activity that started in 1969. To cover this subject, the last 30 years has remained consistently active, with the monitors and cosmetic cover-ups.

MS. DOUGLAS: Isn’t that amazing?

MS. SCHERR: To catch up with the chronological order, 1949, and the introduction of metalsmithing in my life. Our son Randy was about six weeks old, and I had begun to feel abandoned by my profession. I searched about for solutions that would give me pleasure beyond a baby and the smothering apartment walls. The only class that suited my available hours was a jewelry class. I registered into a metals night class at the Akron Art Institute. The instructor was a fiber person with no knowledge of metalsmithing. Regardless of her naive instructions and the first failure, I was hooked. Our son became ill, and I missed all but two classes. I stayed hooked and started collecting tools. The metal sheet was an open, alluring, canvas of possibilities. Two years later, I taught all of the Akron Art Institute metals courses.

Kent State University hired me to teach design and product design, an adjunct position. At the same time [1950] the worldwide craft movement was beginning to take real form. The chairman of the art department, Elmer Novotny, said, “You are the only person on our faculty that has had any metalsmithing.” I said, “I had only the two night classes of a jewelry class. I don’t know anything about metal.” He replied, “You know more than anyone else in the department; stay a chapter ahead of your students.” I did. I found very little basic information, and taught a few of the techniques I had already tried. This was 1951; there were only a few publications, except in books teaching “tin can art.” At that time, I had a studio in my home. I did not know that there were grades of solder. I also didn’t know much about the character or use of hammers that I had purchased as part of a collection of old tools, and knew little about other tools. I entered a competition with the very first pieces fabricated, earring mobiles. I was awarded a first award. That really shook me up.

MS. DOUGLAS: No Robert Von Neumann book [Design and Creation of Jewelry (Philadelphia: Chilton Co., 1961)]?

MS. SCHERR: He published his really fine metals book a little later on. His metal work was stunning. He was self-taught. We hired him within the Korea project as a participant in a Japanese research project.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s amazing. To teach yourself metalsmithing seems --

MS. SCHERR: The Kent State metals program and the graduate school emphasis was beginning to attract an audience of students from many sources. The metals studio was moved to a larger space; the curriculum included enameling, with Bill Harper and Mel Someroski. We were fortunate to have students, Jaclyn Davidson, Hiroko, Sydney Scherr, and Lisa Gralnick.

Metalsmithing today is so complex. The most intriguing issue about metals, for me, is that I may never learn all there is to know. I am still finding techniques I’ve never investigated, including the current fascination with the hydraulic press, another venue of smart ways to create forms. In the early 1970s Heikki Seppä changed the vocabulary of the metal artist. In his investigations of shell forms he is responsible for a unique system for moving metal in very different ways. He researched and restored many of the processes that were used in ancient times.

MS. DOUGLAS: Because of the --

MS. SCHERR: His ability to manage metal with tools he designed.

MS. DOUGLAS: I’m trying to think what those forms are called.

MS. SCHERR: They’re called shell forms.

MS. DOUGLAS: Spiculum?

MS. SCHERR: Spiculum, anticlastic, synclastic, and many more, that served as word descriptions for his unique metalworking vocabulary.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s something else.

MS. SCHERR: I was also self-taught. The metals department at Kent State University had grown into a major study. I felt the need to add hollowware to the schedule. I studied one semester with Fred Miller, at the Cleveland Art Institute, and learned about the equipment needed for the study of classical silversmithing at Kent State.

MS. DOUGLAS: I’m curious as to -- when Kent first came to you and asked you to teach metals, when you were teaching product design and graphics, that’s amazing in this day and age that a dean would come to you and say, “Teach metals,” because now they’re all trying to shut the programs down.

MS. SCHERR: Many programs are now closing. My daughter, Sydney Scherr, and I are now in 2001 charged with a full metals program, and the outreach programs at Meredith College in Raleigh. The metals and jewelry department is well supported and encouraged to continue to develop, with a generous budget for tools and equipment. The courses are very popular.

MS. DOUGLAS: What was it that was happening that created the original demand [in 1950]?

MS. SCHERR: The craft movement had affected an international demand for craft knowledge. Following WWII, 1945-60, the desire for education, the freedom to explore careers, caused a serious demand for personal development. The universities were searching for faculty, and craft organizations were developing. The American Craft Council began to interest artists to unite; their national conferences enjoyed a real growth period. The SNAG organization [Society of North American Goldsmiths] invited several known metal artists to attend a meeting of like-minded participants. In my naive stage, I read the invitation and concluded that I did not qualify, because I had never worked in gold and therefore was not a goldsmith, as expressed in the SNAG name.

MS. DOUGLAS: That was -- you were still teaching at --

MS. SCHERR: Kent State University

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, I think that was sort of a misnomer anyway.

MS. SCHERR: Each metal has a label: blacksmith, if you work in iron or steel; a silversmith makes hollow forms; and goldsmiths make jewelry. A pewter metalworker is a whitesmith. The titles merely suggest the area of interest.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well now, you started -- you said you started teaching at Kent State around 1951.

MS. SCHERR: 1950.

MS. DOUGLAS: And how long did you teach at Kent?

MS. SCHERR: I taught there from 1950 to 1978 -- until I moved to New York.

MS. DOUGLAS: Wow. And did you --

MS. SCHERR: I was a tenured associate professor by that time. I was awarded a master’s degree of fine art equivalent. 1986, I received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Defiance College for my work with the research and development of body monitors. The MFA has been honored in all the schools that followed, Parsons School, The New School for Social Research, Meredith College, and while the degree position was not needed for the classes taught at Duke University, the level of my experience is respected.

MS. DOUGLAS: Kent State awarded an MFA?

MS. SCHERR: Based on the scope of professional experience. The need for a liberal arts education 1940 was not considered essential in either high school or art school. Higher education now realizes that being an artist is not just learning skills. Programs today include a basic academic curriculum. I have added to my limited academic education through auditing courses most of my adult life. While in high school, the history classes were my least favorite subjects, and while teaching at Kent State, I enrolled in the history classes throughout the years to correct the misjudgment.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, did you continue to teach design and other courses at Kent?

MS. SCHERR: No. The metals program became a departmental major study and as quickly, a graduate study. I directed the metals division until I moved to New York City.

MS. DOUGLAS: So you created the metals program at Kent essentially.

MS. SCHERR: Yes. The courses were very popular and became nationally known.

MS. DOUGLAS: ‘Cause you went from teaching one course to --

MS. SCHERR: It happened very fast. I had exhibitions of student work. We suddenly had 25 majors. This seemed to be happening over the whole world at that time.

MS. DOUGLAS: The GI Bill have anything to do with that, or -- ?

MS. SCHERR: Yes, I had several students who were GI. The NEA [National Endowment for The Arts] visited the Kent State campus and encouraged everyone to consider art as a professional career. All of the crafts medias were enjoying new life. The Penland School of Crafts [Penland, North Carolina] and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts [Deer Isle, Maine] were becoming well known. The NEA awarded grants to individual artists. I was fortunate to be invited to submit a grant proposal, but did not understand that the invitation was based on further development of the body monitors, a huge disappointment for me because there was no time to prepare a proposal for the Washington, DC, waiting jury.

MS. DOUGLAS: That must’ve been a very exciting time.

MS. SCHERR: That was an exciting time. And the next most intriguing period was in the ‘70s, when the Vietnam War invaded everyone and every level of life. I was at Kent State when the revolt caused the four deaths of the students by the National Guard.

MS. DOUGLAS: Were you there at that time?

MS. SCHERR: My studio was on the grounds where the killings occurred. One of the boys killed lived in the house with my graduate assistant. It was a frightening, really frightening time.

MS. DOUGLAS: Did they shut the school down?

MS. SCHERR: Yes. That morning a guard would not let me in my office. He leveled his bayonet at my stomach. I told him that I had cyanide and sulfur standing next to each other. “If anything happens to this building the acids will combine, and we’ll have to evacuate the city. It will kill everybody.” And he said, “Can’t go in.”

MS. DOUGLAS: So by the time you left Kent, you had a graduate program in metals?

MS. SCHERR: Yes. Graduate program, with 14 graduate students, and around 20 undergraduates. We had opened the enameling program with Mel Someroski, and we both were assisted with graduate technical assistants.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, you were one of the how many schools in the states with a grad program that big in metals? Who were your colleagues or other schools?

MS. SCHERR: Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, with Richard Thomas; Stanley Lechtzin, in Philadelphia at Tyler; University of Washington, John Marshall; Washington University in St. Louis; Arline Fisch at San Diego; Phil Fike in Detroit; John Prip on the West Coast. I’m not sure they all had graduate programs at that time, but they had strong departments.

