Located in San Antonio, TX
Dan Super "SAM HOUSTON"
(1873-1953)
Houston Artist
Image Size: 3 3/4 inches tall
Medium: Carved Horn of Sam Houston to celebrate the Texas Centennial.
Texas Centennial 1936
"Sam Houston Pin Cushion Holder"
Biography
Dan Super (1873-1953)
Dan E. Super, Jr. (1873 – 1953) Dan Super had the eye of a sculptor, envisioning and then creating hundreds of objects from the elongated form of a Texas Longhorn’s tusk. At the age of six, Dan Super carved his first drawing into a piece of the horn of a Texas Longhorn. Over the next 56 years, he made utilitarian pieces like pencil cups, pin cushions, and backscratchers, realistic replicas of animals and birds, and imaginative carvings of elegant nudes. While these carvings resemble the traditional art of scrimshaw, carvings from whale bone, we’ve not been able to identify another carver who used the Texas Longhorn as his material. “My work is done with an ordinary pocketknife, hacksaw file and rasp,” Super wrote in 1937. He used the horn in every way conceivable; whole, allowing the shape to define the object he was making, flattened to make mosaic or inlay work. He incised and pierced it and carved in the round. His own hands polished the horn to a sheen. Daniel Super, Jr. was born in Houston on August 22, 1873. His father owned stock years, D. Super and Brothers Co., providing the young Super with ready access to his raw material. Throughout his life, he worked in the businesses key to the identity and success of young, booming Houston, cattle, oil, real estate and rail. In 1896 he married Lula, and took over the family business, expanding it to include a grocery. He closed the company in 1912 and got into the oil business...
Category
1930s Realist Figurative Sculptures