About the Collection
Esther Webb Houseman (1910-1992) was an artist and founder of the Dallas School of Creative Arts and the Craft Guild of Dallas. She was a student at the Aunspaugh Art School in Dallas. She graduated from the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas Woman’s University), where she met her lifelong friend and colleague, Velma Davis Dozier.
In 1933, Webb and Davis opened the Dallas School of Creative Arts. The Dallas Times Herald reported: "[Davis and Webb] are two young Dallas women who have established the Dallas School of Creative Arts on Greenville Avenue and have equipped it with one of the finest laboratories in the Southwest for the practical making of jewelry, textile designs and all sorts of hand-wrought articles in silver, copper, pewter and other metals."
Esther and Velma earned the nickname "The Lady Blacksmiths." They won first prize in metalwork at the first Dallas Decorative Arts Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in 1935. Both participated in Dallas Art Carnivals during the 1930s.
In 1939, Esther married John Houseman in the first wedding at the Little Chapel-in-the-Woods, designed by O’Neil Ford in Denton, Texas. A year later, Velma married Texas artist Otis Dozier. Esther and Velma closed their school during World War II metal shortages. Urged by local craftspeople, Esther and Velma reopened the school under a new name – The Craft Guild of Dallas – which is still open today.
The collection includes artwork, clippings, correspondence, documents, photographs, publicity, and published works relating to Esther Webb Houseman’s own personal work and that of the Dallas School of Creative Arts and the Craft Guild of Dallas.