MS. DOUGLAS: Did the -- did your metal work really take over your artistic life? Did you ever do product design anymore after that?

MS. SCHERR: I still do. Throughout all that time I illustrated books and games for the Saafield Publishing Company in Akron, Ohio. Children’s book illustrations, drawing books, and box-game covers. I had other design accounts with plastics companies, designing clothing accessories, umbrellas, and boots. One of the fabricators asked for designs that could fit over card tables to become houses and cars for a child’s indoor play. Another account called for 3-D greeting cards and wall hangings. We had so many unique accounts that stretched imagination, especially in the rubber toy and balloon design category. I believe we designed in every direction. When I moved to New York, I continued fashion illustration for major accounts, drawing directly from the showroom, walking, and models. These sketches were used for newspaper and magazine promotions. For the computer industry, I designed full-page clip art drawings that were sold to the graphics and computer industries.

MS. DOUGLAS: Was that freelance work? Or were you working for a firm? So you started doing that when you moved to New York, the fashion drawings?

MS. SCHERR: I had a fashion account with an upscale boutique in Akron, for which I rendered all their promotional drawings. Their inventory carried major designer labels. When I moved to New York, I was permitted to draw the garments in the designer showrooms. I also drew seasonal images, full 20-inch-by-30-inch pages of concepts related to specific holidays, using purchased art for promotional images. Drawing has threaded though my life like the food needed to live. Over the years I’ve saved thousands of drawings of every object I’ve made.

Our brownstone on 85th Street and York Avenue included the lower-level studio, for which I hired seven artists to assist on an upcoming large exhibition. I loved and love New York, the city where lights and doors never close. Later, we moved to a 5,000-square-foot loft in SoHo on Broadway, where we built a three-bedroom, spatial home with a 100-by-50-foot length studio. We also built another loft home on West Broadway, the center of a New York City carnival atmosphere.

MS. DOUGLAS: [Laughs] Were you in Manhattan?

MS. SCHERR: Our brownstone on 85th and York Avenue was near the East River and the mayor’s mansion. At that time, the Parsons School of Design had started a craft department. I was invited to teach a second-level course in metals. About six months later, the dean of the school, David Levy, now director of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, called saying Parsons was searching for a new chair to direct the craft department.

MS. DOUGLAS: It was called crafts?

MS. SCHERR: It was then called “craft” department -- clay, fiber, and metals. When the position was vacated, I was invited to become chair of the department, which I renamed, from “Crafts” to “Product Design,” because I had several phone calls from reluctant parents who said they didn’t want to pay tuition for their children to learn to make pot holders. That image had to change to insure a successful program.

MS. DOUGLAS: Isn’t that interesting?

MS. SCHERR: I thought about the implication for some time and finally officially changed the name to “Product Design in a Media.” Parsons is a design school, and the emphasis had to reflect both learning how to design and model making. The change gave the department a presence in each of its sections. While chair, I also became the director of clay, fiber, metals, wood, and glass, for the New School for Social Research, the umbrella university under which Parsons was a division.

MS. DOUGLAS: Those were two separate schools?

MS. SCHERR: Yes. Some of the programs and classes dovetailed. There was yet another department, Parsons Associate Adult Education. Each area required a different credit application, student roll, and separate bookkeeping processes.

MS. DOUGLAS: And how did they differ?

MS. SCHERR: While the courses were promoted separately and students registered with their elected schools, the New School and Parsons associate degree programs used the Parsons design school classroom facilities. My position as chair of all the schools included course determinations, promotional activities, student records, hiring and control of faculty [all adjunct contracts], and most important, control of credit requirements for the Parsons full-time students, a complicated, seven-day week with 13-hour, overwhelming, days. Fortunately, I liked Dean David Levy and the New School President, Jonathan [Fanton]. I developed an international program with the New School. We invited academic and practicing artists from all over the world.

MS. DOUGLAS: What kind of degree would they get at the New School?

MS. SCHERR: They could get a full BA [Bachelor of Arts], an Associate Certificate, or in some areas, a BFA [Bachelor of Fine Arts] degree.

MS. DOUGLAS: A BA?

MS. SCHERR: Bachelor of Arts in all Parsons programs; the Parsons Associate Degree, a certificate; the Parsons BFA was offered in only painting and sculpture. The New School offered a certificate or was called “Adult Education.”

MS. DOUGLAS: I’m real interested that that word “craft” was sort of a flag for people.

MS. SCHERR: In New York it really caused problems. My product design program attracted attention, since the emphasis became the art and business of design or design in a media. A national news release described the effort with a full-page accounting of the Parsons design intention, in the Craft Report magazine. Our enrollment numbers showed the growth of interest we had gained with the realistic consideration for professional goals

MS. DOUGLAS: And this was in the late ‘70s?

MS. SCHERR: This was early ‘80s --

MS. DOUGLAS: In New York.

MS. SCHERR: The open philosophy of the New School extended to each department, encouraging social interaction. Wherever possible, we invited outstanding designers or craft artists to visit, lecture, or demonstrate work. Peter Gainsbury, director of development at the Goldsmiths Hall [Assayers of All Metals in London], visited Parsons while attending a jewelry conference in New York City. He told me about titanium and his newly discovered ability to color the metal with light and electricity through anodizing. He was in New York to lecture with the jewelry industry and knew about our desire for gathering information. Edward DeLarge and D. Ward, London, demonstrated the process and lectured at Parsons in 1981.

I was fascinated with the process and purchased the equipment. At that time, I was showing my work at the Robert Lee Morris store in SoHo. He was intrigued with the technique of working with titanium, suggesting that we invite 11 metalsmiths to investigate the process, which would then be introduced with a gallery exhibition. An exhibition of titanium was new to the world, which became a full-scale manufacturing process and business in my loft-studio.

I hadn’t yet really started my job at Parsons as chairman. I designed and fabricated a large collection of titanium jewelry that we decided to exhibit in the International Boutique Festival held annually on Central Park West, New York City. We leased a space. This new metal and color created a storm of buyers. They came to our booth and ordered. We suddenly were deep in business, making 200 pieces each day. The exhibition response was remarkable. We hired five people to start working on production. I worked the chair position at Parsons by day, and designed titanium jewelry at night. We developed a collection that was sold internationally.

MS. DOUGLAS: Sam was at ACC?

MS. SCHERR: He had resigned because the ACC board and he had interpreted his position differently. He was hired as creative director; they felt he should spend full time fundraising. Sam understood the marketing of a product and became the manager of the business. We had moved to a loft that had the 1,500-foot space to produce jewelry.

MS. DOUGLAS: What kind of products?

MS. SCHERR: Titanium bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. This was 1982, and before titanium became popular. We hired several artisans to fabricate and anodize the metal. In the meantime, I started being the department chair at Parsons. Sam managed our jewelry business producing 200 products each day. We were exporting to Japan, to South America, to everywhere. It was an active business. Around six or seven months after we had begun, I was walking to Parsons one morning, and I saw my earrings being sold by a street vender at a fourth of our price; they were copies of my design. A demeaning knockoff of every design we had made. We quit! Other jewelry producers began to flood the market with colored jewelry.

MS. DOUGLAS: [Laughs] That’s terrible.

MS. SCHERR: We were out of business. Within a year, titanium became a household word. It was the introduction of titanium in this country. Meantime, Sydney and I were invited to exhibit a dual show in midtown New York. That was my last real effort and exposure to titanium as an exhibition metal. Beyond the magic of its color and the fun of anodizing, I use it as a teaching tool. Students take real pleasure in creating with the metals titanium and niobium. Locally, I’ve offered classes in the technique at Meredith College, Duke University, and Penland School of Crafts.

MS. DOUGLAS: It’s fascinating, you know?

MS. SCHERR: The Meredith College students find it to be as magical as a computer, with the instant colors.

MS. DOUGLAS: Right. It is amazing. You can pass an electric current through a metal, and the surface changes color.

MS. SCHERR: The metal forms a film related to the voltage and an apparent color forms.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, I’m real interested to hear how you reoriented the crafts department at Parsons, a product design rubric.

MS. SCHERR: I had to write course content catalogues for both New School and for Parsons. Convincing administrators moved slowly. I talked with many parents. I talked with the dean to explain that the craft department was never going to grow until we could educate the public with words that proved we were not teaching corn-husk doll design or kitchen pot holders. Product Design in a Media was the start of change. We then began labeling the courses Product Design, and I hired product designers to teach courses in design thought. I hired Tucker Viemeister from Smart Design. His approach made a very real difference in the quality and process of applying design to all products.

