An immigrant from Holland who arrived in the United States in 1886, Dirk Van Erp (born 1860) became known in the 1910s for the lamps and other metal objects he created using brass shell casings found at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in which he worked. His talent was likely inherited from his father and other family members, all of whom were coppersmiths in Holland.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Van Erp consigned some of his metal pieces to local San Francisco and Oakland shops; in 1908, he opened his own storefront, the Art Copper Shop in Oakland around 1910. He exhibited more than two dozen pieces at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, where his shop won a gold medal. He is best known for lamps made of copper with mica shades, but also for copper vases, bowls, and candlesticks.
Van Erp had considerable design expertise when creating his works. Elizabeth D’Arcy Gaw and August Tisslelinck & Harry St. John Dixon are singled out for lending their considerable vision and artistry to pieces made at Van Erp’s shop.
Van Erp also exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Metal shortages due to World War I curtailed his output, but when the war ended, he returned to metalsmithing until he retired in 1929. He died in 1933, but his son, William Van Erp, continued to run his shop until his death in 1977.