Ed Moulthrop

Art Brokerage: Ed Moulthrop American Artist: b. 1916-2003. Ed Moulthrop (May 22, 1916 – September 24, 2003) was a noted architect and professor, he is best known as a wood turning artist whose art helped transform the genre into a widely respected art form. He was also an accomplished architect whose designs were used for several key structures around Atlanta, GA. After graduating from Princeton University, Moulthrop moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he taught architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology for five years. When the second World War came along the military needed physics teachers, so he took that on as well. While teaching at Georgia Tech, he found a love of working with wood in the school’s industrial arts shop where he had access to many various woodworking tools. Moulthrop eventually left Georgia Tech to pursue a career in architecture, later becoming the chief designer for Robert and Company. Although the company was largely concerned with engineering, he provided the non-engineering concepts that they needed. Moulthrop’s work with Robert and Company would prove to be an outlet for many of his modernist designs. Some of these modernist designs even drew compliments from world famous architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright, who once pointed to one of Moulthrop’s buildings and said “I like that one”. A lot of Moulthrop's architectural designs can still be seen today throughout the U.S. including portions of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., the Van Leer Electrical Engineering building at Georgia Tech, the Atlanta Civic Center, the Carillon Tower at Stone Mountain, and the Callaway Memorial Chapel at Callaway Gardens. Moulthrop's vessels are admired for a number of reasons. Their scale is larger than most other pieces. It was not uncommon to see him turning a large, 5-foot-tall (1.5 m) piece on the lathe in his home workshop. Because of these large-scale projects, Moulthrop had to invent a lot of his own tools, the same tools that would later be featured in several wood arts magazines. Another innovation of his was his use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) to help prevent cracking in his more advanced pieces. His turned wood pieces would be coated with a clear finish that would be as smooth as glass. This later characteristic helped some of his vessels find their way into collections of well-known glass collectors. Listings wanted.