A & E

It's a Thursday night at Nighttown, a gin and jazz joint just up the hill from Cleveland's quaint Little Italy. Across a music- and conversation-filled room flecked with white linen-covered tabletops, a man is spotted quietly sipping a Gibson martini. The gin of choice: Beefeater, the main ingredient in of one of his favorite regimens to which he attributes his longevity. Something he jokingly calls "ginetics."

Nearby a couple's cooing rises to a crescendo of laughter, causing the man to look up. Other than a quick exchange of smiles and nods of mutual recognition between the man and the pair, obvious proof they all know one another somehow, he leaves them to their meal, and they're courteous enough to do the same.

Chances are you know this humble man, too, in a way. If you're of the baby boom generation, it's quite likely you've either eaten off of, drunk out of, sat on, played with or ridden in one of his designs. He is Viktor Schreckengost, artist, designer, ceramicist, sculptor, musician, inventor, architect -- whatever you want to call him -- and he has been and been called them all. He is, above everything, a creative genius extraordinaire.

Though the list of his accomplishments over his long career seems endless -- not to mention patents attributed to him, which officially number 130, with many more yet to be verified -- this summer he will be able to add one more major accomplishment to his list. On June 26 Schreckengost will turn 100.

It's a birthday definitely worth celebrating, and he definitely won't be alone in the celebration. In fact, all of America will be celebrating with him, as they have been already throughout the 100 days leading up to the event. All across the country -- in 36 states altogether -- art, toy, bicycle, music, sports and auto museums have been throwing the biggest birthday bash ever in the form of retrospective exhibitions and related events.

Cleveland will host the biggest birthday bash of them all come June. Ten institutions in University Circle alone will be involved. They include the Cleveland Institute of Art, where Schreckengost was both a student and a longtime instructor, which will feature design pieces from his student days in 1925-29.

The son of a potter, Schreckengost was born in Sebring, Ohio. Although his parents, Warren and Ada, were born and raised in Armstrong County, Pa., they moved to Sebring at the turn of the century when Warren took a job at Sebring Bros. China Co. It was there, while he was still in high school, that Schreckengost learned from his father the craft of sculpting in clay.

One of five siblings -- brothers Don and Paul also took to the craft to become professional potters -- Schreckengost went on to study art at the Cleveland School of the Arts, now Cleveland Institute of Art. At first he intended to become a cartoonist, but after seeing an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, he changed his focus to ceramics.

Upon graduating in 1929 he earned a partial scholarship to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, where his wanderlust would take him on trips through Austria and to Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Switzerland. Upon his return to the States nearly a year later, at the age of 25, he became the youngest faculty member at his alma mater, where he would go on to found the country's first industrial design department.

That same year, 1930, he worked for Cowan Pottery. Cowan received an order from a gallery in New York. A woman of unknown importance wanted a punch bowl with a "New York-ish" theme. Schreckengost was assigned the task of creating the bowl. It wasn't until the bowl was finished that he discovered it was Eleanor Roosevelt who had paid to have the bowl made. Now considered an Art Deco icon, the "Jazz Bowl," as it is called, is in the Smithsonian and a copy of the bowl recently sold at Sotheby's for $254,000.

Museums were a mainstay of Schreckengost's career early on. In 1931 he won the first of several awards for excellence in ceramics at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and inclusion in exhibitions at such prestigious institutions and events would soon follow. Exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Paris International Exposition and the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco all included his work.

By the mid-1930s, Schreckengost began to pursue his interest in industrial design. For American Limoges, he created the first modern, mass-produced dinnerware, called "Manhattan." The line was an immediate success. Truly designed for the masses, it was stylish, practical and affordable, andit remains highly desirable among collectors today.

Later, he would go on to design more than 100 bikes for Sears -- including the Spaceliner, Western Flyer and Campus Compact -- while working as the chief bicycle designer for Murray-Ohio, a position formerly held by the famous Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky. In 1939 Schreckengost released his first design, the 1939 Mercury Bicycle, which was displayed along with four of his sculptures -- "The Four Elements" -- at the New York World's Fair.

Of Schreckengost's many patents, 28 are bicycle-related. Even younger generations can remember his mod "banana seat" of the 1960s.

Over the years many more designs and patents would follow. From pedal cars to riding lawn mowers, chairs to flatware, Schreckengost spent decades designing objects for everyday use. In 1972, at the age of 66, he stopped accepting industrial design projects and devoted his time to teaching and building the Industrial Design program at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he remains professor emeritus and occasionally lectures.

Today he lives with his second wife, Gene, a retired pediatrician, in Cleveland Heights, not far from Nighttown, his favorite haunt. Inside their house they are surrounded by hundreds of objects, some of which Schreckengost has collected over the years but many of which are his own creations.

The house is not cluttered, but rather tastefully appointed, as one would expect of a person so adept at design. Nevertheless, everywhere are items that speak of his history.

Musical instruments on the walls of Schreckengost's third-floor studio hint at younger years in which he played the clarinet and saxophone in a jazz band. Military souvenirs refer to the time he volunteered for World War II, serving as a captain in the Navy, where he designed radar recognition and mapping systems.

"They were trying to interpret radar blips, and my commanding officer felt a sculptor with a sense of depth and shape could best understand them," Schreckengost says of the radar system that won him the Secretary of the Navy's commendation.

While in the Navy he also designed prosthetic devices and created topographical maps, for which he did a considerable amount of flying. That gave him a bird's-eye view of the land, a perspective that influenced many landscapes.

"This was pretty novel for the time," he says.

In the living room, flanked by several of his award-winning ceramic sculptures, sits a Pursuit Plane pedal car Schreckengost designed in 1941 for Murray-Ohio.

"Vik was once referred to as 'the Henry Ford of pedal cars,' because his design and production methods made them affordable to middle-class families," his wife says.

Over the years, about 100 million of Schreckengost's bikes and pedal cars were manufactured by Murray, making it the largest bicycle-maker in the world.

When asked what is the most unusual item he holds a patent on, Schreckengost is quick to respond. "Probably, at the time, the cab-over engine design for White Motors," he says.

It was major alteration to an existing truck design he created in 1932. Schreckengost added 5 feet to the cargo space by fitting the cab over the engine. With the extra freight, truckers could pay off their rig in a year, he reasoned.

Ceramic sculptures and watercolors on display throughout the house hint at another major interest. All told, Schreckengost has created more than 1,500 pieces of fine art over his long career. Also legion are his associations with other artists, such as watercolorist Charles Burchfield, with whom he painted on occasion.

Nowadays, the art Schreckengost creates is mostly in the form of a guessing game of lines and squiggles for the grandkids. But through his lectures and public appearances, he continues to teach and inspire, something he also considers a major accomplishment.

That and always adhering to his credo that good design be available to all. It is that which will remain his legacy, that and the countless people he has touched as a designer, teacher and artist.

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