Cincinnati and the Decorative Arts the Foundations

CINCINNATI ART-CARVED FURNITURE AND INTERIORS

Cincinnati and the Decorative Arts The Foundations

Robert C. Vitz

“ regard him as an English fop who has come ware when he visited the two-year-old pottery, and Iover to make money and is succeeding. He tries he completely ignored local art furniture. How- to act like the fool but he isn’t one.”1 The subject ever, his public lectures on household decoration was Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), a leading exponent stimulated much discussion about the role of the of English Aestheticism, who was visiting Cincin- decorative arts in an expanding industrial age. nati as part of an extended tour that kept him in While the city’s major newspapers covered his two the United States for almost all of 1882 and part of lectures and took great delight in describing his 1883. Although preceded by considerable publicity, clothes and mannerisms, design-conscious Cin- much of it mocking in nature, the twenty-seven- cinnatians, already familiar with the Ruskinian year-old Wilde viewed the city as just another stop ideals espoused by Wilde, applauded his appear- on a lecture tour that stretched from New York to ances but found little new in his public comments. San Francisco. To many Cincinnatians, however, For his part, Wilde apparently knew little about the arrival of the lamboyant Irish poet and aes- the city’s recent successes in the production of dec- thete was an event of considerable distinction, for orative objects and condescendingly dismissed the the Queen City took great pride in its reputation city as provincial.2 as an art center, and especially in its recent accom- Few cities could rival Cincinnati in the emo- plishments in carved furniture and art pottery. tional energy it invested in its cultural reputation Although Wilde commended the city’s most following the Civil War, and many of its artistic versatile decorative artist, M. Louise McLaughlin leaders found inspiration in the English Aes- (1847–1939), for her recent book, Pottery Decoration thetic movement. At the movement’s center was under the Glaze, he did not think much of Rookwood John Ruskin (1819–1900), whose proli0c writings

3 reached across the Atlantic. Ruskin advocated a women, relected this connection, and while the return to a “craftsman ideal” that would restore movement opened vocational possibilities for the values of a preindustrial, organic society. He women, it also built upon traditional female roles argued that industrialization had separated work as guardians of the home and arbiters of taste. In from creativity, leaving the laborer spiritually other words, it did open some doors, but at the damaged and alienated from society. A restora- same time it reinforced a traditional gender divi- tion of the decorative arts, which Ruskin raised to sion of labor.4 the level of the 0ne arts, would reconnect art with Ruskin’s views spread across the United States labor and result in a more harmonious society. through his writings and through the inluence Proper design encouraged good workmanship and of such disciples as Harvard professor Charles a more productive worker. In turn, a transforma- Eliot Norton and, in Cincinnati, three English tion in the nature of work would improve working immigrants—Benn Pitman (1822–1910), Henry L. conditions and alleviate the worst social conditions Fry (1807–1895), and his son, William H. (1830– associated with industrialization. The bleakness 1929). From these beginnings came Cincinnati of Charles Dickens’s world would be relegated to art furniture, which can be de0ned, in short, as the past.3 hand-carved furniture and architectural adorn- Ruskin and his followers turned to medieval ments that relected the ideals of Ruskin. Between England for inspiration. They found in Gothic 1868 and about 1890 Cincinnati supported a highly design the proper combination of aesthetic form, successful art-furniture movement that was part of religious feeling, moral substance, and practical a more general enthusiasm for all the arts during function. To reunite the useful and the beautiful the last third of the nineteenth century. Cincin- became their goal, and to achieve this end, society nati lowered as a regional cultural center and, at required fundamental changes. Ruskin argued for least in the decorative arts, as a national arts cen- personal responsibility in the emerging realm ter. To understand how this came about, one must of mass consumption. Individuals must educate look to the city’s early economic and artistic de- themselves in the principles of good design and velopment. use that education to exert pressure on the manu- Founded in 1788 on a sweeping bend of the facturing process. Thus, the Aesthetic movement, Ohio River, Cincinnati had become, by 1830, the both in Great Britain and the United States, aimed leading economic and cultural center in the trans- at preserving craft skills until society could re- Appalachian West. Tied to a vast inland river form itself. Ruskin assumed that beauty carried system that had been supplemented by the con- moral precepts and that a restoration of beauty, struction of canals during the second quarter of or proper design, would encourage people to be- the nineteenth century, the city served both as an come more virtuous. In that light, a house was not important location for commercial shipping and only an individual’s castle but a moral foundation, as the supplier of manufactured goods for a rap- a sanctuary from the social ills associated with the idly developing region. At any time of year scores industrial city. On a more personal level, the move- of latboats and steamboats could be found docked ment provided an expanding and troubled middle along the river, and the public landing, teeming class with a set of rules for home decoration—rules with people, would be 0lled with crates and boxes, that linked beauty, nature, spiritual values, and the barrels of pork, mounds of rags to be turned into family. At the center of these interlocking con- newsprint, piles of tanned hides, and stacks of cepts were women. A host of organizations, clubs, lumber. books, and art magazines, largely targeted toward Best known as a meatpacking center, Cincin-

