Edward Maene (21 April 1852, Bruges, Belgium – 4 December 1931, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was a Belgian-American architectural sculptor, woodcarver and cabinetmaker.
Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he was a master carver in wood and stone, and executed designs by architects such as Wilson Eyre, Willis G. Hale, Cope and Stewardson, William Lightfoot Price, Horace Wells Sellers, and Milton B. Medary.
Maene's choir stalls and reredos for the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, have been described as "the finest examples of hand carved wood in this country."Ellen Fulton, "Work of Local Sculptor Adorns Famous Buildings," St. Petersburg Times, June 30, 1946.
Career Maene learned the stone- and wood-carving trade in his native Belgium, and studied in Paris.Glenn B. Opitz, ed. Dictionary of American Sculptors, (Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo Books, 1984). He immigrated to the United States in 1881, and settled in Philadelphia in 1883. There is evidence to suggest that he worked as a carver for Daniel Pabst, the premier custom-furniture maker in late-19th century Philadelphia.Robert Edwards, "The Arts and Crafts Go to Work in Philadelphia, 1876–1926" (PDF), paper presented at the September 20–23, 2012 conference: The Workshop of the World: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He opened his own workshop at what is now 239 South Lawrence Court, a half-block east of Pabst's workshop at 269 South 5th Street. Within less than a decade his shop employed "from twenty to twenty-five assistants."
His nephews John, Victor, Louis and Armand Maene all apprenticed in his shop.Robert Edwards, "When You Next Look at a Chair: The Arts and Crafts Furniture of William L. Price," in George E. Thomas, William L. Price: Arts and Crafts to Modern Design (Princeton Architectural Press, 2000), pp. 319-30. John J. Maene (1863–1928) was hired by architect/designer William Lightfoot Price as foreman for the Rose Valley furniture shop.Solis-Cohen, "Winterthur’s Philadelphia Furniture Forum: What Was Learned?" Furniture News, March 5, 2014.
Wilson Eyre
Maene executed designs by architect Wilson Eyre, working on local projects such as the Dr. Henry Genet Taylor House and Office (1884), in Camden, New Jersey;Edward Teitelman, "Wilson Eyre in Camden: The Henry Genet Taylor House and Office," Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1980), (University of Chicago Press), pp. 229-55. a new Dutch Colonial façade and interiors for the Rowley-Pullman House (altered 1886, demolished 1963), at 238 S. 3rd Street, Philadelphia;Rowley-Pullman House, from Historic American Buildings Survey. the William H. Walmsley Building at 1022 Walnut Street, Philadelphia (1887, demolished); and the University Club at 1316 Walnut Street (altered 1887). A 24-year-old Charles Grafly worked with Maene on the Rowley-Pullman House. Maene's frieze for the Walmsley Building vestibule was exhibited alongside Grafly's spandrel for a Rowley-Pullman House doorway at the 58th annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in 1887.Catalogue of the Fifty-Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, March 10-April 21, 1887 (Philadelphia, PAFA, 1887).
For the Charles Lang Freer House (1892), in Detroit, Michigan, Maene modeled in clay Eyre's free-form chandeliers of dangling vines, the whimsical front doorbell surround, and other detail work, all later cast in bronze.Thomas Walter Brunk, The House that Freer Built, (University of Detroit School of Architecture, 1981), pp. 22, 52.
Maene's shop carved exterior stonework for Eyre's City Trust Building (1888, demolished c.1923), at 927-29 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia; and did work on Eyre's Newcomb Memorial Chapel (1894–95, demolished 1954), at Newcomb College in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Willis G. Hale
Maene's shop carved exterior stonework for one of the most notorious buildings in Philadelphia—architect Willis G. Hale's own Hale Building (1887), at the southwest corner of Chestnut & Juniper Streets. A 7-story speculative office building—later known as the Lucas Building, the Keystone National Bank Building, and by other names—it seemed to squeeze an entire Gothic castle's worth of ornament into a narrow city lot.James Foss, Willis Gaylord Hale and Philadelphia's Rebellion of the Picturesque: 1880-1890, masters thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 1964. Critic Montgomery Schuyler, writing in the magazine Architectural Record, pronounced it an "architectural aberration": "Absurd ... irrational, incongruent and ridiculous," one of "the monstrosities of Chestnut street.""Architectural Aberrations: No. 9 – The Hale Building," The Architectural Record, vol. 3 (October - December 1893), pp. 207-10. "Perhaps the most bizarre-looking skyscraper of the nineteenth century,"Korom, Joseph J., Jr., The American Skyscraper, 1850-1940: A Celebration of Height (Wellesley, MA: Branden Books, 2008), p. 144. it is now beloved by many for its funky awkwardness. Although the first story of its Chestnut Street façade has been altered repeatedly, much of the rest of its exterior remains intact.James Jennings, "Hale Yeah! Renderings Show Hale Building in All of Its Glory," The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 1, 2016.
Hale designed, and Maene's shop carved exterior stonework for the Peter A. B. Widener city house (1887–88), at the northwest corner of Broad Street and Girard Avenue, Philadelphia. The Wideners occupied this for barely a decade—architect Horace Trumbauer soon designed them a Neoclassical palace, Lynnewood Hall (1897-1900), just outside the city.Michael J. Lewis, "'He was not a Connoisseur': Peter Widener and his House," Nineteenth Century, vol. 12, nos. 3-4 (1993), pp. 27-35. In 1900, the city house became the Widener Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.Widener Branch – History , from Free Library of Philadelphia. It was destroyed by fire in 1980.Deborah Boyer, "The Widener Mansion," Philadelphia History Blog, March 5, 2009, Philadelphia City Archives.
