Paul Revere Pottery Bowl

Description:

About the Arts and Crafts Movement:

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.

About Paul Revere Pottery and the Saturday Evening Girls Club:

The non-profit Paul Revere Pottery began as part of the settlement house movement in Boston, and the name reflected the original pottery location near the historic Old North Church. The Saturday Evening Girls club, sponsored by Mrs. James J. Storrow, offered reading, social activities, and crafts to Jewish and Italian immigrant girls. Edith Guerrier and Edith Brown were inspired by a pottery in Switzerland and studied painting and glazing in order to bring the skills to the girls at the Club. A kiln was purchased in 1906, and in 1908, Edith Brown as director and designer led commercial production. Over the four decades of the enterprise, over two hundred young women were employed. The girls worked with a potter, a designer, and a kiln operator and enjoyed an eight-hour day and two weeks’ paid vacation, unusual working conditions for the time (Kovel and Kovel 1993:139). Successful sales led to an expanded facility in 1915 in Brighton, Massachusetts, where fourteen to twenty girls were regularly employed. Paul Revere Pottery specialized in vases, lamps, and tiles, and their most popular items were dining ware for children with brightly-hued designs of flowers, rabbits, and ducklings. An emphasis on functional tableware was unusual in art potteries at that time. Glazes were both matte and glossy, on hand-thrown ware, and designs were usually outlined in black. Decorators often preferred single decorative bands on their forms, coating the rest of the object in a distinct, sand-textured glaze. The black-outlined patterns and vibrant colors make Paul Revere Pottery wares some of the most iconic American ceramics from the turn of the century. The pottery always required subsidy because the wares could not be sold for the cost of production (Evans 1987:215). Philanthropic gifts and funds from concerts and theater performances helped the pottery stay solvent. It closed during World War II, in 1942.

(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.)

About the Object:

Small flattened spherical bowl with wide mouth. Turquoise glaze with black striations and speckles. Glazed interior and exterior.