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 4 nati also boasted of its production of whiskey, beer, kamp, and Jacob Deterly.8 Dr. Daniel Drake, the boilers and valves, ironwork, agricultural machin- community’s preeminent physician and booster, ery, carriages and wagons, lour, boots and shoes, in his promotional work of 1815, Natural and Statis- clothing of all types, and a variety of paper prod- tical View, or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country, ucts. By the end of the 1820s the city recorded noted the production of “many diferent articles imports of $3.8 million and exports of $3.1 mil- of jewelry, and silver ware of every sort.”9 Scarcity lion, relecting its strong commercial and manu- of precious metals undoubtedly limited output, facturing economy.5 Visitors were amazed at this but most of these men also produced watches. rapid development. In 1829 one observer com- John Holland, who later made 0ne gold pens; mented that “the sight of [Cincinnati] 0lled one Joseph Jonas; and Gamaliel Bailey, father of the with astonishment—I could not have imagined . . . editor of the Cincinnati Philanthropist, all managed to anything like it . . . either as to the extent or the make a living producing watches and other pieces style and magni0cence of its buildings.” Three of jewelry. Three brothers, Enos, Osman, and years later the recently arrived James Hall, former William Sellew, produced a variety of tin plate, jurist and now writer of Western stories, declared pewter ware, and copper products,10 while Luman that “strangers, with scarce an exception, are struck Watson was the city’s most proli0c clockmaker dur- upon walking through Cincinnati, with the ap- ing the 0rst half of the century.11 parent age and 0nish of the place; with the taste Most important of the crafted items, from shown in the construction of private houses; with a commercial perspective, was furniture. Nearby the appearance of wealth, cultivation, and polish.”6 hardwood forests supplied an abundance of oak, Horace Greeley, publisher of the New York Tribune, maple, poplar, walnut, and cherry, which crafts- predicted that the city would become “the focus men turned into cabinets, beds, chairs, and sofas. and mart for the grandest circle of manufactur- Perhaps the 0rst evidence of the frontier village’s ing thrift on this continent,”7 and local boosters future as a furniture center is found in the 1795 made even more extravagant remarks. By mid- advertisement for “a Journeyman or two, who century “the Queen City,” a name popularized by understand Cabinet Making.”12 Just 0ve years later, a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem written to Lyon & McGinnis were producing “Escritoires, honor the Catawba wine produced by business- dining and breakfast tables, clock cases, Veneered, man and art patron Nicholas Longworth, had the inlaid and plain.”13 To make ends meet, these early sixth largest population in the nation, with ambi- furniture makers did a multitude of tasks, includ- tions of surging even higher. ing glazing, general carpentry, and repairing, but Included among Cincinnati’s products were after 1815 rising demand permitted more special- many that required the services of skilled crafts- ization. Drake commented on the production of men. As be0tted the largest western city, young “sideboards, secretaries, bureaus, and other arti- men came to Cincinnati seeking opportunities. cles of cabinet furniture,” as well as “Fancy chairs Silversmiths, clockmakers, jewelers, engravers, and and settees, elegantly gilt and varnished.”14 By the other artisans helped establish a solid founda- start of the century’s third decade, more than a tion for decorative household items. Robert Best, score of furniture shops produced annual sales of sometimes in partnership with his brother Samuel, ninety-0ve thousand dollars, and according to one emerged as the community’s leading silversmith. resident, the city was “unrivalled” in the western Trained in Philadelphia, he set up shop sometime country.15 Given the di2culties in transport- before 1812. Other important early silversmiths ing eastern-made furniture over the mountains, were David Kinsey, Clemens and Theodore Os- Cincinnati products came to dominate western

cincinnati and the decorative arts 5 markets, and a local construction boom in hotels and steamboats provided especially reliable cus- tomers. Prosperity also led to the building of sub- stantial homes. In 1820 the city’s most successful entrepreneurs anchored the city’s eastern edge with their elaborate homes, most notably Martin Baum’s lovely Federal-style home on Pike Street (now the Taft Museum of Art) and William Lytle’s impressive mansion. A few years later, leading citizens Judge Jacob Burnet, William Greene, and Samuel Foote chose Third Street for their com- manding brick structures. As the number of siz- able residences increased, so did the demand for appropriate furnishings.16 Almost all of these early furniture makers advertised common, fancy, and Windsor chairs, the fig. 1.1. industry staples. But in response to growing needs, Henry Boyd advertisement. many branched out to larger and more elaborate Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841 (Cincinnati, 1841). pieces, such as desks, bedsteads, cabinets, settees, Cincinnati Historical Society Library or sofas. The community’s 0rst furniture factory may have been the English-born John Broadfoot vermin (0g. 1.1). Charles Lehman advertised in a Smith’s cabinet shop, which opened about 1819.17 local newspaper that he could produce “the newest Benjamin Drake and Edward D. Mans0eld, Dr. and most fashionable patterns of cabinet work exe- Drake’s brother and brother-in-law, respectively, cuted in Philadelphia,” while William Morehouse seven years later counted thirteen cabinet shops boasted of his “splendid Sofas and Mahogany and six chair factories, with a total of 142 employ- Chairs of all descriptions,” as well as “Card, Pier, ees. They also singled out a Mr. Sims and a Mr. and Centre Tables, Bookcases, Wardrobes, Side- Shepherd for their “carved 0gure heads” and other boards, Bureaus, Mahogany and Cherry Bedsteads, wooden steamboat ornamentation.18 By 1829 the Etc. Etc. Etc.”19 In 1830 A. B. Rof advertised a city directory listed ninety-six cabinetmakers and single “new and improved piece of Furniture” that twenty-seven chair makers. included “a writing desk, a bookcase with pigeon During the early nineteenth century, skilled holes, cash drawers, and a place for a bed; the whole craftsmen made the majority of the early furniture (when not in use for a bed) occupies no more space used in the city, reproducing eastern and Euro- than a common merchant’s desk.”20 pean patterns, especially in the popular Federal Cincinnati’s economy overcame 0nancial and Empire styles. Much of this furniture was rel- panics in 1819 and 1837, a major lood in 1832, atively simple and inexpensive, but some displayed periodic cholera epidemics, and several racial or elevated styles and personal inventiveness. In 1836 ethnic disturbances during the 1830s and 1840s. Henry Boyd, an African-American carpenter who In this period, furniture manufacturing gradu- had purchased his way out of slavery in Kentucky ally shifted from individual craftsmen to steam- at age eighteen, advertised his famous “swelled powered machinery, and from made-to-order railed bedsteads,” a patented process that promised pieces to stock merchandise. In 1841 Charles Cist, tighter construction and a reduced likelihood of the city’s chief chronicler of the era, noted that

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 6 there were forty-eight cabinet-ware factories em- ploying 384 workers, as well as eight bedstead manufacturers and eleven chair manufacturers where another 147 men worked.21 With machines taking over the rough cutting, manufacturers placed more emphasis on individually decorated pieces; the increased use of “[tree] forks and crotches, curls, warts, and other excrescences,” along with two veneering mills used for imported mahogany and local curled maple, relect this developing attention to detail.22 Power machinery lightened the work in making the intricate scrolls and carvings so popular at the time, and large factories began to replace individual shops. Just before mid- century the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce proudly announced that “seven steam-powered es- tablishments” annually produced over 4,000 bedsteads, 7,500 bureaus, 14,000 chairs, 1,500 sofas, and 3,500 card tables.23 It is di2cult to compare production statistics from diferent cities or to fig. 1.2. assess the claims of urban boosters, but Cincin- Robert Mitchell. nati may have been the nation’s leading manufac- Maurice Joblin, Cincinnati, Past and Present (Cincinnati, turer of furniture in the period. In 1851, Cist, 1872), facing page 188. Cincinnati Historical Society Library commenting on the overall importance of furniture production to the local economy, singled out in 1847. Each partner put up ten thousand dol- the 0rm of Charles D. Johnston and the partner- lars, but a 0re the next year almost wiped out the ship of William Clawson and Enoch Mudge, while ledgling Mitchell and Rammelsberg. Persevering, noting that the Mitchell and Rammelsberg Fur- the two men quickly constructed a new six-story niture Company, poised to become the commu- facility on Second Street, between Main and Syca- nity’s largest and most important furniture 0rm, more, and within a few years the company became produced an entire range of products, employed the city’s largest furniture producer.25 In 1851 Cist 250 workers, and had introduced steam-powered credited Mitchell and Rammelsberg with gross saws that turned at 2,500 revolutions per minute.24 sales of over two hundred twenty thousand dollars The Irish-born, nineteen-year-old Robert during the previous year. Taking advantage of Cin- Mitchell came to Cincinnati in 1831. After ten cinnati’s growth and prosperity, and hoping to years of apprenticeship as a carpenter and cabinet- discourage competition for Southern markets, maker, he went into business with Robert Moore the company opened branches in St. Louis, Mem- (a future mayor of the city) to produce “Windsor phis, and New Orleans.26 In her 1854 visit, the and fancy chairs,” along with other pieces (0g. 1.2). English traveler Isabella Lucy Bird described the Frederick Rammelsberg, three years younger than facility as “a factory as large as a Manchester cot- Mitchell, arrived from Germany about 1834. He ton mill, 0ve stories high, where 260 hands, mostly 0rst teamed up with Seneca Jones to make cabinets native American and German, are constantly em- and other 0ne furniture, before joining Mitchell ployed.” (0g. 1.3). “The English and Scotch being

