Mary Ann Scherr

Early life and education She was born as Mary Ann Weckman on August 3, 1921 in Akron, Ohio. Her father was a self taught mechanic and inventor who invented a threading mechanism for rubber (sold to Goodrich), and her mother was a seamstress. She designed both the interior and exterior of cars made by Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln. She also designed a heart monitoring necklace; a bracelet that monitors the pulse rate and displays the results through a light-emitting diode; a pendant with a 10-minute supply of oxygen; a portable electrocardiograph necklace; and others. Starting in 1968 and onwards, she taught summer courses at Penland School of Crafts.

Death and legacy Scherr died at the age of 94 on March 1, 2016, in her home in Raleigh. Her jewelry and metalwork can be found in the public museum collections at Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Yale University Art Gallery, Vatican Museum of Art, and others.

In 2020, Scherr had her first retrospective exhibition, All is Possible: Mary Ann Scherr's Legacy in Metal, curated by Ana Estrades and held at the Gregg Museum of Art and Design in Raleigh, North Carolina,