Like ceramist Susan Frackelton, blacksmith Cyril Colnik was a member of the flourishing artistic community in Milwaukee at the end of the nineteenth century. He was born in Austria and studied ironworking in Vienna and Munich before coming to the United States at the age of twenty. Colnik first worked as an assistant for the German metalwork exhibition at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After the World’s Fair, Colnik settled in Milwaukee, where he set up shop as a kunstschlosser or artistic metalworker.
This dynamic wrought-iron figure is an unusual example of Colnik’s work because it is a piece of sculpture that was meant to stand on its own. He was far better known for the production of architectural elements, such as custom-made gates and grilles that adorned Milwaukee’s finest turn-of-the-century homes, and the making of stylish lamps and vases that were sold at his Ornamental Iron Shop.
The Colnik Collection of the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum includes more than 200 works donated to the museum by daughter Gretchen Colnik in 1991, many of which are featured in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database. The Villa is also home to the Colnik Archive, an extensive collection of original drawings, blueprints and photographs donated by the Kohler Foundation in 2002.