F 521 I48 Vol6 No1 (

F 521 I48 VOL6 NO1 (

INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

BOARD OF TRUSTEES MI S S I O N James J. Barnes, Crawfordsville Dianne J. Cartmel, Seymour Statement William E. Ervin, Hartford City Ralph D. Gray, Indianapolis H. Roll McLaughlin, Carmel Ronald Morris, Greenwood Mary M. Mullin, Brookville Kathleen Stiso Mullins, South Bend Alan T. Nolan, Indianapolis, Chairman Larry K. Pitts, Indianapolis William G. Prime, Madison ON A SATURDAY NIGHT IN DECEMBER 1830 A GROUP OF THE Evaline H. Rhodehamel, Indianapolis, Vice President Richard S. Simons, Marion, President MOST DISTINGUISHED FIGURES IN INDIANA'S EARLY HISTORY- John Martin Smith, Auburn Theodore L. Steele, Indianapolis INCLUDING JOHN FARNHAM, CALVIN FLETCHER, WILLIAM CONNER, P. R. Sweeney, Vincennes Stanley Warren, Indianapolis, Treasurer Herman B Wells, Bloomington JOHN TIPTON, AND MORE THAN HALF OF THE INDIANA GENERAL ASSEMBLY-

ADMINISTRATION MET AT THE MARION COUNTY COURTHOUSE IN INDIANAPOLIS TO FORM Peter T. Harstad, Executive Director Raymond L. Shoemaker, Assistant Executive Director and Business Manager WHAT BECAME THE INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. THAT GROUP COMPOSED Annabelle J. Jackson, Controller Susan P. Brown, Director Human Resources THE ORGANIZATION'S CONSTITUTION AND DECLARED: Carolyn S. Smith, Membership Secretary

DIVISION DIRECTORS Bruce L.Johnson, Library Thomas K. Krasean, Community Relations The objects of the Society shall be the collection of all Thomas A. Mason, Publications Robert M. Taylor Jr., Education materials calculated to shed light on the natural, civil and TRACES OF INDIANA AND MIDWESTERN HISTORY political history of Indiana, the promotion of useful knowledge Thomas A. Mason, Executive Editor J. Kent Calder, Managing Editor Megan L. McKee, Editor and the friendly and profitable intercourse of such citizens of Kathleen M. Breen, Editorial Assistant George R. Hanlin, Editorial Assistant the state as are disposed to promote the aforesaid objects. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Ray E. Boomhower Douglas E. Clanin Paula J. Corpuz TODAY, WITH MORE THAN 10,000 MEMBERS IN AND BEYOND INDIANA, THE Ruth Dorrel

SOCIETY BUILDS ON THIS FOUNDATION. AS THE NEXT CENTURY APPROACHES, PHOTOGRAPHY Stephen J. Fletcher, Curator Visual Collections Kim Charles Ferrill, Photographer IT REAFFIRMS ITS ORIGINAL "OBJECTS" WITHIN THE BROADER CONTEXTS OF Susan L. S. Sutton, Coordinator

REGIONAL, NATIONAL, AND WORLD HISTORY AND FOCUSES THEM AS FOLLOWS: EDITORIAL BOARD Richard J. M. Blackett, Indiana University, Bloomington Edward E. Breen, Marion Chronicle-Tribune Andrew R. L. Cayton, Miami University David E. Dawson, Indianapolis To promote public awareness and appreciation of Indiana Robert L. Gildea, Indianapolis Ralph D. Gray, Indiana University, Indianapolis history, the Indiana Historical Society collects, preserves, Monroe H. Little Jr., Indiana University, Indianapolis James H. Madison, Indiana University, Bloomington interprets, and disseminates documentary and visual evidence Richard S. Simons, Marion Emma Lou Thornbrough, Butler University

and supports scholarly research. The Society fosters excellence DESIGN Dean Johnson Design and leadership, historical inquiry, and pleasurable and R. Lloyd Brooks, Art Director Scott Johnson, Mike Schwab, Designers informal exchanges, believing that an understanding of TYPOGRAPHY Weimer Graphics, Inc. the past illuminates the present and gives vision for the future.

PRINTING Shepard Poorman Communications Corp.

Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History (ISSN 1040-788X) is published quarterly and distributed as a benefit of membership by the Indiana Historical Society; editorial and executive offices, 315 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3299. Membership categories are Annual $20, Sustaining $30, Contributing $50, and Life $500. Single copies are $5. Second-class postage paid at Indianapolis, Indiana; USPS Number 003-275. Literary contri- butions: A brochure containing information for contributors is available APPROVED BY THE upon request. Traces accepts no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts BOARD OF TRUSTEES, 25 APRIL 1991. submitted without return postage. Indiana newspaper publishers may obtain permission to reprint articles by written request to the Society. The Society will refer requests from other publishers to the author. ©1994 Indiana Historical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Indiana Historical Society, 315 West Ohio Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3299. Traces is a member of the Conference of Historical Journals. O1 VOLUM E 6 N

"The ideal of democratizing art'1 TRACES

"Arts and Crafts taste predominates"

"Photography as art"

WINTER 1994

_3| Editors' Page MJ The Selridge Pottery of Shortridge High School _«] Utility Embellished by Skilled Robert M. Taylor Jr. Hands :The Arts and Crafts Movement in Indianapolis 30J Liberating the Creative Spirit: Robert M. Taylor Jr. and Barry Shifman China Painters of Indiana Ellen Paul Denker _8J A Magazine "Perilously Fine": Joseph Moore Bowles and 36J The Pictorialism of Modern Art Mary Lyon Taylor Harriet G. Warkel Joan E. Hostetler J2J Truth to Material: l°!The House Beautiful in Janet Payne Bowles, Indianapolis Metalworker Susan Slade Barry Shifman 44J An Aire of Definite Sincerity" UJ Work Worth Doing: Indiana Hickory Furniture Brandt Steele, Ralph Kylloe Designer and Potter 48J Contributors and Barry Shifman Further Reading 22j "Some Special Object": The Arts and Crafts Society of Indianapolis Robert M. Taylor Jr. In a world whose possibilities were just beginning to open up for women, Janet Payne Bowles achieved economic independence and creative fulfillment as a metalworker. E d i t o r s' Page

18 November 1883 at noon, with the fall of Western Unions New York time ball, Standard Railway Time began in America. The Indianapolis Daily Sentinel reported that day on the significance of the event: "The sun Indiana's best writers and artists Movement in Indianapolis." Though is no longer to boss the job. People— made national reputations and, in the articles that follow deal primarily 55,000,000 people—must now eat, some cases, good livings by catering to with Indianapolis, the stories they tell sleep and work, as well as travel by rail- the preferences of this expanding are indicative of what went on in cities road time" By 1918 Standard Railway group with stories, poems, and paint- throughout the Midwest, such as Time had become federal law, and ings that promoted traditional values, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Dayton, ordinary life in America had altered portrayed rustic scenes, and offered Detroit, Cleveland, and Saint Louis. irrevocably. Historian Thomas J. escape from contemporary social con- Schlereth uses standard time in his ditions. While many readers of Traces book Victorian America: Transformations are familiar with the names and works "The SUN is no longer of Everyday Life, 1876-1915 as a symbol of Indiana's Golden Age writers and of of the "growing quantification, regi- the Hoosier Group painters, the names to boss the job. mentation, homogeneity, and stan- of the artists treated in this issue, who dardization that had crept into many worked in the Arts and Crafts aes- PEOPLE— aspects of everyday life by 1915." The thetic, are perhaps less well known. Arts and Crafts movement that started Herein, one will learn about the lives 55,000,000 people— in England, the home of the Industrial and works of such Hoosiers as editor Revolution, and swept through the and publisher Joseph Moore Bowles, must now eat, United States at the turn of the century metalsmith Janet Payne Bowles, potter was a reaction to these forces. and designer Brandt Steele, photog- SLEEP and WORK, Industrialization introduced rapid rapher Mary Lyon Taylor, and many others. All these artists endeavored to changes into all aspects of American as well as travel life, especially in the realms of busi- recapture the integrity and morality of ness and labor, production and con- preindustrial craftsmanship and to RAILROAD sumption. While a few entrepreneurs counter the standardization of mass by time." amassed huge fortunes, ever increasing culture by creating everyday objects numbers of the growing population that combined beauty and utility. The movement was of brief duration, declining as a result of its own inher- experienced the realities of poverty, This issue was conceived and planned ent contradictions and the changing unemployment, child labor, and social by Robert M. Taylor Jr. of the Indiana tastes of postwar America. It survives unrest. By the early years of the new Historical Society and Barry Shifman in the beautiful objects it produced, century, members of a large and influ- of the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Its which are avidly collected today, and ential professional middle class sought publication precedes a number of sig- in the ideal it promoted of the unifica- to turn the clock back by various means. nificant exhibitions on American Arts tion of labor, art, and morality. This Their tastes in literature and art and Crafts that will open at the IMA on ideal retains its currency for the edi- reflected nostalgic longings for sim- 10 April and that are mentioned by tors and designers of Traces. pler and more serene times, and their title in Taylor and Shifman's introduc- homes became sanctified refuges from tory essay, "Utility Embellished by J. KENT CALDER the burdens of progress and civilization. Skilled Hands: The Arts and Crafts Managing Editor

Winter 19 9 4 3 UTLTY m THE ART5 AMD CRAff5 M?VEMtnT IN INDIANAP9LIS ROBERT M. TAYLOR JR. AND BARRY SHIFMAN BY

in mTRACE S BELLISHED SKILLED the Citizens Education Society of Indianapolis sought to further its mission of promoting interest in public schools by sponsoring an Arts and Crafts exhibition at Shortridge

High School. The city claimed that the exhibition was the first Arts and Crafts event in the nation to be connected in any way to public schools. This exhibition and one the following year brought together a dizzying assortment of artwork from professionals, amateurs, and schoolchildren.

