Wharton Esherick Museum

Tucked into the wooded hills of Chester County near Paoli, the Wharton Esherick Museum preserves the home and studio of the man often called the Dean of American Craftsmen. Esherick moved here in nineteen thirteen and spent the next six decades carving, shaping, and building everything around him: furniture, sculptures, staircases, and door handles. His spiral staircase in the studio, made of hand-carved wood, is considered a masterwork of the American craft movement.

Esherick rejected the industrial uniformity of mass production and treated daily objects as art. His work influenced a generation of craftspeople and furniture designers. The studio, which became a museum in nineteen seventy-two, is a National Historic Landmark and is preserved much as Esherick left it, a place where every surface was a creative decision.