cincinnati and the decorative arts 7 The next twenty years witnessed the emergence of Hiram Powers and a host of less prominent sculptors, often through the 0nancial support of Nicholas Longworth. At the same time James H. Beard, Lily Martin Spencer, Robert S. Duncan- son, and T. Worthington Whittredge made Cin- cinnati the major painting center in the West. Enthusiasm for art led to a succession of art and art-supportive institutions, beginning in 1828 with the founding of the Ohio Mechanics’ Institute, fig. 1.3. Mitchell and Rammelsberg Furniture Company. which included the encouragement of western D. J. Kenny, Illustrated Cincinnati: A Pictorial Hand-Book artists among its several goals. That same year of the Queen City (Cincinnati, 1875), 157. Frederick Franks opened the Gallery of Fine Arts, Cincinnati Historical Society Library an arts center that survived through the 1830s.31 In 1838 two new organizations appeared. Local rejected,” she wryly noted, “on account of their artists formed a second Academy of Fine Arts as intemperance.” 27 a place to improve and display their work, but By 1870 Mitchell and Rammelsberg employed according to Cist, “the great body of Cincinnati 560 adults and some 40 children in its Cincinnati artists” belonged to the Section of Fine Arts, one facilities, which included a large, seven-story retail of the fourteen divisions of the Society for the building on Fourth Street as well as the mammoth Difusion of Useful Knowledge, which aimed at factory near the river. Annual sales surpassed bringing together “all individuals desirous of seven hundred thousand dollars, one-seventh of higher culture to teach each other through read- the city’s furniture production. In keeping with the ing, lectures, and discussion.” Typical of mid- ideals of the Aesthetic movement, the Cincinnati century community improvement associations, the company produced furniture that relected the in- society also hoped to establish a public library, a luence of English designer Charles Locke Eastlake science museum, and an art gallery. Both groups and displayed pieces of this style at the Philadel- held annual exhibitions patronized by the city’s phia International Exhibition of 1876 (commonly cultural leaders, and several of these support- known as the Centennial Exhibition).28 Although ers, most notably Longworth, Peyton S. Symmes, the Civil War restricted many traditional mar- George K. Schoenberger, and Charles Stetson, kets for Cincinnati products, the furniture indus- acquired impressive collections of local art.32 try continued to lourish until the 1880s, when Although some observers anticipated that the much of it shifted to Chicago and Grand Rapids, two groups would merge, the economic troubles Michigan.29 that plagued the country after the Panic of 1837 In the wake of Cincinnati’s economic rise dur- led to the demise of both organizations by 1843. ing the second quarter of the nineteenth century, The short-lived nature of these art enterprises re- the city experienced surprising developments in lects the di2culties of art promotion in a com- painting and sculpture. As early as 1826, Freder- munity just two generations removed from the ick Eckstein, a sculptor and native of Germany, frontier. Nevertheless, Cincinnati was clearly established the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts sloughing of its provincial shell, and eastern ob- to serve as a museum and art school.30 Its short life servers took note. “Cincinnati! What is there in did not deter the development of the 0ne arts. the atmosphere of Cincinnati, that has so thor-

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 8 oughly awakened the arts of sculpture and paint- arts, especially in the manufacture of household ing?” asked the New York Star in 1840. “It cannot items, and sought support from local business- surely be mere accident which gives birth to so men. The Ladies’ Academy did not survive the many artists, all of distinguished merit, too.”33 Five Civil War, but the collection of casts and copies years later, the New York Tribune praised the “wealth, used in its classes passed on eventually to the re- genius, and beauty” that adorned “the Western cently opened McMicken School of Design.38 Metropolis.”34 In 1842 William Adams of Zanes- Paralleling this intermittent support for paint- ville, Ohio, expressed the prevailing view when he ing, sculpture, and the decorative arts was a more wrote his friend, the painter Thomas Cole, that modest development in music. As in other young in Cincinnati “wealth has engendered a taste for communities, formal music found little outlet ex- the arts, and its inhabitants seem to be peeping out cept through church choirs. A short-lived Haydn of the transition state, and entering upon one of Society, founded in 1819, several marginally pro0t- taste and re0nement. . . . Cincinnati can boast of able music schools in the 1830s, and eforts by the her artists.”35 Paris-trained violinist Joseph Tosso to establish Cincinnati’s population more than doubled an orchestra, represent the earliest promotion of during the 1840s, from 46,382 to 115,438, and in concert music. In the 1840s an amateur orchestra 1847 art supporters established the Western Art associated with the Eclectic Academy of Music ap- Union. Similar to the more prominent Ameri- peared, and in 1846 several local German singing can Art-Union in New York, the Western Art societies gathered for a small outdoor music fes- Union further stimulated regional painting and tival that opened the way for the annual regional sculpture. Its facilities included a gallery and artist Saengerfests. The Queen City hosted the 0rst of studios, and each year through an annual lottery these afairs in 1849, and the event returned to the it distributed to its members paintings and en- city every three or four years. Steeped in ethnic gravings, often by local artists. Although member- traditions and often ofensive to Anglo-American ship approached 0ve thousand, 0nancial irreg- tastes, the German choruses gradually gained ac- ularities and internal dissension undermined its ceptance in the community’s musical circles. In success, and the organization ended in 1851.36 Later 1856 the German-born Frederic Ritter organized that year, feeding of the interest in art, Cist called the Cincinnati Philharmonic Orchestra, the most for the establishment of an academy of design.37 ambitious attempt yet at providing concert music. While nothing immediately developed from this This growing appreciation for formal music laid suggestion, in 1853 Sarah Worthington King Peter the foundation for the internationally recognized founded the Ladies’ Academy of Fine Arts. Peter, May Festivals, which began in 1873, as well as for the daughter of an Ohio governor, whose 0rst hus- the most important of the city’s music schools, band was prominent Cincinnati attorney Edward the Conservatory of Music (1867) and the College King, established this all-women’s organization, of Music (1878).39 responding to the same forces that earlier had In other ways as well, Cincinnati relected stimulated the founding of the Cooper Union in its expanding cultural life. As early as 1820 Dr. New York and the Philadelphia School of Design Daniel Drake had helped establish the Western for Women. The academy opened a reading room, Museum as a center for the advancement of sci- sponsored lectures, held exhibitions, and organ- ence. Its collection of Indian relics, fossils, rocks, ized design classes in order to elevate public taste mounted and preserved animals, and regional pre- and to provide young women with “an honorable historic remains relected Drake’s own insatiable livelihood.” Sarah Peter emphasized the decorative curiosity. However, to most residents the past had