Winter 1994 n the 1899 event the Indianapolis News cataloged "paintings in oil and water I color, sketches in ink, pencil and pastel, examples of book-making, wood carving, ceramics, engraving, etching, art glass, grilles, miniatures, plastic decorations, tile, terra

cotta, photography (professional and amateur), wrought iron, embroidery and lace." There were also oriental rugs from L. S. Ayres and Com- would-be artists in Europe and America to reunite labor pany, rare books from Bowen-Merrill, floral decorations and art. Indianapolis artist Richard B. Gruelle expressed from Bertermann, and various architectural renderings of the ideals and social consequences of the Arts and Crafts contemporary and prospective buildings. The work consti- movement in his comments on the 1899 exhibition: "Here tuted for that time a "complete local expression" of Indi- beauty vies with beauty, whether in the time-defying terra anapolis art, which the newspaper dubbed "democratic cotta or wrought-iron or the most delicate and dainty fabri- art." The News went on to describe it as "the art of utility, cations of lace and embroidery, all being a messenger of domestic art, art in the utensils of life, combined with, and beauty and usefulness, all go toward uplifting and making growing out of the artistic the world better, all tend instinct, having its origins _ toward the unfolding of in nature and the art of man's higher creative fac- the easel." ulties, all tend toward mak- Some persons wondered, ing our city truly beautiful no doubt, why anyone in the eyes of the world." should bother to handcraft Wilhelmina Seegmiller, a sterling silver objects, prime mover of art educa- hammer copper decoration in Indianapolis, in- tive items into their dis- formed a broad audience tinctive peened surfaces, of the success of the two shape clay into classic Shortridge exhibitions forms and glaze them with her article in an 1899 matte green, tool leather issue of Brush and Pencil, book covers, or build the "The Arts and Crafts heavy, stark, oak mission Movement in Indianapolis." furniture. Why fritter The Indianapolis exhi- away moments better bitions of 1898 and 1899 spent in efficient produc- 1 culminated a decade of tion of merchandise to u i£ intense interest among meet the world's needs? Indianapolis art enthusi- The bygone notion of The 1899 Shortridge High School Annual asts for the international creative and utilitarian featured this promotion for the second initiative in Arts and design executed by one Arts and Crafts exhibition to he held at the school Crafts. Earlier in the person or a small shop, decade, for example, the though wonderfully romantic, seemed out of place in the Art Association of Indianapolis, founded in 1883, had held new machine age. Yet, it was precisely the haunting fear that an exhibition on William Morris in 1892. The Portfolio machines and the pace of life had robbed society of its Club, established in 1890 to serve as a forum for leading closeness to nature, corrupted its values, and degraded its artists, architects, writers, teachers, and musicians in the standards of beauty that triggered the emergence of the city, began early to expose its members to English decora- Arts and Crafts movement. At a very basic level, the typical tive arts. About the time of the first Arts and Crafts exhibi- industrial worker's experience of contributing only a part tions, Indianapolis High School (named Shortridge in of a mass-produced product, one not personally designed 1898) introduced craftwork such as leather tooling, pottery or completed, opened the door to a revival of handicrafts. throwing, jewelry making, and metalworking to its art cur- The movement drew its ideals from Europe, principally riculum. The manual training movement in the public from England's John Ruskin and William Morris. It embod- schools in the 1890s, most evident in the establishment of ied a return to the individual and utilitarian craftsmanship Manual Training High School, introduced handwork and of the Middle Ages. The Arts and Crafts style invoked a the basics of the Arts and Crafts to children throughout nostalgic refrain while it inspired hundreds of artists and the city. Around the turn of the century the Sketching 10 TRACES The bygone NOTION of creative and utilitarian DESIGN executed

by one person or a small shop, though WONDERFULLY romantic,

seemed OUT OF PLACE in the new machine age.

Club, organized in 1887, launched a series of Arts and teacher, another subject for a Craftsman article, seems a like- Crafts exhibitions. The establishment in 1902 of the John ly prospect for consideration. Richmond's annual art exhi- Herron Art Institute to train professionals helped to bition drew handcrafts from around the state and nation, formalize and give credence to the young movement. The and the city itself fostered an active arts movement. The formation of an Arts and Crafts Society in 1905 further United States Bureau of Labor in 1904 reported on Rich- helped to focus the city's art colony. mond's emphasis on basketry, china decoration, and wood The major goal of the movement, to bring art into every- carving. And, what of the "Arts and Crafts League of Evans- day life, taxed the intellectual and creative powers of its ville" that filed incorporation papers in 1907? Did it ever leaders and eventually proved fulfill its object of cultivating unreachable. The major benefi- and practicing "fine arts" and ciaries of the Arts and Crafts "applied arts and arts crafts"? movement turned out to be This issue of Traces is devoted those artists who acquired com- to the Arts and Crafts move- missions from wealthy clients to ment of the late nineteenth and create one-of-a-kind objects, early twentieth centuries in Indi- craftspeople whose individual- anapolis and vicinity. Harriet ized pieces ranked high aesthet- Warkel provides an overview of ically but carried hefty price the life of editor Joseph Bowles tags, manufacturers who pro- and his influential journal, duced mission-style furniture Modern Art. Barry Shifman con- for retail outlets, and assembly- tributes articles on designer line potteries. Only the wealthy Brandt Steele and silversmith could afford to fill their lives Janet Payne Bowles, and Joan with the best Arts and Crafts Hostetler looks at the pictorialist work. Most people put up with photographer Mary Lyon Taylor. poor imitations. Perhaps only in Robert M. Taylor Jr. writes on school shops did the ideal of the short-lived Indianapolis democratizing art come close to Arts and Crafts Society and on fulfillment. The Arts and Crafts pottery making at Shortridge movement did make lasting con- High School. Ellen Paul Denker tributions. Most clearly, it gen- examines the hobby of china erated a number of artistic painting, while Susan Slade styles that found niches in Brandt Steele drew up this design for a stained looks at the popularity of bun- the chain of art schools, groups, glass window about 1900. galow architecture. Finally, and movements. Ralph Kylloe describes one of Indiana's most abiding industries, that of rustic furniture The Arts and Crafts movement as a statewide phenome- manufacture. non awaits its chronicler and interpreter. For that exercise the writer would want to investigate, for instance, the In April the Indianapolis Museum of Art will open nationally acclaimed pottery and design work of the Over- long-awaited exhibitions featuring a major sampling of beck sisters of Cambridge City. They can be read about in the Arts and Crafts portfolio. The four separate exhibi- Kathleen R. Postle's The Chronicle of the Overbeck Pottery, tions are The Arts & Crafts Metalwork of Janet Payne published by the Indiana Historical Society in 1977. The Bowies', Brandt Steele, Indianapolis Arts & Crafts Designer Quesiana Art Workshop of La Porte, to give another exam- and Potter-, Mary Lyon Taylor: Hoosier Pictorialist; and ple, primarily made furniture and gained prominence by American Arts & Crafts: Virtue in Design, a major exhibi- being featured in the Craftsman, the publication of choice tion on loan from California. The exhibitions, which for devotees of Arts and Crafts. George Bicknell, proprietor complement this issue of Traces, will open to the public of the Cooperative Crafts Shop in Terre Haute and a on 10 April 1994.

Wi nle r i994 7 GENTLE AND BELOVED FIGURE

AMONG THOSE WHO HAVE CARED

FOR THE GRAPHIC ARTS. .

HE TOUCHED THE IDEAS

AND THE TASTE OF MANY

IN A FORMATIVE PERIOD

OF AMERICAN ART.

