CINCINNATI, OH.- The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick, the largest exhibition of works from the rarely-loaned collection of the Wharton Esherick Museum, concludes its nationwide tour at the Taft Museum of Art June 7–September 7, 2025. The exhibition—co organized by the Brandywine Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Wharton Esherick Museum in Malvern, Pennsylvania—presents the innovative work of Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), the famed American artist best known as the father of the studio furniture movement.

Between 1926 and 1966, Esherick built his hillside home and studio in southeastern Pennsylvania. Now the Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM), it houses a treasury of work from seven decades of artistic practice. To share Esherick’s creative vision with contemporary audiences, The Crafted World draws on WEM’s rich and seldomly loaned collection of over 3,000 works of art, detailing the artist’s career from his early woodcut illustrations to his revolutionary reimagining of furniture forms as organic sculpture.

Esherick’s hillside retreat was the locus, and often the subject, of his creativity throughout his career. Visitors—high-end clients, avant-garde artists, skilled tradespeople, and ordinary individuals interested in living with Esherick’s work entered a world crafted by the artist’s hands. Esherick found acclaim through private commissions, such as a suite of interiors (1935–38) for Justice Curtis Bok, including a fireplace now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and public exhibitions, for example the “America at Home” display at the New York World’s Fair (1939–40). Today, Esherick is considered a foundational figure for the American studio craft movement.

“This exhibition, in the unique setting of the Taft Museum of Art (also once a residence), brings a fresh perspective to Wharton Esherick’s distinct aesthetic vision and imaginative spirit as well as the important legacy he left in crafting the meaning of ‘home’ for future generations. Programming will engage contemporary audiences with tours by working artists, workshops with woodcarvers and printmakers, and more,” says Taft Museum of Art Associate Curator, Ann Glasscock, who is curating the museum's presentation of the exhibition.