Ralph Helm Johonnot (1879-1940) & Salome JOHONNOT (1883-1961)
Ralph Helm Johonnot was a graduate of Pratt Institute around 1899 and quickly became a design professor alongside Arthur Wesley Dow. Ralph oversaw the Ipswich Summer School program when Dow was not available and succeeded him as head of department in 1909. Ralph travelled to Europe several times and studied the new design aesthetic and modern color palettes. He developed an artistic style drawing deeply from the Arts & Crafts Movement yet pushing forward with landscape abstraction & color use that places him squarely in the first wave of the American Modernism Art Movement.
He met his wife, Salome Lavinia Hopper (1883-1961), in Brooklyn, where she worked at the Herter Looms. She had also travelled to Europe and studied with May Morris. She was an incredibly talented designer and textile artist in her own right and much of their work was collaborative. In 1913, they moved to Pasadena, California where Ralph was the Head of the Art Department for the Pasadena School District. By 1914, the couple had set up their own workshop, The School of Design & Handwork in Pacific Grove, California which included summer schools they would take to dozens of cities across America from 1915 to the early 1930’s. They taught design theory, interpretive painting, textiles & embroidery, interior decoration, woodblocks, greeting card design, metalwork, leather work and more.
Examples of work may be found at these links:
PAINTINGS // TEXTILES // GREETING CARDS // WOODBLOCKS // SKETCHES
Many period articles praised their work and noted what an important designer & instructor Ralph was, from Keramic Studio to Home & Garden and the School Arts Magazine. Ralph was very close with fellow craftsmen Ernest Batchelder, Douglas Donaldson and Emma Waldvogel and taught William Rice and Rudolph Schaffer early in their careers. The couple exhibited at the Society of Arts & Crafts in Boston, the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts and had a large exhibit at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco where they won a silver medal for their work.
During the 1920’s, Ralph supplied designs and illustrations for a series of student art books published by Atkinson, Mentzer & Company under the “Industrial and Applied Art Books” moniker, edited by Elmer & Florence Reid Bush. Ralph continued to paint and exhibit well into the 1930’s yet his arthritis slowed his work tremendously. Ralph passed away in Los Gatos, California in November of 1940. Salome passed away in 1961.
THE LEGACY
Much of the art and design collection featured here is a time capsule of the Johonnots output with many pieces that were used in their school course work. When Ralph passed in 1940, there was concern their son might destroy the archive as he was not fond of the strict artistic control of his upbringing and, in fact, had burned many of his father’s art pieces. Salome had the archive sent to Rudolph Schaffer in San Francisco, who safe-kept it for nearly five decades at his school. A few years ago, Schaffer’s aging assistant contacted the family to return this archive of material.
This is an incredibly rare glimpse into the Johonnots work and their importance in furthering the Arts & Crafts ideals in which they were rooted. An early “power couple” - Ralph & Salome radically shifted tastes in America, pulling the best out of the Arts & Crafts Movement and it’s focus on handwork while pushing the early 20th Century boundaries of color theory, textile design, interior design and modern art. The paintings of Ralph Helm Johonnot are some of the earliest examples of Modernism in America.
OTHER KEY LINKS
JOHONNOT EPHEMERA // PRATT STUDENT JOURNAL // STUDENT WORK
SUMMER SCHOOL OF DESIGN AND HANDWORK AT PACIFIC GROVE, CALIFORNIA, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF RALPH HELM JOHONNOT. JULY 13 TO AUGUST 15, 1914
The school is formed upon the basis that design enters into all art work and that successful hand work depends upon a knowledge of good design. All members of the school will give part time to the study of design. The making of quaint abstractions or interpretations of nature which are appropriate for hand work, will be an important feature of the class. The problems will be given in reference to the various crafts and as designs of merit are produced they may be worked out in the material. The course will be arranged that each student may choose three subjects besides the general design. The crafts of jewelry, wood carving, leather work, wood block printing, embroidery, and china decoration will be taught. Design will find expression through these mediums, also through landscape interpretation in flat tones bearing upon illustration and painting.
Rudolph Schaeffer, Rudolph Schaeffer School of Rhythmo-Chromatic Design (1924 – 1984) (oral history)
Speaking of the thriving art community in Pasadena…“Then came on the scene in 1913, Ralph Johonnot, who was a pupil of Dow, who was the teacher of Georgia O’Keefe. We all flocked to him for his classes. Mrs. Johonnot did stitchery and he did decorative painting, landscapes.
