Time Capsule: Museum cabinetmakers showcase craft at work

“Time Capsule” is a 1 Fine Arts Blog series drawing on the rich history of the Saint Louis Art Museum as documented through its institutional records. Established in 1976, the Museum Archives preserve and provide access to historic records chronicling spaces, events, exhibitions, and other activities. Materials from the Archives are open to the public by appointment in the Richardson Memorial Library’s reading room. 

From artist file cabinets to hand-built slide carrying cases to the period room restoration project of the 1980s, on-site craft labor is embedded in the fabric of the galleries and continues in the work carried out by the Museum’s Cabinet Shop and Frame Lab today.  

Craft workers—carpenters, tile setters, and house painters—helped build the institution from the ground up. More information on the emphasis put on applied arts during the Museum’s early years is in a previous blog post. 

Tucked away in SLAM’s archives is a box of early inventories, including one from Mr. Ben Swartz, who was the first documented craft worker on staff. The 1932 file contains an itemized list of woodworking tools but not much else. A timeline of Swartz’s tenure as cabinetmaker can be stitched together through census records, staff directories, employee cards, and Museum maps. Born in Russia in the 1870s, he came to the St. Louis area as a highly skilled cabinetmaker and found employment at the Museum. His workspace was located at the base of an elevator shaft. 

Swartz appeared in a 1952 newspaper article documenting the Museum’s first cabinetmaker: “A craftsman of the perfectionist old school, Swartz not only constructs and repairs frames but makes many of his own tools,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In addition to his frame-making skills, Swartz helped with fabrication and installation of exhibitions in the galleries.    

Swartz would remain on staff through 1952, when he was succeeded by another Eastern European–born cabinetmaker, Anton Chernich. In the latter half of the 20th century, the cabinetry department expanded beyond a single cabinetmaker; the impact of their work—which once ranged from building casework to restoring objects to exhibition design—can still be seen across the Museum. The period rooms are tangible evidence of this work. 

Both European and early American interior period rooms were installed at the Museum in the 1930s by skilled carpenters, including Ben Swartz. As part of large-scale renovations on the Museum campus, several period rooms were dismantled in the mid-1970s. In the 1980s, the decorative arts curatorial department completed archival research on the rooms, gathering information on paint samples, wallpapers, and furnishings. The cabinetry department members meticulously researched period cabinetry work and construction methods, culminating in the reinstallation of six period rooms in 1989.  

Cabinetmaker Jeff Wamhoff led a four-person team in fabricating pieces of architectural detailing that were missing in the period rooms and even fashioned his own tools, much like SLAM’s first cabinetmaker, Ben Swartz, did. In one instance, according to a 1989 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, about 60 percent of the intricate, incised fretwork molding in the Alexandria Room had to be replaced. The team did this work entirely by hand to match the original. Because of meticulous work like this, each period room took three months to complete. In another example showcasing the skilled hands at work, a fireplace had to be entirely carved from scratch—all at the last minute. When a shipping delay threatened the grand opening of the period rooms, Wamhoff was dispatched to a Minneapolis museum to sketch a fireplace for the French room at SLAM. Upon his return, he was tasked with carving the piece from eight blocks of wood: “He’s got four weeks to carve it, two weeks to marbleize it and two days to install it,” according to the article—and he did. 

The cabinet shop today is run by SLAM’s fabrication manager, who is responsible for building casework and for other woodworking needs in the galleries. Contractors are brought in for larger-scale carpentry projects. Other specialty workshops at the Museum include mount making, where the structural supports that hold art objects are fabricated; matting and framing for artworks on paper; and a paint shop that creates custom paint for gallery walls.  

For additional information on the history of craft workers, check out Overview – Craft History in the Archives – LibGuides at Saint Louis Art Museum.