For more than a decade, during much of which period he was in residence at Hull-House, Mr. Twose gave unsparingly of his time and talents to our various undertakings. He lived at the house during those years when Chicago was developing a real appreciation and a considerable technique in what was called the Arts and Crafts movement, and this nascent effort to bring the motives and solace of art into the occupations of working people found in Mr. Twose both an ardent promoter and wise leader.
He was convinced by his experience as a teacher that there was much art appreciation and unsuspected ability which only needed to be freed in order to add enormously to the art resources of the city, and he constantly proved this by the product of individual young men whom he had not only taught and inspired but with whom he lived and worked in a simple friendliness which still had about it a touch of the Italian studio relationship between master and followers. He was most suggestive in the promotion of the Labor Museum at Hull-House and he was always eager to bring to the people of the neighborhood something of the background conveyed by historical architecture and a knowledge of the most beautiful creations of the past; to this end he framed and put up in Hull-House workshops innumerable sketches, drawings and photographs and continually sent home when he was such carefully selected articles as a fine Egyptian jar which is almost a museum piece, a bronze lamp from Japan and many another humble specimen full of significance and interest.
He did these things with such a fine comradeship and sense of mutual obligation that we constantly felt his sense of identification with Hull-House and his complete understanding of its underlying purpose.
After his art work took him to New York and to Paris and when his war work led him yet further afield he never lost the sense of his “belonging” as the children say, and his recurrent visits always corroborated the impression.
During its history of thirty years very few people have put into Hull-House the devoted service and gifted personality which Mr. Twose contributed.
It means much to us that several of his pictures hang upon our walls, and we are planning a memorial room which shall contain certain of his sketches and painting, furniture which he designed and in many cases built with his own hands, and other reminders of his affection and understanding of Hull-House -- these will show his amazing skill and versatility, but it depends upon his many friends in Chicago to reveal his fine manly spirit, to the coming young people who will constantly use it.
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