A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana - (Page 405)

NEWCOMB POTTERY by Susan Tucker, Ph.D. HARRIET COULTER JOOR (Decorator) JOSEPH FORTUNE MEYER (Potter) Newcomb College Pottery Earthenware; 7 x 8 in. New Orleans Museum of Art Gift of Newcomb College, Pierce Butler, Dean NEWCOMB POTTERY IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT AMERICAN art potteries of the first half of the twentieth century. Influenced by the English Arts and Crafts movement, Newcomb pottery was exhibited around the world, sold in shops on both coasts, and written about in art journals throughout the United States and Europe. Newcomb potters (always men) and designers (always women and girls, though called craftsmen) were awarded eight medals at international exhibitions before 1916. Begun in 1895, the pottery operated until 1940. The pottery derives its name from H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, the coordinate women’s college of Tulane University in New Orleans, where the works were cast and decorated as part of the art educational program. The Newcomb art curriculum, as well as the utilitarian philosophy underlying it, were unique among art potteries and women’s colleges of the time. Josephine Louise Newcomb’s gift founding Newcomb College in 1886, as a memorial to her deceased teenage daughter, stressed an education both “practical and literary.” The art department would become the focus of this institutional ideal. Among the young faculty hired to develop Newcomb’s program of art education was Ellsworth Woodward, who brought with him traditions he learned at the Rhode Island School of Design. Woodward envisioned an ambitious program of vocational training for young women artists. Under his guidance, Mary Given Sheerer was recruited from Cincinnati to teach first china decoration and then pottery. Sheerer became a dedicated leader within the early Newcomb community and a respected authority on ceramics. From 1896 through 1925 most Newcomb Pottery was thrown by Joseph Meyer based on designs prepared by Newcomb students and alumnae under Sheerer’s direction. Completed pots also were decorated by the women in the Newcomb art department. Newcomb Pottery always operated as a studio pottery, never as a large-scale production pottery. Meyer had been hired in fall 1897 as the third potter for the Newcomb Pottery. His classically shaped pots and consistently high standards provided the background needed for the designs of the Newcomb women. Together they collaborated on a style of pottery with great appeal and artistic merit. Their first success was in the award of a bronze medal at the Paris International Exposition of 1900. Earlier, Meyer and his friend George Ohr had worked with designers involved in the short-lived New Orleans Art Pottery (1886-1890), some of whose participants became Newcomb students or inspired them. Ohr is said to have worked at Newcomb for a short time in the late 1880s. Biographical information indicates that Ohr left New Orleans in 1890 to return to the Mississippi studio and store he built in 1888. He later became known as the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” a moniker given for his eccentric personality and his wild and exaggerated pottery NEWCOMB POTTERY 405  http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=529 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1174 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1322 http://www.knowla.org/entry.php?rec=1174

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

A Unique Slant of Light: The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana

https://www.nxtbook.com/leh/uniqueslant2012/uniqueslant2012
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com