MS DOUGLAS: I know him. How did you change the Parsons program?

[END TAPE ONE SIDE B.]

MS. SCHERR: We moved from the one-of-a-kind conceptual project, the self-expression syndrome. I started hiring designers that were doing multiples, designing collections in any media. In clay, we taught slip casting rather than making a single pot. Michael Lucero was teaching sculpture; this study became an elective; Dorothy Hafner, who was producing wonderful, colorful, multiples, taught dinnerware; I hired an artist who was doing only slip-mold production, with design the primary core of the concept. In metals, we offered wax carving and casting, combined with concept rendering and all basic techniques for independent and personal fabrication.

An internship was initiated at Parsons for senior year. The program exchanged a one-semester work instruction for a credit-grade evaluation in any position of choice. Often that student was hired at the completion of the position. The product design program also encompassed clay, fiber, metal, wood, glass, glass painting, surface design, and computer design. While I was there, the head count was 800 students and 70 faculty members. All adjunct instructors.

One of the Parsons intern students is now the director of Ralph Lauren domestics department. Ralph Lauren called my Parsons office wanting to know if I had a student who could tabletop design, two-dimension. The student was interning with Dinner Ware, a well-known dinnerware designer, learning to render the different stages and faces of a design. Lauren hired her.

We worked with many designers in New York at that time. In the design world, it seemed that all designers had a New York office/studio. Finding internships for students was as simple as a phone call. The student was not paid money; they earned a grade. The student was learning to think in terms of multiples, collections, and production techniques.

Unfortunately, due to current internal problems and narrowed interests, Parsons replaced product design with computer technology. The person who replaced me had refused to continue working with the national and international New School programs, cancelled the visiting artists program, and closed all courses that had been scheduled for non-Parsons degree students, after eight intensive years of building a broad design image. Though I am not there, I do regret the loss of a fine academic potential.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, so what happened before you resigned?

MS. SCHERR: We had converted the program from solo works to production techniques in each of the medias. Promotional planning gained attention, resulting in a strong response to the school and the department. Helen Drutt, Philadelphia, directed the history of crafts, for a first offering in the area. The internship program was proving to be very successful. We were filling classes with students.

MS. DOUGLAS: Right, that was while you were still there?

MS. SCHERR: Yes. That was when the program was beginning to grow and we had changed the name.

MS. DOUGLAS: Before you came in, had the crafts been taught as part of the fine arts department?

MS. SCHERR: It was fine arts. Students were making pots. We had a few looms, and the metals program was being handled by a satellite teaching group that copied enameled pendants from historical references.

MS. DOUGLAS: So it was like part of the sculpture and painting program.

MS. SCHERR: There was very little interaction. Before I assumed the chair position, the craft department had a part-time head, and the classes seemed scattered with the schedules of instructors directed by a fractured management.

MS. DOUGLAS: So it sounds like the changes you made were very successful?

MS. SCHERR: I enjoyed the challenge and was really disappointed when I recently learned that the program had been discontinued.

MS. DOUGLAS: Back to the idea of fine art?

MS. SCHERR: No, it had been dropped. The painting and sculpture department was icing on a cupcake. It was a special consideration to the art ideal and had little to do with being included in a design school like Parsons. The product design department had begun to realize a design-based reputation, representing another of the levels of design training, fashion, interiors, illustration, photography, and product design. The citywide product design areas of the internship courses placed students in areas that live in the real world.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, it sounds like it was paralleling FIT’s [Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City] program of putting people in industry.

MS. SCHERR: We always had a comeback phrase for the FIT competition; it was “FIT teaches you how to make, and Parsons teaches you how to design -- and make.” Sam Biezer, chair, died, by the way. Did you know him?

MS. DOUGLAS: No. I didn’t know him. So when you say they eliminated the crafts department, in other words, they just melded it back into a fine art department? Or they quit teaching it altogether?

MS. SCHERR: The department was canceled, totally, and not from lack of students, or interest --

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s happened, you know; so often when a major faculty person leaves, the program cancels --

MS. SCHERR: Institutions survive. Richard Yelle replaced me as chair. He was a glass artist and furthered his interest in glass during this time. When I offered glass, it was a course through the New School course schedule only.

I hired the whole [New York Experimental Glass] workshop. Their courses appeared in the New School catalogue and attracted wide attention

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, as part of Parsons.

MS. SCHERR: Offered through the New School catalogue.

MS. DOUGLAS: As part of the curriculum?

MS. SCHERR: When I moved into the director position and decided to offer glass, I visited the Experimental Glass facility when they were in Little Italy. I was really impressed with the glass artists and the glass program that was then formed for the New School. They were a complement to the breadth of the department and, as well, the department exhibitions.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s wonderful. Well, were you teaching metals at Parsons yourself?

MS. SCHERR: I tried to teach an advanced metals class and found I couldn’t leave my office without being recalled for another important emergency or meeting. My staff consisted of a secretary and a studio manager. We had approximately 800 students and approximately 70 instructors, all part-time. My schedule consumed an eight-day-plus week. The commitment extended to the visiting artists, lectures, and school events.

The program included many international artists; Wendy Ramshaw for a workshop [from London], Peter Scubic, Eva Eisler [from Germany]; artists from London, Israel, Japan; Robert Turner, U.S.A., etc., etc. -- to name a few. These artists came through New York, were scheduled to teach courses, some were one-week courses and weekend courses.

Every week there were visiting artists in one of the clay, fiber, metal, and glass departments. I tried to take part in a class, just to sit in, and gave up; I gave up being anything but a chairman.

MS. DOUGLAS: From your experience at Kent for so long, running the metals program there, to Parsons, what was the difference? How would you compare them?

MS. SCHERR: I learned almost immediately that the New York student wanted to know how to make products that would support their life in New York. They wanted to learn how to make two of a kind, not one of a kind, but 30 of a kind. The solo piece is wonderful; it salves the ego’s need to be emotionally involved with the piece in the perfect world. The student should learn both -- know how to create a collection; know how to make one piece, one of a kind.

In 1975, I was a participant in the Reed & Barton’s, Signature Five national sales promotion [Reed & Barton, Silversmith Company, in Massachusetts]. They commissioned five metalsmiths to design prototypes, which then would be copied and fabricated by their in-house artisans. These copies were then sold in major stores as the “Signature Five Collection.” From a series of drawings, the designs were selected and the prototype fabricated by the designer. This is a designer dream world.

At Parsons, when I started to introduce production techniques, casting and assembly, I discovered that my own experience did not include many fundamental multi-production details, nor did I have enough marketing experience to relate the information for a large base of marketing and sales requirements. Knowledge of production; learning about how to cost a finished piece; amortize costs to make a profit, and as important, to support a way of life.

We learned in our experience with marketing titanium jewelry that multiples require either people or special knowledge of equipment to complete the work. To this end, that is, to teach the production of a collection in a technique with which I was familiar, I designed a line of jewelry that could be chemically photoetched in multiples. This is a technique that I had experimented with since the start of my history with metal. I paper-designed a collection of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings that would be finished in black nickel, 24-karat gold, and sterling silver. Each color was electroplated on a base of brass metal. We located a jewelry manufacturer in Providence, Rhode Island, who etched and assembled the line according to our instructions. This collection was then sold in selected major department stores such as Saks, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, and as well through catalogue publications throughout the country.

MS. DOUGLAS: I think New York is so fashion conscious that I’m not surprised that the jewelry students would want to be part of that.

MS. SCHERR: The jewelry industry is another planet. Stores like Details [New York] search for artists to do only limited unique production pieces. They want the work to look different. The little galleries all through New York and areas of Soho and Greenwich Village and Tribeca are interested in the local, less expensive than gem-quality production pieces. For metals students learning how to do design, fabricating quickly, or simple assembly, is a key for work being successful in terms of commissions, sales, and costs.

MS. DOUGLAS: Was there at Parsons, was there an industrial design department, or -- ?

MS. SCHERR: That was my department. Industrial design in a media, each division --clay, fiber, metal -- taught design and working processes in that media.

MS. DOUGLAS: Outside of the craft areas?

MS. SCHERR: Not really. We included the design of a product in each specific area of study. “Fiber” became “surface design and textile pattern”; “clay” became “cast dinner and hollowware”; “metal” became “designing objects for collections and production.” There were assigned projects that forced students to consider designs that could be made as multiples as well as satisfy personal creative expression.

Each division, clay, fiber, metal subjects, were not given the typical industrial designer’s project, like a pencil sharpener. Our limitations related to the materials being studied. The important element in designing with materials is the material being used and the function of the product. While I was at Parsons, the ceramic department became involved with the European ceramic export industry.

