Object Details
- Newcomb Pottery
- Description
- About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
- Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
- About the Newcomb Pottery:
- The Newcomb Pottery was founded in 1895 at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College in New Orleans, Louisiana, a degree-granting college for women that was affiliated with Tulane University. Newcomb Pottery, one of a number of art industries associated with the college, was directed by Ellsworth Woodard, while Mary G. Sheerer taught pottery decoration and supervised the young women decorators. The pottery “operated in conjunction with advanced art and design courses…where students could obtain practical information as to a method of earning a living….” (Evans 1987:182). Decorators were encouraged to design their own vessels (although within a board-approved aesthetic) and received half the sale price. They chose a pottery shape from a book of pictures, the clay was molded on the wheel by a potter on staff, and after decoration, the piece was glazed and fired by other male employees. Because many promising decorators received two free years of education, a free studio after graduation, and the opportunity to earn a living with their craft, many chose to stay on (Kovel and Kovel 1993:103).
- The pottery’s wares featured regional flowers and plants, such as water lilies, jonquils, and Spanish moss-covered trees. An early period was best known for translucent high-gloss glazes, but from 1910-1930 under the design guidance of Paul Cox, the pottery became famous for its matte glazes and relief carvings of local plants. The incised designs were sometimes sponged, which brought fine silica to the surface and added to the foggy colors effected. Underglaze colors were covered by a transparent glossy glaze, often emphasized with black lines. Newcomb Pottery won numerous awards at world’s fairs including Paris (1900), St. Louis (1905), and San Francisco (1915). It closed in 1940.
- (Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.; Kovel, Ralph and Terry Kovel, 1993. Kovels’ American Art Pottery: The Collector’s Guide to Makers, Marks and Factory Histories. New York: Crown Publishers.)
- About the Object:
- Elongated cylindrical vessel with narrow waist and flaring base and mouth. Buff colored body with gauze-like light blue glaze. Top of vessel has decorative band of stylized and repeating green leaves and either a yellow flower bud or fruit. "Wild Tomato" pattern. The decorative band is in low relief or thick slip. Lightly incised decorative line decoration in black, blue and yellow. This moss-green vase with stylized fruit bears the mark of Mazie T. Ryan, a female decorator working from about 1897-1910. It is important to note that although the Newcomb Pottery was instrumental in giving women like Ms. Ryan early working opportunities and a trade education, college organizers still felt that throwing vessels was not an appropriate occupation for women. Like nearly every other vessel made at Newcomb, this vase was thrown by Joseph Fortune Meyer, who was involved with the earliest developments of the Newcomb Pottery from 1893.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Credit Line
- Tulane University of Louisiana
- ca 1905
- ID Number
- CE.237987
- catalog number
- 237987
- accession number
- 45745
- Object Name
- vase
- Physical Description
- blue (overall color)
- polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
- ceramic (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 11 3/4 in x 4 1/2 in; 29.845 cm x 11.43 cm
- place made
- United States: Louisiana, New Orleans
- See more items in
- Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
- Domestic Furnishings
- National Museum of American History
- Subject
- Art Pottery
- Record ID
- nmah_575663
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746b3-1010-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
