Beverage Server and Cover

Arts of the Americas

1956

Arthur Jon Pulos
American, 1917–1997
Syracuse, New York

Arthur Pulos designed this server for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, describing it as “a coffee pot that could also double as a pitcher with a side handle on it.” Pulos trained as a potter and metalsmith in the late 1930s and worked as an instructor in aircraft design and engineering for the armed forces during World War II. This beverage server unites traditional craft materials—here, sterling silver and ebony—while the smooth, undecorated surface reflects the streamlined aesthetics of industry.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Arthur Jon Pulos
Title: Beverage Server and Cover
Place: Syracuse (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1956
Medium: Silver and ebony
Inscriptions: Marked on bottom of lid and body: PULOS (in rectangle) / STERLING
Dimensions: 24.1 × 14 × 19.1 cm (9 1/2 × 5 1/2 × 7 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Marilyn and Thomas L. Karsten in honor of her parents, Gertrude and Perry S. Herst
Reference Number: 1988.513a-b

“U.S.Craft at Brussels,” Craft Horizons, 18, 3 (May–June 1958), 21 (ill.).
Oral history interview with Arthur J. Pulos, July 31, 1980 – December 5, 1983, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Jennifer M. Downs, “ ‘The New Modern Feeling’: A Catalogue of the Collection,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, 2 (2001), 101–103, cat. 31.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 357.
Judith A. Barter, Elizabeth McGoey, et al., American Silver in the Art Institute of Chicago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), cat. 97 (ill.).
Elizabeth McGoey, ed., American Silver in the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2018), https://publications.artic.edu/americansilver/reader/collection/section/6, cat. 97 (ill.).

Syracuse, New York, 1958 Art Exhibition Syracuse University Faculty School of Art, Feb. 16–Mar. 24, 1958, n.p. (ill.).
Brussels, Belgium, Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, United States Pavillion, Brussels, Apr. 17–Oct. 19, 1958.

The artist, Syracuse, NY, until; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1985.

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