—Publishers Weekly, 27 JANUARY 1934

JOSEPH MOORE BOWLES and Modern Art 10 TRACES Bowles was motivated to begin an art quarterly, however, by more than "YOUR beautiful magazine his feelings about his lackluster job. A On a visit to Chicago in 1892, he saw a is a wonderfully fine output; collection of original Gothic manuscripts along with books printed at the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith, PERILOUSLY FINE," wrote novelist England. William Morris established Hamlin Garland about Joseph Moore the press in late 1890 to create books Bowles's new Modern Art. Bowles's that would be works of art. According publication ran from 1893 to 1897; to Morris, "A book quite unornamented its design reflected a conscious effort can be positively beautiful . . . the by its creator to produce a journal that page must be easy to read, the type was a work of art in its own right, filled must be well designed and the mar- with "the impress of as much art gins in due proportions to the size of thought as any picture." As a "work of the letters." Drawing inspiration from art" the magazine was in clear opposi- the skilled craftsmen of the Middle tion to the mass-produced periodicals Ages, Kelmscott Press published fifty- of the day. Modern Art quickly became a three beautiful books before closing successful publication with an interna- in 1898, eighteen months after Mor- tional subscription list by the end of ris's death. Bowles recalled how he 1895. It could be purchased in book- "used to buy small Kelmscott volumes, stores in sixteen American cities and in occasionally, direct from Morris by London, Paris, Leipzig, and Florence. mail, enclosing a money order which owles, a man with little expe- cost $1.75; and I would show them to rience in periodical produc- artists and others interested." This tion, but with great insight introduction to Morris's innovative and and determination, was born prestigious private press no doubt in Indianapolis on 1 July influenced Bowles's decision to try his B hand at publishing a magazine. 1866. His father, Thomas H. Bowles, worked as an attorney. His mother, Bowles received additional induce- Kate, was a writer. Young Joseph ment to launch a periodical from dis- showed an early interest in art and cussions with Theodore Clement Steele, spent much of his time drawing. At William Forsyth, and J. Ottis Adams at age twenty-two he operated an art sup- the Portfolio Club. The purpose of the ply store on East Washington Street, club, founded in May 1890, was to and in the early 1890s he began work- unite the artistic, literary, and musical ing at H. Lieber Company as a sales- Joseph M. Bowles, circa 4 890. interests of the community. It was man. The company, founded in Indi- INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART probably at the club that Bowles met anapolis in 1854, sold art supplies as Bruce Rogers, a Lafayette native and well as etchings, engravings, and water- Purdue graduate who later became a colors. Herman Lieber was also a pio- renowned book designer and typogra- neer in the photographic supply busi- Opposite: pher. When they met in the early ness, which he had added to his store The Art Nouveau style found 1890s, Rogers was working as an illus- around 1872. Bowles later recalled, its way onto the cover of trator for the Indianapolis News. He left the newspaper for a brief stay in his however, that the work he did for Modern Art following the hometown and at his brother's resi- Lieber was "dull from the fine art magazine's purchase by Boston standpoint." Needing an outlet for his dence in Kansas before returning to lithographers Louis Prang and creativity, Bowles started his art maga- Indianapolis in 1893. In the capital he zine. Lieber supported the venture by Company in i 895. worked for the Indiana Illustrating furnishing Bowles with handmade INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART Company, where he executed the dec- French charcoal paper at a discount. orations for Botany in Pharmacy, writ- The Indianapolis firm of Carlon and ten by Clermont, Indiana, native John Hollenbeck printed the elaborately Shepard Wright and published by Eli designed periodical. Lilly and Company in 1893. Rogers

Wi titer 19 9 4 9 also designed the title page for Mary E. Steele's Impressions, published in 1893 by the Portfolio Club. THE FIRST ISSUE OF MODERN ART CAME OUT in January 1893. The quarterly, Bowles stated, existed "to give expression to the spirit of the art of to-day, and the majority of the articles in the new magazine will always be written by working artists." Thus, this initial issue contained essays by artists Richard B. Gruelle and T. C. Steele, among others. Steele's article on French Impressionism, along with articles on Jules Cheret's poster art and on modern Dutch masters, set the stage for a discussion of modern art movements, which Bowles pursued in succeeding issues. In addition, Gruelle wrote about the paintings in the distinguished collection of William T. trial printings to William Morris for of all art lies in the handicrafts, a bold Walters of Baltimore. Bowles sent a criticism. Morris returned them with statement coming from an easel painter. copy of the inaugural issue to Walters, his notes in the margins. Bowles liked Bowles's veneration for Morris who asked Gruelle to write a catalog the suggestions and made the appro- showed no bounds. He particularly of his collection of paintings. The priate adjustments. admired the English master's book result was Gruelle's Notes: Critical and ruce Rogers became the regu- designs because they complemented Biographical, which Bowles edited and lar designer and illustrator of the "strength and vitality of a plain, published. In April 1895 Carlon and Modern Art beginning with solid page of his type, and next, in Hollenbeck printed the book in an the second issue in the spring the ever varying and original beauty edition of 981 in the Kelmscott Press of 1893. The collaboration of his 'composition' and 'make-up.'" style, with Walters's permission. Bbetween Bowles and Rogers ushered Modern Art reflected Morris's ideals Bruce Rogers designed the headbands, in a publication that became an even more following its purchase by initials, and title page. Bowles sent important vehicle for the dissemina- the prominent Boston lithographers tion of the Arts and Crafts philosophy. Louis Prang and Company in 1895. At Louis Gibson's article "Decorative that time Bowles moved to Boston and Sculpture," which appeared in the served as editor, and Bruce Rogers spring issue, emphasized the impor- soon joined him as designer of the tance of the artisans, who by executing magazine. The cover now exhibited an their own designs produced complete Art Nouveau style, with simplified and artistic units. Another article by organic forms consisting of leaves and Gibson, titled "Gargoyles," appeared branches arranged in a curvilinear in the autumn 1893 number and sup- pattern. Arthur Wesley Dow, artist, ported the Arts and Crafts principle teacher, and exponent of Japanese art, that decorative sculpture should serve created a poster based on Japanese a useful function. In this case, the gar- principles for Modern Art, which maga- goyles drained the water from the zine subscribers received. roofs of buildings. Despite the Art Nouveau cover < The emerging American Arts and design the Boston version of Modern o as Crafts movement continued to be the Art adhered to Arts and Crafts princi- 3 s focus of the magazine. T. C. Steele's ples: handmade paper with deckle g article "The Mark of the Tool" empha- edges; a rich gray cover with the title < z< sized the importance of the skilled in bold roman letters printed in dark Q craftsperson and declared that the basis reddish-brown; text lettering in bold- 10 TRACES Opposite: Modern Art reflected J. M. Bowles's admiration for William Morris. Bowles's article "William Morris as a Printer: The Kelmscott Press" appeared in the autumn 18 94 issue.

Brandt Steele designed the border for the spring 1894 cover of Modern Art.

Left: A layout from the autumn 1 896 issue of Modern Art, the last one published by Prang.

face; a unified decoration and type; Beardsley from a Japanese Standpoint," art department at McClure's Magazine. no italics, but words underlined with a "The Evolution of Impressionism," From 1903 through 1906 he did liter- heavy rule; paragraphs separated with "French Symbolism: In Poetry and ary work for several major book pub- a tiny Maltese cross in red, or another Painting," and "Secession: The New lishers, including Doubleday, Page and motif; illuminated Gothic initials; and Movement in the Art of Germany" sug- Company. In 1906 he also started an margins imitating Kelmscott Press gest the journal's role of exposing new illustrated monthly titled Art and Life, standards. The advertisements related trends in art. coedited the periodical The Collector to Arts and Crafts, art magazines, Because of ill health, Louis Prang and Art Critic, and gathered around artists, art sellers, and printers. retired from active business, and the him a group of graphic arts devotees While Bowles empha- autumn 1896 issue of Modern Art was who called themselves the Stowaways. sized the designer the last that Prang published. Bowles The following year Bowles began pub- and craftsperson as then turned to Carl H. Heintzemann, lishing the magazine Interior Decoration well as applied and dec- "a lover of the fine print and an art and founded the Forest Press. In 1918 orative arts, he merged patron," who published the winter Dill and Collins published his book all the arts—architecture, graphics, 1897 issue, which was to be the last Some Examples of the Work of American easel painting, and so forth—and issue of Modern Art. Here Bowles wrote Designers. Bowles launched a small treated them equally. He especially optimistically about the future of the leaflet titled Art Events in 1924, but it gave space to "modern art," a period magazine, but he could no longer con- only lasted about one year. Through- term applied to the works of such tinue because, as he recalled "during a out these years he wrote for various art painters as James Abbott McNeill long absence of Mr. Heintzemann in periodicals. Bowles died in Engle: Whistler, Claude Monet, and Aubrey Europe with his hopelessly ill wife, I wood, New Jersey, on 7 January 1934. Beardsley. In 1893 these and other was billed so much for the only issue Joseph Moore Bowles's Modern Art artists were moving away from the printed there that I became alarmed introduced to Indianapolis and its classicism of the French academies and decided to produce no more." environs the state of art around the and toward a style influenced by Bowles apparently stayed with globe and the ideals associated with Japanese prints. The traditionalists in Heintzemann for several more years, the burgeoning Arts and Crafts move- the academies loudly objected to the during which time he published, in ment. The magazine arrived at a new abstract quality of flatness rather 1901, his rarest volume, a version of time—in the late nineteenth century than depth and to the emphasis on the Second Epistle of John, illuminated —when mass-produced publications pattern and design. Modern Art created by his wife, the celebrated metalsmith began flooding the market. Its appear- a forum for the display and discussion Janet Payne Bowles, and limited to fif- ance and success proved that a hand- of these innovations. Such articles as teen parchment and fifty handmade crafted, skillfully designed magazine "Exposition Mary Cassatt," "Aubrey paper copies. In 1902 he managed the could still be appreciated.