MS. DOUGLAS: So did you introduce prototyping and model making in the department?

MS. SCHERR: In metal, we were starting with drawing the basics of a design to be modeled in wax, to make a casting or fabrications with a step-by-step assembly. In clay, with making the mold, we were starting with the basic concept, starting with drawings of all elevations of the product. From this we proceeded to work with the drawing to complete the model. Sometimes we worked in Styrofoam to make a 3-D model.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, I’m curious to know how you think -- what was the difference, say, in -- from your own experiences at Cleveland Art Institute as a student, and then working in the industry in Ohio and in Chicago. What kind of differences did you see happen in the field of product design from when -- that experience till working at Parsons?

MS. SCHERR: What you are asking pre-dates the computer, so at the time I entered, Parsons’s methods for training had not changed that much. We were still using magic markers for color, and some were still airbrushing their renderings. The metals area had begun to work with Seppä’s shell forms, and trendy design is always in fashion. Having had the experience with Sam’s office, the volumes of information needed to design the vacuum sweeper’s basic body demanded that we learn the function of each of the parts related to the whole just to produce a sketch. Without information, a designer stays in that sort of wavy wonderland. It matters that the dimensions are correct. A mental structure of being conscious of function, mechanical needs, and the way things have to be built, all exist before the designer enters the intuitive design moment. The computer was just beginning and has changed and contributed to a whole new beginning with the way a designer is trained to think and respond.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh.

MS. SCHERR: I was fascinated with the possibilities of the computer. One of the Parsons textile instructors had some knowledge of computer-aided weaving and suggested that we purchase the equipment. To understand her position, I enrolled in a computer-weaving course that proved to be the ideal direction for students to be taking. Parsons purchased the equipment with which we could generate “color ways” in a few of the seconds that once required weeks to accomplish.

We also designed pottery forms with the computer that could relay the form to another computer-driven computer that would sculpt a 3-D model, also a process that had required weeks of manual labor. These processes were really in baby stages. Jack Lenor Larsen, world famous for textile design and one of my advisors, advised that computer training was “absolutely essential.” The computer was beginning to change the direction of education, and the design profession.

MS. DOUGLAS: Mm-hm. Very much so, in terms of designing fabrics, you know?

MS. SCHERR: There’s a company here in Raleigh, North Carolina, that weaves automobile and interior fabrics. They hired a graphic designer, who had then to be computer trained before she could handle their design needs. There are many ready-trained, competent, textile-graphic designers, searching for work.

MS. DOUGLAS: Textile designers?

MS. SCHERR: There is a textile division at North Carolina State University and, as well, a weaving instructor in the NC State University design school who is computer savvy. The old problem of coveting departmental control positions within two disparate academic departments, the textile engineers who do not respect the artist, and artists who believe that engineers have no taste. That textile manufacturer is a university graduate who possibly does not know that knowledge of color theory and color combinations requires a smart eye and design training.

MS. DOUGLAS: Very much. Right.

MS. SCHERR: I haven’t answered your question yet, but --

MS. DOUGLAS: No, I think you have. I was just interested, because I know when you were a student, it sounds like you were very much in the world of design and product design, and having clients, and working in industry was very much a part of --

MS. SCHERR: When I was first an art student, I was unaware of art, music, or real life.

MS. DOUGLAS: Right. That was a given, it sounds like.

MS. SCHERR: I was very naïve. [Laughs] When I was in art school, I believed that all I needed to know was how to do the assignments. For me, designs just happened. At this stage of my teaching career, I believe there is no way to teach design. We can teach design elements and principles and tricks, but design is intuitive. We may refer to basic design organization, but the idea is a spontaneous emotional and mental force. There’s no formula that covers a response to a solution. Skill is an extension and connection to the creative response. Skills can be taught, but the mind does the creating. In theory, some people have the reaction, but they do not have the power of inspiration and intuition.

Design for me is a response. Sam and I are open designers. At Sam’s prime he had a raw and rare ability to visualize shape. I teach design now at Meredith College, and when I speak of shape to the students, I’ve discovered they have not experienced the concept of space or shape relationships. I remember my first design class; a “shape” was not in my vocabulary or part of my art experience. I was like most beginning art students, and I believe that in time I will be able to add “form” to my student’s language sensibilities; they will have discovered a shape, what a negative shape means, and all the other magical discoveries that occur naturally when they start to feel intuitive response.

MS. DOUGLAS: Take it for granted.

MS. SCHERR: I’m not answering your questions --

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, no, I’m just thinking about how your introduction of product design into a craft program at Parsons would’ve been a radical thing --

MS. SCHERR: It was an inclusive direction for the craft student who wanted to concentrate on independent and personal comment, a one-of-a-kind expression, the emphasis became a different mind-set and challenge.

MS. DOUGLAS: -- in terms of especially the context of how crafts had been being taught in universities --

MS. SCHERR: And continues to be.

MS. DOUGLAS: -- and still are taught as extensions of fine art departments, where you make art; and it’s not tied into industry or a broader design challenge. And so what you did, to me, seems radical. What kind of reactions, or how did you relate to your colleagues in metals in academia?

MS. SCHERR: Very poorly. I attended a SNAG conference. The panel of SNAG participants on stage were teachers from many of the major universities and art schools. My position as head of the department at Parsons was so totally opposite the accepted academic curricula. I said to them, “You’re teasing the students to go into the field of teaching, where there are very few available teaching opportunities.” They graduate with limited knowledge about many techniques; about production and collection design. The word “production” seems to be an insult, much less systems for making multiple products. They step into their life making a single, wonderful piece that no one can afford or that the maker does not want to ever sell. Ted Meuhling, now in New York City, is one of the people who is trained as an industrial designer. One of the best, Muehling has the ability to design with a sensitive, gentle, elegant, touch, using hard metals. He controls his materials and, of course, the shapes. His work is outstanding.

I make a limited number of pieces for galleries -- Boston, Penland, and Florida -- and for my studio. I’ve had to train most of the people from school programs. None had really studied wax to be cast as multiples, never really studied how to design for wax or multiples or the process, who do you send it to, what do you do with it -- after it returns. These new members of metals enter the field in their new studios and wonder about finding customers. I know what it is to make one piece. You love it, and you spend any length of time making it wonderful. It is an extraordinary, unique, creation and is published in all the books -- and you still own because it required 200 hours to make. Everything matters!

MS. DOUGLAS: Serious problem.

MS.SCHERR: After four years of study, an eager metals student will plead to be hired. They intern for two weeks, during which time their level of experience is evaluated. They are a little slow, but promising, and the teaching begins. A year passes, and then they know that they can handle their own metals studio. They leave -- and the search, for me, begins again. The year of teaching pays for their education. The employer never really has the leisure, the learning period. Starts with someone new. I have a student who wanted to take lessons from Sydney [Scherr]. On a good productive day her studio makes a comfortable hourly dollar income when she is working on commissions. The student wanted to study enamels with her. Sydney explained that as a private student she would charge much less than commission rates because she could do some small amounts of work while observing and teaching. The student could not afford any amount for private lessons. I know, I’ve hired interns in my studio. I pay them minimum wage for two weeks, and if they seem to be teachable, I have them sign a contract that somewhat protects my time. I truly believe that talent should move on and up, and there have been some people whom I’ve encouraged to leave to fulfill their potential. They have remained important in my life as friends.

MS. DOUGLAS: This sounds almost like a form of apprenticeship --

MS. SCHERR: It is apprenticeship.

MS. DOUGLAS: -- only it’s not got the commitment tied into it.

MS. SCHERR: Maybe this will change--

MS. DOUGLAS: It’s hard to get that though, isn’t it?

MS. SCHERR: I know that when boredom with a piece starts, the work becomes unpleasant, along with the attitude toward the job. My own background reads like a telephone book, because once the work became too familiar, I had to move on and on. I feel it is very important for a person who’s working for me to like what they do, and like being in my studio. My current aim is to hire someone whom I can train, whose life is local, who has a spouse with a stable job, who is not interested in moving, building a personal studio or reputation. Their primary interest is the job because the process is interesting and skills are improving. I have trained and spawned many artists that have studios all over the nation.

MS. DOUGLAS: Doing their own thing.

MS. SCHERR: They go.

MS. DOUGLAS: But they don’t work for you anymore.

MS. SCHERR: No. I have one young man that does freelance for me, and he is remarkable. We stay in touch because we respect each other. He started as a student showing promise within his first assignment, a natural skill. I have just begun to search for the same kind of commitment and to avoid misunderstandings concerning the future, will have contracts that please all, artisans, interns, and apprentices.

