Newcomb Pottery, also called Newcomb College Pottery, was a brand of American Arts & Crafts pottery produced from 1895 to 1940. [1] 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.
Newcomb College had been founded expressly to instruct young Southern women in liberal arts. [2] The art school opened in 1886 and production of art pottery on a for-profit basis began in 1895 under the supervision of art professors William Woodward, Ellsworth Woodward, and Mary Given Sheerer. [3] [4] [5]
Among the first persons to be hired by the Woodwards to assist with the new pottery program were the potters. Unlike the artists who created and carved the designs for the Pottery, the potters were all men, as it was believed that a "male potter would be needed to work the clay, throw the pots, fire the kiln and handle the glazing." [6] The first potter hired was Jules Garby in 1895. He was followed by one of Newcomb Pottery's most recognized potters, Joseph Meyer, in 1896. Notably, George Ohr was hired as a potter at approximately the same time as Joseph Meyer, but Ohr left Newcomb to work on his own sometime in 1897. [6] Meyer's cipher is found on more pieces of Newcomb College Pottery than any other person. [6] Meyer won awards for his work at Newcomb at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition. [6] Meyer stayed with the Pottery until his retirement in 1927. He was replaced by Jonathan Hunt in 1927 and later Kenneth Smith in 1929. After Hunt left the Pottery in 1933, he was replaced by Francis Ford. Both Smith and Ford stayed with the Newcomb Pottery program through its termination in 1940. [6]
When the Pottery was first established, any woman who studied art at Newcomb College was allowed to sell wares that she had decorated, provided it was judged to be adequate for sale by the faculty at the school. [6] Over the years, the Pottery employed dozens of women.
Some early Newcomb College artists included: [6]
Eventually the women who worked regularly with the Pottery were designated as craftsmen with a preference given to those who had completed an undergraduate degree and a later graduate studies program with the art department. [6]
As the Pottery grew and expanded, new craftsmen joined the program including: [6]
While the craftsmen did not typically pot their own pieces, they were responsible for creating and carving designs for each piece of pottery the program put out. During the lifespan of the Pottery, over 70,000 unique pieces were created and carved by the women. [7]
Early pieces at the Pottery closely reflected the arts and crafts era in which the Pottery was operating. The pottery often depicted Louisiana's local flora, done in blue, yellow and green high glazes. The high point of Newcomb is generally considered to be from 1897 to 1917. During that period the Pottery experimented with various glazes and designs, and won numerous awards at various exhibitions throughout the country and in Europe. As the school entered the 1920s, new professors arrived and began to introduce influences from the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art. Highly carved pieces done in matt glazes of blue, green and pink marked this period. Perhaps one of the most famous Newcomb Pottery designs, the "Moon & Moss" style was introduced in this period.
The Pottery used an elaborate system of marks to indicate a piece came from Newcomb College. [6] The marks would include an "N" inside of a "C" to indicate the school, along with the ciphers of the potter and craftsman who both created the piece. [6]
Also typically included would be a registration number indicating the year the piece was made. [6] The registration number for a Newcomb piece consisted of a letter or combination of letters to indicate the year the piece was made, along with a number from 1-100. [6] While most Newcomb pieces do have a registration number, some pieces, particularly earlier ones that were glazed but not otherwise decorated, do not.
In addition to the marks already mentioned, pieces prior to 1915 sometimes also had marks indicating the type of clay and glaze used for the piece. [6]
These marks include:
Mark | Clay and glaze used | Years used |
---|---|---|
U | White clay | 1895–1902 |
W | White clay | 1895–1908 |
Q | Buff clay | 1895–1909 |
R | Dark red clay | 1895–1910 |
F | Dark red clay body with opaque glaze | 1895–1907 |
FR | Dark red clay body with red glaze | 1895–1907 |
B or B (enclosed in a circle) | Buff clay with a semi-matte glaze | 1910–1912 |
C or C (enclosed in a circle) | Buff clay with a semi-matte glaze | 1913–1915 |
A, D, E, F, G, K or T | White clay with a glass glaze | |
As tastes changed, and Arts & Crafts-style pottery became less popular and profitable for the College, the Pottery ceased production in 1940. It was replaced by the Newcomb Guild program that focused more on utilitarian wares, rather than the decorative pottery which symbolized the earlier Newcomb era. [6] Members of the earlier pottery program including Kenneth Smith, Francis Ford and Sadie Irvine continued producing pieces with the Newcomb Guild. However, the Newcomb Guild proved to be less popular than the earlier program and it effectively ended with Sadie Irvine's retirement in 1952. [6]
The Smithsonian Institution held an exhibition of Newcomb College Pottery in the Renwick Gallery of the American Art Museum from November 1984 to February 1985. That exhibition consisted of 210 Newcomb College Pottery pieces. [8] Approximately 30 years later, the Smithsonian put forward another exhibition of Newcomb College Pottery that ran from October 2013 to October 2016. This was a traveling exhibition which visited various cities around the United States, and displayed approximately 180 objects from the Newcomb College Pottery program, along with metalwork, jewelry, textiles and other objects made during the period the Pottery was in operation. [9]
H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, or Newcomb College, was the coordinate women's college of Tulane University located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It was founded by Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1886 in memory of her daughter.
