Edgar Miller’s Influences:
Alfonso Iannelli & Iannelli Studios

Through his apprenticeship at Iannelli Studios in Park Ridge, Illinois, Edgar Miller experienced some of the greatest successes and frustrations of his early career. There he learned how to apply both avant garde artistry and tried-and-true technical skills to his craftsmanship, and he firmly established a path for himself towards commercial success during the Interwar Period in the Midwest United States. Having freshly departed the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and beginning to start his own career in Chicago’s Near North Side neighborhood of Towertown, Miller spent much of his early twenties working on commissioned projects that came to him by way of Iannelli Studios. Named after the artistic couple who founded it, Alfonso and Margaret, Iannelli Studios gave Miller a template for a career that would span a wide range of types of media and creative outlets. The Studios’ repertoire of modern graphic illustrations, industrial design, sculptural work, painting, and decorative crafts allowed Miller to practice his natural artistic genius in an all-encompassing way. More than anything else, the Iannellis gave Miller the confidence and license to say “yes” to any project that he came across, as long as it allowed for creativity, and to take on any challenge with a resourceful zeal. 

Alfonso Iannelli - Modern Artist-Designer

Alfonso Iannelli was born in a small town outside of Naples, Italy in 1888, making him twelve years Miller’s senior. Iannelli and his family made their way to Newark, New Jersey in 1898, following his father Giuseppe, who worked as a cobbler, and as an artisan himself, gave his sons the freedom to pursue their own professional talents. Alfonso, at the age of eighteen, opened his first studio in Manhattan and focused on illustration jobs from publishers such as Harper’s Weekly. Over the next six years, Iannelli traveled around the country, honing his artistry as a prolific modernist graphic designer and painter, taking commissions in Cincinnati and in Los Angeles. By 1912, Iannelli had met up with acolytes of Frank Lloyd Wright, including his sons John and Lloyd, as well as renowned architect Barry Byrne, all of whom were working as designers in California. They partnered with Iannelli to design several ornamental sculptures and motif designs for local theater and hotel commissions. There, Iannelli learned to execute a skill he had been developing for the past few years: to transform his modernist, repetitive graphic design work into a fully realized, three-dimensional piece. Iannelli had a particular knack for tactility and imbuing his created objects with a sense of unique textures that melded well with an architectural sensibility. It was his direct collaborations with the Wrights and Byrne that finally brought Iannelli to Chicago and led him to design one of his most iconic works: the sculptures for the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed entertainment venue Midway Gardens in 1914.

While Iannelli did not receive the full accolades that he rightfully deserved for the project, after envisioning and creating the “Sprites” for the Midway Gardens, Iannelli’s uniquely abstract style solidified his personal aesthetic and helped launch his career with a wider clientele. He wrote to his wife and fellow graphic artist, Margaret, still working herself in California that year: “There was a period of recuperation from the continuous work in Chicago... The forms became clearer and more geometric—and the colors stronger.” In 1915, Barry Byrne also had returned to Chicago, and soon established a long-lasting partnership with Iannelli as part of a coterie of Midwestern avant garde creatives. The two collaborated on a number of projects, including private residences, churches, public administration buildings, theaters, and schools, with many independent commissions coming to Iannelli through his growing body of impeccable modernist work.

An Elemental Apprenticeship at Iannelli Studios of Park Ridge

In 1919, Alfonso and Margaret moved to the suburb of Park Ridge, deciding to call the Midwest home, and set up a studio beside their house on a corner lot in what was then a small, rustic town (today it is only a couple miles from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport). At the time, it was an ideal location that was both close enough to work on larger commercial projects in the city, while being relatively secluded and peaceful. Margaret had also established a growing graphic design business for a number of larger Midwestern clients. By the early 1920s, the Iannellis had become known throughout Chicago as a team of prolific and renowned artist-designers, with a penchant for both learning and teaching. Alfonso in particular espoused a progressive mindset, both culturally and politically, with an interest in socialist politics that grew during the Interwar Period. The two traveled frequently, as well, not just within the US but abroad; Alfonso even visited sites of learning such as the Bauhaus School in Germany, to guest lecture and contribute to the era’s dialogue on modern art. In Chicago, Alfonso taught in Hull-House and Art Institute classrooms, one of which was the likely venue where Alfonso first met Edgar Miller.

