page_title: Emile Norman
section_title: Career and work
hierarchical_section_title: Emile Norman / Career and work
caption_attribution_description: English: Nob Hill Masonic Center.
context_page_description: Emile Norman, born Emil Nomann, was an American artist, widely known for his sculptures, mosaics, panels, and jewelry He was the subject of the 2006 PBS documentary, Emile Norman: By His Own Design.
context_section_description: Norman began his professional career designing window displays for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. He later moved to New York to design window displays for department stores including Bergdorf Goodman and Bonwit Teller — his work featured in Vogue and other periodicals. In 1946, he designed ornate headgear for performers in the 1946 Hollywood musical Blue Skies.
  On a trip to Europe, he discovered an affinity for working with plastics, especially epoxy resin, which would ultimately become a mainstay of his work. His work was featured in a Manhattan gallery in 1944 and subsequently covered in the New York Times — noting Norman's innovative use of plastic as decorative rather than functional material. The show received positive reviews and quickly sold out.
  In his work, Norman was known to use a technique combining admixtures of epoxy, crushed glass, plastic, and wood to create a cloisonne or stained glass effect. He also layered the material over wax forms, which were subsequently melted to leave a 3-dimensional sculpture.
  His body of work includes sculptures, mosaics, panels, and jewelry — notably the 40-by-46-foot mosaic window for the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, depicting the founding of California Freemasonry. The Monterey Herald described the mural as an endomosaic, incorporating thousands of bits of metal, parchment, felt, linen, silk, natural foliage, thinly sliced vegetable matter, shells and sea life, plus 180 colors of stained glass."
caption: The Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, California, mosaic window and exterior stone sculptures by Norman
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A720 IS", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2012:06:04 23:02:17", "Image ExifOffset": "176", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/640", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2012:06:04 23:02:17", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:06:04 23:02:17", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "149/16", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "7059/1000", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3264", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2448", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "43520/3", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "347645/24", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}