Hilda Kraus was seen as a leader and innovator in the fields of enameling, metalwork and jewelry design in the postwar era. She received her bachelor of fine arts degree from Hunter College in New York and subsequently studied sculpture with the prominent artist Chaim Gross. Kraus then maintained a three-year apprenticeship with a Danish silversmith living in New York, and then studied goldsmithing in Austria with Sepp Schmolzer and Josef Symon; mosaics in Ravenna; and enameling in France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
Hilda Kraus was a long-time resident of Westport, Connecticut and taught at the Silvermine Arts Center, the Brookfield Craft Center, and the Stamford Museum. In 1946, her work was featured in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art called Modern Handmade Jewelry, one of the earliest and most influential jewelry exhibitions in the postwar period. She was also awarded a purchase prize in the seminal exhibition Enamels ’70 organized by the Craft Alliance of St. Louis. Her work is in the collections of the Delaware Art Museum, Everson Museum of Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