cincinnati and the decorative arts 9 little connection to the tumultuous present, and formal papers were presented (a practice that con- they remained indiferent to Drake’s vision. Even- tinues today). Eleven years later Moncure Conway, tually the Western Museum changed ownership, a Virginia-born Emersonian, abolitionist, and became noted for its animated depiction of the Literary Club member, published the Dial in an “Infernal Regions,” and ended as a Barnumesque attempt to revive the spirit of the earlier Boston display of the bizarre.40 publication of that name. Collectively, the num- Drake also supported libraries and literary or- ber and quality of these publications and organi- ganizations. In the early 1830s he organized the zations suggest the healthy intellectual climate that Buckeye Club. Intended to create an informal distinguished Cincinnati among western urban intellectual atmosphere, the club met at Drake’s centers.42 home and involved many of the local literati. The failure of the Dial after only one year, in Overlapping the Buckeye Club, both in time and part because of the advent of the Civil War, marked in membership, was the Semi-Colon Club, whose an end to Cincinnati’s early cultural development. weekly meetings encouraged literary contribu- Music, art, and literature seemed trivial in light tions. Members included Drake; Edward and of the political and moral issues that divided the Sarah King (later Sarah King Peter); the Reverend nation. Conway, Ritter, and others left for the Lyman Beecher and his daughters Catherine East, and Northern armies drained young men and Harriet; William Henry Channing, nephew from the city. Money and energy went to war of Boston’s celebrated William Ellery Channing; causes, while the threat of invasion and a steady Timothy Flint, editor of the Western Monthly Review; stream of wounded soldiers cast a somber atmos- William Fuller, brother of the Bostonian transcen- phere over the city. Yet if the arts withered during dentalist Margaret Fuller; and Elizabeth Blackwell, the war, economically the city thrived as war- soon to become the nation’s 0rst female physi- time spending ofset the loss of Southern markets. cian.41 However, a postwar contraction alarmed city lead- These societies developed and promoted a dis- ers. O2cially, Cincinnati was still the largest west- tinctly western literature, and most of the Semi- ern city, but by 1865 Chicago and St. Louis were Colon members contributed to a succession of growing at faster rates. Both rivals were situated literary journals based in the city. Flint published closer to the westward-shifting frontier, and the the Western Monthly Review, which lasted three years. country’s new rail lines, stimulated by wartime James Hall’s Western Monthly Magazine survived just needs for transportation, had already made 0ve. In 1835, the most important journal of the Chicago the regional hub. In the years immedi- era, the Western Messenger, at various times edited by ately following the war, a nervous group of city William Channing or his cousin James Handasyd leaders sought ways to maintain Cincinnati’s su- Perkins, began its six-year run as an expression of premacy. They planned the expansion of the rail- its editors’ Unitarian and transcendentalist spirit. road, particularly to recapture Southern markets, Contributors included not only area residents, and industrial expositions to promote manufac- but also Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, turing, but leaders also turned to the city’s rich and William Ellery Channing, three of Boston’s cultural heritage (0g. 1.4). most distinguished intellectuals. In 1849 a dozen Building on the successful Saengerfests and of the city’s younger men, led by Ainsworth Rand the popularity of the New York-based orchestra Spoford (who would become Librarian of Con- of Theodore Thomas, which had 0rst visited gress), formed the Literary Club. Initially mem- Cincinnati in 1867, cultural leaders planned a bers debated announced topics, but eventually large spring musical festival. Organized by George

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 10 fig. 1.4. Cincinnati. Ehrgott & Forbriger lithographers. Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1859 (Cincinnati, 1859), frontispiece. Mary R. Schif Library, Cincinnati Art Museum

Ward Nichols, son-in-law of wealthy art patron passed from Boston to the Ohio city. Success led Joseph Longworth, and Thomas, the 1873 May Fes- to a second festival in 1875 and then to the con- tival proved to be one of the nation’s most impor- struction of Music Hall in 1878, inaugurated by tant musical events. For Thomas, nothing could the third festival. Nichols and other eminent cit- be allowed to interfere with the presentation of izens established the College of Music to serve as Europe’s great music. He insisted there be no a national school of music, and Thomas moved to popular airs like “Yankee Doodle,” which were Cincinnati to direct the school and its a2liated commonly mixed in to make classical concerts orchestra. For a few years the city did indeed ap- more palatable, and no boisterousness or food and pear to have taken the musical crown; “the Paris drink, as at the ethnic Saengerfests. Thomas’s of America” became the city’s new label. But in orchestra, 0lled out by local musicians and a 1880 the headstrong Thomas, after quarreling with six-hundred-voice chorus drawn from local sing- the equally headstrong Nichols, resigned from the ing societies, swept all before them. Critics in college and returned to New York. The result- Boston and New York honored the city for its ing acrimony weakened the College of Music, de- singular achievement, and one Chicago reporter stroyed the nascent orchestra, and divided local proclaimed that the country’s musical crown had musicians for the next 0fteen years.43

cincinnati and the decorative arts 11 Artistic ambitions nearly matched those of music. In late 1873 painter Frank Duveneck (1848– 1919), born and reared across the river in Coving- ton, Kentucky, returned to Cincinnati after several highly successful years of study at Munich’s Royal Academy of Art. Decked out in a cape and hat, he introduced a coterie of young painters to his dashing brushwork (0g. 1.5). “Munich real- ism” challenged the academic style taught at the School of Design, and the most talented of the city’s young artists quickly responded to Duveneck’s inluence. Several of them, most notably John Henry Twachtman, followed Duveneck to Europe in 1875, where they became known as the Duveneck Boys. Although the School of Design (later the Art Academy of Cincinnati) maintained its traditional curriculum for another twenty-0ve years under the direction of Thomas S. Noble, Duve- neck had expanded both the palette and the vision of a new generation. During the 0nal two decades of the century, Twachtman, Robert Blum, Eliza- beth Nourse, Joseph H. Sharp, Edward H. Pot- thast, and Henry F. Farny, after studying in Cincinnati, earned national recognition, and in the case of Nourse, international recognition. Although all except Farny eventually left the city, Duveneck returned for good in 1890. Until the fig. 1.5. artist’s death in 1919, his reputation and teaching Frank Duveneck. attracted a host of students and placed him at the Undated photograph. Cincinnati Historical Society Library center of a lively art community.44 Within this cultural climate the decorative to apply their skills to various manufacturing proc- arts also blossomed. The 1856 city directory listed esses, including those involved in the production more than twenty makers or sellers of jewelry, of furniture and carriages. The principal goal, of watches, and silverware, plus numerous other course, was to improve products, not to start an craft-oriented businesses. The Ohio Mechanics’ Arts and Crafts movement. Enrollment peaked in Institute (OMI), established in 1828 for the bene0t 1868, with 228 pupils, but competition from the of “young persons engaged in mechanical or other McMicken School of Design and the introduc- laborious employments,” responded to growing tion of vocational classes in the public schools led industrial concerns by organizing a School of to a gradual decline.45 Design in 1856. At the beginning of the Civil War, While OMI continued to train workers, Benn its program counted 221 students in classes de- Pitman and the two Frys introduced Cincinnatians voted to drawing, design, perspective, engraving, to hand-carved, decorated furniture and architec- and clay modeling. The school trained mechanics tural elements. The elder Fry, who had learned

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 12 woodcarving in England, immigrated to the United The Frys’ work and that of their students States in 1849, and in 1851 both father and son also embraced the naturalistic themes of English were listed as being in Cincinnati.46 A few years Aestheticism. However, it was Pitman who more later, Cist described Henry Fry as an “architec- publicly spread the Ruskinian message, whether tural carver and designer” who did “ornamented in his classes or in his numerous pamphlets and pattern work” for public and private buildings.47 journal articles. In keeping with prevailing atti- The Frys brought a professional, eclectic approach tudes about women, which entrusted them with to decorative carving. Although they were most domestic harmony, Pitman and the Frys agreed comfortable with Gothic and Elizabethan styles, that women were essential to a revived sense of much of their success derived from a willingness household design. However, for the most part, to meet their clients’ tastes. Thus, there is con- men built the furniture and women carved the siderable variation in the work they did, especially decoration. “Construction may be regarded as the in private homes. In the 1850s the Frys caught the peculiar province of men,” advised Pitman; “to attention of Joseph Longworth, who engaged them beautify is as naturally the province of women.”51 to decorate the interior of his new Grandin Road It should come as no surprise, then, that home, “Rookwood,” situated on a bluf overlook- women made up the great majority of woodcarvers ing the river, several miles east of the city. So in Cincinnati. If Pitman had hoped to train these pleased was Longworth that in 1868 he commis- women for work in the local furniture industry, sioned them to provide similar decoration for the he was disappointed. Initially, most of the students neighboring house he was having constructed for came from socially prominent families and sought his daughter Maria (1849–1932). Visitors to the merely an outlet for their own creativity, as well as homes, especially women, expressed a desire to an opportunity to incorporate more aesthetic fur- learn carving skills. In the early 1870s the Frys nishings within their own homes. Although they formed a private woodcarving class, initiating the may have been able to exert some inluence on art-furniture movement in the city.48 local furniture manufacturers, they certainly had Benn Pitman, who had acquired some expe- no interest in working for wages. An even more rience in architecture as a youth in England, came serious problem lay in the furniture industry’s to Cincinnati in 1853 to promote phonography, a reluctance to produce handcrafted furniture be- system of shorthand devised by his brother, Isaac cause of the intensive labor required. Manufac- Pitman. Early training in drawing and graphic turers may have adopted Aesthetic styles, but they design apparently led Pitman to experiment with had no intention of moving away from the more woodcarving, and in 1872 he, his wife Jane, and cost-e2cient, machinery-driven process they had their twenty-two-year-old daughter Agnes dis- been using since the 1840s. played their work at the Third Cincinnati Indus- The catalogues of the Cincinnati Industrial trial Exposition.49 A year later Pitman ofered his Expositions graphically chart the city’s embryonic services to the School of Design without remuner- decorative arts movement. The 0rst two exposi- ation, and in 1873 a Wood Carving Department be- tions, 1870 and 1871, paid little attention to the came part of the curriculum. Woodcarving classes arts. At the 1872 exposition, under the capable provided the means for applying proper design to guidance of Alfred Traber Goshorn, who would many types of ordinary household goods. To Pit- become the director of the Cincinnati Art Mu- man and others, the application of art to common seum, the Pitmans displayed their 0rst carved manufactured items would elevate public taste as work. The 1873 exposition expanded the art ex- well as provide employment for skilled craftsmen.50 hibits, including the decorative arts, and for