Why haven’t we known more about Johonnot? “I could have been the instrument of his being known. His wife passed away, but the administrator of the will didn’t know what to do with the paintings. She gave me the whole list of paintings, all his paintings, that he’d exhibited, left them to the Schaffer School. They were in Carmel and I was to go down, but this was when I first moved here, (SF) and I was so absorbed in this building, in getting the school started, I had to put off getting a truck and going down to Carmel to get those paintings. In the meantime, the son, Ralph Johonnot, Jr. he had very little use for his father’s paintings, and for his father in particular, because he grew up in resistance to his father who was so meticulous about his house that he wouldn’t lie a newspaper down for fear it would spoil the composition, something like some people I know today where everything has to be just so. He (Sr.) was so interested in color, one side of the house was painted one color and the other side another color, and he was a great artist, a great teacher. The son, I don’t know what he’s done with the paintings. I’ve tried to get in touch with him, but he lives in Los Angeles. What has become of those beautiful paintings? I could have exhibited them.”
“Johonnot made a great impression on my art expression. It was the first time that I had been introduced to these beautiful new prismatic colors which were being introduced by that time in Europe. They had not arrived here in this country, only through Johonnot. The summer before he came here (1913), I think he was in Budapest, and studied there and in Vienna. When he came West and gave his private courses, art teachers flocked to him, and all the people who were interested in art.”
Is Pattern Beauty, A Question Raised by the Decorative Handicraft of Salome & Ralph Helm Johonnot. House & Garden Magazine, May 1916.
“It was this realization of a bigger, more practical work that led Ralph Help Johonnot to leave his position as head of the design department at Pratt Institute, in New York City, and, with Mrs. Johonnot, to establish himself in California that they could carry theory into practice and develop the many phases of handicraft - particularly of interior decoration and costume - in which they have been interested for years. Of their personal success, of the Medal of Honor awarded their work at the Pan-American Exposition and of their enthusiastic following in the various cities where they teach during the winter months Mr. Johonnot has little to say, his thought is concentrated in spreading abroad a fine sincerity of artistic truthfulness, a respect for exquisite materials, their proper, natural use and enrichment and an interpretive comprehension of beauty in colorful, patterned design. These, his work, and the work of Mrs. Johonnot, pictured here, speak for themselves. For their work is devoted to those arts which apply directly to the beautifying of the home. A printed curtain of unusual pattern and striking colors, an embroidered pillow, a table cover, a miniature mural, along lines as these have their energies been directed.
On the opposite page are shown some examples of their design. The scarves, of which five are pictured here, are block printed crepe. Both the designs and the blocks are made by these handicrafters. The same designs have been applied to curtains of crepe and other materials. In thee pattern lies the beauty. Or again, there is the embroidered pillow, a design in tans, blues, greens, ivory, rose and yellow. And here again the pattern is beauty. Their use in a room would give it immediate distinction. These may seem small items, but it is by such that an interior attains individuality.
Unquestionably the first law for the decoration of interiors is to use those furnishings that are suitable for the room, the the house and to the sort of life the occupants live. That is suitability plus personality. The personal distinction lies in the judicious use of the smaller decorative accessories, objects especially wrought for those especial uses and places. The same suitability that requires the right sort of furniture in a certain kind of room justifies the creation of these accessories. For they are the result of applying a pattern which is beautiful to material which also is beautiful.
When we shall have learned to appreciate this suitability of detail, our American interiors will begin to rise above the mediocre and attain something of distinction. Meantime here are the examples of the work of but two of our American handicraft artists. Hundreds of others are devoted to the like work. It is a sign of better things.
Ralph and Salome Johonnot Arts, Crafts Course, Detroit Free Press, Detroit, MI, April 8th 1923
ARTS, CRAFTS OFFER COURSE. Ralph & Salome Johonnot, Exponents of Creative Design, Exhibit. The Society of Arts And Crafts has been fortunate enough to secure Ralph Johonnot, Formerly associated with Arthur W. Dow in the art department of Pratt Institute for a series of lectures here in creative design. In connection with the course, an exhibition of the Johonnot textile work, applique embroidery, and decorative landscapes, will be on view in the galleries of the society. Mrs. Salome Johonnot, who studied stitchery in England under May Morris, daughter of William Morris, has created a series of intricate stitches which are used, not only in applying the design in appliquéd silk, but to produce the design itself, forming its more delicate motifs, and giving the whole its admirable surface. One of the features of these decorative textiles is their effectiveness at a distance, and their exquisite finish when closely examined.
