Volkmar Plaque
notes: label: Description
content: About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
label: Description
content: 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 20th century.
label: Description
content: About Volkmar Pottery:
label: Description
content: Charles Volkmar was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and after studying art in Paris, became interested in ceramics. He apprenticed at the Haviland China factory, and when he returned to the U.S. in 1879, he began pottery work with the Salamagundi Club in Greenpoint, Long Island, New York, creating Limoges-style tiles. In 1882, he founded his own studio and kilns in Tremont, New York (the Bronx). Art pottery forms were both molded and thrown, and decoration used finely-ground fired clay applied to a dry pottery base, unlike Cincinnati faience, pioneered by Mary Louise McLaughlin, which used unfired clay slip on a damp body (Evans 1987:145). Volkmar then joined the Menlo Park Ceramic Company for five years, after which he founded the Volkmar Keramic Company (Brooklyn, New York), producing tiles, plaques, and mugs in a blue and white Delft style. Volkmar briefly formed a partnership with artist Kate Cory and began production in Corona, Queens, New York. Subsequently working alone in 1896, Volkmar’s Corona firm produced Crown Point ware, offering a wider array of colors in underglaze decoration. In 1902, Volkmar’s son Leon joined him to create Volkmar Kilns, and production moved to Metuchen, New Jersey. There, they favored simple forms with semi-matte and high-gloss glazes. Both of the Volkmars taught pottery and glazing in Metuchen. Their firm produced new designs into the mid-1910s, until the death of Charles Volkmar in 1914.
label: Description
content: (Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York
topic: label: Subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Marcus Benjamin
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.379687
label: catalog number
content: 379687
label: accession number
content: 150313
objectType: label: Object Name
content: plaque
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: monochrome, blue (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, earthenware, refined (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 1/8 in x 9 3/4 in; 2.8575 cm x 24.765 cm