Frederick Meyer

Meyer was born on November 6, 1872, near Hamelin, German Empire (now Lower Saxony, Germany), into a family whose occupations were dominated by furniture craftsmen and weavers. He apprenticed as a cabinetmaker before he immigrated in 1888 to Fresno, California, where he worked in a large commercial nursery.

In about 1890, he enrolled at the Cincinnati Technical School, and two years later transferred to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art.

On November 7, 1893, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States of America. In the spring of 1895 he traveled to Germany, completed the program at the Royal Academy of Berlin for Fine Arts and Mechanical Sciences (also known as the Prussian Academy of Arts), and returned to the Pennsylvania Museum and School, where he was awarded a master's degree.

Between 1898 and 1902 Meyer held the post of Supervisor of Art for the public schools in Stockton, California. In 1900, he hired as assistant art supervisor William S. Rice, whom he had met in Pennsylvania; Rice was promoted to Meyer's job in 1902. Meyer and his wife relocated to Berkeley, California, in fall of 1902, where he was hired as an “Instructor of Descriptive Geometry” (i.e. mechanical drawing) at the University of California. A year later was appointed Professor of Applied Arts and head of the Department of Industrial Design at San Francisco's Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, which was administered by U.C. Berkeley. In addition, he opened the Craftsman's Shop in San Francisco and designed custom furniture for prestigious clients, including the: Phoebe Hearst estate at Wyntoon (in association with Bernard Maybeck), California Building at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Faculty Club at U.C. Berkeley, and Sequoia Club in San Francisco.

In October 1905 he was elected president of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts and his wife became its treasurer; they held both positions for two years. After the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire in April 1906, which destroyed the Mark Hopkins Institute, he briefly traveled to Europe.

In Stockton, California, Meyer met and married in June 1902, Laetitia Summerville from Boston. The couple relocated that fall to Berkeley, California.

Meyer died at the age of 88, on January 6, 1961, in Oakland.