Mary Yancey

Last updated

Mary Yancey Hodgdon (1902-1992) was a ceramic artist and designer from Alabama who worked in Louisiana, Ohio, Iowa, Massachusetts, and California. Along with Paul Cox, she co-founded an art pottery outreach program at Iowa State College that sold thousands of ceramic wares across the country.

Contents

Biography

Born Mary Lanier Yancey in 1902, she grew up in Birmingham, Alabama until moving to Louisiana around 1919. She enrolled in Newcomb College, a women's liberal arts institution that had a strong program in art and design. She participated in the Newcomb Pottery program, which taught students ceramic design and allowed them to sell their wares for-profit. The style of her ceramics, even after leaving the college, was similar to the work that was created under the Newcomb Pottery program. [1] She won multiple prizes during her studies and graduated in 1922 with a bachelor's degree in design. [2]

After graduation, Mary Yancey moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and taught ceramics and jewelry to high school students until 1924. She was then hired by Iowa State College in the ceramic engineering department to teach modeled pottery. While at Iowa State College, Yancey and department head Paul Cox created an ISC art pottery program modeled after Newcomb's own. [3]

In 1930, Yancey married Frank Hodgdon, a former Iowa State College student, and moved to Massachusetts. She continued to produce pottery independently and founded Clay Craft Studios in 1931. In 1933, she became a faculty member of Fullerton Junior College, a position she held until retirement in 1962. [3]

Iowa State College Art Pottery

The ceramic engineering department of Iowa State College was founded in 1906 and modeled pottery had been a subject in the department since 1915. The class sizes were growing quickly, with both men from the engineering department and women from the home economics program enrolling. Mary Yancey was hired by the department Head, Paul Cox, in 1924 to meet class demands.

Cox had worked on the Newcomb Pottery program as a technician and admired the program's model of turning ceramics education into a profitable venture. He believed that Iowa needed to diversify its industrial economy beyond agriculture and saw the clay and stone deposits of the state as possible routes to this end. Cox and Yancey began the Iowa State College art pottery program in 1924. Cox served as technician, throwing the base ceramics, and Yancey as designer, incising motifs and painting the glaze. The duo also engaged in outreach on behalf of the program, attending campus and state events to advertise and sending ceramics on display all over the country.

Yancey's designs were like those used in Newcomb Pottery, although her and Cox used local Iowa clays and enamels. They sold the wares from anywhere between $2.50 and $50, and made an estimated $10,000 from seven or eight hundred pieces over a six-year period. [3] The ceramics have a distinct style and can be identified by maker's marks on the bottom. [4] Mary Yancey left Iowa State College in 1930 and the art pottery program halted soon after. Paul Cox lost administrative support for the program fully in 1932 and the Great Depression made sales plummet even before then. Yancey's independent ceramics after her time at Iowa State College retained a similar style. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese pottery and porcelain</span> Overview of Japanese pottery and porcelain

Pottery and porcelain, is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period. Kilns have produced earthenware, pottery, stoneware, glazed pottery, glazed stoneware, porcelain, and blue-and-white ware. Japan has an exceptionally long and successful history of ceramic production. Earthenwares were made as early as the Jōmon period, giving Japan one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world. Japan is further distinguished by the unusual esteem that ceramics holds within its artistic tradition, owing to the enduring popularity of the tea ceremony.

The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University (NYSCC) is a statutory college of the State University of New York located on the campus of Alfred University, Alfred, New York. There are a total of 616 students, including 536 undergraduates and 80 graduates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Voulkos</span> American artist

Peter Voulkos was an American artist of Greek descent. He is known for his abstract expressionist ceramic sculptures, which crossed the traditional divide between ceramic crafts and fine art. He established the ceramics department at the Los Angeles County Art Institute and at UC Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean pottery and porcelain</span>

Korean ceramic history begins with the oldest earthenware from around 8000 BC. Throughout the history, the Korean peninsula has been home to lively, innovative, and sophisticated art making. Long periods of stability have allowed for the establishment of spiritual traditions, and artisan technologies specific to the region. Korean ceramics in Neolithic period have a unique geometric patterns of sunshine, or it is decorated with twists. In Southern part of Korea, Mumun pottery were popular. Mumun togi used specific minerals to make colors of red and black. Korean pottery developed a distinct style of its own, with its own shapes, such as the moon jar or Buncheong sagi which is a new form between earthenware and porcelain, white clay inlay celadon of Goryeo, and later styles like minimalism that represents Korean Joseon philosophers' idea. Many talented Korean potters were captured and brought to Japan during the invasions of Korea, where they heavily contributed to advancing Japanese pottery. Arita ware, founded by Yi Sam-pyeong opened a new era of porcelain in Japan. Another Japanese representative porcelain, Satsuma ware was also founded by Dang-gil Shim and Pyeong-ui Park. 14th generation of Su-kwan Shim have been using the same name to his grandfather and father to honor they are originally Korean, 14th Su-kwan Shim is honorable citizen of Namwon, Korea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Rhodes</span> American sculptor and artist

