Firescreen: Cocks and Crows

Sculpture has been too long an affair of marble and bronze. It is too remote, too inaccessible. We must do everything possible to extend its scope and appeal, to insure for it a wider, more popular acceptance.

– William Hunt Diederich, 1920

William Hunt Diederich—known simply as Hunt Diederich—defied the conventions of traditional sculpture. He made sculpture of common household objects and worked in utilitarian materials, such as sheet metal and wrought iron. His favorite subjects were not heroes of myth and history but animals, whose antics enchanted him. The techniques Diederich favored seem as simple as child's play, especially his cut silhouettes in both paper and sheet metal.

This firescreen by Diederich was one of the first objects purchased for the new Seattle Art Museum when it opened in 1933. It was acquired then not as a work of sculpture but as a functional object—a fireplace screen for the museum's trustees meeting room—a kind of object for which Diederich was then quite well known and admired. The Seattle Art Museum was among the first public institutions to purchase Diederich's work. Dr. Richard Fuller, the museum's founding director, recognized the value of having Diederich's artful objects in an art museum. Dr. Fuller's fondness for well-designed objects, in both Asian art and contemporary American architecture and design, was behind the acquisition of this and other Hunt Diederich sculptures for the museum in 1933.

Let's explore the life and work of this unconventional modern sculptor. Insofar as possible, we will let the artist's own words describe his motivations to create and express his artistic ideals.