Frank Miles Day Frank Miles Day won the 1888 architectural competition to design the Art Club of Philadelphia, at 220 South Broad Street. Completed in 1889, Maene executed its interior woodcarving:A most remarkably effective use of white pine has been made in many of the mantels throughout the house. In the cafe and other apartments this ordinary wood has been so treated and finished that it has all the elegant effects of the richest and rarest grains of tropical forests, and moreover the genuinely artistic carvings lend an air of the greatest elegance. The carvings of the mahogany mantels in the dining room are particularly fine. For its wood carving the club has been fortunate in having the services of Edward Maene."The New Home of Art," The Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), December 8, 1889, p. 3. The building was demolished in 1976.
Cope and Stewardson
Cope and Stewardson designed, and Maene carved, the rood screen (1894) for St. Luke's Episcopal Church, in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.Roger W. Moss, Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), pp. 254-255. Architect and author Ralph Adams Cram later described it as "one of the best pieces of ecclesiastical wood-carving in America."Ralph Adams Cram, Church Building: A Study of the Principles of Architecture in Their Relation to the Church (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1924), p. 93.
Charles Custis Harrison became University of Pennsylvania provost in 1894, and immediately removed Frank Furness as unofficial campus architect, replacing him with the young firm of Cope and Stewardson.George E. Thomas, et al., Frank Furness: The Complete Works (Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 54-55. Beginning with the Quadrangle Dormitories, Harrison and his architects remade the campus in an exuberant Neo-Jacobean Collegiate Gothic style. Maene's workshop provided expert architectural carving for the exteriors of the new buildings, including 69 grotesques (bosses) for the Quadrangle. These caricatures of people and animals were carved in situ—blank limestone blocks had been mortared in above the second story, and his crew stood upon scaffolding to carve them:
Take, for instance, a boss of a man holding a tankard. The architect makes a rough charcoal sketch of the figure and sends the sketch to the sculptor. The sculptor models it in clay. He makes, in clay, a boss of the same size and the same relief as the real stone boss on the dormitory building is to be. Of course, the charcoal sketch is not much to go by. The sculptor must use his brain in his work. It is not mechanical; it is real creative work on his part, this making of a model from a sketch. After the model has been finished and approved by the architect it is sent out to the University, and the carver sets it up beside him and gets to work on the stone. He measures here and there, makes nicks here and there, and then he proceeds to copy his model. It takes him three or four days to finish one of the fourteen inch bosses. The work must be done with care, delicacy and tact. Only the most skillful carvers are fit to do such jobs."Grotesque Designs on Sculptured Bosses," The Monumental News, vol. 12, no. 11 (November 1900), (Chicago, R. J. Haight), p. 619. Maene's team for the Quadrangle grotesques comprised Henry F. Plasschaert (of the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art), who modeled the figures in clay; William John Kaufmann and August Zeller (a former student of Thomas Eakins), who carved most of the grotesques; and Edmund T. Wright, who oversaw the carving and added finishing touches."Grotesque Figures Carved in Stone," Stone Magazine, vol. 21, no. 3 (September 1900), (New York: Frank W. Hoyt, publisher), pp. 241-42.
Cope and Stewardson also contracted with Maene to carve exterior ornament for the University of Pennsylvania Law School (1900), and for the Quadrangle's War Memorial Tower (1901) and Provost's Tower (1911).
William Lightfoot Price
Architect William Lightfoot Price designed "Woodmont" (1891-1894), for Congressman Alan Wood, Jr. The chateau-like mansion overlooked the Schuylkill River and the Alan Wood Steel mills in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Maene and his shop carved its exterior and interior architectural sculpture. The June 1894 issue of The Architectural Review published photographs of the newly-completed "Woodmont," and Maene placed an advertisement promoting his work: The carved work in Stone and Wood illustrated in this issue of THE ARCHITECTURAL REVIEW, from the house of Alan Wood, Jr., Esq., of Philadelphia, was all done by E. Maene.Other work of the same character has been executed from the designs of Messrs. W. L. Price, Wilson Eyre, Jr., Frank Miles Day & Bro., Cope & Stewardson, Willis G. Hale, Wilson Brothers & Co., and others, including the University Club, Philadelphia Art Club, the Rood-screen in St. Luke's Church, and many of the finest private residences in and about Philadelphia.The Architectural Review, vol. 3, no. 2 (June 1894), Bates & Guild, Boston, pp. viii-x, 40.
Maene executed cabinetry and furniture work for Price from the mid-1890s to the mid-1910s. In 1902, Price hired Maene's nephew John to run the Rose Valley furniture shop, which manufactured pieces designed by the architect. That same year, Price designed major interior alterations to the John S. Clarke House in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, although it is unclear whether these were executed by Edward Maene, John J. Maene, or both.George E. Thomas, "The Evolution of the Real Estate Divisions of the Eastern Portion of the Bryn Mawr Campus, the Construction of "the Owl," and Its Historical Color Schemes, Yarrow Street and Morris Avenue, Bryn Mawr College" (1998). (PDF), from Bryn Mawr College.
Shakespeare cabinet