Harold G Egan

Harold Egan, A Reminiscence

Harold Egan was my uncle, my fathers youngest brother. He and his wife Erica were my godparents. Outside of my own parents, they were the adults whose company I craved over all others when I was growing up.

Harold was a remarkable man for reasons way beyond his longevity. He was a problem-solver, first and foremost, and this aspect of his personality showed forth in ways large and small. At my familys summer house, there was an old chest on the porch for tools and things, and when you opened it up, you could see that the screws holding one of the hinges had been loosened from their moorings and in the place of the damaged wood was a section of carpenters rule mitered in place. I remember asking my father about what went on there, and he said that Harold had fixed it on the spot with the materials at hand, which had included, for a suitable piece of wood, that piece of old discarded carpenters rule. Every time I opened that chest, I thought of Harolds ingenuity and pragmatic approach to matters like woodcraft and carpentry.

Harolds approach was almost always, dont buy it, make it. Need a cardboard box? Well, then, get some cardboard, X-acto knife, a ruler and some glue, and make the exact box you require. If you want to give a small present, make a presentation box. For a really classy effect, make a box of polished walnut with brass trimmings! When you make that from scratch, of course, it helps to have a table saw and a well-stocked collection of good woods"which of course Harold had in abundance in his studio.

Harold worked on a lot of what you might call off-the-beaten path projects, one-offs, like the time he designed a CBS award and made it in the shape of a big bulbous vacuum tube"certainly more germane than something like a little bald man with a sword. One I remember well was his entry in the competition to create a T for the Toyota car symbol. His T was masculine and zesty, deep red colors on a block of brushed aluminum in a shape that echoed the great Roman monumental capitals. The winner, however, which you will see on all Toyotas to this day, I believe"and I defy you to recognize it as the letter T"is two intersecting ellipses, to me an eyesore and a typographic heresy.

With Harold and Erica my birthdays were far superior to Christmas! Erica would always call in advance and ask my mother or father what I was interested at the time, and then they would come and deliver the goods"always adult things, the real things of the world, not toys or toy versions of materials or implements. Books, tools, chemistry equipment, art supplies--but the real art supplies the pros used, and linseed oil and mixtures of real mineral pigments one year. (The smell of linseed oil is like Prousts madelaine for me, as I conjure up my doting, loving godparents.) Another time, it was books about astronomy and the planets, Stoegers catalogs of guns and sporting goods, chemical glassware like Erlenmeyer and Florence flasks and the porcelain crucible I had insisted on, and a mortar and pestle large--larger than I could possibly employ in my chemistry experiments, but welcome nonetheless. One year it was wood burning tools, and another, linoleum block carving sets and X-acto knives. I still have a linoleum block image I made and I remember especially the fat tubes of linoleum-block ink in brilliant primary colors and a deep black. We would sit in the living room and make ice-cream sodas with scoops of vanilla ice cream and ginger ale and toast each others health.

Harold was a great raconteur, also, with a great repertoire (well, even to the point of too much rep) but nonetheless, he would be egged on By Erica to tell the story of . . . you name it, one of their curious adventures bordering always on an ironic, Thurber-esque view on life. The one about inviting this obese man to visit, and then realizing that they had no chair to sit him at dinner, and Harold having a few brief a hours to figure out how to BUILD a chair for him. But build a chair out of what? What design as precedent? And then his whipping it up at the last minute and managing to get the enormous guest to the table on time without a hint of effort.

Or the curious little tale of an acquaintance who, reading a British treatment of book restoration, got the ingredients for their recipe, mixed it all together, and ended up with this horrible goop all over the leather bindings, learning soon after that the British paraffin is not our paraffin wax, but kerosene. He had melted a few blocks of paraffin wax into the mixture, seeing that the recipe seemed to be calling for something liquid. . . .

Harold and Erica always seemed to find these strange and unusual projects that they were proud to complete, even though the premises were sometimes such that lesser mortals would have quailed at the prospect of carrying out the task. One such project was creating a three-dimensional map of the ocean floor around the globe. Harold researched all he could, discovering of course that much at the time (the 60s, I would say) was really uncharted (which it remains to this day, we were somewhat surprised to learn after the loss of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370). He built the thing, including little sculptures of legendary treasure ships sunken and undiscovered and known features like the Marianas Trench. He incorporated features that were newly discovered and learned, and he came to believe that no single effort had been made to that date to incorporate all this topography in a single model. He had it executed in fiberglass, as I remember, assembled from several large sections bolted together, and it was exhibited in Atlantic City. (He had a prototype section of it in white-painted sections of plywood layers, hanging on the wall at the apartment on Ninth Street.) He told me later when I asked whether it could still be visited that it had been removed and destroyed.

As a kid, I found the prospect of a visit to Harold and Erica exciting, a visit to almost another world, things that looked beautiful, things that worked in strange ways, the kind of art you were aware existed, but never seen from so up close!

They had all these objects and tools in little boxes and drawers, all filed and categorized, at the ready. Every nut, bolt, screw, drill bit, X-acto knife, scissors, or well-sharpened pencil of any conceivable hardness were all in their appointed places ready for retrieval and use. Around the studio were receptacles for chalks, charcoal sticks, drawing pens, India inks, art crayons and pastels, gum erasers, drafting tools, vast rolls of papers and cardboards, oil paints and canvas"you name it. His machine shop with lathe, drill-press and variously configured table saws was an amazing revelation to see on the second floor of a walkup tenement apartment on the lower East side. Their living quarters were a floor above, incorporating their own comfortable and spacially economical furniture designs such as a Murphy bed and custom chairs and cushions in what we would now call modular designs. Harold photo-reproduced Piranesi drawings and put them into integral bookcases and a kind of walnut-bordered pediment in their alcove to the studio. They had a collection of books that included illustrated editions for them to reference when the picture of a particular insect or bird or piece of scientific equipment was needed. At one point they gave me an enormous Eimer and Amend catalogue from the famous scientific supply store, hardbound, the kind of thing you never see nowadays, because I was interested in microscopes and other things like types of Bunsen burners (which they bought for me, to replace my alcohol lamp). I learned that this, too, was the kind of book they had kept on hand for their drawing reference.

When I was in elementary school, they embarked on a demi-career of paper sculpture promotion, which on a normal artistic scale was one of Ericas amazing specialties. They designed and mass-produced, however, kits for making giant paper sculptures of familiar things like the Easter bunny. I took one of the Easter bunnies to school, and many kids marveled at it, and others said they had one at home. When I told them that my aunt and uncle had made it, they were incredulous. How could you know who made this?

This in fact was the basis for another oft-told Harold and Erica story"that they never considered the phenomenal success they would achieve with these sculpture kits, advertised in the old Family Circle magazine, and had people send in quarters with their orders. Then, faced with an onslaught of mail, they had to open hundreds of envelopes, remove the quarters taped to 3x5 cards inside, and put the coins in rollers and schlep them in a shopping cart to the bank, in what seemed like a full-time and pretty arduous job. Later, when I was already a teen, they came up with a Statue of Liberty that enjoyed a great deal of popularity as well, although the bunny was to me a more artistic and developed product.

In sum, Harold was an artist, a designer and a craftsman who loved beauty, finding it in many things, and lending that beauty to his own works. His was a life many of us might envy for its unique accomplishments, but truth be told, few of us have the skill and the dedication that enabled him to lead such a life.

--Brian Harold Egan