Main content

Susan R. Hinkel research files on Wharton Esherick

Notifications

Held at: Wharton Esherick Museum [Contact Us]1520 Horse Shoe Trail, Malvern, Pennsylvania, 19355

This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Wharton Esherick Museum. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.

Overview and metadata sections

A friend of the Wharton Esherick family, Susan R. Hinkel spent some of her professional career writing and conducting research about Wharton Esherick, the influential sculptor and craftsman. One piece of writing includes an article on Esherick and his studio on Diamond Rock Hill, entitled "A Maverick's Mansion," which appeared in the May 1988 issue of Arts and Antiques. Hinkel began preparing a biography on Esherick that focused on his family and personal life but never finished it. The book was to serve as a companion to Mansfield Bascom's biography, The Journey of a Creative Mind, which documented Esherick's professional career.

Susan Hinkel became friends with the Eshericks, particularly Wharton's daughter Ruth Esherick and her husband Mansfield "Bob" Bascom, through her association with Hedgerow Theater (Rose Valley, Pa.)-- the country's first repertory theater-- where she trained as an actress. Hinkel moved with her husband, Robert N. Hinkel, to Markham, Virginia where she ran an art center and wrote and directed children's theater and marionette theater.

This collection consists of research files on Wharton Esherick that Susan Hinkel compiled while preparing a biography on Esherick that she did not complete. The files are organized by subject and include chapter drafts, research-related correspondence (principally letters with friends, associates, and people who knew Esherick), clippings and ephemera, and various other secondary-source materials. Of special interest are transcripts of oral histories that Hinkel conducted for the book, in particular interviews with Wharton's daughter Ruth Esherick and Mansfield "Bob" Bascom.

Gift of Susan R. Hinkel, 2013.

Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.

In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Wharton Esherick Museum directly for more information.

Publisher
Wharton Esherick Museum
Finding Aid Author
Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
Sponsor
This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Access Restrictions

Contact Wharton Esherick Museum for information about accessing this collection.

Collection Inventory

Print, Suggest