Embracing old-world skills in a technological age, Edgar Miller was Chicago’s last Renaissance artist. He was a fine painter, a master wood carver, and one of the nation’s foremost stained glass designers. He could sculpt, draw hunting portraits, and was considered a pioneer in the use of graphic art in modern advertising. His artistic genius came together in four artistic studios he built on Chicago’s north side in the 1920s and 1930s. He touched almost every inch of the studios with daring and surprise. He took rustic brick, crude stone, salvaged tile, found glass, steel, and wood, then “Edgarized” the homes with stained glass windows, frescos, murals, tile work, and wood carving. This collection contains over 400 images of the homes, which remarkably remain intact today. *Starred Review* Edgar Miller (1899–1993) was an innovative master of “dozens of disciplines and multiple styles.” Believing that humankind “should respect and learn from nature,” he created supple animal and plant motifs, as well as human figures, for his intricate bas-reliefs, wood carvings, ceramics, stained-glass windows, murals, and tiles. He decried waste and so used recycled materials and transformed old buildings into exuberantly decorated architectural marvels. Phenomenally gifted and prolific, Miller was renowned, even legendary, and then he was forgotten, except by those who dwell in his wildly original homes. Cahan and Williams, the team who resurrected the life and work of architectural photographer Richard Nickel, vividly recount Miller’s story of genius and audacity, from his Idaho youth to his meteoric rise in Chicago. Architectural photographer AlexanderVertikoff’s sharp and lustrous images elegantly capture the extraordinary details, rich colors, and profound connectivity of Miller’s spectacular creations. Miller’s fecund imagination, virtuosity, and epic energy produced vibrant architecture in which every element from ceiling to floor is alive with arabesque imagery, entwined patterns, and an aura of aspiration. Miller intended for each space to be a “total work of art,” the perfect description for this unique book. --Donna Seaman On 400 varnished pages, pictures by the architectural photographer Alexander Vertikoff reveal multistory planes of windows with diamond-shaped colored panes, smudgy frescoes of jungles and ziggurat-shaped newel posts. --Eve Kahn, New York Times This beautiful volume, by the authors of Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City , is a singular, admirable tribute to a brilliant creative talent of the American Arts and Crafts movement who has been forgotten for far too long. --Library Journal In a city bursting with pride over its architecture, it may defy logic that such a talent as Edgar Miller could be so overlooked, so absent from the lexicon of Chicago. This glorious book, with 400 color plates, celebrates Miller's imagination. --Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune Alexander Vertikoff's beautiful, scrupulous, comprehensive new photographs of those residences--more than 200 pages of them--form the core of Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home. --Tony Adler, Chicago Reader Richard Cahan is a former picture editor for the Chicago Sun-Times and was the director of CITY 2000. He lives in Skokie, Illinois. Michael Williams is the author or coauthor of 10 books on Chicago history, including Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, The Lost Panoramas,  and Richard Nickel's Chicago . He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Alexander Vertikoff is one of the leading architectural photographers in America whose work has been featured in American Bungalow Magazine , Architectural Digest , and the New York Times . He lives in Tijeras, New Mexico. Used Book in Good Condition