Winter 199 4 JANET PAYNE BOWLES, Metalworker TRUTH TO THE SOUND OFMETA L Janet Payne was born in Indianapolis on 29 June 1872 or being hammered into graceful 1873. She graduated in 1890 from and serviceable objects struck Indianapolis High School (later Janet Payne Bowles as symphonic renamed Shortridge High School], that day in Boston when she where she displayed a special happened upon a Russian silver- interest in music. In addition to smith whom she persuaded to teach English classes taught by Charity her the fundamentals of his craft. Dye, Payne also took art courses The story she told often: "One under Roda Selleck and studied day I was walking along and piano with Clarence Forsyth, a heard an orchestral tone which composer and teacher who founded was the most beautiful thing I the Indianapolis School of Music. had ever heard. I traced it to a Janet married Joseph Moore basement room and found a young Bowles in October 1895 and Russian metalworker. ... I stayed moved with him to Boston, where and helped and watched. We made he continued to edit Modern a bargain—I was to teach him Art, the magazine he had begun psychology and he would teach me in Indianapolis in 1893. While metalsmithing." Payne Bowles, her husband was busy with the a Radcliffe psychology student journal, Janet pursued her own taking courses with philosopher interests, which besides classes William James, thereupon changed in psychologyBARRY andSHIFMAN philosophy, the course of her life and became a metalsmith and jeweler. 10 10 TRACES Jewelry by Janet Payne Bowles, perhaps displayed at the third annual exhibition of the National Society of Craftsmen, New York, December i 909.

INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART, PAYNE BOWLES ARCHIVES

"Sacred Tears" chalice. The composition of this chalice,

In her metalwork, such as with its contrast between the this spoon, Janet Payne smooth surface of the cup Bowles strove to and the intricate detail express "the of the base, reflects universal and Danish silversmith the eternal," Georg Jensen's two of her influence on favorite Payne Bowles.

INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM subjects. OF ART, GIFT OF JAN AND MIRA BOWLES IN MEMORY OF THEIR MOTHER, INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM JANET PAYNE BOWLES OF ART, GIFT OF JAN AND MIRA BOWLES IN MEMORY OF THEIR MOTHER, JANET PAYNE BOWLES included wandering the wharves and wholesale districts. incense burners, rings, and spoons. Of perhaps equal con- There she met her Russian mentor. sequence, Clarke introduced her to art patrons in New Payne Bowles also set up a small studio in her own home York, none more important than the eminent financier to create book illuminations and metalwork. She described J. Pierpont Morgan. "The vital art of goldsmithing of the her early training: ancients has come up like a lost river in America in Janet Payne Bowles," Clarke grandiloquently wrote Morgan by From that time on I kept at it, working in every sort of shop that way of introducing Janet. For four years (1909-13), Janet would give me a wider training. I even paid for the privilege of recalled, "I worked on nothing but pieces for his collection. working in one shop, where they refused to employ me because I He was a connoisseur on handwrought jewelry and service was an apprentice in the trade. I went to a foundry and learned the and all I did was the work itself, for he furnished all the processes used there, and I served an apprenticeship in a manufac- gold and jewels. Of course, for my usual orders I had to turing jeweler's shop. 1 studied stone cutting as well as metallurgy, obtain the gold from an assayist in the sheet and buy the and, of course, I always studied design. gems in the rough, cutting them myself." The Indianapolis News in 1913 reported that Morgan "was interested in the She also busied herself writing book reviews for development of design historically, encouraging new and Modern Art and decorating totally different impulses in motif." books published by her hus- This focus and Morgan's ability to band, including the Second judge crafted jewelry critically no Epistle of John. After the demise doubt served to bond the artist and the of Modern Art the Bowleses moved to banker. In September 1914 the Short- Rye, New York, in 1902, where Joseph ridge Daily Echo reported that "Mrs. managed the art department at Janet P. Bowles, of the metal depart- McClure's Magazine. In the same year, a ment, filled an interesting order for daughter, Mira, was born; a son, Jan, the late Pierpont Morgan. It was a set was born two years later, in 1904. Dur- of gold spoons uniform in size but ing her years in New York, Janet contin- each different in design and set with ued her schooling. She studied ancient different combinations of stones pro- Egyptian, Greek, and Asian metalwork, ducing a range of color effect through- and she attended lectures in psychol- out the set." ogy given by John Dewey at Columbia Payne Bowles won the Spencer Trask University. During these years she also Award from the National Society of wrote for the Craftsman, Gustav Stick- Craftsmen about 1909, possibly as a ley's influential Arts and Crafts jour- result of her display of jewelry and nal, and completed the manuscript of a metalwork in the third annual exhibi- novel, Gossamer to Steel, which was pub- tion sponsored by that organization in lished in 1917. December 1909 in New York City. Trask, In November 1906 the family moved a prominent Wall Street banker, served In illuminating the to Helicon Hall, Upton Sinclair's as president of the National Society experiment in communal living at Second Epistle of John, of Craftsmen and chairman of the Englewood, New Jersey. The commu- Payne Bowles used National Arts Club. Payne Bowles exhibited at the National Society of Crafts- nity offered artists and intellectuals Celtic inspired images, relief from domestic chores and from men meeting the following year also. seen here in the flat patterned New York City rents. The Bowleses The artist's growing reputation for enjoyed the stimulating life at Helicon arrangement of wormlike creating the unusual from fine metals Hall until the building caught fire on creatures and birds. It was the extended to the glamorous world of 16 March 1907. According to a New spirituality of Celtic art that the theater. The celebrated stage York Times report, Janet and Joseph had actress Maude Adams, for her role as attracted the artisan. their faces and hands burned while Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like escaping the blaze. Apparently, how- It, wore a collection of jewelry made by ever, the near tragedy had no lasting physical effects. Payne Bowles and commissioned by painter and theatrical Back in New York City after the fire, Janet made the designer John Alexander. The carved silver items, set with acquaintance of Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, director of the green onyx stones, consisted of a four-piece front buckle, a Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1905 to 1910. Over time, back and shoulder buckle, and a cap ornament, together Clarke purchased a number of Janet's creations, including a with chain pendant ornaments, a curtal ax set with green cross, a silver and gold reliquary, two silver and gold onyx, and a boar spear with steel blade. The work con- 10 10 TRACES sumed considerable amounts of time but brought Payne Workmanship Guild, made up of students from the high Bowles name recognition that helped to bring her numer- school's Art Metal Department whom Payne Bowles ous prizes and commissions. thought skillful and honest of purpose. In 1912 Janet separated from her husband, Joseph, and As for herself, Payne Bowles regularly displayed her returned with her two children to Indianapolis. She began jewelry and metalwork at the annual exhibition of teaching metalwork and jewelry at Shortridge High School, works by Indiana artists and craftsmen held at a position she held for the next three decades. The India- Herron. After 1911 "Applied Arts," which meant napolis to which she returned had experienced much activ- the yield from the Arts and Crafts field (jewelry ity in the Arts and Crafts since her departure seventeen and metalwork, textiles, leather, stained glass, pottery, years earlier, including the establishment of the John Herron ceramic decoration, wood carving, and book design), Art Institute. Roda Selleck had introduced art metalwork to were displayed in a separate section of the exhibition. Shortridge in the late 1890s. In 1908 Harry E. Wood, then She also exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the head of the Art Metal Department at Shortridge, offered Indiana State Fair, the Genthe Studios and the Art Center the first class in jewelry making in an Indiana public in New York City, and at a number of places in Europe. school. Within a year after her arrival, Payne Bowles After the death of Roda Selleck in 1924, she taught the offered an advanced class in art metal, which enrolled forty- pottery classes at Shortridge. two students by the spring of 1914. Payne Bowles was as active in the Most students took her classes as last years of her life as she was in electives, but a few sought metalwork- the first years. A member of the ing careers. Organizing the metal Portfolio Club from 1894 until her course into the elements of design, death, she regularly held the office construction, and art appreciation, of vice president of the club. Dur- Payne Bowles managed to combine ing the 1920s she frequently spoke education with vocational training. there on such topics as "Work Shop Girls and boys produced boxes, carv- and the Eternities" (1920), "On ing sets, hammered bowls, bill clips, Some People I Have Met" (1924), jewelry, swords, bayonets, door knock- and "A Goldsmith Wends" (1929). ers, bronze bells, and paper knives She worshiped at All Souls Unitar- that were replicas of Oriental knives ian Church and belonged to such and daggers. Students often created organizations as the Woman's Poetry ten to fifteen projects per year, and Club and the Woman's Rotary Club. each year the work became more chal- Because of ill health, Janet Payne Janet Payne Bowles was able to lenging. Advanced students worked in Bowles retired in June 1942 from gold and fashioned copper objects on fund her daughter Mira's college teaching at Shortridge High School. an anvil. Payne Bowles also instituted education with money from the She died in 1948. Her son and a predental course, which included sale of silver chalices and other daughter inherited the bulk of the discussion of the process of filling estate, including more than 120 ecclesiastical commissions, teeth and soldering. pieces of metalwork. In 1968 they The students had plenty of opportu- such as this reliquary. presented all these objects to the nities to display their art in Indianapo- John Herron Art Institute (later lis and beyond. The superior status of the products emanat- renamed the Indianapolis Museum of Art). ing from Payne Bowles's classes can be measured not only Janet Payne Bowles and other individuals made their by the professional judging of them in local exhibitions but marks on the art community of Indianapolis and con- by the acceptance of these creations in New York City. tributed to keeping the midwestern city an active partici- Annually, art metalwork from Shortridge stood alongside pant in the Arts and Crafts movement. Important advances that from such institutions as Pratt Institute, Columbia Uni- in the American version of Arts and Crafts ideology, aes- versity, Peter Cooper Union, Rhode Island School of thetic, and philosophy came about because of her approach Design, and the Art Institute of Chicago in an exhibition at to her craft. She lived and worked according to the precepts R. L. Gorham's Fifth Avenue Gallery. of English Arts and Crafts thinking established earlier by Payne Bowles and a group of students formed the Art William Morris. She took up the Arts and Crafts cause with Appreciation Club in 1920. Members usually met at the a determination; her jewelry and handcrafted metalwork John Herron Art Institute for lectures by Payne Bowles and showed a truth to material and gave pleasure to the creator. others. Occasionally the club sponsored a trip to downtown There is an inherent spirituality to her metalwork. Today Indianapolis to determine "if beauty [was] developing in we can still appreciate her creative imagination, dedication commercial life." In 1927 Payne Bowles also founded the as a teacher, and inspiring and uplifting life.

