Jerome Connor

Jerome Connor (23 February 1874 in Coumduff, Annascaul, County Kerry – 21 August 1943 in Dublin) was an Irish sculptor.

In 1888, he immigrated to Holyoke, Massachusetts. His father was a stonemason, which led to Connor's jobs in New York as a sign painter, stonecutter, bronze founder and machinist. Inspired by his father's work and his own experience, Connor used to steal his father's chisels as a child and carve figures into rocks.

It is believed he may have assisted in the manufacture of bronzes such as the Civil War monument in Town Green in South Hadley, Massachusetts erected in 1896 and The Court of Neptune Fountain at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., completed in 1898.

He joined the Roycroft arts community, in 1899 where he assisted with blacksmithing and later started creating terracotta busts and reliefs and eventually, he was recognized as Roycroft's sculptor-in-residence.

One of the most ambitious works he created was The Marriage of Art and Industry. Connor is reported to have dedicated the better part of a year on the monument's construction. With new ideas came additions, improvements, and increased weight. Connor worked on the upper floor of an old barn, and one evening, as Roycrofters and visitors relaxed on the peristyle of the Roycroft Inn, a thunderous crash was heard from Connor's studio. The beams under the second floor had given way, and Connor's Marriage fell to pieces. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

After four years at Roycroft, he then worked with Gustav Stickley and became well known as a sculptor being commissioned to create civic commissions in bronze for placement in Washington, D.C., Syracuse, East Aurora, New York, San Francisco, and in his native Ireland. In 1910, he established his own studio in Washington, D.C. From 1902 until his death, Connor produced scores of designs ranging from small portrait heads to relief panels to large civic commissions realized in bronze.

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