Paper Is Part of the Picture no. 21 Cornelia Hoff addendum

At the end of Paper Is Part of the Picture no. 21 I included a short note about Cornelia Hoff. Since I published that post Alex Jay, who operates The Tenth Letter of the Alphabet blog, has sent me more information about Hoff which he plans to publish on January 8, 2018. What follows is a summary of what he has learned.

Cornelia Josephine Hoff was born on June 22, 1903 in Concord, Massachusetts to Anton J. and Pauline Hoff, immigrants from Norway. She was the second of five daughters in the family. She attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School, the country’s oldest art school which is now MassArt, graduating in 1924 with a bachelor of science degree in education. Hoff was one of two students awarded a medal of honor in teacher training. After art school she taught in the public schools of Wellesley, Massachusetts before starting a career as a freelance commercial artist.

The earliest reference to Hoff’s commercial art career that Jay found was a listing in the 1927 Eastern Edition of Advertising Arts and Crafts where her specialties were listed as “Borders, Decoration, Decorative Wash, Design, Layout, Lettering, Magazine Covers, Ornamentation, Poster, Trade Specialties, Black and White, Charcoal, Color, Line Drawings, Pastel, Pencil, Pen and Ink, Tempera, Wash, [and] Water Color.” She had a studio on Newbury Street in Boston.

By 1929 Hoff had moved her studio to 383 Boylston Street where she remained until at least 1937. She was unmarried and lived with her parents who had moved at some point to Carlisle, Massachusetts, a small town twenty-two miles northwest of Boston. Hoff was known during this time for he work illustrating children’s books and mathematics textbooks, especially for Ginn & Co.

One of Hoff’s designs for Strathmore was included in Modern Publicity 23 (London: The Studio Publications, 1953) on p. 87. Which one is not known from online sources since only Google snippets without images are available.

Hoff died in 1964