MS. DOUGLAS: Not unless you want to start charging tuition.

MS. SCHERR: I don’t blame them for wanting to walk away, though.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, have you had people working for you all along, since you started out?

MS. SCHERR: I started to hire people after working with my father for those months with U.S. Steel. For the first of the major department-store individual artist’s exhibitions, in New York City 1969, hiring helpers started with the department store Bloomingdale’s. An exhibition in Cincinnati, Ohio, resulted in an invitation for a solo exhibition on Madison Avenue, the first single-artist opportunity for art jewelry in a major store. I hired seven students who worked with me for three months in an around-the-clock effort to satisfy a very short deadline. Bloomingdale’s was planning a large promotion of artists’ works in many of their departments, and I was made the jewelry participant.

MS. DOUGLAS: When you were at Kent, did you have people working for you?

MS. SCHERR: I had four people working for me full time. I had constant commissions. I designed and worked on all projects. I was at Kent State University Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with the balance of the time in my studio nights and two days a week. I had a manager at that time and an active business.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, let’s talk about that a little bit. Were you making jewelry?

MS. SCHERR: Some of that time was with Reed & Barton, Silversmiths. I was one of their consultants. I was also doing private commissions. I had major commissions with Alcoa [Aluminum Company of America] and sculpted four wax mythological figures that were published as their promotional theme in all magazines for one year. This also was the period that the U.S. Steel collection was in exhibition at Bloomingdale’s in New York. We fabricated additional work ordered by Bloomingdale’s. I was commissioned then to make the religious piece that was exhibited in Philadelphia and was shipped to the Vatican in Rome for an international seminar on religions, the Vatican’s museum of contemporary art [Vatican Museums, Collection of Modern Religious Art], to replace it for the original commission, the Torah and Pointer, for their permanent collection. I made a duplicate of that piece for the original commission. My studio had four artisans working full time. I also traveled with workshops, and we were managing the foreign programs with the other countries.

MS. DOUGLAS: Were you doing workshops stateside?

MS. SCHERR: Yes, and at that time, 1969, the body monitors became a passionate force. The mayor of Akron, Ohio, commissioned me to design the Miss Ohio representative for the Miss Universe Competition. A student of Kent State University became Miss Ohio in the local competition. The first astronauts in space were from Ohio, so we used the spacesuit as the theme for her representative state costume.

[END TAPE TWO SIDE A.]

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, you were designing her costume.

MS. SCHERR: Much as I disagreed with beauty competitions, I agreed to design and make her costume. I had enormous cooperation from every industry related to the space program. NASA gave me parachute material; Goodyear Aircraft gave me standard space headgear, and any other product needed. During one of those all-night working sessions, three in the morning, I watched the awesome, still chilling, moon landing. I was making a stainless-steel belt for the costume. It simulated the devices that might measure the astronaut’s heartbeat and other vital areas of the body. I was watching humans land on the moon! The TV screen showed a chart and recorded the beep-sounds that registered the results of the monitoring of the astronaut’s heart, pulse, and breathing actions. Amazing!
Hours later, as I reconsidered the moon landing and the coincidence of making that belt, it occurred to me that we could measure the body in a similar way on our own planet. The following Monday, I went to the KSU [Kent State University] biology department, chemistry department, the Liquid Crystals Institute. I went wherever on campus, talking to the different department people, asking questions about possibilities. I wanted to make a pendant that measured the air, so that in bad air, something could alert the wearer. I was advised that I was looking at an 11-by-15-foot wall that measured air quality. This was 1969. The wall was filled with massive mechanical and electronic devices measuring air. The professor smiled when I commented that I wanted a device small enough to wear as jewelry.

And then I talked with an electronic engineer, Harry Hosterman, a consultant with Sam’s office who was creating a motherboard for basic computer equipment. I talked with him and discovered that he was one of the unusual persons with an imagination. He became curious about my concept and agreed to work with me. In a month or so, he had reduced that huge wall of electronic equipment to an electronic field that measured 1.5 by three inches. I have the duplicate of the pendant that is now in the American Craft Museum’s permanent collection. Hosterman reduced the mechanics and the circuitry, to a 7-by- 3-inch area. In the current level of technology that pendant would be no larger than the size of a facemask.

MS. DOUGLAS: Wow.

MS. SCHERR: That was one of the body monitors. The first was a medical “cosmetic cover-up,” a “trach” worn into the neck, into the throat, that covers a really ugly, standard hospital issue, equipment for problems of the throat and esophagus. The body monitor devices were alerts, not the trendy biofeedback items that displayed attitude and emotion, although I had used the liquid crystals in some of the monitors and called a jewelry manufacturer in New York with the thought to design jewelry using the material to show the different color range of human temperature ranges. They informed me that no one would or could be interested in knowing body heat changes. I dropped the subject. A few months later, the manufacturer called to tell me his error in not paying attention to my suggestion to use liquid crystals, and really disappointed because the mood-ring craze flooded the country.

The monitor work depended upon the knowledge of engineers. I created the concepts, and depended on electronic engineers with their abilities to bring life and sound to each concept. After the related size and function of the electronics was established, I would then design the appropriate-sized housings.

The second monitor developed was a bracelet that indicated the pre-set pulse rate of the wearer. A light emitting diode [LED] displayed the ongoing pulse beat. A radical change in heart rhythms triggered a beep, which alerted the wearer to call the medics. I have a U.S.A. Patent on the system used in this bracelet.

Other body monitors began to evolve, because new technologies such as liquid crystals, electronics, fiber optics, and the computer made measuring body functions possible. The monitors are directly connected to health concerns, not as emotional biofeedback, but as serious alert systems. By 1972, I had designed several pieces that were attracting an amazing amount of international public recognition.

In 1979, Dr. George [Malindzak], director of a hospital and nursing school in Rootstown, Ohio -- currently he is with the National Institutes of Health -- contacted me in New York City. He was researching body and station monitors and had read about my work with body monitors. He was preparing a paper for an upcoming conference of world scientists on personal monitors, to be held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Would I demonstrate the working monitors? The conference proved that my monitors were the only working concepts in the world. I demonstrated the collection to a truly stunned audience of learned scientists. Dr. Malindzak read his paper, and I demonstrated all of my 11 working pieces. One that measured air, a portable EKG, a smoke detector, battery-operated devices that measured body and air temperatures, measured heart action and pulse alerts. We demonstrated these sounds and lighted works that were masked in jewelry

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, these were technology housed as jewelry.

MS. SCHERR: I was a guest on many of the popular television talk shows. I was on the “Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “Johnny Carson,” “That’s Incredible,” and others in both Canada and the U.S. Dan Rather taped a 10-minute documentary using Charlie Osgood, “Sunday Morning,” as the narrator. He wore all the beeping and lighted pieces, demonstrating the monitors on the evening news program that showed the first landing of the space shuttle. The American Medical Association filmed a documentary of the portable EKG monitor, a three-minute documentary that was shown on the American Airlines in-flight aircraft channels. Renewed interest with the news media circled the world probably 15 times over 10 years, with full newspaper and magazine articles. The letters started to arrive wanting to purchase the monitors.

MS. DOUGLAS: Manufacturers?

MS. SCHERR: People wishing for the monitor alerts for their individual problems. I got into another area of monitors just before we moved to Raleigh. I was working on infant crib death syndrome [Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, SIDS]. I had to stop for several reasons. The bioengineer that was doing research in a nursery in Boston had to leave for a project with the Texas Instruments for six months. At the time we were getting the patent ready for implementation. Steve Kaner, biomechanical engineer, devised a system for reading the baby’s skin tension. Our patent attorney felt that our research did not fully cover the baby-weight possibilities and advised further research on the baby-weight issue. I would wait the six months to have the proper control, and move to Raleigh, NC, so time was called.

MS. DOUGLAS: You had produced these body monitors as unique works, but you had --

MS. SCHERR: Prototypes. They’re all prototypes.

MS. DOUGLAS: But you had all along planned to put them into production.

MS. SCHERR: My research was only for the concept; production and marketing became a really powerful block in the process.

MS. DOUGLAS: Had you thought about it?

MS. SCHERR: Manufacturers were interested, but nervous about being sued should any of the devices fail. The real cost of research and development and production was still necessary, and manufacturers believed that the U.S. government should share in the responsibility. This was when Jimmy Carter was President. After much discussion, the government allocated 14 million dollars to the University of Akron, with me as the design consultant, with the engineering department to develop the products. The contract removed it from the hands of individuals and placed the development in pure research.

MS. DOUGLAS: Behind the R&D [Research and Development].