Daniel Rhodes was an American artist, known as a ceramic artist, muralist, sculptor, author and educator. During his 25 years (1947–1973) on the faculty at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York, he built an international reputation as a potter, sculptor and authority on studio pottery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Studio pottery</span> Modern hand-made artistic pottery

Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur artists or artisans working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marguerite Wildenhain</span> American ceramic artist, educator and author

Marguerite Wildenhain, née Marguerite Friedlaender and alternative spelling Friedländer, was an American Bauhaus-trained ceramic artist, educator and author. After immigrating to the United States in 1940, she taught at Pond Farm and wrote three influential books—Pottery: Form and Expression (1959), The Invisible Core: A Potter's Life and Thoughts (1973), and ...that We Look and See: An Admirer Looks at the Indians (1979). Artist Robert Arneson described her as "the grande dame of potters,".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chinese ceramics</span> Pottery and porcelain from China

Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage.

Toshiko Takaezu was an American ceramic artist, painter, sculptor, and educator with an oeuvre spanning a wide range of mediums, including ceramics, weavings, bronzes, and paintings. She is noted for her pioneer work in ceramics and has played an important role in the international revival of interest in the ceramic arts. Takaezu was known for her rounded, closed ceramic forms which broke from traditions of clay as a medium for functional objects to explore its potential for aesthetic expression, taking on Abstract Expressionist concepts and placing her work in the realm of postwar abstractionism. She is of Japanese descent and from Pepeeko, Hawaii.

Edith Kiertzner Heath was an American studio potter and founder of Heath Ceramics. The company, well known for its mid-century modern ceramic tableware, including "Heathware," and architectural tiles, is still operating in Sausalito, California, after being founded in 1948.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slip (ceramics)</span> Slurry of clay and water

A slip is a clay slurry used to produce pottery and other ceramic wares. Liquified clay, in which there is no fixed ratio of water and clay, is called slip or clay slurry which is used either for joining leather-hard (semi-hardened) clay body together by slipcasting with mould, glazing or decorating the pottery by painting or dipping the pottery with slip. Pottery on which slip has been applied either for glazing or decoration is called the slipware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mexican ceramics</span>

Ceramics in Mexico date back thousands of years before the Pre-Columbian period, when ceramic arts and pottery crafts developed with the first advanced civilizations and cultures of Mesoamerica. With one exception, pre-Hispanic wares were not glazed, but rather burnished and painted with colored fine clay slips. The potter's wheel was unknown as well; pieces were shaped by molding, coiling and other methods,

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newcomb Pottery</span> American potter

Newcomb Pottery, also called Newcomb College Pottery, was a brand of American Arts & Crafts pottery produced from 1895 to 1940. The company grew out of the pottery program at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, the women's college now associated with Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Pottery was a contemporary of Rookwood Pottery, the Saturday Evening Girls, North Dakota pottery, Teco and Grueby.

Frances Maude Senska was an art professor and artist specializing in ceramics who taught at Montana State University – Bozeman from 1946 to 1973. She was known as the "grandmother of ceramics in Montana". During her career, she trained a number of now internationally known ceramic artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Peterson</span> American artist, ceramics teacher and author (1925–2009)

Susan Harnly Peterson was an American artist, ceramics teacher, author and professor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monica Rudquist</span> American ceramics artist

Monica E. Rudquist is a ceramic artist working out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is known for her distinctive "spiraling shapes" and works primarily in porcelain. In addition, her work features wheel-thrown functional wares as well as large-scale, abstract wall installations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ceramic art</span> Decorative objects made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery

Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take varied forms, including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is a visual art. While some ceramics are considered fine art, such as pottery or sculpture, most are considered to be decorative, industrial or applied art objects. Ceramic art can be created by one person or by a group, in a pottery or a ceramic factory with a group designing and manufacturing the artware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American art pottery</span>

American art pottery refers to aesthetically distinctive hand-made ceramics in earthenware and stoneware from the period 1870-1950s. Ranging from tall vases to tiles, the work features original designs, simplified shapes, and experimental glazes and painting techniques. Stylistically, most of this work is affiliated with the modernizing Arts and Crafts (1880-1910), Art Nouveau (1890–1910), or Art Deco (1920s) movements, and also European art pottery.

Rae Dunn, is an American ceramist best known for her eponymous brand of ceramic wares and pottery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Chaleff</span> American ceramic artist and professor (b. 1947)

Paul Chaleff is an American ceramist and professor emeritus of Fine Arts at Hofstra University. He is considered a pioneer of the revival of wood-fired ceramics in the US and credited as one of the first to use wood-burning dragon kilns in the style of the anagama tradition. He is best known as an innovator of large-scale ceramic sculpture. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art Department of Architecture and Design, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

References

  1. Poesch, Jessie (1984). Newcomb Pottery: An Enterprise for Southern Women 1895-1940. Schiffer Publishing.
  2. Russo, Susan (2021-07-30). "Yancey, Mary Hodgdon". Iowa State University Biographical Dictionary.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Russo, Susan (Fall 1987). "A Collaboration in Clay: Iowa State's Prairie Pottery". The Palimpsest.
  4. "Works – Mary Yancey – People – University Museums, Iowa State University eMuseum". emuseum.its.iastate.edu. Retrieved 2023-08-31.