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Statham Enamels to be Reborn

Valerie Statham proudly displays an enamel bowl created by her father, Leon Statham. Photo by Len Villano.

Years ago, Valerie Statham was the impetus for the career of her father, internationally famous enamellist Leon Statham. Soon, she hopes to continue the work that ended with his death in 1986.

A native of Oklahoma, Statham (pronounced ‘state ham’) settled in Canada after five years of service during WWII, intending to become a writer. His third book, Welcome Darkness, was published in 1950 to mixed reviews. The harrowing account of the struggle of seven men whose plane crashed in the Philippine jungles during the war was described by a New York Times reviewer as “a powerful and peculiar novel.” However, the following year, he was awarded a $1,000 prize by the Friends of American Writers, a Chicago-based women’s organization, formed to encourage promising Midwestern authors.

This encouragement was outweighed when Leon’s wife, Jessica, gave birth to Valerie, the couple’s second child. The financially precarious life of a novelist was not, they decided, what a family of four should rely on. They moved to Door County in 1950 and soon became friends with Gerhard Miller. Perhaps it was Gerhard who suggested that the couple enroll in a class in enameling that first winter. And perhaps it was the $1,000 prize money, intended to further Leon’s career as a writer, that enabled them to pay for it.

As the dream of a writing career faded, they found they had a real talent for the art of enameling, and Jessica suggested that it might become more than a hobby. Their first Door County home was near Peninsula Players Theatre, and Leon made his first sales of enamel-on-copper bowls from a card table set up in the courtyard during intermission.

In 1955, the Stathams purchased a home at 10438 Water Street in Ephraim (now the Stone Cottage Shop). They converted the garage to a workshop and used the front rooms of the house as a gallery. The fame of Statham Enamels spread, and visitors from across the world came to the little village on the shore of Green Bay to see the master at work and commission custom-made items.

Leon shaped his own bowls, trays and plaques from copper, then coated them with ten fine layers of enamel in colors he created.

Leon Statham liked to experiment with various enamel colors on his copper bowls, trays, and plaques. Photo by Len Villano.

(Years ago, Keta Steebs wrote a story in the Green Bay Press Gazette about a woman who scraped fluff from the carpet of a home she was visiting, taped it to a card and asked Leon to match it exactly on a bowl, which he did. Keta suggested he name the new color Pilfered Blue Fluff.)

Sometimes he etched or hammered a design into the copper before enameling it. For other pieces he used multiple colors to create a design in the enamel. Valerie began working with her parents at 15, creating enamel on silver earrings and bracelets.

Across the field from the Stathams, the Bentley family from Connecticut had a summer home. Lester Bentley, a portrait artist born in Two Rivers, was perhaps best known for his portrait of President Dwight Eisenhower, commissioned by Columbia University in 1954, as well as for portraits of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William O. Douglas and four Wisconsin governors. An interesting story concerns the time Connie Bentley returned from shopping for snacks for Eisenhower and his secret service entourage to find Lester giving the president a painting lesson. But the Bentleys’ connection to this story is that they had a little boy named George who loved to hang around Leon Statham’s workshop and watch him shape the copper pieces to be enameled. George, who does play a role in this story, will reappear later.

Leon was a lover of classical music and developed a close relationship with the Peninsula Music Festival. (“You didn’t want to play Name That Tune with him,” Valerie chuckles.) For years, he designed and created the bowl presented to an outstanding young musician at the conclusion of each festival. He also was the creator of the large medallions given annually to Ephraim’s Fyr Bal chieftain, including the one he, himself, received in 1982.

A display of Statham enamels at the Sister Bay-Liberty Grove Library will be available through September. It was arranged by Sally Bahrke, a retired Gibraltar art teacher, and includes pieces from her collection and those of several other local families. Valerie says that the items shown are early ones with “a wonderful retro look.” As she was admiring the exhibit last week, a library patron stopped to tell her that the pieces she owns are among her most prized possessions. “I’ve given away dozens of them as wedding gifts,” she recalled.

Valerie commented that the Partridge Breast design, with subtle blending of soft shades, was a most popular gift for brides, both in the United States and all over the world. “Every Christmas morning,” Valerie recalls, “Dad would say, ‘Well, I wonder how many people are opening Statham Enamels today.’”

Leon Statham created the enamel work he is known for while living in Door County.

Jessica Statham died in 1974. Although the family rallied to take up the slack, Leon gradually cut back on the amount of work he did. “Perhaps it was fitting,” Valerie says, “that he died at a Peninsula Music Festival concert in 1986, in the company of his best friend.”

After 25 years away from enameling, Valerie has begun again, back home in Door County. “It’s like I was never away,” she says. “At a recent advanced class at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, it all came back. And my dad was right there, looking over my shoulder and encouraging me.

“OSHA regulations are so much stricter now than in the days when my dad smoked as he worked, we wore no masks and particulates drifted through the air. But I’m putting together a workshop in the old Starry Night Gallery north of Ellison Bay and hope that Statham Enamels will soon be back in business.”

Valerie has a partner in her new business – her fiancé, who is a master engraver and goldsmith.

His name? George Bentley, the grown up little boy who learned to love what an artist could do with metal all those summers ago as he watched Leon Statham at work.

The Sister Bay-Liberty Grove Library is located at 2323 Mill Road in Sister Bay.