Joseph Skinger

History

Joseph A. Skinger was born in Worcester, MA on March 16, 1911. He died in Stowe, VT January 1967. He moved from Worcester to Alburg Springs, Vermont permanently in 1946 following World War II. He had purchased his 1880’s house in the late 1930’s, following a fishing trip with friends to Missisquoi Bay – the northern most part of the Lake Champlain. Joe named the Alburg Springs house Clover Gables after the clover shaped gingerbread lining the gables. Joe worked on the renovation of the Alburg Springs house on weekends and vacations while working his day job at American Steel and Wire in his native Worcester, MA. The original barn on the property in Alburg Springs became his first shop and studio where he made jewelry and sculpture. Skinger’s first enterprise was named The Islanders. His identity as craftsman and artist was now well underway.

As a youth Joe was first exposed to art and took art classes at the Worcester Art Museum. Though largely self taught, Joe studied metal working in England at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1951 on the GI Bill. Joe’s inclination to work in metal began at an early age. As a child, his mother, Rose Gaier Skinger, often scolded him for wasting heat by melting metal in the furnace of their house in Worcester. Joe would then make things out of the softened metal.

In 1946 Joe married Constance Adams of Llewellyn Park, NJ (1914- 2005). They moved from Massachusetts, where they had both been stationed during WWII, to the Alburg Springs house in the Lake Champlain Islands he had been renovating. Together they completed work on the house, building chimneys and fireplaces, installing plumbing and electrical systems, and doing all of the finish work. They had three children, Jody, Erica and Carol.

In 1958 the family moved to Stowe, Vermont, where Skinger continued to work in jewelry and sculpture in the barn he renovated for a workshop and showroom. This barn came attached to a house which was an operating family ski lodge, then known as The Tucker House. Two months after the Skingers moved in-- ski guests holding reservations began to arrive.

Joe’s business "Silver by Skinger" was widely known to thousands of visitors to Stowe. “Silver by Skinger” was located a mile below the Toll House on the Mountain Road. His shop was known as the “Home of the Slalom Ring” though there were many imitators in ski areas around the country as the slalom ring gained in popularity with skiers. Each sterling silver slalom ring was hand wrought, of a heavy gauge silver and came with hammer marks. Slalom Ring was not the first name of the ring. When Joe was at London Central School of Arts and Crafts in the early 1950’s, he saw a piece of jewelry titled “slave ring” at the British Museum. It was basically a similar shape -two V’s - but very wide and flat- with engravings. He thought he could make a similar shape though more minimal in execution- more like a wavy line and less like a broad flat shape. In Alburg he called it a slave ring after the ring at the British Museum which had been his motivation. When Joe moved to Stowe he decided that the ring had more commercial value as a “slalom ring". It caught on with college kids and skiers--though even before Skinger moved to Stowe the design already had it’s niche. In addition to creating jewelry and sculpture Mr. Skinger taught Jewelry at the UVM Summer Sessions and the Fletcher Farm Craft School in the 1950s. Joe hired Gay Bessette, his top metals and jewelry student at Fletcher Farm Craft School, beginning their ten year association at Silver by Skinger.

A successful and well known designer and craftsman in hand wrought silver jewelry by vocation-Joe’s greatest creative drive went into his work in sculpture. Beginning with highly original and unusual molten silver sculptures his work went on to other mediums including cast bronze, wood and fiber glass.

Joe’s jewelry was exhibited several times at the Fleming Museum in Burlington but he never allowed the sculpture to be sold or exhibited during his life, preferring to keep the entire collection together as he added to it. The Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY pursued him to have a show of his sculpture. Joe’s goal was MoMA. Following his death there was one exhibit of his sculpture at Assumption College in Worcester, MA.

He was profiled in Vermont Life in Autumn 1953, and memorialized in Vermont Skiing in 1967 by Peter Miller. There were several newspaper articles in various New England newspapers.

Jewelry

Slalom Ring

Slalom Ring and Slalom Bracelet

Mountain Shadow design

Mountain Shadow detail

Flying Geese

Flying Geese detail

Ivy

Ivy Detail

Molten Pins

Chain Bracelet

Chain Bracelet Detail

Sculpture

Articles

[Category:1967 deaths]
[Category:People from Massachusetts]