JOHN PRIP (1922-2009)
John Prip was a renowned American metalsmith, educator, and industrial designer. Born in New York to a family of Danish silversmiths, he moved to Denmark at the age of 10 when his father returned to manage the family’s flatware factory. This early experience left a lasting impact on Prip’s creative development.
At 15, Prip began an apprenticeship with a Danish silversmith. He later trained under master silversmith Evald Nielsen and earned a diploma from the Copenhagen Technical School. In 1948, he returned to the United States, where he was soon recruited to teach at the newly established School for American Craftsmen (SAC) in Alfred, New York—a program that would later become part of the Rochester Institute of Technology.
In 1953, Prip joined fellow SAC faculty—cabinetmaker Tage Frid and ceramist Frans Wildenhain (and eventually ronald pearson)—in opening Shop One in Rochester, New York. This groundbreaking retail space, the first of its kind in the region, showcased the work of its founders and other SAC alumni. Prip contributed both jewelry and silverware designs to the shop.
By 1954, he had left teaching to pursue full-time work as a designer and craftsman. He joined the Hickock Corporation, where he worked until 1956, before being hired by Reed & Barton in 1957 as their designer-craftsman in residence. There, he was granted a private workshop and complete creative freedom to develop prototypes—ranging from hollowware and flatware to jewelry—for production. He remained with the company full-time until 1960.
Prip eventually returned to academia, first teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (1960–1962), then at the Rhode Island School of Design (1963–1980). He continued consulting for Reed & Barton while maintaining his independent studio practice.
In a 1988 New York Times article titled "John Prip’s Diverse Silver Designs," the author wrote: “His early works in highly polished silver combine the purity of the Danish design tradition with risk-taking. Handles, spouts and even the lips of teapots, gravy boats or pitchers veer off into unpredictable curves or unexpected angles, infusing otherwise classical designs with tension and sparkle. This risk-taking, modified by a degree of self-restraint, has turned out to be a characteristic of virtually all of Mr. Prip's work. His pieces are exercises in balance: they explore the ways a silversmith can tug at a piece, almost skew it, and then resolve it into a new whole.”
Prip was a founding member of the Society of North American Goldsmiths in 1971. In 1977, he was elected Fellow of the American Crafts Council and in 1986 he was Awarded National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work is in permanent collections nationwide.
