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As he celebrates his 100th birthday, Viktor Schreckengost will be honored with the largest exhibition in history as museums across the country show the work of this influential designer. His remarkable career encompasses creations ranging from paintings to ceramics, from trucks to pedal cars.

Beginning on March 18th and over the next 100 days Schreckengost’s art and design works will be shown in a Centennial Exhibition at 120 different venues. This is the larges t exhibition in United States history and a fitting tribute to the man who has been called “America’s da Vinci.”

The artist is best known today as the creator of The Jazz Bowl, a seminal piece of Art Deco ceramics that he created for Cleveland’s Cowan Pottery at the request of Eleanor Roosevelt. Drawing on his trips to Manhattan, where he attended shows at the legendary Cotton Club, Schreckengost etched the bowl with soaring buildings, musical motifs and an ocean liner, and then cast it with a cobalt blue glaze to capture the quality of city lights at night. This striking vision of New York City in the Jazz Age has grown more famous over time, and is part of the permanent collections of some of the nation’s most prominent museums.

Among Schreckengost’s other important designs were the first mass-produced dinnerware for American Limoges, the first cab-over-engine truck he designed for White Motors and the first economical pedal cars for children. He also broke new ground with printing presses, electric fans, lawn chairs, seated lawn mowers, and he developed many bicycle models for the world’s largest manufacturer, Murray.

Viktor Schreckengost was born in Sebring, Ohio, in 1906. Sebring is a commercial pottery town and he began designing ceramics as a teenager. He studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art, intending to pursue a degree in cartooning, but ultimately he reverted to ceramics.

In 1950, he was commissioned by the Cleveland Zoo to design and build enormous ceramic panels depicting extinct and endangered birds for their Bird Building; and in 1956 he designed the exterior wall of the Pachyderm Building at the Zoo with a full-scale relief of mastodons and mammoths.

Schreckengost’s influence on American life was felt in other ways. During World War II, he joined the U.S. Navy and developed a system for radar recognition that won the Secretary of the Navy’s commendation. During his 65-year career as a teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Art, he launched their Industrial Design program, and mentored students who later designed the Ford Mustang, Little Tykes Playhouses and the Crest Spin Brush.

His work with bat-wing headlights for the JC Higgins bicycle led him to design flashlights for Delta Electric and other lighting for the Holophane Company and General Electric. Every adult living in American today has seen or used something created by Victor Schreckengost.

In addition to the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, other Northeast Ohio museums displaying his work are: The Cleveland Botanical Gardens; Canton Museum of Art; Massillon Museum, Kent State University Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, Western Reserve Historical Society, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

For more information on events held in conjunction with the Viktor Schreckengost Centennial Exhibition visit www.viktorschreckengost.org and click on “100 Shows.”