MS. SCHERR: Working with individual companies is a problem, because of copying. Pulsar Watch interviewed me and decided to step out because at the time their digital watch design development was copied by all other manufacturers overnight. “We have millions of dollars into that watch development ideal, and our patents were overrun. The profit vanished overnight.”

MS. DOUGLAS: Was it --

MS. SCHERR: [President Jimmy] Carter allocated the money through EPA.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, I remember, you know, as a metals student, hearing about your body monitors, just thinking they were really fantastic concepts for jewelry.

MS. SCHERR: Well, they -- they were fine; they continue to have possibilities.

MS. DOUGLAS: What’s interesting to me is this was developed before the computer technology --

MS. SCHERR: We made full, tiny motherboards that held transistors and other components --

MS. DOUGLAS: -- had microchips and –

MS. SCHERR: This was 1969; not much was known about micro-miniaturization, or the electronics that music would need for the smoke-detector music box. After the size was established, the bioengineers had to make the motherboard, the microchip, and reduce each component. The same requirement area in the year 2002 would be less than millimeter, less than a pinhead. The most important was the portable EKG.

When I discussed the concept, I was referred to Dr. Bruce Taylor, a research bioengineer who was working in heart research in the Akron, Ohio, City Hospital. I asked him if it was possible to read the heart any other way than sound or graph. I had the ability to measure with color and temperature, with liquid crystals, and wondered if this system might react to heart changes with color. A few weeks later he called with a plan. We worked together for the next six months designing the necklace, the electronics, the connecting electrodes, batteries, and switches.

The trial day was the most remarkable event in my creative life. We hired a fine-looking model, strapped her into the electrodes, and covered her body with her clothes, and switched on the monitor. A full-color bull’s-eye pattern that radiated a helical pattern with orange, yellow, blue, purple, and a tiny blast of magenta. It flashed with her constant heartbeat, a fantastic moment, like the birth of a baby. We danced and clapped with the success of that work. I believe I told you that the American Medical Association was impressed enough to film the process in a three-minute documentary that was shown in many places, including national TV, and aircraft in-flight channels.

MS. DOUGLAS: Describe the Portable EKG Necklace.

MS. SCHERR: The necklace is made of sterling silver, moonstones, and transparent, plastic-rod electronics, liquid crystals, and batteries. The center panel is a small polarized screen of encapsulated liquid crystals. One enclosed side panel holds the batteries; the other side panel holds the electronics. The necklace masks the connecting electrodes through tubing that falls from a necklace to the inside of the clothes covering the body. When switched on the small screen displays, the wearer’s heart beat in a helical, color pattern. I was on the “Today Show,” when the TV camera zoomed in on the small-screen area. My heart literally jumped, and for a heartbeat, and the TV screen was a massive single magenta color.

MS. DOUGLAS: What’s fascinating to me is that the technology and the function is housed in a piece of jewelry, an ornamental piece, as opposed to, like say, a piece of benign plastic that would be strapped to your wrist.

MS. SCHERR: That is the same reaction we had with the world scientists.

MS. DOUGLAS: It has an aesthetic function to it as well.

MS. SCHERR: Vanity was the least of the persuasions; feeling comfortable became a purpose. Physical conditions in themselves are difficult to manage, and adding visual discomfort to the mix can worsen a problem. The woman at Penland School of Crafts walked toward me and her scarf fell away from her throat, exposing an ugly piece of equipment. I was troubled with the image of her embarrassment as she moved her head allowing the trach to roll around inside her neck. I felt like coughing for her. I asked her about the device. Her reaction to the staring from others caused her to wear scarves to mask the device.

I made her a decorative trach cover. The Smithsonian Institution placed a sample of the concept in their medical sciences division exhibition Triumph over Disability. They had seen the trach in the American Craft Museum, New York City. Paul Smith, the curator, exhibited all of the monitors in the exhibition Portable World.

The program grant that President Carter had awarded was canceled because of the hostages in Iran. The body monitor information is now recorded in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

MS. DOUGLAS: Where are the prototypes? Do you have them?

MS. SCHERR: Some of them. Some of them have been stolen.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, that’s awful.

MS. SCHERR: I continue to make the trachs. Three of the original monitors were stolen. I believe that people steal them for fun, because they beep and blink, little lights.

MS. DOUGLAS: Were they stolen out of an exhibition?

MS. SCHERR: The EKG monitor was stolen out of my loft in New York, while I was managing the Parsons summer sessions at Lake Placid, New York. I usually kept them in the safe, but it was in a showcase at the time. Another was stolen out of Brentano’s book store, under guard, in New York, and another one was stolen from a showcase exhibition.

I was very upset, because each monitor required volumes of time, with the electronic requirement, research, materials, and labor. None could be reproduced simply. These prototypes are now 20 years old.

MS. DOUGLAS: You were doing that work, the body monitor series, in the --

MS. SCHERR: 1969 through 1986 for all but the trachs. I continue to make the trach covers and just finished a full necklace with a trach, cosmetic, cover-up for a woman in North Carolina.

MS. DOUGLAS: Just now?

MS. SCHERR: I hear from people all over the country.

MS. DOUGLAS: So you’re still doing that.

MS. SCHERR: I’m still doing it. The other prototypes, with the special requirements of individual research, medical information, materials, etc -- is cost intensive. To achieve a pre-set heart rate, the wearer would need to be close. To design the electronic components, the wearer would need to spend time with the bioengineer. Making a body monitor is an endeavor, not simply a jewelry fabrication.

MS. DOUGLAS: The technology has changed a lot since your first prototype.

MS. SCHERR: What was the size of a wall is now less than a pinhead.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, my goodness.

MS. SCHERR: I’ve proven the existence of the conceptual possibility; there is no need to reillustrate the function by simply making a smaller example because of current, reduced sizes of the electronic technology. One of the pieces is a Waist Watcher, a belt that beeps when human posture slips. This is the product Bloomingdale’s wanted to sell. They offered me a space if I would supply a few thousand belts. Unless sales warranted, they would not promise beyond the number ordered, which was not enough production to cover the setting-up costs for the manufacturing. We cancelled. The patent rights concluded, and I saw the knockoff advertised on TV a few months ago. I saw another of my concepts that are copies. One is a small device that fits on glasses or a headband that buzzes loudly if the head drops in sleep. The loud buzz causes the wearer to wake up. The other is if your stomach sags, it’ll buzz and wake you up.

MS. DOUGLAS: Your stomach sags?

MS. SCHERR: Your posture. It’s a posture monitor.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s amazing -- and if you’re listening to a bad lecture. [They laugh.]

MS. DOUGLAS: To back up a minute, when did you first begin exhibiting your metal work? Or did you exhibit it? Was it --

MS. SCHERR: My metal? You mean just general metals?

MS. DOUGLAS: Your jewelry and metal work.

MS. SCHERR: The first pieces, 1951, were the earrings that received a first award, much to the consternation of all the other metalsmiths.

MS. DOUGLAS: Really? [Laughs] Because you weren’t --

MS. SCHERR: At the time, I didn’t know what a metal gauge was.

MS. DOUGLAS: You weren’t classically trained in metal work?

MS. SCHERR: No, two nights in a class, and then years of trials.

MS. DOUGLAS: What kind of exhibition was it?

MS. SCHERR: It was an [annual] general art exhibition at the Akron Art Institute. We had just started the design studio during that time.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, that must have been very rewarding for you to have an exhibition and win an award.

MS. SCHERR: That was the first time I ever entered an exhibition in any category. My child was just barely two months old, and to have any kind of personal attention to my art was a nice surprise. I was busy being a wife, a mother, and a part-time designer. After having been an art professional for so many years, and suddenly feeling lost in a new homebound environment, being recognized in a field wherein I knew nothing was fun. It was just fun.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, it seems like your career, and especially at that time, has been bridging three different worlds -- industrial design, studio artist, and homemaker with three kids.

MS. SCHERR: I was lucky to have married a man like Sam. He encouraged and supported me as a contributing artist, especially at a time when many men wanted home comforts.

MS. DOUGLAS: So have exhibitions then played a part in your professional career?

MS. SCHERR: Gaining a reputation was difficult. Competing in exhibitions was a way that attracts attention.

MS. DOUGLAS: In addition to commissions.

MS. SCHERR: Exhibiting carries two realities, recognition and accomplishment, two rewards for a personal effort. I’ve never designed a piece in order to appeal to a jury. Inspiration happens. I may prepare work for an upcoming exhibition, but the jury is not the incentive.

