Matt Morgan Art Pottery Tile
date: label: Date made
content: 1882 - 1885
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 Matt Morgan Art Pottery:
label: Description
content: A short-lived firm begun in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1882, the Matt Morgan Art Pottery specialized in Hispano-Moresque decorative motifs, with incised designs in both shiny and matte glazes. Morgan came from England to Ohio in the 1870s and worked for a while at the Dayton Porcelain Pottery. The Matt Morgan Art Pottery produced several different pottery lines before it ceased making art pottery in 1884.
label: Description
content: About the Object:
label: Description
content: Yellow-bodied unglazed tile, sides and bottom possibly covered with thin, transparent slip. Decorated with molded-relief pattern of overlapping five-pointed stars.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Ohio, Cincinnati
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: Ronald E. Endlich
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1992.0590.02
label: catalog number
content: 1992.0590.02
label: accession number
content: 1992.0590
objectType: label: Object Name
content: tile
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: molded (overall production method/technique)
label: Measurements
content: average spatial: 4 1/4 in x 4 1/4 in; x 10.795 cm x 10.795 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5/16 in x 4 3/16 in x 4 1/8 in; .79375 cm x 10.63625 cm x 10.4775 cm