Edgar Miller’s Influences:
Medieval Art & European Craftwork of the Middle Ages

As a student, Edgar Miller began to learn about the practice of embedded, decorative art and design by looking first to the most salient examples at hand: the Medieval and Renaissance Art of Middle Ages Europe. Works of all varieties from throughout the era—such as the Gothic, Romanesque, Celtic, Hiberno-Saxon, and Germanic styles—all captivated Miller and influenced his practice throughout his extensive career. The 1910s and ‘20s were a period of heavy reliance on revival architecture and ornamentation in the United States (particularly the use of Gothic and Renaissance design motifs in residential and commercial buildings), which Miller would have been exposed to when he first arrived in Chicago, and recognized as more of an old guard view of design aesthetics. Simultaneously, by the early 1920s, when Miller was beginning his art career in earnest, the early-Modernist movements of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, and even Art Deco had become established as a more forward-looking, cosmopolitan approach to design. Besides highlighting “the craftsman ideal” and promulgating the handmade aspect of decorative design work, these Modernist styles also took an ahistorical approach to finding influences. As opposed to being a resurgence of a single style of the past, early-Modernism opened the door to a number of traditional aesthetics, effectively blending them with modern motifs, and allowing the designer to gain insight from ornamental construction of the past while also updating designs to fit the current mood. Miller was ultimately a product of European Revivalism and Modernism, with his work reflecting a true amalgam of both throughout his career.

Studying the European Past

As a product of the times and with the boundless energy of his youth, Miller honed his artistic skill by studying the techniques and styles of revivalist work. Around the time when he first came to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute, Miller started collecting architectural and design research books of Medieval and Renaissance art, full of diagrammatic details and images to fuel his studious fascination. These books were somewhat prevalent and popular in the Midwest because of Gothic-revival architecture’s popularity at the time. Among his collected sketchbooks that are now housed at the Chicago History Museum is the seminal German reference manual on the art of bookbinding, Das Alte Buch und seine Ausstattung (“The Old Book and Its Equipments”) by Martin Gerlach. This volume, originally published in 1915, brims with Medieval architectural, artisanal, and illustrated motifs, and surely was a book Miller eagerly sought out for instruction and inspiration. The manual was but one design source from which he would tirelessly practice throughout his career. Miller’s archived sketchbooks are full of copious studies and notes from every available resource that was within reach, and it’s clear he fell in love with the craftsmanship, detail, and pure artistic prowess shown in the work of Middle Age artisanal masters.

One of the first things that comes to mind when thinking of Edgar Miller is his stained glass work, which still decorate his Handmade Homes and public sites around the Chicagoland area, to astounding effect. The glasswork medium lent itself incredibly well to Miller’s most deep-seated passions in artistic design: framed geometries, intricate details, and meticulous craftsmanship. In alignment with Modernist sensibilities, Miller took to studying historical European architecture with an eye for the artisanship, particularly in the complexity and intricacies of motif design and expression. In his practice, such as in the Handmade Home studio complexes in Old Town (which some might describe as a sort of Modernist / Medieval fusion) Miller showed what he had learned from the past in electrifying new ways and in the modern setting of a dense 20th century urban neighborhood.  

By studying Medieval designs and craft technologies, Miller taught himself many techniques that served as a basis for the rest of his artistic career. In coming to better understand woodblock carving and pattern making, he learned to shape things in terms of the negative space, producing entire scenes, figures, and textures using a reductive technique. His painterly illustration style lends itself to direct comparisons to Medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts. The often refined, and floral decorative motifs he was so adept at producing have much in common with Middle Age tapestry and woven art. And of course, his stained glass work incorporated a Gothic sense of form, shade, texture, and light. From the early 1920s, Miller quickly became known as the go-to local artist for producing advertisements, flyers, and collateral design with a timeless feel. His agile and deft hand produced beautiful, complex designs that could be transferred to a carved wood stamp or directly to paper with a practiced ease.

Turning Handicrafts into a Grand Style

Some of Miller’s grandest public works take their cues from a Medieval style, often with a Modernist twist. While he did not personally have much of a spiritual interest in liturgical art, he was well-known in the Chicagoland area for his stained glass design, for which he was highly sought after by faith ministers to produce reverent stained glass work that conveyed a sense of intimacy and modernity. Miller’s stained glass, woodwork, and mosaics still decorate magnificent churches and synagogues throughout the Chicagoland area. 

Miller was also commissioned to produce many murals for various sites around the country, and nearly all his murals had an explicit narrative quality. “History of Brewing” is one such mural. Executed in fresco, the hand-painted masterpiece still wraps around the Best Place beer hall at the historic Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. It depicts scenes of “a day in the life” of various laborers, brewers, and revelers of the Middle Ages, all throughout with hints of Miller’s characteristic cheekiness and caricature. It was in his mural work that Miller found his most comfortable niche, filling grand pieces with action, depth, and diverse characters, like narrative epic tapestries. Much of this artwork was very clearly a reinterpretation of scenes of Medieval royal courts, Biblical stories, and allegorical vignettes that Miller had previously studied.

It’s often asked if Edgar Miller ever visited Europe himself. In an article about his Pabst murals, from the Milwaukee Journal in 1943, he referenced the picturesque views of the Rhine Valley as a specific source of inspiration, that he claimed to be a first-hand experience. Only a few other references to Miller having traveled to Europe in his lifetime have surfaced. Still, he was able to produce detailed studies of foreign scenes from across time through a variety of local resources, such as permanent and traveling exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, and by viewing the excavated and collected artifacts from far-off places at the Field Museum of Natural History. On top of all the books and journals and encyclopedias Miller could get his hands on, he had all the inspiration he needed. 

Miller’s artwork can often confuse the viewer as to which era it derived. His deftly formed figures are at once Medieval in his use of flattened perspective, flowery detail, and intricate motifs, while also appearing Modern and almost Cubist in shape and form, with colorful, expressionistic subject matter. Miller’s genius was that he allowed the traditional and the modern to work with each other in a single piece, and that he never settled on a definable style.