With individual commissions, the design direction is determined with customer input. We discuss the project, with much of the interview concentrated on the image, character, and desires of that person. My studio has made thousands of unique pieces of jewelry and small objects. I demonstrate and work with artisan employees until their skills are perfected to my own level of quality [or more]. In my studio, I am the designer. If a piece is a poor design, it was my determination, and if it is good – it is to my credit. I no longer feel compelled to work every element of a project.

I would rather use my time designing. As long as I know each technique, I know how to evaluate each artisan’s effort in the fabrication and if they’re doing it as perfectly as I would, I am comfortable with someone else being the metalworker.

MS. DOUGLAS: What commissions have been your most important ones, do you think?

MS. SCHERR: Do you mean important pieces or important people? Most of the glamorous commissions stem from references, such as the body monitors or Duke of Windsor.

MS. DOUGLAS: Now, what did you make for him?

MS. SCHERR: I made him a ring with an abstracted “David”; John L. Knight, Sylvia Porter, Alice Gund, all are important names. These are names dropped. In a rough estimate, I know I’ve designed and made at least 10,000 pieces for individual commissions. In my 49 years of teaching, I have probably added another several thousand design concepts and solutions with students. I’ve also consistently been teaching at Penland for 34 years.

MS. DOUGLAS: What do you teach there?

MS. SCHERR: Metal -- and of course, design.

MS. DOUGLAS: What kind of techniques?

MS. SCHERR: I teach almost any metals technique. When I am assigned a commission, I make a decision about the techniques to be incorporated. Each technique adds to a metals vocabulary. Adding to this, there are the bench tricks that get passed along like old tales and refine the storage of special information.

MS. DOUGLAS: Which ones have really pushed you forward, do you think, in terms of the problems that you had to solve?

MS. SCHERR: Probably every time I’ve soldered, every design I make, pushes another urge to simplify or alter a known direction. I learned to take risks with gold, make major trial attempts with the hydraulic press. I’ve developed information for etching and have added dimension to many other techniques by simply learning simpler ways to manage the tools. More than adding yet another necklace to my collection, designing a trach for a client requires a different set of physical and visual rules. With the monitors, each disability requires a unique solution. If a product has social significance, it becomes important to the ceremony. If the product enhances a life, it is important to an individual. For me, a piece starts its life with the thought, the drawing, and then becomes important because it exists.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh -- what are the trachs, exactly? Describe that.

MS. SCHERR: When there is a throat injury or a problem, a surgical procedure called tracheotomy is performed to open a small area in the throat, which allows air to enter into the esophagus and lungs. The trach is standard, hospital-issue equipment that is inserted into the neck opening. It is clinical and ugly and usually made of sterling silver to accommodate the technical requirements for soldering additional parts to the basic stem. I design trach covers or full necklaces that mask the need, the problem, and the embarrassment.

MS. DOUGLAS: So it disguises the --

MS. SCHERR: It covers the equipment. Added to the physical insult, the equipment is connected to a gauze ribbon and tied at the back of the neck. Most patients hide the trach with a scarf. A Penland artist was walking toward me when her scarf fell away, exposing the metal sticking in her throat. The American Craft Museum exhibited the trachs in their exhibition Portable World. The Smithsonian Institution saw the show and invited this and another heart monitor to be on exhibition in the Triumph Over Disability exhibition. I still have areas of the heart piece to complete, and the trach is now in their medical science collection.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, wow.

MS. SCHERR: The Smithsonian wanted to continue showing the work, so I donated both monitors.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s great; let’s look at your studio.

MS. SCHERR: I’ve been working with small sculptures.

MS. DOUGLAS: About this netsuke [small and often intricately carved toggle of wood, ivory, or metal, used to fasten a small container to a kimono sash] work.

MS. SCHERR: I found some of the Japanese miniature netsuke carvings in Japan. I was directing a six-week Parsons student study tour, 1986. I have several that I will eventually use. The Cat and Kitten netsuke, of carved ivory, is an 18-karat, 14-karat gold-and-sterling-silver stool, seven inches high that has a sterling silver cushion, with 24-karat gold kumboo, on which the cats are sitting. There are 40 small rubies mounted on the cushion.

This sculpture is the Primate Sanctuary. It is seven inches high, 14-karat gold and sterling silver and an opal stone -- with a netsuke, a monkey, carved in wood. It was just shipped to the Art of Gold, three-year tour.

MS. DOUGLAS: So you fabricated the --

MS. SCHERR: The house. The housing.

MS. DOUGLAS: Now, what inspired you to make these pieces?

MS. SCHERR: The themes of the carved netsuke. On many of the other pieces of jewelry I’ve used netsukes and Noh masks. Other works use ancient Japanese steel carvings, like this sword piece from a samurai antique sword, gold inlays on steel. The netsuke legend and the shapes of the sword furniture inspire the designs.

MS. DOUGLAS: Is that a brooch?

MS. SCHERR: Yes, this is an all-18-karat-gold brooch with a netsuke. This piece is jade and tourmaline, granite stone, netsuke, and opals. The inspiration comes from the netsuke, and the Oriental style.

MS. DOUGLAS: When did you make that piece --

MS. SCHERR: The Waterfall series? The Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC, purchased it for the permanent gallery of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Art. I’ve made Waterfall bracelets, earrings, and rings with the tiny tubes of liquid-silver tubing and 14-karat gold beads.

MS. DOUGLAS: Now, what do you mean, liquid silver?

MS. SCHERR: These little one-millimeter beads are tubing. I’ve strung them on fish line. And these are 14-karat gold and sterling silver beads.

MS. DOUGLAS: Now, would you put these into production?

MS. SCHERR: No, they are labor intensive.

MS. DOUGLAS: These are one of a kind.

MS. SCHERR: Everything in this showcase is in the one-of-a-kind category. When a piece is placed in a museum’s permanent collection, I make a duplicate that will remain in my personal collection. This is a meteorite necklace, with 14-karat gold and stainless steel. I treated the stainless so that it would match in color, that dull, dark color of meteor gray. This is a pyrite necklace and earrings. I’ve collected all sizes of the natural pyrite cube, a marvel of nature.

MS. DOUGLAS: It’s made in nature like that.

MS. SCHERR: These are some of the different sizes of cubes from an inch to the full square-inch cube. The Hishi necklace is made with a sliced walrus tusk, black coral, and 14-karat gold, sterling, and jade stone. I had the tusk before the prevention of animal broaching, especially with ivory.

MS. DOUGLAS: The work in this case goes from what time period to what time period?

MS. SCHERR: My personal collection started around 1951. These pieces were made from about 1951 to 2002. Well, this piece was made in 1975. This is one of the Reed & Barton pieces. This is 1975-76.

MS. DOUGLAS: And when was the Reed & Barton piece done?

MS. SCHERR: 1975. This is the one of the smoke detectors, 1975-76.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s one of the body monitors.

MS. SCHERR: [Winding sounds] This is the smoke detector I showed at the body monitor conference. [Music box sounds]

MS. DOUGLAS: The body monitor conference?

MS. SCHERR: We blew cigarette smoke into these small holes, and the music box started to play the tune “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”

MS. DOUGLAS: “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”

MS. SCHERR: The scientists were amazed.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s a bracelet.

MS. SCHERR: And this necklace texture was applied with a hammer on a concrete walkway.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, that’s a wonderful texture. Is there a production piece here?

MS. SCHERR: None of these are.

MS. DOUGLAS: Well, what -- I’m curious to know if your ideas for this unique work are -- if your inspiration is different than for pieces you want to do in production, or -- ?

MS. SCHERR: Not really, although the process of production requires different considerations, such as, each step in the assembly adds to the cost. If the piece is to be cast in multiples with a rubber mold, the wax must be made to accommodate the making of the mold, the weight of the metal, assembly, and finishing.

MS. DOUGLAS: Right.

MS. SCHERR: These four aluminum figures were commissioned by the Aluminum Company of America [ALCOA]. They are the only copies of the four original mythological figures that were first made in wax and shell-cast individually for ALCOA’s permanent collection. The theme “Rediscover Aluminum,” was published in a full year of full-color national magazines for the promotion for aluminum.

MS. DOUGLAS: What do they symbolize?

MS. SCHERR: Each 14-inch figure represents a separate subject related to Earth and Mankind. The Phoenix Bird sculpture, rising out of the face in the rocks below is about life and renewal; the god of the sun with his musical lyre and with the white geese that flew across the sky representing the sun; Dianne is the goddess of ecology and is escorted by a satyr; Vulcan, god of fire and metal, holding a bolt of lightning. They are mythological interpretations of the god figures. We cast them all in aluminum.

MS. DOUGLAS: What did ALCOA do with them?

