Fred Fenster (1934 - 2024) was born in New York City and attended City College of New York where he received his B.S. in industrial arts.  He taught in public schools for two years before enrolling at Cranbrook Academy of Art to study metalsmithing and ceramics.  He earned his M.F.A in 1960, and began teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison the following year.  He and fellow faculty member and ACC Fellow Eleanor Moty built the art metal department into one of the finest in the country. He retired as a professor emeritus in 2005 after 43 years with the university.  

Fenster was considered one of the most highly skilled artists working with pewter and holloware, influencing generations of students with his techniques and problem solving. The clean lines and elegant forms of his work reflected a modernist aesthetic, employing geometric shapes with little or no surface decoration.  “Having gone to school in the 1950s, I was very much influenced by the clean, functional beauty of Scandinavian design.  Early on I made a decision to do functional holloware, flatware and jewelry objects in the same design mode,” he told American Craft in 1995.  “I also believe that form and structure can be sufficient embellishment for any piece.”  His extensive resume of teaching pewter techniques on the workshop circuit includes schools across the country such as Penland School of Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Arrowmont School of Crafts, the Craft Students League of New York, and even Hong Ik University in Seoul, South Korea.  Fenster’s work has been widely exhibited, including two exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts: Young Americans 1962 and Forms in Metal: 275 Years of Metalsmithing in America in 1975.  The Chazen Museum of Art presented a retrospective exhibition Metalsmiths and Mentors: Fred Fenster and Eleanor Moty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007.
 
Fenster was one of the founding members of the Society of North American Goldsmiths, which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015.  Other awards he received throughout his career include National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1971 and 1977, four research grants from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Award of Excellence from the American Pewter Guild in 1994, and the 2011 Master Metalsmith by the Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.  Fred Fenster was inducted into the ACC College of Fellows in 1995 and was awarded the Gold Medal for Consummate Craftsmanship in 2005.  His works can be found in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Center; the Detroit Art Institute; Yale University Art Museum; the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of Art, Smithsonian; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea.

An oral history interview with Fred Fenster can be found at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian.