Newcomb Pottery

Newcomb College, the women's college of Tulane University, New Orleans, was organized in 1886. In 1895, a pottery was established under the supervision of artist and educator Ellsworth Woodward (1861-1939), although production did not begin until the following year. The pottery was to be operated in conjunction with the school as a way of blending art and science in a practical program focused on earning a living through craft. Pottery was only the most prominent of the art industries that were part of this program, which also included textiles, copper, letterpress (graphic design) and others. Master potters formed and fired the ware which was decorated by Newcomb College students. Mary G. Sheerer, a graduate of the Cincinnati Art Academy, supervised the young women.

In addition to its educational focus, the pottery was expected to be a southern enterprise, incorporating southern materials with decorative motifs derived from southern flora. Although early wares were made of a variety of local clays, the managers eventually settled on a buff-firing earthenware clay from St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. In its earliest days the decorators were female undergraduates, but as the market for the Newcomb wares expanded there was a regular decorating group of about five women graduates who were more or less permanent employees. Anne Frances Simpson (1880-1930) was one of this group. Her name can be found in the records from 1908 to 1928 as a regular contributor to the operation.

The pottery produced bowls, vases, lamp bases, tiles and coffee sets. After a period of experimentation, the managers settled on a set of regular methods to produce and decorate the ware. Objects were formed by a resident professional male potter (usually Joseph F. Meyer until the mid 1920s) and decorated by use of incised, low-relief designs executed in the damp clay. Coloring with a limited palette of underglaze colors -- blue, green, black and yellow -- was applied after the first (or bisque) firing. A transparent high-gloss glaze was applied overall until about 1910 when they transitioned to a transparent matt glaze over the usual colors to satisfy the market.. Blues and greens were especially successful with the transparent matt over glaze.

Every piece of Newcomb Pottery is unique, although many have similar motifs drawn from the surrounding Bayou country. Pottery with oak tree motifs was the most popular with the market, although it was not necessarily what the artists would have chosen on their own. Sadie Irvine, a contemporary of Anne Simpson, wrote in 1971, long after the Newcomb Pottery had closed, that she "was accused of doing the first oak-tree decoration....Our beautiful moss-draped oak trees appealed to the buying public but nothing is less suited to the tall graceful vases--no way to convey the true character of the tree. And oh, how boring it was to use the same motif over and over and over, though each was a fresh drawing."[1]

In 1930, a plain ware was introduced and, although Woodward retired in 1931, a limited output continued at the school into the 1940s under the name of The Newcomb Guild. The earliest era of the pottery's operation was its period of greatest artistic recognition. The Newcomb Pottery won medals at important fairs held at Paris in 1900, Buffalo in 1901, Charleston in 1902, St. Louis in 1904, Portland in 1905, Jamestown in 1907, Knoxville in 1913 and San Francisco in 1915.

Notes:

[1] Irvine is quoted in Paul Evans , page 187, note 8.