cincinnati and the decorative arts 13 several years these were among the largest and most The Cincinnati contribution in Philadelphia inluential art displays in the country.52 came almost entirely from the talented group of The Frys remained with woodcarving, but amateurs in the classes of the Frys and Pitman— Pitman’s restless artistic nature led him into other artists who now faced a national audience. Cin- 0elds. In 1874, responding to his students’ inter- cinnatians contributed over two hundred examples est in other practical applications of art, he en- of carved wood and other art objects. Most Ameri- gaged Marie Eggers, a young German woman, to can visitors came away from the Centennial Exhi- teach a class in china painting, then gaining pop- bition disappointed in both the quality and the ularity across the country. Among these early ce- derivative nature of the nation’s artistic entries; at ramics decorators were M. Louise McLaughlin, the same time, the exhibition awakened Americans Clara Chipman Newton, Jane Porter Dodd, and to the country’s artistic poverty. For some, the Agnes Pitman—all to become prominent in the Cincinnati work provided the best foundation local Art Pottery movement. Other women, infor a national renaissance in the decorative arts. cluding Maria Longworth Nichols, practiced the Atlantic Monthly editor William Dean Howells en- craft with Karl Langenbeck, later a ceramics thusiastically endorsed the women’s work, while chemist employed by the Rookwood Pottery Com- the New Century for Woman, published at the exhibi- pany. At the 1874 exposition and for years there- tion, singled out the Cincinnati exhibit as open- after, visitors saw displays of both carved furniture ing “a broad and remunerative 0eld for artistic and decorated ceramics.53 talent and industry.”56 This success placed the city This quickening of interest had an immediate at the forefront of the emerging national Aes- impact. As plans got underway in Philadelphia for thetic movement. the Centennial Exhibition, the Women’s Centen- Its work completed, WCEC dissolved in nial Executive Committee of Cincinnati (WCEC) 1877, but most of its members reconvened as promoted the event and encouraged local women the Women’s Art Museum Association (WAMA). to display their decorative artwork in order to raise WAMA aimed at advancing “women’s work . . . money for the exhibition. The women needed particularly in the direction of industrial art.” little encouragement, and their subsequent ex- Supported by a male advisory committee, the hibits helped raise over seven thousand dollars. women launched a campaign for the establish- When the Philadelphia organizers of the exhibi- ment of an art museum based on the model of tion’s Women’s Pavilion were told that they would London’s South Kensington Museum, now the have to construct and pay for their own pavilion, Victoria and Albert Museum, which had been WCEC responded by contributing 0ve thousand founded in response to a general concern for the dollars, about one-sixth of the total cost. In re- impoverished state of British applied art, as it turn, the organizers rewarded the Cincinnati had been represented at London’s Crystal Palace women with one thousand square feet of space for Exhibition in 1851. In 1878 WAMA sponsored three display of their painted china, carved furniture free lectures to stimulate public support. Sidney and architectural elements, and needlework.54 Al- D. Maxwell, superintendent of the Cincinnati though pleased by this recognition, like many Chamber of Commerce, described in optimistic women elsewhere, some Cincinnatians balked at terms the current state of commerce and manu- having women’s work restricted to a separate build- facturing in the city and the importance of aes- ing: “We feel keenly the injustice of putting women thetics to manufactured products. George Ward on a diferent footing from other exhibitors,” they Nichols, husband of Maria and a major supporter complained.55 of the city’s cultural institutions, addressed the

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 14 importance of good design in manufacturing and elected Longworth as its president, appointed the need for properly trained workers, singling Alfred Traber Goshorn as the director, and placed out pottery and furniture making as holding con- overall control in the hands of a tightly knit group siderable promise for the employment of women. of male trustees.59 After selecting architect James Charles P. Taft concluded the series with a strong W. McLaughlin’s Romanesque stone design (James Ruskinian endorsement of the South Kensington McLaughlin was a brother of M. Louise McLaugh- Museum as the appropriate model for Cincinnati.57 lin), the CMA turned its attention to a perma- “To educate and develop the genius of the nent collection.60 Along with those items presented masses” became the goal of WAMA, and during its by WAMA, the trustees acquired a collection of nine-year existence its members worked to gain arms and armor, a collection of electroplated re- broad support for their cause. In a letter to Taft, productions of notable metal treasures of the Elizabeth Perry, president of WAMA, alluded to world, several plaster casts of two Ghiberti bronze the di2culty in convincing the public that the church doors in Florence, examples of textiles, and proposed museum would not be only “a gallery a number of oil paintings and sculptures. With an of sculpture and painting.” To focus on the 0ne eye toward using the collection for educational arts suggested an elitism that museum supporters purposes, Longworth also worked to have the wished to avoid. To reinforce its point, WAMA School of Design detached from the University followed its lecture series with an exhibition of Cincinnati and linked to the museum. Shortly devoted almost entirely to decorative art pieces, after his death in December 1883, the School of borrowed largely from Cincinnati families. The Design became the Art Academy of Cincinnati quality of the display earned notice in New York, and was placed under the control of the CMA.61 Paris, and London. The association began to ac- Although the woodcarving classes under Pit- cept items for the permanent collection, with an man, and later under William H. Fry, remained emphasis on applied arts. Early acquisitions in- popular, they failed to have any visible efect on cluded porcelain, ancient pottery, Native Ameri- the local furniture industry. The women carved can pottery, European laces, tapestries, and even largely for their own needs and their own homes. a few carefully selected pieces of local art pottery; The same cannot be said for classes in ceramic such items as “wax lowers and fruit, feather low- design, for the Cincinnati Art Pottery movement ers, leather, hair and shell work, skeletonized eventually became intertwined with the Art Acad- leaves, knitting, crochet and Berlin woolwork” emy. Art pottery owed its success to the twin eforts were deemed too amateurish and unacceptable.58 of McLaughlin and Nichols. After returning from WAMA’s energy and enthusiasm prodded male the Centennial Exhibition, McLaughlin experi- museum supporters, in some cases the husbands mented with an underglaze technique similar to of WAMA members, to become involved. When that used in the production of Haviland faience, Charles W. West, a retired lour mill owner, ofered made in Limoges, France, which she had admired one hundred 0fty thousand dollars for the con- in Philadelphia (0g. 1.6). Using the facilities of struction of a building, contingent on matching the Coultry Pottery, she achieved success within funds through a public subscription, prominent sixteen months, and in 1880 she shared her knowl- supporters Melville Ingalls, David Sinton, Julius edge in Pottery Decoration under the Glaze, a com- Dexter, and Joseph Longworth led the donor list. panion volume to her previous how-to book on The men organized the Cincinnati Museum As- china painting (0g. 1.7). Two years earlier George sociation (CMA) to build and organize the future W. Nichols had published a more general instruc- museum. Set up as a stock company, the CMA tional book, Pottery, How It Is Made, Its Shape and

cincinnati and the decorative arts 15 full-time decorator in 1879, and Thomas J. Wheat- ley, formerly employed at the Coultry Pottery, opened his own business, devoted exclusively to decorative work. Wheatley’s operation eventually became the Cincinnati Art Pottery, while about the same time Matt Morgan established his pottery, and a few years later Karl Langenbeck founded the Avon Pottery.63 The women who had gathered around McLaughlin organized the Cincinnati Pottery Club, a prototype for similar clubs in other American cities. However, when an invitation to join apparently did not reach Nichols, she took it as a slight (perhaps a rift had already developed), and she began working independently of the others (0g. 1.9). Nichols had returned from the Centennial Exhibition with an interest in Japan- ese glazes. Initially she had asked her father to import an entire Japanese pottery, complete with workers. When this proved impractical, she ex- fig. 1.6. perimented with glazes on her own. Unhappy with M. Louise McLaughlin. Undated photograph. Cincinnati Historical Society Library the kilns at local commercial potteries, in 1880 Nichols (supported by her father) converted an old school building into a pottery, naming it the Decoration, and as a result of all of this infor- Rookwood Pottery Company, after her father’s mation, interest in ceramic decoration exploded estate.64 Combining commercial ware with indi- 62 (0g. 1.8). WAMA organized classes in china vidually decorated pieces, the pottery struggled to painting, even attempting to get the overcome inexperience and prominent English ceramist John Ben- limited materials (0g. 1.10). nett to come, while John Rettig and Al- bert Valentine (later Valentien) started their own classes in Limoges-style decoration. The Hamilton Road Pottery, a commercial operation, employed its 0rst fig. 1.7. Cover of Pottery Decoration under the Glaze by M. Louise McLaughlin (Cincinnati, 1880). Mary R. Schif Library, Cincinnati Art Museum

fig. 1.8. Cover of Pottery: How It Is Made, Its Shape and Decoration by George Ward Nichols, illustrated by Maria Longworth Nichols (Cincinnati, 1878). Cincinnati Historical Society Library

