hello folks this is another round of what's going on and you never know what's going to be going on we have a wonderful speaker today his name is richard pennington and he's been an author a writer you know artist you name it and he has brought some of his pictures today and so forth and i think we could me the name of the art plates in chicago chicago art institute thank you and my uncle was a painter and so there was that kind of buzz going around when we were growing up and then what did you do when you how did you get into this did you do anything else first for did you go right into this hard work ok  i'll try to make it short i moved to cambridge nine hundred seventy two after finishing at the university university of illinois in chicago i got a job at the cambridge public library after working for years in a blue collar job the cambridge public library job led to a job at the boston globe library and i was there for twenty five years and the boston globe library is one the most phenomenal boston resources  in boston and it has a clipping stating from the turn of the century it has over a million photographs it's a wonderful institution and i was proud to be part of it for twenty five years i left there in two thousand and seven and the first thing i thought about was writing a book because i've always wanted to write a book and i had the it's the story of a family really oh and the leader of the family is john gardner low this is a picture taken of him an eighteen fifty eight when he was a student paris and he studied painting there and he came back to the united states during the civil war did not serve as a soldier became a landscape painter and bought in chelsea and he could make a living from it so he built a factory and he created these tiles and this is one of the best examples of this work it's called the passion flower and this is a set of tiles that were around a fireplace and they were the finest that were made in the united states up until that time the lower tile company was prolific they created hundreds of designs they sold hundreds of thousands of these tiles around the world around the country particularly and i fell in love with them when i first started studying them john gardner lo had a son he had a father they were all part of the family business is part of the fascination of this subject is that there were so many places where i expected to be where i could not find him i think he was a bit of a private person he didn't get out a tremendous amount none of the do you have more questions or shall i keep on to the problem talking ok that's fine i got a lot sweeter when at one time there was a young artist who was trying to make a living in boston buried anyway his name was child has sam he became famous later on as one of the foremost american impression this he went to chelsea he visited the factory he drew a picture of the offices of john gardner lo he has john gardner though sitting in a chair in front of a picture window all the products of the lower tile company are in this room you see a cast iron stove a numberless stand vases fireplace surrounds and has a grandfather clock which he did not make it has a fireplace screen which he did not make it meant might have been produced by john  this is one of the most remarkable things in this research that when you think about the fact that this happened in one thousand nine hundred five and this drawing was done for a children's magazine called wide awake and  beck this richly illustrated book showcasing lowe's chelsea tiles this primarily a biography of john gardner low eight hundred thirty five to one thousand and seven and on this is also a family history a tale of chelsea and boston and a portrait of a group of painters hunt some vetter and clay modelers groupy the robertsons who contributed a body of artistic work that  often showcased in great museums today this leads to one of the subplots of the story is that john gardner lowe learned everything he could from the robertson's i'm from scotland  he used much of what he had learned from them to create his works and they were brilliant paint brilliant works of workers and clay it was a large family was three sons and a father  much of their work is in the museum of fine arts the american wing john gardner though was the mentor of william henry groupy who was an arts and crafts worker in clay american wing the artists of boston knew each other very well it was a small group of people they conversed with each other they learn from each other if it's just a fairly remarkable story of how this one man knew all these other men one degree of separation from mark twain they're one degree of separation from theater roosevelt you made the acquaintance you make took the initiative to get to know the people in the field you want experiment with and he thought the thing that's coming is electricity and so he got to know all the famous and had them to order him he never pay paid to go to college he couldn't afford it but he got this fabulous one on one education i haven't a drawer you know like little pick pieces of paper that show the people he taught you and i so i think in that very eerie your talking about you know in that era people tried to get in touch with a circle of people and had similar interests and learn from one another yeah it was called the american gardner low during his lifetime was responsible for deciding what shade of white what tone of white to paint the white city the same way as francis davis millet and at one time i thought well someone should write a book about francis stevens you know what it i was speaking to a colleague one day and she said yes someone did publish and he's published of these sold a couple hundred copies he lives in these bridgewater he's wrote written this big deficit book and he's had very little