Melvin Cummings of Salt Lake City, was an active and talented wood-carver and sculptor who worked not only on furniture and animal and wildlife subjects but also portrait busts, statues, and monuments as well. An apprentice wood-carver on the Salt Lake Temple project in the late nineteenth century, Cummings created other work on view locally during the same period. For example, the Salt Lake City firm of Allaway, Hoock and company exhibited a large furniture piece designed and executed by the young man to the order of W.H. Walker in 1897. Then Cummings moved to San Francisco late in the same year. He studied at San Francisco late in the same year. He studied at the San Francisco school of Design; became a Paris student (1899-1903); and was noted for his collaboration with Arthur Putnam on various sculptural projects before he was through.

Biography courtesy Artists of Utah