Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen
Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen (April 20, 1840 – 1920) was a Danish-American artist and designer. Trained as an architect, he is known for his designs in a wide variety of disciplines. Early life and education. Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen was born on April 20, 1840, to Ludvig Ipsen (18061875) and Mette Margrethe Ipsen (, August 16, 1808 – April 23, 1840) in Copenhagen, Denmark. He trained as an architect at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen. In 1860, shortly after graduation, he entered the military, serving in the engineering corps and participating in the Second  Schleswig War in 1864. Career. After military service, Ipsen worked for a few years in the office of a Copenhagen architect before emigrating to the United States. He found work with the Boston architect Henry Walker Hartwell, and was later a member of the firm Hartwell & Swasey. By 1875, he had abandoned the practice of architecture in favor of the decorative arts and illustration. He did, however, return to architecture at least once, for the design of a crematorium chapel. Book illustration. Ibsen was employed as a staff illustrator by the James R. Osgood publishing firm in Boston and also  worked for several other local publishers. The book that brought Ipsen the most acclaim was "Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, issued in 1886 by Ticknor and Company of Boston. From their 1887 catalog: Contemporary reviews were positive. Bookplates. One of Ipsen's specialities was the design of bookplates. In the foreword to his book "The Book-plates of Ludvig Sandöe Ipsen" (1904), the well-known art collector Winfred Porter Truesdell wrote: Other works on paper. Shortly after the Boston-based men's choral society, the Apollo Club, was incorporated, Ipsen was commissioned by Arthur Reed, the club  secretary, to illustrate the club's publications, and he designed 130 program covers over the course of 23 years, as well as designing the club's seal in 1876. The club's records, now held by the Massachusetts Historical Society, include fifty-one original illustrations created for Apollo Club concert programs. One curiosity preserved in the collection of the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University is a facsimile telegram created for a dinner in 1883 honoring the recently retired physician Oliver Wendell Holmes. Ipsen's contribution is a cartoon showing Holmes carrying bones and books, greeted at Delmonico's  by Fordyce Barker. Typography. In 1903, Ipsen patented two typefaces for the American Type Founders which had appeared in their catalog as early as 1896. The wording of his patent application seems to confirm that Ipsen was personally responsible for the typeface design. Architecture and architectural elements. In 1893, the Massachusetts Cremation Society opened a crematorium designed by Ipsen and built of Roxbury felsite in the neoclassical style. Now owned by Forest Hills Cemetery, it includes the Lucy Stone Chapel, named after the Boston abolitionist and suffragist who was the first person cremated there. Ipsen received a commission in 1910  to design a pair of iron gates for the Converse Memorial Library, which was designed by H. H. Richardson, in Malden. The gates enclose a garden designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Other design work. Ipsen received U.S. patent in 1897 for a design for decorating china. Personal life. Ipsen emigrated to the United States in 1867, arriving first in New York, where he married Emma Petrea Petersen (February 8, 1846March 5, 1914) in Manhattan on August 10, 1868. Emma, also born in Copenhagen, was a well-known mezzo-soprano who performed in recital halls and churches. She was the sister  of John Petersen (18391874), a marine painter also known as Johan Erik Christian Petersen. The couple had moved to Malden, Massachusetts by the following year when their son, Ernest, was born. Ernest Ludvig Ipsen (18691951) became an internationally renowned portrait painter. A 1897 patent application refers to Ipsen as a “subject of the King of Denmark”; however, when he, his wife and son were returning to the U.S. from a trip to Europe in 1906, all three were listed on the Ellis Island arrivals list as U.S. citizens.