The Johonnots who are both Easterners, have conducted a successful workshop and school in southern California for the past ten years. Their workshop, like most centers for creating beauty began on a small scale as a place for assembling textiles and making them into decorative hangings and gowns, as a place for working out the color and design theories of these two artists. The clear, joyous colors used were so radical a departure fro the so-called “artistic” browns and other drab colors with which most people surround themselves, that a room and often a whole house would have to be done over to make a background for the Johonnot things. From this grew as interior decorating establishment, and later, because Mr. Johonnot believes that the house should be adapted to the needs of the liver, he began to plan small houses in which his decorative schemes would find perfect background.
TEACHING A SIDE ISSUE. As a teacher Mr. Johonnot has been particularly successful for the reason that aside from being well informed and absorbed in his subject, he spends most of his time carrying his theories into actual practice. The creative work of building decorative design is important thing with him, the teaching is a side issue. Too many teachers never work out the aesthetic principles about which they lecture year after year, with the consequence that their ideas get farther and farther away from the working knowledge that a practical application imposes. The Johonnot murals are all painted flat in clear colors and are usually illustrative of some fairy story. In the fairy realm are countless themes that call for imaginative conceptions far removed from the naturalistic. In fairyland, the grass may be blue and the evening sky magenta, the moon green and the round eyed daisies purple. Trees, fish, birds, people, everything may in a a fairy tale atmosphere, slough their ordinary traits for forms quaintly decorative.
INDIVIDUALITY IN GOWNS. The Johonnot tea and afternoon gowns of gorgeous crepes with motifs of embroidered and exquisite finish, are among the most enticing of the extensive exhibition. An increasing number of women are dressing to suit themselves, to emphasize their own individuality rather than an another duplicate of the prevailing mode. To these, the lovely things made by the Johonnots and their pupils will be particularly interesting. Many of them are created for the setting in which they are to be worn, and they are all made along lines that conform gracefully to almost any figure. Mr. Johonnot will give a landscape course as well; as a course in creative design which should prove immensely stimulating to the interested people who will study with him.
“The Institute News” PRATT INSTITUTE: January 24, 1941 : Ralph Johonnot Obituary (1940)
Word has only just been received of the death in November of Mr. Ralph H. Johonnot at his home in Los Gatos, California. For many years, Mr. Johonnot was intimately associated with the Art School - first as a student and then as a teacher. In 1901 he was graduated from the Department of Design and later followed Mr. Arthur Dow as Head of that Department. Since leaving in 1913, he has done much painting and teaching in private classes. He had a wide reputation throughout the entire country for his design and color and whatever he taught he left a group of devoted students. Mr. Johonnot had been ill for many years - a great sufferer from arthritis. The stories we have heard of his latter years remind one of the experiences of the aged Renoir, who painted with brushes tied to his hands.
PAINTINGS // TEXTILES // GREETING CARDS // WOODBLOCKS // SKETCHES
JOHONNOT EPHEMERA // PRATT STUDENT JOURNAL // STUDENT WORK
REFERENCE WORK:
Jennie V. Cannon: The Untold History of the Carmel and Berkeley Art Colonies, vol. one, East Bay Heritage Project, Oakland, 2012 by Robert W. Edwards
Biographies from "Appendix 7 - Biographies of Carmel and Berkeley Artists" in Jennie V. Cannon: The Untold History of the Carmel and Berkeley Art Colonies, vol. one, East Bay Heritage Project, Oakland, 2012
Ralph Helm Johonnot, Wikipedia
The Arts and Crafts Movement in California: Living the Good Life. Oakland Museum. Trapp, Kenneth R.; Bowman, Leslie Greene (1993).
"The Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design, Art in San Francisco Since 1915". (oral history transcript). The Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design.
Is Pattern Beauty, A Question Raised by the Decorative Handicraft of Salome & Ralph Helm Johonnot. House & Garden Magazine, May 1916.
School Arts Magazine, March 1926. “The Pacific Arts Association” by Arthur Clark.
“Certainly the West has received much from the Atlantic states...bearing upon art education, Ralph Johonnot has made a decided impression upon the use of color in design and textiles. He developed under Professor Dow in Pratt.”