Having grown somewhat exasperated by the pacing and emphasis on curricular specialization at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Miller, along with several other compatriots dubbed “the Independents”, left the school to forge his own path. Fresh from his lackluster experience in the classroom, Miller was quickly hired by Iannelli, in 1919, at a rate of $20 per week. Miller’s “apprenticeship” at Iannelli Studios had him working directly under both Alfonso and Margaret on a number of commissioned projects, including advertisements, packaging design, murals, carved stone sculptures, stained glass windows, and woodcut prints. “My willingness to relate to any medium was of advantage to Iannelli,” Miller would say about his time at the Studios in later recollections. “And at one time or another, the [projects] ranged from decorations to serious expression in sculpture or painting.” It is notable that at this time, Miller, who was living in Chicago’s Near North Side Towertown district, was also running his own local studio and gallery, and working with his own clients, while taking on more responsibilities with gusto at Iannelli Studios.

Around that time, Iannelli and collaborator Barry Byrne undertook the design of Chicago’s St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in 1922, where the two devised what was at the time an unusually laid out architectural plan for the new church on Chicago’s South Side. The church is full of Art Deco motifs—chevron glass patterns, geometric recesses, abstract shaped finials, serrated corners, and zig-zag brick work—which all helps to give the space a complex, modern feel. The design work was characterized by Byrne as a "dance" between his architectural vision and Iannelli's artistic direction, each taking the lead to balance and marry together modernism and Catholic traditionalism. Very radical for a Catholic church at the time was moving the altar space closer into the nave. Miller, then in the midst of his employment with Iannelli Studios, executed some of the church's architectural ornamentation. After a string of disagreements with the church’s priest, Iannelli and Byrne were asked to leave the project before the church’s completion. However, what remained after the project was a creative ethos—a dance of give-and-take, and productive momentum—that Iannelli would carry on with him throughout his career, and which had a profound influence on Edgar Miller.

By the early 1920s, while Miller was working at Iannelli Studios, Margaret sadly succumbed to several bouts of mental illness that saw her committed to various sanitariums in the area for lengthy periods of time. Miller stepped in and took over many of her recurring commercial commissions including advertisements for companies such as Bauer and Black cosmetics producers, Martin and Martin Shoes, and Marshall Field and Company. Miller’s skills as a detail-oriented graphic designer and his quick, deft hand allowed him to draft illustrations from conception to final production in quick succession, applying a wide-range of techniques to reproduce Margaret’s unique, modernist style. Miller, however, often went beyond her original work to embellish drawings with small samples of his own personal style and flair. His exposure to a variety of clients opened many doors for young Miller, whereby he was soon able to pick up commissions for recurring advertisement design, magazine art design, and book illustration throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. Miller would continue to produce commissioned graphic design and book illustration well into the 1960s. 

During his time at Iannelli Studios in Park Ridge, Miller learned quite a few things that he brought with him to future projects. Beyond developing skills in the heavy craftwork of large-scale projects like sculpture carving and stained glass fabrication, Miller absorbed Iannelli’s knack for transferring motifs and patterns across media, and how to easily transform graphic work to bas relief elements, adding dimensionality and texture through unique, repetitive design. Indeed, Iannelli’s ability to layer specific, simple shapes to produce a textured pattern, and judicious use of large symbols to draw in the eye was a technique that Miller would emulate and develop throughout his career. Likewise, Miller also took to heart his mentor’s collaborative philosophy that he witnessed in Iannelli’s partnerships with other creative professionals like Byrne. This ethos viewed a project as a dance, with various collaborators taking turns to lead, that tightly married the fields of architecture and sculptural artistry into a cohesive whole. 