Wi nter l9 9 4 15 BARRY

BRANDT STEELE,

the 'Life of William Morris' I found a sentence that has been my guide all my life as well as the lives of many others. Here it is—'it is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which should be worth doing and be itself pleasant to do,- and which should be done under such

Brandt Steele in 1902. conditions as would make it neither overwearisome nor overanxious.'"

16 PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE HEIRS OF BRANDT T. STEELE AND THE INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED TRACES S HI F M A N

DESIGNER AND POTTER

So said Rembrandt Theodore Steele, son of the well-known Hoosier artist Design for a beer stein, Theodore C. Steele and his wife Mary Elizabeth Lakin Steele. Born in Battle Creek, about 1 898, Michigan, on 16 November 1870, Brandt Steele came to Indianapolis with his family in in watercolor 1873. At home Brandt and his sister, Margaret, often interacted with artists, craftspeople, and ink. teachers, writers, and musicians. The young Steele was influenced by his mother's love and knowledge of nature, and botany would be a lifelong interest for him.

Winter 19 9 4 Brandt Steele held an important place in Indianapolis during the first decades of this century. He was probably the city's most active designer working in the Arts and Crafts aesthetic. Besides teaching at the John Herron Art Institute, he was an art potter and designer of stained glass, interiors, and metalwork. By studying for several years in Paris and Munich, Steele absorbed contemporary European taste. He combined aspects of the French Art Nouveau style, German Jugendstil (style of youth), and English Arts and Crafts to create his own American vision. When his family moved to Munich in 1880, Steele came under the influence of German culture, language, and scenery. Because of these childhood years abroad and his study in Bavaria between 1895 and 1897, Steele reflected his love of Ger- many in his design work. Upon the family's return to Indianapolis in May 1885, he attended Indianapolis High Steele became a disciple of Morris School and graduated four years later. and undertook a career as a designer Joseph Moore Bowles, Bruce Rogers, working in the Arts and Crafts mode. "It is right and and Carl H. Lieber all exerted a pro- His goal was to have a career in archi- found influence on the young Steele. tecture and design. To this end he necessary that all men Of course, his parents also contrib- worked at the Indianapolis Terra Cotta uted to his education and outlook on Company, specializing in the creation should have WORK to life. His closest friend was Lieber, a of architectural and ornamental terra- member of a German family who cotta. Steele felt he needed further do which should be owned the H. Lieber Company, a fine education in architecture, so in the evenings he attended the Gewerbe- arts store and gallery well known in WORTH DOING and be the city. Meeting at the Portfolio schide, a private industrial training Club, Steele's group of lively friends school that became public in 1895 and discussed Morris, the Arts and Crafts would eventually be called Manual itself PLEASANT to do." Training High School. He took courses aesthetic, and other art-related top- in engineering, drafting, modeling, ics. Morris's book News from Nowhere, drawing, and geometry. Moreover, in published in 1890, made a strong order to acquire additional architec- impact on the budding artist. Accord- tural training, Steele sought employ- ing to Steele: ment with a number of Indianapolis architects. Those he worked for included The reading of this book and the subse- Bernard Vonnegut and Arthur Bohn, quent recital of a quotation from the same John Stem, Henry Hendrickson, and author made a profound impression upon Louis Gibson. While under contract me . . . made me decide then and there to with Gibson he helped design the give up being a great scientist. ... It was exterior ornamentation for the Manu- only after I had become really more factures and Liberal Arts Building at acquainted with my father and a friend by the World's Columbian Exposition of the name of Joe Bowles, that I found the 1895 in Chicago. goal I was looking for. 10 TRACES Left: Wall elevation, about 1900, in watercolor and ink.

Below, left: Three earthenware vases by Brandt Steele, about 1900.

Below, right: Iron candelabrum, about 1902.

he met the distinguished ceramist Steele clearly was familiar with the William De Morgan, discussed schools most current taste in France. with him, and visited Kelmscott House Steele went to Munich around with hopes of meeting William Morris. 1895 to continue his art educa- Upon arriving in Paris, Steele attended tion. At that time the German the Ecole Normale d'Enseignement du Art Nouveau style of decoration, Dessin (Normal School of Design known as Jugendstil (a variation Teaching), founded in 1881, which of the English Arts and Crafts style and MacMonnies had selected for him. the French Art Nouveau aesthetic) was Steele studied under Eugene Grasset, popular in Munich. Well aware of this, who was head of the program in deco- Steele was eager to participate in the rative composition. Grasset designed activities of the lively and cosmopolitan posters, furniture, stained glass, jewelry, city. Some of the leading artists included and interiors, among other things. Bernhard Pankok, August Endell, and Steele also studied at the Academie Richard Riemerschmid, who created Julian, the most popular and success- masterpieces in architecture, furniture, ful commercial academy in Paris, at and metalwork. Steele settled in the the Academie Colarossi, a private village of Schleissheim, where he had school in Montparnasse, and at the Uni- lived as a youth and where he would be Steele's father, T. C. Steele, the sculp- versity of Paris. He quickly absorbed among old friends. Sometime in about tor Frederick William MacMonnies, the Parisian Art Nouveau style, and it 1896 Steele was said to have studied and Gibson all felt the young student appeared in his work thereafter. with Riemerschmid, one of the most distinguished European architects and should study art in Paris for a number Since his days at work for the Indi- designers. He therefore acquired a taste of years. Brandt Steele was excited anapolis Terra Cotta Company in Indi- for German architecture, furniture, about the prospect of studying abroad anapolis, Steele had wanted to pursue metalwork, and glass. but wanted to explore England for his interest in ceramic production. possible schools, too. It was during this One of the elements of the Ecole Normale During his stay in Munich, Steele period that he created several designs d'Enseignement du Dessin was the study entered a competition to design a beer for Bowles's Modern Art, such as a dec- of a related craft. For brief periods in stein symbolic of the city. The stein, orative border and the initial "I" for 1894 and 1895 he worked at a pottery showing the Munich skyline dominated the spring 1894 issue. in Brolles, making ceramic vessels and by the great Frauenkirche with its twin On his way to France in 1894, Steele clay pipes. During his visit to France, towers, won first prize and was soon stopped briefly in England, where Steele also became acquainted with produced commercially. When Steele the work of Clement Massier, who had returned to Indianapolis in 1897 his in the early 1880s established his own metalwork showed German influence. workshop in Golfe-Juan where he per- For example, a wrought iron candle- fected the technique of lustre decora- stick he designed between 1902 and tion. Besides Massier, Steele was aware 1905 showed similarities to some of of the reputation of Jean Carries, Riemerschmid's pieces. Furthermore, founder of the modern method of pot- Steele looked to a number of contem- tery manufacture. One of the most porary German publications, such as important Art Nouveau potters work- Kunst und Handiverk (Art and Craft), for ing in France, Carries is especially additional inspiration. known for his ceramics in the style of Steele worked in both the French Japanese rustic pottery. Two other cele- and German traditions. In 1898 he brated French Art Nouveau potters designed stained glass doors for the that Steele knew of were Adrien-Pierre interior of his father's newly purchased Dalpayrat and Auguste Delaherche. house, later named the Hermitage, in

Winter 1 9 9 4 19 Brookville, Indiana. The building was used as a studio by both T. C. Steele and J. Ottis Adams. The stained glass for the project, as well as for many others by Brandt Steele, is thought to have been executed by Ulysses Grant Cassady of Indianapolis. At the large art exhibition, called the First Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts, held in 1898 at Short- ridge High School, Steele displayed designs for bookbindings, ceramics, and metalwork, as well as examples of his pottery. The following year he showed additional selections of pottery. His work was clearly inspired by French Art Nouveau ceramics, remi- niscent of rustic Japanese stoneware and drip glazes. During this period Steele organized the Brandt Steele Pottery on Shelby Street. Unfortu- nately, a fire in the kiln went out of control and destroyed everything. In 1901 the artist designed the wrought iron gate at the southwest entrance to Crown Hill Cemetery. He established the Indiana Ornamental Iron Work in 1902 in order to create his designs in metal. Later that year, and in 1903, Steele displayed some of these new designs, including gold frames, candlesticks, and a paper knife, at the annual exhibition of the Richmond Art Asso- ciation. Some of his metalwork could also be seen at the Seventh Annual Exhibition of the Society of Western Artists, which was presented at the John Herron Art Institute in 1903. In 1902 Steele married Helen Eliza- lectures on topics such as "History of East Drive in Woodruff Place. The beth McKay, daughter of Horace Ornament" and the "Origin and Devel- design of the house departs markedly McKay and Martha Nicholson opment of Decorative Forms." from that of the other houses built at McKay, leading members of the From about 1902 Steele, who formed the time. It includes an applied half- artistic and intellectual circles in his own architectural practice, designed timber and stucco facade, while the Indianapolis. Helen McKay had stud- stained glass windows and interiors Arts and Crafts taste predominates in ied at the Art Institute of Chicago and for, among others, several members of the interior design. Most important, often exhibited her work and taught the Lieber family. By its active patron- stained glass throughout the house children's classes at Herron. age of Steele, the Lieber family played reflects Steele's love of nature. It is Like his wife, Steele was a teacher an important role in the expansion of here, too, that his acceptance of the and lecturer of design at Herron. He the Arts and Crafts movement in the philosophical concepts of Morris is taught a design course called "Modern city. Herman P. Lieber's house, created most evident. Ornament" from 1902 until 1909. The about 1909, shows Steele's use of Among Steele's possessions are jour- subjects discussed included enamels, stained glass windows throughout the nals such as Kunst und HancLwerk, metalwork, illuminations, wallpaper entire building. • Modern British Domestic Architecture and and textiles, leather, and interior deco- One of the most unusual houses cre- Decoration, Das Interieur (The Interior), ration. Other activities by Steele at ated in Indianapolis at the turn of the and The Studio. These periodicals illus- Herron included lectures or series of century was Steele's own residence on trated examples of the latest artistic 10 TRACES Above: Brandt Steele residence designed and executed in 1 904.

Top right: Brandt Steele displayed this pottery at the X o 5 Second Exhibition of Arts and Crafts, Shortridge High School, X Indianapolis, 14 through 22 April 1 899.

Lower right: Steele designed the principal's office of photography. He joined the India- School No. 45, 2 3d and Park Avenue, Indianapolis. napolis Camera Club, one of the The plan was executed about 191 0. most important organizations of its kind in the country, when it was Opposite, top: Design for stained glass windows for the founded in 1928. He exhibited at the First Invitational Club Exhibit of Pic- Herman P. Lieber home, Indianapolis, about 1909, torial Photograph held at the John in graphite, ink, and watercolor. Herron Art Institute in 1934. His photographs also appeared in exhi- Opposite, below: Design for a cabinet for the Robert Lieber home, bitions elsewhere in the United about 1905, in watercolor and ink. States, as well as in South America and Japan. Throughout his life, Steele was trends in England, Scotland, Germany, between 1913 and 1914. Again, the win- always busy. He renewed his interest in and Austria. Steele especially valued dows clearly reflect Steele's use of pottery making and around 1945 the interiors and furniture designed by forms derived from nature. shared his hobby with Kurt Vonnegut M. H. Baillie Scott and Charles Voysey rom about 1910 until 1930, Sr., a longtime friend. He remained as well as works by Charles Rennie Steele worked in the design de- active with both the Camera Club and Mackintosh in Scotland, among others. partment at H. Lieber Company. the Portfolio Club until his death at In late 1905 Brandt, as vice president There he created catalog covers, the age of ninety-four in March 1965. of the Arts and Crafts Society of Indi- moldings, picture frames, man- anapolis, designed the interior of the Ftelpieces, and mirrors. The company, The author is indebted to Theodore L. craft shop at the society's new home established in 1854, was a large art- Steele and Elizabeth Steele Creveling who on East Ohio Street. Some five years related establishment that also had gave free access to the work of Brandt Steele later, he designed the interior, book- artists' materials, photographic sup- in their possession. Moreover, they always cases, and stained glass windows for plies, and manufactured picture were available for consultation and the principal's office at School No. 45 frames and moldings. Because of ill answered many questions about Brandt at the corner of 15th Street (now 23d health, however, Steele only worked Steele. Both read the manuscript and made Street) and Park Avenue. Steele later part-time after 1925. many helpful comments. The author also designed the stained glass for All Souls Upon retiring from work, Steele thanks Thomas Lakin Creveling for his assis- Unitarian Church in Indianapolis, built renewed his long-standing interest in tance on this article.

Winter <994 21

OBJECT"SOME S P E C I A L

THE ARTS AND CRAFTS things is because they have the mis- FAITHFUL CHERISHED THE taken idea that all hand-made ideal of producing the finest in things are artistic." Maintaining the handmade items. Thus they were movement's intrinsic values and dismayed at witnessing the debase- minimizing the inevitable counter- ment of that ideal. Using machines, feiting of items fell to organizations manufacturers copied handmade of craftspeople who taught, created, articles with unfortunate conse- and displayed the best the move- quences. Warner Carr, of Manual ment had to offer. Training High School, observed The skilled workers and devotees such a sham in a local business. "In of the movement organized soci- one window I saw a hammered eties in most of the country's major brass tray that occupied a promi- cities. The Society of Arts and nent position. It was really muti- Crafts of Boston, founded in 1897, lated by dents in imitation of the led the way, followed in a few hammer marks of a skilled work- months by the Chicago Arts and man, but I could tell at a glance that Crafts Society. Within fifteen years it was machine made. Instead of some sixty associations had been imitating well a hand-wrought formed with thirty-seven of these surface, it looked like a bad case of belonging to the National League of measles." His keen eye noticed on Arts and Crafts. Although the Amer- the street another violation of ican Art Annual for 1899 listed an quality craftsmanship, but one that Arts and Crafts Society in Indi- had nothing to do with machines: anapolis, no corroborative evidence "Not long ago a young lady attracted has been found to confirm its exis- much attention in the downtown tence. In 1905, however, Indianapo- streets, by the unusual size of her lis definitely joined the national breastpin of hammered copper, trend, but then for less than one year. with the customary green daubed The brief life and meager legacy of liberally over it. It appeared so an organization that should have ancient and unwieldy as to resemble been the cornerstone of the local a piece of armor, cast off by some movement calls for explanation. prehistoric chieftain. Of course Robert M. One newspaper item specified such work is far from beautiful. The the origins of the Indianapolis orga- only reason why people wear such TAYLOR JR. nization in the exhibitions given by

Wi nte r i 9 9 4 23 10 the Sketching Club of Indianapolis. Several stories men- tions including articles, in all branches of handicraft, of tioned Minnie M. Fay, wife of realtor Henry H. Fay, as "orig- special artistic merit and excellence in design and work- inator of the organization." A vigorous patron of the arts, manship," articles, it might be added, that had a useful Minnie Fay was one of eleven people who made up the function. Beauty without usefulness held little merit for membership of the Arts and Crafts Society of Indianapolis Arts and Crafts organizers. As Minnie Fay is reported to on 14 June 1905 at the filing of the incorporation papers. have said: "Few people not directly interested in the work Besides Minnie Fay, the charter members included noted seem to understand the object of the society and the real architect Robert Frost and fundamental basis Daggett; Roda E. Sell- of arts and crafts eck, Shortridge High work. All work done School art teacher; "Few people not directly INTERESTED under this society must businessman Howard have some special M. Talbot; Rudolph in the work seem to understand the object. Nothing is Schwarz, monument good that is merely designer and sculptor; OBJECT of the society and the real decorative without artist T. C. Steele; consideration of form, Alfred B. Lyon, de- and fundamental BASIS of and use of the object, signer for H. Lieber in fact, nothing is Company; artist and arts and crafts work. good decoration that designer Brandt Steele; has not some special painter John Ottis object." Wanting the Adams; playwright and All work done under this society society to tolerate only journalist William articles combining Oscar Bates; and cabi- must have some SPECIAL OBJECT. good form and utility, netmaker Charles L. she also desired it to Kiefer. The board of Nothing is good that is merely be more "democratic" directors named in the than the Boston Soci- incorporation papers DECORATIVE without consideration ety, which had mem- included Minnie Fay, bership levels based Talbot, Daggett, of form, and use oj the object, on artistic proficiency. Schwarz, Kiefer, Bates, The city's first and Brandt Steele, as in fact, NOTHING is good decoration organized handicraft well as attorney Frank movement, grounded H. Blackledge, art in Arts and Crafts phi- glass designer and that has not some special object." losophy, could have manufacturer Ulysses - remained largely in- Grant Cassady, former distinct and unsettled, director of the Art Association Thomas E. Hibben, painter offering show-and-tell meetings at public halls or at offi- Otto Stark, and clubwoman Frances Maclntire Ross. cers' homes. The members' intention from the start, how- he evening of the filing of the incorporation ever, was to locate and maintain a permanent exhibition papers, a meeting of interested people con- and sales room modeled on the Boston guild. To this end, vened at the East New York Street residence it leased the old Mansur home at 21 East Ohio Street, of Blackledge and his jewelry-designer wife across from the Federal Building. Mary Elder to elect officers for the new asso- The society opened its shop doors 21 November 1905 ciation. Hibben assumed the president's with the civic elite, including Mrs. Charles W. Fairbanks and Toffice. Bates took up the second chair; Minnie Fay became Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, serving as hostesses for the first secretary; and Frank Blackledge took charge of the trea- two days. Upon entering, visitors saw first the work of sury. Committee appointees included artists Stark and Brandt Steele, who directed the remodeling of the two William Forsyth, iron and steel producer Hugh Richards, shop rooms. He sectioned the first room's lower walls in a Ross, Daggett, Talbot, the Blackledges, and Cassady. Shortly "soft wood brown" divided by burlap covering and gave the after this initial meeting Brandt Steele joined the list of oak woodwork a gray finish. The same wood lined the ceil- officers as second vice president. ing and the leaded glass cabinets. Steele decorated the sec- Incorporated 16 June 1905 and capitalized at $10,000, the ond room in soft green and draped the walls with fishnet. organization stated its purpose as "the buying and selling The two rooms, opening onto one another, were filled of merchandise and the conducting of mercantile opera- with items representing many branches of the craftsman

TRACES Wilhelmina Seegmiller portrayed examples of six of America's leading art potteries in her Applied Arts Drawing Book. The caption reads.- "The vase to the front is Markham, the one to the hack, Rookivood. The other four, beginning at the left, are Van Briggle, Newcombe, Gruebe, and Teco." art in Indiana and from around the globe, most for sale pany, which displayed "craftsmen's articles in their win- with the remainder on loan. Prominent Hoosier artist T. C. dows, such as Rookwood pottery, Tiffany ware and copper Steele presented a painting, which hung over the fireplace articles." The West Market Street shops were perhaps small in the first room. The fireplace tiles complemented the individual studios that exhibited and sold goods. This high room's decor. A plate rail around the room formed a rack level of activity seemed to fulfill the wishes of Minnie Fay, for displays. A cabinet held hand- who managed the East Ohio Street wrought jewelry by Cleveland artists marketplace, "to teach the people of Jane Carson and Frances Barnum. Mrs. Indianapolis what real arts and crafts Mott-Smith of San Francisco exhibited work is and why it is good, and ... to her jewelry. On an old table stood a make the shops a rallying point, as it book of prints, pottery, candlesticks, were, for all sympathetic workers." and bayberry candles. Other parts of The officers moved quickly to estab- the two rooms featured Japanese wind- lish their Arts and Crafts Society as bells, a hand-carved ivory chess set the all-purpose handicraft organiza- with a price tag of four hundred dol- tion. By February 1906 they had begun lars, a Japanese cabinet and artificial a series of evening lectures on various flowers, and an old spinet. Anna Has- aspects of the Arts and Crafts move- selman and Margaret Steele Neubacher ment, beginning with a paper read by displayed bookplates and illuminated Mrs. Robert Bennett on William Mor- texts. Miniature portraits by Bessie ris. Louis A. Bacon, director of manual Whittridge lay about. Painted ceramics training in the city grade schools, gave included dinner plates and vases deco- a lecture in April on woods and wood rated by Mrs. Charles F. Palmer and construction. Besides the lecture Mrs. A. L. Orndorff. Hasselman, Rena series, in mid-April the directors Tucker, and Virginia Keep exhibited opened a tearoom in the rear of the small paintings. Art pottery included building. Mrs. Clarence Stanley, then Markham, Teco, Newcomb College, president of the society, executed the and Van Briggle. Helene Hibben set murals around the room. The 27 April out her miniature modeled heads. Indianapolis Star carried this descrip- Blanche Budd from Chicago brought her bronze candle- tion: "The walls are tinted a warm brown, with delicate yellow ceiling, and the windows are curtained with half sticks and bookracks. Jarvie brass and copper candlesticks draperies of yellow silk. On the high window shelf pots of competed for space with Edward Buchorn's copper work red geraniums bloom, adding the needful touch of bright and DeCordova blown crystal glassware. Textiles in the color. The plate rail displays a choice collection of old brass form of embroideries were abundant. Among the Irish lace candlesticks and pewter ware." could be seen the work of Mary Williamson, an ex-Hoosier living in California, and other textiles executed by M. M. Visitors to the tearoom and lectures in April could view Finch. However, the great majority came an exhibit of pottery borrowed from well- from the skilled hands of Mrs. J. H. Mur- known designers throughout the country. A banner advertises the grand phy, who had her embroidery studio on Pieces included work by such firms as the second floor of the building. Murphy opening of the Arts and Crafts Markham, Grueby, Teco, Van Briggle, was well known in the city as a medal win- Society's sales and show rooms.. Webb, and the Moravian potteries. The ner at the 1904 Saint Louis World's Fair for newspapers valued the collection at eight her textile work. hundred dollars. Among the local contrib- he city teemed, so it ap- utors of less critically acclaimed pottery peared, with Arts and Crafts were Mrs. Orndorff, Mrs. Stanley, and production and exhibitions. Mrs. W. S. Day. The Manual Training High Sales spurted after the spring lectures, School Mirror in December exhibits, and tearoom opening. The June 1905 called readers' atten- sales increased 20 percent from April's Ttion not only to the newly opened Arts and receipts, and the tearoom reportedly Crafts Society rooms on East Ohio Street became self-supporting in its second but also to the "shops- of the Arts and month of operation. In July the society Crafts Societies of Indianapolis on West reported that almost 700 articles had been Market Street" and to the art departments sold. It signed up some 150 consignees, of L. S. Ay res and Charles Mayer and Com- s including high school students from 10 TRACES Manual and Shortridge and artists throughout the state. furniture. No doubt the society could not rival the down- The shops had received a number of orders for special town department and furniture stores in price or' in range designs in jewelry, iron, metal, leather, and bookbinding, of offerings. and the directors had ideas about establishing an interior The high prices charged for the handmade items also decorating component. contributed to the uneven competition and the eventual With all this success patrons must have closing of the East Ohio Street shop. The society may have expressed surprise when the society outpriced itself. One of the ironies of the Arts and Crafts announced the shop would be closed movement was that its propensity to show only the best of from 1 August until mid-September or craftwork and assign high prices was contrary to its inten- early October 1906. Ostensibly, the need tion of uplifting the lives of common people. Indianapolis's to restock the shop led to the suspension of society boasted of turning down some two hundred pieces operations. Newspapers glowingly anticipated the shop's its review board considered less desirable. The problem may reopening and praised organizers' plans to rent out three have been that not enough people could afford to shop at additional rooms in the building as artist stu- the society's headquarters. dios. "Many persons," the Indianapolis News Perhaps the central reason for the society's reported, "have announced their intention of demise, however, rests with the opening of joining the society and helping encourage the the John Herron Art Institute's new museum art workers of the city and State." building in November 1906. The museum had Those intending to join the society, how- been part of the school's plan when it was ever, never had the chance because the shop founded in 1902. Once the new building failed to reopen. In fact, nothing was said opened, the institute attracted the city's best about the shop in the newspapers after 31 July artists and teachers, and it exhibited not only 1906 until an announcement on 14 October paintings but also Arts and Crafts products, that the rooms formerly occupied by the Arts and Crafts replacing the society as the major focus of area artisans. Society at 21 East Ohio Street had become the quarters of The institutionalization of the city's professional arts the Indianapolis Social Institute. Brandt Steele filed a cor- and crafts activity further restricted the movement's aim to poration report with the state in 1908 in which he wrote, disseminate its ideals. The society, through its East Ohio "Society was abandoned in the fall of 1906 Street headquarters, tried to epitomize Arts and has done no business since." and Crafts ideals, but came up short. Its cre- The Arts and Crafts Society Although one cannot know definitely ations, to a degree, combined the beautiful of Indianapolis hoped its what prompted the apparently prospering and the useful, or as the Shortridge Daily Echo society to call it quits, failure probably can exhibition and sales rooms put it, the members did "a common thing be attributed to a lack of money rather than in its rented home on uncommonly well." Nonetheless, the nostal- a lack of interest. Revenue from product East Ohio Street would gia for a preindustrial era and its hand- sales and other society attractions might not prove to be a rallying point wrought items did not translate into an art have met expectations. Factors contributing for all people to enjoy. What the average for all sympathetic to this imaginable condition include the sug- citizen could buy happened to be the imita- to the Arts and Crafts gestion, first, that the art community of Indi- tion Arts and Crafts wares marketed in anapolis and environs favored painters, such movement. A display of practically every department and furniture as T. C. Steele, Forsyth, Adams, and Stark, pottery graced the corner store in the city. Unfortunately, those over craftspersons in the decorative arts. of the front room. wares came stripped of any ideological com- Thus, even though these painters did support ponent. The individually produced and the society in various ways, other painters and expensive artwork ended up in personal the general public would not invest in the collections or in museums. new movement. Still, for a brief period, the Arts and In addition, competition from local retail- Crafts Society of Indianapolis was the cen- ers could have undercut the sales potential tral location for artists interested in reviving of the society's shops. In October 1905 Ayres craftwork to meet, instruct, and have their opened its Arts and Crafts Department in works evaluated, exhibited, and sold. It its new building and carried on an aggres- served, therefore, as a catalyst for the work sive ad campaign thereafter. Charles Mayer of scattered and unorganized artisans, as a and Company publicized its art pottery, par- means whereby artists could envision making ticularly Cincinnati's Rookwood. Furniture a living, and a transitional locale, perhaps, stores, such as Badger, along with Sander before artists concentrated their efforts in and Recker, sold the popular mission style the new John Herron Art Institute.

