“Dancing Dragon," Cyril Colnik, late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Wrought iron figure of a dragon with s-curve body and applied arms and tail.
Trained in Vienna and Munich, master metalworker Cyril Colnik settled in Milwaukee in 1893, where he created decorative wrought iron work for dozens of homes and public buildings until his retirement in 1955. He also designed vases, candlesticks, door hardware, and other ornamental wares in a variety of styles. The Villa Terrace holds more than 200 examples of Colnik's work donated by daughter Gretchen Colnik in 1991 and an archive of Colnik's original drawings, blueprints and photographs.
Bertha Kitchell Whyte, Craftsmen of Wisconsin (Racine, WI: Western Publishing Co., 1971); Alan J. Strekow, Cyril Colnik: Man of Iron (The Friends of Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, 2011)
Exhibited in "The Finest in the Western Country: Wisconsin Decorative Arts 1820-1900," Milwaukee Art Museum, 2008