MS. SCHERR: The sculptures are in the ALCOA permanent collection and are housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania. These were made after I completed the U.S. Steel Corporation commission. I continue to work with stainless steel, but I have none of the U.S. Steel collection. I made several body monitors in stainless steel.

MS. DOUGLAS: The body monitor belt?

MS. SCHERR: I used stainless steel with liquid crystal elements that were formulated to read ultraviolet radiation; carbon monoxide; oxides of nitrogen; air and body temperatures. Another monitor [buzzing noise] will buzz if my posture sags [buzzing noise]. The tiny circuitry alerts a wearer of bad posture. “Tuck it in.” [Buzzing noise] And this piece is the No-Nod headpiece.

MS. DOUGLAS: I see; it’s to let you know if you’re falling asleep.

MS. SCHERR: Here’s my first piece. Very first piece.

MS. DOUGLAS: The first piece of jewelry you ever made?

MS. SCHERR: Other than the earrings that won the award. I went on to a more complicated piece. This is sterling, etched, carved, and soldered bracelet.

MS. DOUGLAS: And you’ve got metal fringes in the edges.

[END TAPE TWO SIDE B.]

MS. SCHERR: The large buckle has the name Ralph Lauren abstracted over the surface.

MS. DOUGLAS: When you say “duplicated,” what do you mean?

MS. SCHERR: Well, I made this, and then I made a copy of it. We were living in New York, and Sam was managing our jewelry business. He met Lauren’s brother, who ordered the buckle for his brother.

MS. DOUGLAS: So that was a commission for him?

MS. SCHERR: I’ve made many “message” pieces. This one says, “Love is knowing you.” This one says, “All is possible.” I’ve made thousands of message rings, bracelets, key ornaments, and many necklaces, all with personal messages appliquéd to the metal. Ralph Lauren is a belt message. A bracelet with the date and a “Raleigh” symbol buried in the North Carolina State’s 100-year capsule in a cornerstone of the North Carolina Museum of History.

MS. DOUGLAS: Now, were those a production item?

MS. SCHERR: Some with the same message are cast in silver and gold and are called “limited production.” I cast some of the messages in gold because in several U.S. regions gold is the popular metal. I had the show in Florida, because I was advised that in Florida only gold sells.

MS. DOUGLAS: Which show was that in Florida?

MS. SCHERR: In the Jaffe Gallery, a painting and sculpture gallery in Boca. The sword guards are production pieces that sell as museum replicas. I cast Japanese sword disks in sterling and bronze. They are called “fuchi.”

MS. DOUGLAS: Right, the hilts.

MS. SCHERR: When we were directing in the demonstration center in Seoul, Korea, I visited a small storefront that had a four-foot-deep collection of antique coins, charms, and amulets filling a three-by-three-foot show window. We returned to the U.S., and I designed the Korean collection of jewelry using the antiques. Sam had steel molds made of each of the charms, shipped the molds back to Korea, and our center hired a small brass company to produce multiples. In 1961, we then showed the jewelry collection to the museum shop organization, which then promoted and sold the collection to museums shops. The effort became known as “Museum Replicas,” the first in the United States.

MS. DOUGLAS: What -- do you have current -- anything in here that’s in current production?

MS. SCHERR: These are a few designs that are considered limited production. I make five of a single design.

MS. DOUGLAS: Those are earrings. An edition of five.

MS. SCHERR: These rings are also part of production; a two-finger ring and these are the anodized titanium pieces.

MS. DOUGLAS: I see what you’re talking about.

MS. SCHERR: Titanium. Do you know that when I did Handmade in America: Conversations with Fourteen Craftmasters, Barbaralee Diamonstein interviewed with me for several days, and I edited the transcript. It required several weeks. These are samples of the instant-etch process, the etching system that replaces the photoetch technique.

MS. DOUGLAS: Oh, yes.

MS. SCHERR: You may know the complicated problems with the original photoetch process. Extremely toxic chemicals combined with specific equipment and isolation. An image photographed and enhanced with a photographic dot-and-line pattern; the toxic emulsions; a light-type box; metal preparation; and then the etching. Two days later, the image is finally transferred to metal and then etched.

In 1991-92 I watched Rio Grande Suppliers demonstrate at the SNAG conference in San Antonio. The Japanese full-color graphics printer would silk-screen print any design that could be xeroxed. The printer could print sales cards and graphics as a promotion for jewelry.

I experimented with the possibility of printing on metal for about the next four years and finally found a formula for a resist that would permit the resist to pass through the screen and maintain the integrity of the design image. As a result, instead of days required for photoetching, the instant etch needs about an hour from the start to a finished etch.

MS. DOUGLAS: Instant etch? Now, is that --?

MS. SCHERR: I represent the Japanese company with the Gucco Printer. Rio Grande Suppliers is using a manual I prepared, and they sell the Rio Master Printer with all the accessories pictured in their Rio Grande catalogue. Have you seen the promotion?

MS. DOUGLAS: No, not lately.

MS. SCHERR: They’ve given the Rio Etch Press a full page including my history of the development of the process with photos and instructions. It is also promoted on the Internet. Gucco sends me a few kits, which I demo and sell to students. However Rio Grande supplies both kits, and I recommend purchasing the screens and flash bulbs from Rio Grande catalogue.

MS. DOUGLAS: Etching is one of the processes you became known for early on.

MS. SCHERR: Years before the development of the instant etch process, Oppi Untracht’s first book [Enameling on Metal (New York: Greenberg, 1957)], was followed by Metal Techniques for Craftsmen [New York: Doubleday, 1968] and includes a full chapter about etching. The publishers used a photo and credit of my necklace that was pictured with his book whenever advertised.

His third book, Jewelry Concepts and Technology [Doubleday, 1982], used photos of my hands illustrating a complete etch technique. When I realized I could print a complex optical pattern, I bought a computer and started to design patterns that were both mechanical and disciplined, along with free-flow images. I began designing for precise computer patterns instead of drawing directly on the metal. I revert to free-drawing, though, because I love to draw.

MS. DOUGLAS: What about the pierced pieces? Are those etched through?

MS. SCHERR: Yes, by a careful registration of opposite sides of a single pattern, the image can be chemically pierced. This was one of the designs for the Reed & Barton promotion. A cuff bracelet that has the imagery registered on both sides, and then etched in nitric acid eating through from two sides to make it pierced.

MS. DOUGLAS: And it’s an open network. Very delicate. Is that 18-karat gold?

MS. SCHERR: It is a 22-karat gold plating over sterling silver called “vermeil.” This is a NuGold bracelet.

MS. DOUGLAS: What is NuGold?

MS. SCHERR: NuGold is a bronze alloy of copper and tin, used if a gold color is desired.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s a beautiful --

MS. SCHERR: It is a gold-and-silver cuff with a quartz-crystal stone shaped as a pyramid. I used the kumboo technique to create an optical pattern beneath the clear crystal.

MS. DOUGLAS: Kumboo is a Korean technique?

MS. SCHERR: Yes, a technique of burnishing gold over a temperature-controlled fine silver surface. The gold then becomes a permanent surface on the fine silver.

MS. DOUGLAS: It’s beautiful.

MS. SCHERR: These are fish lures that I purchased in Japan. Parsons School of Design offered a six-week, hands-on session in Japan 1982. The U.S. teachers were selected, and 50 U.S. students studied metal, clay, and fiber with Japanese counterparts assisting in the study. We toured the larger cities.

MS. DOUGLAS: Wow. Well, the pieces you did for Reed & Barton, how long did they stay in production?

MS. SCHERR: Two years.

MS. DOUGLAS: That’s good for jewelry, isn’t it? Jewelry changes pretty frequently, doesn’t it?

MS. SCHERR: Fashion’s demand for a three-month turnaround of publishing deadlines, keeping current with the magazine deadline is an endless invasion of time and energy. I worked with popular fashion magazines while living in New York. Their editor called for new work and available production and sales of the available jewelry. This meant new designs, new work, and a ready supply of finished pieces every two months, a nightmare for independent designers and makers.

Reed & Barton decided that the waning interest in flat- and hollowware might improve if the programs in jewelry would attract customers into their stores. Sterling silver hollowware was becoming too expensive to produce in the slow market.

MS. DOUGLAS: So they diversified into jewelry? This etched pattern looks like pop art. Or op art.

MS. SCHERR: The design is a Vasarely print. Op art painting. He gave printing rights to the Dover Publishing Company. That print really illustrates the line quality of printing the instant etch printing process. I started working on the computer because I wanted to make designs that would be as precise as possible, geometric patterns. The computer is the perfect tool