Joseph Poli Company

According to an ad, the Joseph Poli Company was established in 1890 and specialized in church interior decorating, which included not just statuary, but altars, railings, fonts, and sacramental robes. The company was founded by Joseph Poli, an Italian immigrant from Barga. He came to the United States in 1880. He worked in plaster studios in New Orleans, St. Louis, New York, and Washington before settling in Pittsburgh. Here, he opened a sculpture studio in the Uptown neighborhood of Pittsburgh. An article in the Pittsburgh Press from 1908 described how the Joseph Poli Company made some of their statues using liquid cement poured into a mold, and, once set, refined and coated with smoothed plaster. Joseph died in 1917, after which his brother Anthony until his death in 1954. There were four brothers (Joseph, Anthony, Emil, and Henry) in the family and one sister, Mary Bugi.