attention i drove down and we sat around all the afternoon talking about but he also did things his dad's way a lot and so forth and i made a point there for a without even thinking about  and i know i just love getting to know people that that's why i'm enjoying you know that's so i think it's a wonderful way of learning is to know get to know people and about individuals and people and now what kind of art do you do oh i'm just starting and  working watercolors because i think they're just gorgeous and for a while i was trying to train myself but recently i took a course at the mass college of art oh yes and right now i'm studying drawing at the cambridge center for adult education i'm at the very beginning i don't see them but they're looking at a little bit of a bit of my artwork your i mean these picture frames myself and i painted them myself oh and i have a basement full of wood and this is made out of walnut and i glued the tile yeah onto the picture frame about the book and it will be showcasing many of the images inside the book it's a unique opportunity to have these wonderful images conveyed in the proper way  will be having a reception on the tuesday before the twenty seventh of february and everybody will be able to come and see the book and see the studio and have some pizza and perhaps drink knocks like some things i've seen the chimpanzees do and it turned out it was everybody was a homo this man is so intelligent i'll bet you get a fortune for this yellow thing and of course if it was done by chimpanzees so  a museum in denver devoted to clifford still who say abstract expressionist and it's just remarkable and i don't normally like abstract and expressionism but you languished for many years until they built a full stand alone museum next in the denver museum and it's remarkable to see what he's done and there are things there that you see in you that makes you feel to be his chief modeler and he and arthur osborne studied that can sing to a school of art in london and became the united states is a tremendously young man very young and it was early twenty's he was given ten thousand dollars a year to model these tiles in hundred seventy nine he was that good in him he must have worked constantly because he produced all these great works of art in a very short period of time there is a special series of lower tiles called the plastic sketches and in the center is a picture of a plastic sketch and  he created forty seven of those in a couple years and this is called el c'est anyway there are large pieces of clay and to be framed hung on the wall like oil paintings the the lower tile company produced many products and the plastic sketches were one the fireplace tiles were another they created bigger than starbucks when every drugstore had the sort of don't yet lower tile company made some of the greatest soda fountains made there was one for sale in somerville couple years ago i got pictures of it before  auctioned off for seven thousand dollars just a section of it that was in the north end for seven hundred dollars or forgotten anyway it's just amazing to look at used you look at you say i can't believe human hands created this sort of  how people came in different countries categorize things in different ways and in living in europe you know it said the modern modern it was from the fifteen hundred soccer renaissance in the last five hundred years and so forth and that they just held on to things  so i always say this to a guest is there something else you'd like to explain before we close off well whatever you want to one of my favorite stories i'd like to explain  ended is kind of vague i think they just kind of kept losing money and they were selling everything off to pay off their debts the factory doesn't exist any longer you won't see kilns and shells any longer the general manager works bought the factory from the lowes he moved to maine and it just kind of disappeared nine hundred fifty a fellow named went to a warehouse in cambridge discovered catch of lower tiles that had been sitting there for fifty years in boxes burned because of the chelsea fire oh i opened it up in there was a story about sumter hinkley in it and i hadn't ever known about his name before that time and it just led me and discovering more about the lore tile company twentieth century  there was a lot of journalism done by a main writer in the one nine hundred sixty s and i work now at a lot a lot of this work was going through magazines and newspapers page by page i w named robert lowe he's the great great grandson of john gardner though and he had a box in the basement and he pulled all this stuff out of the box he says can you use this i said are you kidding this is the book right here when it went down to washington d c to visit his cousin and then went to hartford connecticut to visit his cousin and so that's how the book was put together i flew around the country photographs of all the collections and all the soda fountains oh my goodness soda water in they've got two ladies on either side there and bare breasted in eighty ninety two  minutes i know yeah thank you for coming and thank you for watching us this is this is totally impromptu by the way i was saying this in the hallway and they said we need you right now sit down and talk so indeed this is richard pennington who has written books who makes collections of different art and different places is this you're just one last thing is this an avocation i do you do something else also another words are you making a living at what you're doing and i'm not making a living at what i'm doing i'm retired yeah my last job was the boston public library when we began our show he wondered how we would ever fill half an hour or so without further ado i want to say i'm so grateful to mr pennington and all he's done and