John d taylor artist biography

John Taylor Arms (1887-1953) was born in Washington, D.C., on April 19, 1887.  He began his higher education as a law student at Princeton University in 1905 but transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1907 to study architecture.  He apprenticed as an architectural draftsman before opening an architectural firm with Cameron Clark as a partner in 1914.  In 1913 he married Dorothy Noyes and as a Christmas present that year, she gave him an etching kit. 

At first, he took up etching as a hobby, mastering the technique by copying European masters.  He published his first print, Sunlight and Shadow, in 1915.  During WWI he served in the Navy and in 1919 decided to give up his career as an architect and dedicated himself to art, primarily etching, for the remainder of his life.  

Arms was one of the more famous printmakers of the first half of the twentieth-century.  He is well know for his medieval architectural etchings a