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.
Sarah Agnes Estelle (Sadie) Irvine was an American artist and educator. Her work is associated with the Newcomb College pottery school, where she studied and taught until her retirement in 1952.
The Della Robbia Pottery was a ceramic factory founded in 1894 in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, England. It closed in 1906. Initially it mostly made large pieces with high artistic aspirations, especially relief panels for architectural use, but also ornamental vessels and plates, intended for display rather than use.
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
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 slipware.
The Overbeck sisters were American women potters and artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement who established Overbeck Pottery in their Cambridge City, Indiana, home in 1911 with the goal of producing original, high-quality, hand-wrought ceramics as their primary source of income. The sisters are best known for their fanciful figurines, their skill in matte glazes, and their stylized designs of plants and animals in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. The women owned and handled all aspects of their artistic enterprise until 1955, when the last of the sisters died and the pottery closed. As a result of their efforts, the Overbecks managed to become economically independent and earned a modest living from the sales of their art.
Mary Louise McLaughlin was an American ceramic painter and studio potter from Cincinnati, Ohio, and the main local competitor of Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, who founded Rookwood Pottery. Like Storer, McLaughlin was one of the originators of the art pottery movement that swept the United States.
Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865–1929) was an American china painter and potter, and is considered one of the top ceramists of American art pottery in her era.
Art pottery is a term for pottery with artistic aspirations, made in relatively small quantities, mostly between about 1870 and 1930. Typically, sets of the usual tableware items are excluded from the term; instead the objects produced are mostly decorative vessels such as vases, jugs, bowls and the like which are sold singly. The term originated in the later 19th century, and is usually used only for pottery produced from that period onwards. It tends to be used for ceramics produced in factory conditions, but in relatively small quantities, using skilled workers, with at the least close supervision by a designer or some sort of artistic director. Studio pottery is a step up, supposed to be produced in even smaller quantities, with the hands-on participation of an artist-potter, who often performs all or most of the production stages. But the use of both terms can be elastic. Ceramic art is often a much wider term, covering all pottery that comes within the scope of art history, but "ceramic artist" is often used for hands-on artist potters in studio pottery.
Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University is an art museum located in the Woldenberg Art Center on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. It has been historically known for its significant collection of Newcomb Pottery and other crafts produced at Newcomb College, as well as administering the art collections of the university. Since 2014, the institution has increasingly focused on exhibitions and programs that explore socially engaged art, civic dialogue, and community transformation.
Charles Fergus Binns was an English-born studio potter. Binns was the first director of the New York State School of Clayworking and Ceramics, currently called the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He began his position in 1900 and retired in 1931. His work included authorship of several books on the history and practice of pottery. Some of his more notable students included Arthur Eugene Baggs, William Victor Bragdon, R. Guy Cowan, Maija Grotell, Elizabeth Overbeck, and Adelaide Alsop Robineau. This has led Binns to be called "the father of American studio ceramics".
Mary Given Sheerer (1865–1954) was an American ceramicist, designer, and art educator, best known for her affiliation with the Newcomb Pottery project at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, now part of Tulane University.
Harriet Coulter Joor (1875–1965) was an American artist, writer, textile and ceramics designer, and pottery decorator. Joor was among the earliest graduates of H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, and was one of the original producers of Newcomb Pottery.
Rosalie Roos Wiener (1899–1982) was an art student and an artist at Newcomb College from 1923 until the late 1930s. She specialized in metalwork and jewelry making, working with silver, copper, brass, tin, and gold.
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.
The Coxwold Pottery was a pottery studio based in the village of Coxwold, North Yorkshire, England, launched by artist potters Peter and Jill Dick in 1965, and in operation until 2012.
Ron Meyers is an American studio potter and ceramics teacher known for producing functional pottery featuring animal and human forms. His work is featured in numerous museums and notable collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the Rosenfield Collection, and he has presented more than 100 workshops in the US and internationally. He has been described as "one of his generation's most important potters" and "an icon of the American ceramics community."
Jan Dunn born in Springvale, Victoria, Australia, was a potter, ceramicist and teacher.
The pottery collection of the Albert Hall Museum in Jaipur, India, is a diverse 19th-century collection. The collection represents a wide range of crafts, techniques, and regions. The display includes unglazed vessels with ornamental decoration. The pottery techniques on display include burnished, lacquered, slip-painted, incised wares, and glazed pottery. The museum has representative pieces of Indian craftsmanship and other international pottery styles.