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 16 Fortunately, the Longworth fortune could aford the early 0nancial losses. Rookwood’s commercial ware, much of it white or cream-colored and made from Ohio Valley or Tennessee clays, kept the operation marginally aloat, while Nichols continued her experiments with Japanese designs.65 At 0rst, Rookwood ofered classes for women and employed women to decorate pieces, as well as ofering a place for Nichols and others, including the Cincinnati Pottery Club members, to experiment with glazes. In 1883 she brought in her friend William Watts Taylor to take charge of the operation. He discontinued the classes; replaced the part-time female decorators with full-time decorators, many of them men; and asked the Cincinnati Pottery Club members to take their amateur experiments elsewhere.66 Although initially most of these women, including McLaughlin and Nichols, had shaped their own ceramic pieces, after Taylor’s appearance Rookwood’s designers usually worked only with glazes, not clay. A close examination of Taylor’s correspondence strongly suggests that he believed that women had less fig. to contribute than men. For Taylor, Rookwood’s 1.9. identi0cation with women undermined its eforts Maria Longworth Nichols. 67 Undated photograph, c. late 1870s–early 1880s. to be taken seriously as an art pottery. Cincinnati Historical Society Library Taylor also did away with the common table- ware in order to concentrate on art pottery, and from this time on, Rookwood operated strictly Throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s na- as a business concern. The new decorators came tional magazines wrote about the city’s achieve- largely from middle- and lower-middle-class ments in woodcarving and art pottery, and the art backgrounds. Many of Rookwood’s 0nest decora- museum and academy received much favorable tors studied at the Art Academy, taking classes in attention.69 Rookwood Pottery, in one of the more drawing, decorative design, and china painting. dramatic success stories in American decorative After 1890, when the pottery moved to new facil- art, earned gold medals at both the 1889 Exposition ities on Mount Adams, the two institutions were Universelle in Paris and the World’s Columbian situated within easy walking distance of each other. Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Indeed, Cincin- In addition to the decorators’ connections to the natians participated extensively at the Chicago academy, Taylor served on the museum’s board of exposition. Several painters served on juries or trustees, and Joseph H. Gest, longtime assistant displayed their work in the exhibit of American to Goshorn, eventually became both the director art, and the organizers granted Cincinnati women of the museum and the president of Rookwood an entire room in the Woman’s Building for a Pottery.68 display of needlework, ceramics, furniture, and

cincinnati and the decorative arts 17 manufacturers did employ some woodcarvers, no records exist that document their numbers or the presence of women among them. As a group, the woodcarvers displayed little interest in the more philosophical implications of Aestheticism or in the concerns about design that would soon lead others into the Arts and Crafts movement. Their most successful collaborative achievement was an elaborately carved organ screen completed in 1878 for the city’s new Music Hall. This screen, which enclosed a powerful Hook and Hastings organ, celebrated nature’s bounty with a display of intricately carved birds, lowers, vines, and leaves that typi0ed Cincinnati art furniture. Pitman and Henry and William Fry assisted in the overall design and carving of the main panels, and virtually all of their students contributed to the challeng- 71 fig. 1.10. ing project. “Rookwood Pottery By the mid-1890s most female carvers had Company,” Harper’s New moved on to other aesthetic challenges or to other Monthly Magazine 67 social activities. Maria Longworth Nichols (Storer) (July 1883): 259. turned over the Rookwood Pottery to William Collection of The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Watts Taylor in 1890, and by the end of the century she was increasingly involved in her second painting, completely separate from the Rookwood husband’s diplomatic career. Even McLaughlin, contribution exhibited in the Palace of Fine Arts Cincinnati’s leading and most versatile decorative (0g. 1.11). No other group of women was so warmly artist, left woodcarving to concentrate on china supported. Rookwood then capped of the cen- painting, ceramics, metalwork, stained glass, and tury by bringing home a coveted Grand Prix for embroidery. Furthermore, the Arts and Crafts its display at the Exposition Universelle of 1900 movement, which lowed out of the Aesthetic in Paris.70 movement, emphasized handcrafted construction Cincinnati’s international reputation peaked of items and simpler inlaid designs in furniture in the 1890s, as did its position within the na- rather than ornate surface carving, an approach tional decorative arts movement. Practitioners of that may have appealed less to these women. Cin- art-carved furniture in Cincinnati apparently were cinnati’s major contribution to this more mod- uninterested in or unable to gain a retail market. ernistic furniture style was Oscar Onken’s Shop of Like the early ceramic decorators, the more so- the Crafters (1904–20). Like Rookwood, the Shop cially prominent did not wish to turn their enjoy- of the Crafters blended hand and machine work. ment into a vocation that might have eroded their It produced German- and Austrian-inluenced sense of class respectability. Thus, their work, how- furniture, but there is little evidence to suggest ever attractive, remained largely personal. Those that Cincinnati’s earlier carvers had any interest who learned carving skills for vocational purposes, in this style or that Onken was much inluenced such as teaching, were few in number. While local by them.72

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 18 fig. 1.11. Cincinnati Room in the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893. James W. Shepp, Shepp’s World’s Fair Photographed (Chicago, 1893), 281. Cincinnati Historical Society Library

