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>>Cullen: The reason most of us
came to RIT was because of Hans.
He was a unique man for what he
was doing; we didn't appreciate
it, we didn't, you know, we knew
we had a good professor, but we
weren't aware of how good and
how notable and how famous
he basically was.
He was a European trained
master.
He had to push, we had to push
ourselves.
>>Christensen: He was very
strict, because he had brought
that with him from his own
childhood but also when he had
his education at Georg Jensen.
There you worked with masters.
>>Cullen: An apprenticeship in
Europe was completely different
than what we had here.
He spent fifteen years to
become a master.
We were to learn as much as we
could in four.
>>Christensen: What he taught
the students at that particular
time was so different as what
they are teaching now.
You know, he hammered
everything.
He made sometimes his own
stakes and he made sometimes
his own hammers and those kinds
of things, because everything
is just hammered up from a flat
piece of silver and it is
hammered up and hammered up and
so it is very, very special.
>>Cullen: Hans could do that.
He could go into his office,
take a disc of metal which was
dead flat...
twenty minutes later come out
with a bowl that was already
three inches high...
(laughing)
...and be done with the bowl
in an afternoon.
Instead of letting a machine
fabricate and form your pieces,
we were taking flat sheets of
metals and learning to push it
by hand,
but doing shapes that weren't
centrifugal: ovals, rectangles,
squares, things machines can't
do, and still can't.
Everything was by hand,
no machinery, and we did learn.
>>Christensen: All his designs
he always got from nature.
That was his life.
>>Cullen: Most of his pieces
tended to be mobiles where a
design aspect may be the fact
that it's just maybe teetering,
simplified bases on a spike,
on omegas, which were common
for Hans.
The designs tend to be very
plain; the detail is in the
hammer work, which meant it had
to be done by hand.
>>Christensen: His things are
so different, what he made,
than anything else, his work is
so simple.
You know, one time one of the
factories asked to make a whole
set of spoons for him and he
gave it to them and they said,
"Oh no, that is not ornate
enough."
His work is not ornate!
So plain and clean, but so
special.
I think my favorite piece is in
silver was really he had a very
nice candelabra that he made,
because one time he was at a
dinner and people had
candelabras and he said,
"I only saw one because the
other ones were all standing
beside each other."
So he made a candelabra that
from every angle you could see
the light.
>>Cullen: Hans' uniqueness were
these obelisk forms, these
concaved and twisted omegas,
which all tend to intertwine,
and you're doing this...
manipulating the metal
itself with hammers,
which tend to be very large
and you have these elements
which are intertwining and to
control that?
None of us could understand it.
That was something that was
typical Hans and there was
nobody else doing it.
>>Christensen: The Mace is
really like a world bowl, and so
that was very special for him.
But also the necklace that the
President is wearing...
and what he did is he made an
eye on the backside because he
always felt that the President
has to look in the future, but
has an eye in the back for
what's happening, so that is
why that eye is in the back of
the necklace.
>>Cullen: I probably didn't
realize this when I was a
student...
the appreciation of what he was
doing only came to me afterwards
once I started working for
myself.
We knew that what he was
teaching us was probably not
being taught anywhere else in
the United States.
Going into this type of
profession, this type of
education...
it's a physical...
we were doing everything by
hand and hammer,
and we were supposed to return
all of his tools that we
borrowed,
but a lot of us never did.
It may have been a ruler, a
compass, a hammer or a file, but
it was our little trophy.
it had his little name, the
little hammer, H and C
and I still have his pieces in
my shop today,
that's 30 years later.
I still use his tools.
That's what kind of guy he was.