Newcomb Pottery Bottle
date: label: date made
content: ca 1891-1900
name: label: maker
content: Newcomb Pottery
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 20^th^ century.
label: Description
content: About the Newcomb Pottery:
label: Description
content: 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).
label: Description
content: 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.
label: Description
content: (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.)
label: Description
content: About the Object:
label: Description
content: Mottled gray, green and black glaze.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Louisiana, New Orleans
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.379633
label: catalog number
content: 379633
label: accession number
content: 150313
objectType: label: Object Name
content: bottle
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 5/8 in x 4 3/4 in; 14.2875 cm x 12.065 cm