After Pitman resigned from the Art Academy Wheeler, or a Frank Lloyd Wright. Nor did the in 1893, William Fry continued the carving class city produce any lasting arts and crafts organiza- until his retirement more than thirty years later. tions or a journal devoted to the decorative arts.73 Fry’s aesthetic views remained largely unchanged, In 1910 death stilled Pitman’s voice, and McLaugh- and as a consequence, Cincinnati woodcarvers lin, Cincinnati’s strongest public presence, turned failed to move beyond their initial Gothic and inward, writing historical and political books and Elizabethan focus, never embraced Ruskin’s or spending her last twenty years as a virtual recluse.74 William Morris’s social reform concepts, and never Cincinnati’s gradual decline in decorative fur- made the transition to the modernist ideals of the niture 0t into a general pattern of decline in the Arts and Crafts movement. arts. Theodore Thomas’s angry departure in 1880 Despite its early promise, then, the city did and its residue of bitterness critically damaged not move on to become a signi0cant center for Cincinnati’s musical aspirations. The biannual the Arts and Crafts movement, and it produced May Festivals dimmed in importance as symphonic no new national voice—no Gustav Stickley, no music gained in public acceptance, and an opera Elbert Hubbard, no Charles Limbert, to say festival and a dramatic festival inaugurated in the nothing of a Louis Comfort Tifany, a Candace 1880s did not outlast the decade. By the time local

cincinnati and the decorative arts 19 women founded the Cincinnati Symphony Or- wasting disease.”76 In the years between 1880 and chestra in 1895, the city had cast aside all illusions 1910, Cincinnati struggled with loods, riots, labor of musical greatness. The Cincinnati Art Museum strife, growing pollution, increased crime, and and the Art Academy of Cincinnati sufered from political corruption. Other cities experienced overly conservative leadership, as well as insu2- many of the same di2culties, but most could take cient funding, which limited their development. heart in accelerated growth and rapidly expanding When Thomas S. Noble took charge of the School economies. Not so Cincinnati. The con0dence of Design in 1869, he brought a much-needed and optimism of earlier years quickly receded, solid European training to the curriculum, but his leaving many civic leaders in despair. Nagging continued academic traditionalism discouraged tones of doubt replaced the earlier inlated the introduction of modern art styles emanating visions. The Reverend Charles Frederic Goss, a from Europe. Even Duveneck’s return to the city local Presbyterian minister, alluded to the problem in 1890 did not substantially alter this. Although when he asked rhetorically, “Who knows what the Rookwood remained the nation’s leading art pot- mission of Cincinnati is? What is its destiny? For tery, it, too, faced an increasingly troubled future. what does it exist?”77 Visiting author Charles Dud- Numerous rivals appeared, and not only did it ley Warner described Cincinnati as a “solid city” struggle with the swirling art currents of the era, but lacking the growth and vitality of Chicago.78 but its commercial blending of machine and craft Travelers from Europe, if they even deigned to work was at odds with the purist philosophy that visit, saw not a queen but a dull, dirty, compact dominated much of the Arts and Crafts movement city.79 after 1900. Charles P. Taft pointed to another discour- A good argument can be made for Cincinnati aging problem: political corruption. “The day of as the birthplace of American art furniture and pure politics,” he trumpeted, “can never be in an important center for the decorative arts be- Cincinnati until a riot, plague or lood kills of tween 1868 and 1890. It is not altogether clear, the ward bummers.”80 Taft was referring to local however, why the city failed to maintain its posi- corrupt Democrats. Within two years Republicans tion. Certainly a loss of economic momentum answered with George B. Cox, whose political played a role. Once the country’s sixth largest city, machine earned for the city a new label: “the most by 1900 Cincinnati experienced a rate of growth corrupt city in America,” courtesy of muckraker that had slowed to 9.8 percent; the city had slipped Lincoln Stefens.81 The turn of the century brought to tenth in population, with Chicago, St. Louis, a rash of articles and books touting the Queen and Cleveland surpassing the Queen City as re- City, but there is a curious hollowness in their gional economic and cultural centers. Although tone. As one leafs through these assessments of it remained a leader in soap products, carriage the city, the past is laid out as a series of remark- manufacturing, clothing, distilled liquors, and able economic and cultural achievements, lead- machine tools, hog processing had dropped to ing to a somewhat remote but promising future. pre-1850 levels, furniture production reached less Charles Thomas Logan, writing in Frank Leslie’s than half of its 1870 output, and iron production Popular Monthly, described Cincinnati’s commercial had moved to Pittsburgh and Cleveland.75 Ten situation as not having gone backwards within years later, Cincinnati’s population had slipped to the past decade; as for progress, he stated, “She thirteenth in the nation, and its rate of growth simply moves, as do all great bodies, slowly but was the lowest among Ohio cities. As one astute surely.”82 What is missing is a sense of a vibrant observer phrased it, the city was “sufering from a present. There is little to suggest that much was

cincinnati art-carved furniture and interiors 20 currently going on, and the most common note and M. Louise McLaughlin’s pioneering work sounded by these observers was their praise of the collectively brought art furniture and ceramic city’s slow, steady growth—what can now be seen as decoration into the national consciousness. The a euphemism for stagnation. Cincinnati Industrial Expositions, the Cincinnati Although Cincinnati’s skyline inched upwards, exhibits at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 in the city’s overall development was now sluggish, Philadelphia and at the World’s Columbian Ex- and this apathy carried over to the arts. The pop- position in 1893 in Chicago, as well as numerous ulation seemed content with existing cultural lesser exhibitions gave focus and direction to the institutions and hesitant to embrace new art cur- national Aesthetic movement. Rookwood Pottery rents. Second-generation wealth proved less ad- became the most successful and most honored venturous and less public-spirited than the 0rst. art pottery in the nation. The Cincinnati Pottery No new generation of Wests or Longworths ap- Club’s innovative work excited women across the peared. Likewise, Cincinnati had been blessed country, and the work of WAMA was watched with energetic and progressive leaders in the arts: closely. Historian Eileen Boris has pointed out Duveneck, McLaughlin, Nichols, Pitman, the Frys, that, although Victorian America placed gender and the list could go on. Talented artists remained, limitations on women, craftswomen found a “sis- but now their allegiance was to comfortable, ac- terhood of art, a sense of community” in their cepted styles. activities, and Cincinnati craftswomen certainly That Cincinnati did not sustain its promise served as examples. As one San Francisco woman should not diminish its very real contributions to wrote, in imagining “an annual pilgrimage” of American decorative art in the nineteenth cen- women potters to Cincinnati, “It would be so de- tury. The city supported the McMicken School of lightful to go to the center of the great sisterhood Design (and its later incarnation, the Art Academy of states, as delegates, to see and admire the handy- of Cincinnati) and the Cincinnati Art Museum, works of our sister women.” She signed of, “Truly and manual training classes entered the public yours for women’s progress.”83 Whether in shap- school curriculum. Benn Pitman’s writings, the ing women’s lives or in shaping wood and clay, the Frys’ programs of instruction, and Maria Nichols’s Queen City can be justly proud of itself.

cincinnati and the decorative arts 21