He Loved Texas to Pieces by Lauren Schaubhut

By: Lauren Schaubhut

Curator of Collections

There are many wonderful and unique objects that are part of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum collection, such as Sam Houston’s jaguar vest that reminded him of his time with the Cherokee, Santa Anna’s saddle that he used during the San Jacinto campaign, and Sam Houston, Jr’s Bible his mother gave him that saved his life during the Civil War.  Another amazing piece we have on display is the mosaic portrait of Sam Houston.  

As soon as you walk into the museum’s main doors, the portrait is hanging to your left, above the Sam Houston sculpture made by Elisabet Ney.  The portrait was given to the museum by Fred Pontello, who came to Houston, Texas in 1912 from Italy after learning the tile-making trade from German masters.  His home town was near the Austrian border, so he spoke fluent German and two dialects of Italian. After coming to the United States, he served in the Army during World War I, then later worked for a Texas tile company until 1926, when he then founded his own terrazzo company.    

Pontello loved his adopted state of Texas and became a great admirer of Sam Houston. With the help of a lifelong friend, who was pastor of the Annunciation Catholic Church and a member of the Sam Houston Memorial Association, Pontello was able to obtain a picture of General Sam Houston from a book.  This picture accompanied him and his wife back to Italy when they returned to his home town for a visit.  

Because Pontello was from the town of Spilimbergio, the director of the famous mosaic school there offered to create a terrazzo portrait made of Sam Houston at no cost.  Two young student artists were immediately put to work in creating the portrait, which is made from some material from a cathedral in northern Italy near Pontello’s hometown, some 60 miles northeast of Venice.  They estimated it would take from nine months to a year to finish it.  They were right, as it was completed the next year in 1960.         

After the mosaic was finished in Italy, it should have taken about three months for it to arrive in the United States and due to the subject matter of the portrait, the U.S. government agreed to let it into the country duty free.  Those three months came and went, when finally the customs officers called from Galveston to tell Pontello they had a package for him, which they had opened when it arrived because they had gotten advanced word on it.  The customs officials told the Italian native that “it doesn’t look like Sam Houston to us.”  They were right, because what had happened was a huge mosaic mural of ships at sea had been sent to Texas, while the Sam Houston portrait was sent to Norway.  It took about three months for the “red tape” to be cut and the mosaic pictures exchanged.  After being shipped across the world, the Sam Houston portrait finally found its permanent home at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum where it is admired and continues to fascinate young and old visitors alike.