Newcomb

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Josephine Louise Newcomb founded the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College with a focus on art courses in 1886. An art curriculum for this New Orleans College for females was planned from the first in this school for women coordinated with Tulane University.

Ellsworth Woodward from the Rhode Island School Design was hired in 1894 as an art instructor with the expectation that he would develop the handicrafts program that was to become the hallmark of the arts at Newcomb. He viewed this as an opportunity to develop a new generation of young women as artists. Mary Given Sheerer, who was trained at the Art Acdemy in Cincinatti and the Art Students League of New York, was hired to teach pottery making and decoration. Pottery-making was thought to be a useful trade to provide an economic for young women. Despite the intention of training women in the pottery industry, men were actually hired to provide the pottery and women were trained to decorate the clay. This relationship did not change at the college until much later.

This segregation of tasks according to sex has been praised as having “unleashed superlative creativity to both sexes.” In true arts and crafts spirit, profitability seemed not to be the goal of pottery made at Newcomb.

Newcomb College pottery is distinctive for its muted colored glazes, restrained forms, regionally distinctive landscape designs, and for its well-marked name of the college or the mark of an N inside a C as well as a paper label. Registration marks and initials of designer/decorators are also found on the base of Newcomb pottery. Newcomb pottery continued in production until WWII, winning prizes in major exhibitions worldwide.

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Newcomb

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