California College of the Arts was founded in 1907 by Frederick Meyer
to provide an education for artists and designers that would integrate
both theory and practice in the arts. Meyer’s vision continues to the
present day.
Frederick Meyer was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, which originated in Europe during the late 19th
century in response to the industrial aesthetics of the machine age. Meyer was a cabinetmaker in his native Germany, and he was
already involved in the movement when he came to live in the Bay Area
in 1902. He established a cabinet shop and taught at the Mark Hopkins
Institute of Art.
The 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed both his shop and the Institute. At a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Society shortly after
the disaster, he articulated his dream of a school that would fuse the
practical and ideal goals of the artist.
In 1907 in Berkeley, Meyer founded the School of the California Guild
of Arts and Crafts with $45 in cash, 43 students, three classrooms, and
three teachers: himself, the designer Isabelle Percy West, and the
artist Perham W. Nahl. Meyer’s wife, Laetitia, was the school secretary.
In 1922 Meyer bought the four-acre James Treadwell estate at
Broadway and College Avenue in Oakland. Students, faculty, alumni, and
the Meyer family all pitched in to transform the dilapidated buildings
and grounds into a college campus. Meyer, a skilled horticulturist, did
the landscaping, and some of his work is still in evidence today.
In 1936 the school was renamed the California College of Arts and
Crafts. Meyer remained president until his retirement in 1944.
Enrollment grew dramatically after World War II. New programs were
added, such as Wood Design, Glass, Interior Architecture, and Film/TV;
these, like all the school’s programs, would evolve in subsequent
decades in response to new technologies and changes in the art world. Source: http://www.cca.edu/about/history
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