Don Clever and the Peterson Caterpillar Company

This mural, unofficially titled Workers and Tractors, was done for the Peterson Caterpillar Company in 1948 (I have also found the year 1936 attached to this mural) by Don Clever.

Here is Mr. Clever’s obituary.

Chronicle 6/21/01:
Don Clever, by Kelly St. John, Chronicle Staff Writer

“Don Clever, a San Francisco-based designer and muralist, was born in 1916 in Champion, Alberta, Canada, Mr. Clever moved to San Francisco at age 20. Although he had no formal training beyond an eighth-grade education, he quickly found success as a muralist. His work included a mural of Moses descending Mount Sinai. The mural hangs in San Francisco’s Temple Sherith Israel.

Mr. Clever soon began to work as a designer, sketching out projects like the gold and scarlet interior of Johnny Kan’s in San Francisco.

One of Mr. Clever’s most beloved projects was Storyland, a children’s fairy park with murals and fairy creatures at Fleishhacker Playfield near the San Francisco Zoo. Mr. Clever sketched out the murals and fiberglass figures in 1960, when his own children were young.

In the decades that followed, he worked for several Japanese clients, traveling to the island nation 37 times, his wife said.

Mr. Clever’s work won numerous awards here and abroad, including a Bronze Prize in the Tokyo International Lighting Design Competition, the Governor’s Award for the Roaring ’20s building in San Francisco and the State of California Awards for designing for the state fair.”