Iannelli and Miller’s last project together also happened to be once more with Barry Byrne. The commission was to design Christ the King Catholic Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1926. Byrne was tasked with the architectural and structural planning, while Iannelli and his team took on the aesthetic direction, as well as the actual ornamental work, including wood-carving, tile-work, and stained glass production. It’s unclear who actually came up with the master design for the windows—all the artwork was credited to Iannelli Studios, but Miller claimed later in life that the stained glass designs derived from original sketches he presented to Alfonso.

Regardless, the project was a culmination of the relationship between the two artists, and in many ways a natural end to Miller’s informal apprenticeship with Iannelli. Of his time with Iannelli, particularly this final stained glass commission at Iannelli Studios, Miller said, “This was the last job I had with Iannelli, although he called me several times afterward. I think from his irregular treatment of me that Iannelli was jealous. To him I seemed to do things easily. I could never understand jealousy. The explorations and development of the possibilities in your unknown interior will occupy a full lifetime. Art, I’m sure does not come from outside.” There is also some evidence that Miller had become tired of Iannelli’s socialist political viewpoints being expressed ad nauseum in the studio. It’s not clear that Miller was opposed to socialism per se; more likely, he simply thought discussion at work, political or otherwise, was a distraction. He would sometimes go days waiting on critiques from Iannelli on a particular project drafts before being able to finally execute them. Whether the development of a professional jealousy or personal friction did in fact play a part in Miller’s leaving the tutelage of Iannelli is hard to determine, as neither artist reflected much on that time until decades later. 1927 was when the Tulsa project was completed, and also the exact same year that Miller and his collaborators Sol Kogen, Jesús Torres, and others began the “Handmade Homes” projects. Beyond a doubt, Miller was at a point in his career where he was eager to forge his path as an artistic director in his own right.

Both Iannelli and Miller would continue to work in parallel careers through the 1940s, with both artists working on major projects such as the 1933-34 Century of Progress International Exhibition. Iannelli designed much of the frieze work for major buildings and pavilions throughout the Fair, and Miller was an artistic director for the “Streets of Paris” concession. Iannelli was also famous for his bas relief sculptures designed for the Adler Planetarium, completed in 1930, a few years before the Fair. He also went on to be hired in 1936-38 by the Sunbeam Corporation line of kitchen products (at the time a brand division of the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company). These kitchen products married together quintessential features from various modern design movements. They borrowed the crafted, fine artistic details from Art Deco; while the items’ simple geometric and ergonomic forms came from a decidedly more Bauhaus viewpoint. Iannelli, was taken with the sculptural minimalism that we know to have been exhibited there at the time. One of his contributions to the Sunbeam Coffeemaster (“America’s favorite new home appliance!”) gave it its iconic, embossed abstract graphic, which was at once forward-looking and streamlined, while also harkening back to the hand-etched details of traditional Art Deco design. For decades to come, Miller, like Iannelli before him, would also bring a detailed eye and a dedication to craftwork, down to the smallest details, to all of his design projects.

References & Further Reading

Lectures

• For more on Edgar Miller’s sculptural work from his time with Iannelli and beyond, check out the lecture by Marin Sullivan Sculpture as Texture: Edgar Miller’s Reliefs in our lecture archive.

Books

• For more about Alfonso Iannelli, and Iannelli Studios, check out the incredible tome Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design, by David Jamison, with a forward by Tim Samuelson.

• For more on Alfonso Iannelli’s modern industrial and product design work, look for Everyday Modern: The Industrial Design of Alfonso Iannelli by David Jameson.

• For more of Alfonso Iannelli’s architectural and history of some of design work in Chicago look for Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America edited by Robert Bruegmann.