Newcomb Pottery

Depending upon space requirements for our other exhibitions, Newcomb arts and crafts are on not always on display in the gallery. Visitors should call in advance.


A variety of experiments with types of clay bodies, glazes, decorative techniques and forms were tried simultaneously during the Pottery's early formative years. The designs of 1896 - 1901, were modeled on various prototypes, such as Delftwares or Chinese and Japanese motifs. The decoration of this period is characterized by an emphasis on outline, clear division of space, and at times abstract renderings of flora.

Bowl, 1898
Potter: Joseph Meyer
Decorator: Esther Huger Elliot
Collection: Newcomb College

Plate, 1897
Potter : Unknown
Decorator : Katherine Kopman
Collection: Newcomb College

The years 1901 - 1910 saw a highly creative period for the Pottery with a wide variety of designs. Though blues and greens were chosen as basic colors, there were subtle shifts in tone and intensity. With few exceptions, a bright, clear lead glaze was used over translucent under-glazes; buff and white clay bodies were used exclusively. The exceptions referred to earlier occurred between 1902 - 1907 and dealt with a brief experimentation with red glazes. By starving a kiln of oxygen, commonly known as reduction firing, a copper-based glaze will turn lustrous or iridescent.

Bowl, 1898
Potter: Joseph Meyer
Decorator: Esther Huger Elliot
Collection: Newcomb College

Plate, 1897
Potter : Unknown
Decorator : Katherine Kopman
Collection: Newcomb College

After initial experiments, the wares made between 1910 - 1940 used a semi-opaque matte glaze over relief renderings of more naturalistic imagery. The best known of these is the "moon and moss" motif. Introduced by Paul Cox, the first professionally trained ceramist, this translucent matte glaze was used exclusively by the Pottery until its demise in 1940.

Assorted clay and glaze experiments,
c. 1910 - 1915
Potter: Joseph Meyer
Collection: Newcomb College

Vase, c. 1921
Potter : Joseph Meyer
Decorator : Anne Frances Simpson Collection: Newcomb College

In the summer of 1925, Mary Sheerer was sent by United States authorities to Exposition of Decorative Arts. As noted in Jessie Poesch's Newcomb Pottery: An Enterprise for Southern Women, "Sheerer was struck by the way this new 'moderne' art expressed the mechanical, scientific age as shown in the right-angled, triangled, straightened lines of our new architecture in New York and Paris." Influenced by Mary Sheerer's reports from Paris and the natural assimilation of changing tastes, several of the decorators at Newcomb began making designs which relied on the use of abstraction.

Vase, c. 1933
Potter: Frances Ford
Decorator: Henrietta Bailey
Collection: Newcomb College

Vase, c. 1930
Potter: Jonathan Hunt
Decorator: Sadie Irvine
Collection: Newcomb College

Lidded Jar, c. 1934
Potter : Kenneth Smith
Decorator : Aurelia Arbo
Collection: Newcomb College

One of the new designs was called "Espanol," introduced in 1925-1926. According to an interview given by Sadie Irvine from the Times-Picayune of July 21, 1929, Ellsworth Woodward discovered a "hand carved Spanish mantel in the French Quarter with an odd pattern of reeding cut across the U-shaped gouges to cut an undercut design." The geometric pattern of the late 18th Century mantel served as the basis for a whole group of subtly different "Espanol" designs.

 

Candlestick, c. 1929
Potter : Jonathan Hunt
Decorator : Anna Frances Simpson

Vase, c. 1926
Potter : Joseph Meyer
Decorator : Anna F. Simpson

Among the most successful of the "moderne" designs is the piece entitled "Grand Isle." Named for the poplar sandy, offshore resort island in the Gulf of Mexico, the diagonally placed lines suggest lapping waves over shell-strewn beaches.

 

 

 

 

Vase, c. 1933
Potter: Frances Ford
Decorator: Sadie Irvine

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