Winter i 99 4 27 ROBERT M . TAYLOR JR. On 6 May 1911 the Sketching Club of her as "a little brown wren of a woman"), pottery, including Rookwood, Van Briggle, Indianapolis held a pottery exhibition at she guided the creative urges of hun- Grueby, and Teco. Noted potters, such as the home of Mrs. Wilmer Christian on dreds of students for forty-three years the Overbeck sisters of Cambridge City North Delaware Street. A portion of the and is credited with having established and Ernest Bachelder from California, pottery came from Shortridge High the Art Department at Shortridge. visited the pottery classes as observers School, where the student artists learned Beginning with drawing instruction, or to give demonstrations. Officials at their craft under Miss Roda Selleck, the Selleck moved on to teaching art metal the John Herron Art Institute appointed revered head of the school's Art Depart- and finally pottery. She, of course, had Selleck chair of the first committee ment. To honor Selleck and Shortridge talent in all three areas. As for her pot- charged with the handicraft exhibit at High School the students named the tery, Isabel Layman (Troyer) recalled the yearly Indiana artist exhibition. pottery "Selridge," a combination of that "Miss Selleck was so devoted to her Doubtless taking advantage of her "Selleck" and "Shortridge." craft that she frequently spent the night position, Selleck and her students, all Schoolchildren working with clay is as in the school basement tending to her kiln young ladies, exhibited under the name common a feature of American educa- so that the pottery would be fired prop- Selridge Pottery at the Indiana artists tion as can be imagined. Despite its erly." When the new Shortridge High exhibitions beginning in 1916. almost universal practice, school art has School opened in 1928, a Selleck Gallery After Roda Selleck's death, Janet been relatively neglected by scholars, graced the third floor and featured a Payne Bowles, the famed silversmith, probably because it is considered merely painting of the beloved teacher by the accepted responsibility for teaching the a training ground at best, and often noted Hoosier artist Wayman Adams. pottery classes in 1929. She studied with compulsory at that. Rarely do serious The Arts and Crafts movement noted ceramist Charles F. Binns at researchers or collectors seek what could infused Shortridge High School. Charity Alfred University, New York, and she be called "homeroom 101" clayware. Dye, one of the foremost educators in the reportedly took instruction in ceramics And yet Indianapolis boasted a high state at the time, organized a William at the Sevres Porcelain Manufactory in school pottery with its own identifying Morris Society in 1905 to bring the France. Purchasing clay from the Indi- mark, one that showed at major local famed craftsman's writings and ideals to anapolis Terra Cotta Company or the exhibitions and achieved recognition her literature students at Shortridge. In American Art Clay Company, Payne around the state. Few schools in the 1906, the school's Annual carried a piece Bowles led the students in making hand- nation had as prominent a pottery as did by Marie Stewart titled "Arts and Crafts." built or cast pottery. Like the earlier Shortridge High School. In it, Stewart noted that "our own Short- Selridge pottery, the items made under The Sketching Club came into being ridge High School is doing its share of Payne Bowles were exhibited often and in the 1890s through the desire of the art craft work. . . . There is an influ- attracted public notice. However, we do Roda E. Selleck and a group of her ence that unites the workers in such a not know the fate of the Selridge logo friends to found a forum for training manner as to form the necessary links during her tenure. in art and the discussion of aesthetic that are essential to the production of Surprisingly, despite the years of clay- issues. The club had given a major articles useful and beautiful." work in the school's art classes and the impetus to the Arts and Crafts move- The Shortridge art students designed pottery's celebrity, very little of it has ment in the city and the establishment and crafted rugs; tooled leather for surfaced that can be attributed to the of the Arts and Crafts Society through bookbindings, belts, pocketbooks, and Selleck years, even less actually stamped its twice monthly meetings and its music rolls; made lanterns, plates, and with the Selridge logo, which often has sponsorship of frequent exhibitions. bowls from copper; and studied nature's been confused with marks of other pot- Selleck, born in Utica, Michigan, forms to create stencils and wood-block tery. Possessors today of a vase or a wall began teaching in the Indianapolis pub- printing. Pottery, however, along with pocket from the Selleck years can con- lic schools in 1881 and according to metalwork, garnered the most public sider a time when the love of beautiful newspaper reports never missed a day of acclaim. Pottery students experienced articles entirely handmade had a distinct school until her death in 1924. Small of the best the country had to offer as the influence on the artistic development of stature (the Indianapolis Star referred to school began a collection of American the community and its young people.

28 TRACES Roda Selleck and her students exhibited under the name Selridge Pottery, a combination of Selleck and Shortridge.

POTTERY LOANED BY CHARLES H ALEXANDER, VIRGINIA HEISS, AND ROBERT M. TAYLOR JR.

Winter 1 9 9 4 29 10 TRACES CREATIVE SPIRIT Homemaking took on new meaning during the Arts and Crafts movement, when women used their talents to create many of their own furnishings. Like needlework, printmaking, or canvas painting, china painting gave women an opportunity to participate in the artistic decoration of their homes. Prior to 4870 china painting was a professional skill practiced primarily by men in porcelain factories and independent studios in Europe and America that served retailers of china and glass. During the late 1800s, however, the hand painting of china became one of the many mediums through which women participated in the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. ELLEN PAUL DENKER China painting fit comfortably into the lifestyle of American middle-class women. The intricate skills necessary to apply mineral colors to china blanks and fix the design by fire were learned primarily through group instruction. Furthermore, women could practice the art at home. In certain large cities, like New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati, where the craze

PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON HOME caught on first, shops selling art materials catered to the new market by pro- RICHMOND ART MUSEUM viding china blanks, colors, patterns,

Above: Watercolor and china and tools. For women who lived out- in the annual exhibitions of the side urban areas, mail-order catalogs painting are closely related in Richmond Art Association offered the same goods. In addition, appearance, although the color the forms available to amateur in 1903. A vase offered in does not fade from painting painters were easily handled, and the that year was available in the latter medium. Perhaps tools used were small and straightfor- for fifteen dollars.

such color permanence attracted ward. By 1890 portable decorating kilns were available for home use, but Above: H. Otto Punsch of Caroline Scott Harrison, even women who did not have their Richmond, Indiana, an accomplished watercolorist, own kilns were able to use their teach- decorated this stein in 1905. to'china painting. ers' or to hire the services of indepen- He specialized in portrait work dent decorators. Opposite.- Hannah Overbeck, and miniatures, frequently Fewer than ten years after its hum- who crafted this vase, began choosing biblical and ble beginnings in the early 1870s, exhibiting china painting china painting was pronounced "a metaphorical subjects.

Wi titer I99 4 31 decided art industry" by a reporter for Harper's New Monthly sources from the mainstream traditions that were abhorred Magazine in 1880. Chicago could boast at least 200 teachers by proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement. Neverthe- of china painting in 1896, some earning as much as $2,000 less, china painting was important in liberating women's a year. More than 5,000 ladies had invested half a million creative spirits during the early years of the movement. dollars in china painters' materials and china blanks in the Indeed, far more women participated in the Arts and same city. The statistics for Indianapolis in the same period Crafts movement before 1920 by painting china than by are not known, but the working in clay. local devotees could have Manuals published been no less fervent. in America and England uring the early gave written and picto- years of this rial instructions in the Bcentury the art of painting china. Keramic Supply Specialized periodicals Company of also helped women Indianapolis learn the intricacies of Doffered tools, ceramic applying mineral colors colors, decals, and kilns to ceramics and fixing by mail through its cat- them by fire through alogs, as well as books examples pictured and of patterns and individ- described. Personal ual studies that could instruction through be used as models by individual and group china painters. Al- classes was a common though the firm did way to learn the skill. A not sell blank shapes, china painting class its catalogs carried taught by Marie Eggers advertisements for at the School of Design Schrader China in in Cincinnati begin- Indianapolis, which ning in 1874 is the offered china blanks earliest known that is and a wide variety of described in any detail. decorated china and It was organized ini- glass. China painters in tially around the task Indiana could have of decorating Martha ordered their supplies Washington Tea Party from these firms or any cups and saucers to number of other com- raise money for the panies across the coun- Women's Pavilion at try that sold their wares the Philadelphia Cen- through catalogs. tennial Exhibition of The nature of china 1876. Art academies painting as a cottage elsewhere, like the art industry aligns it School of Design for with the Arts and Crafts Women in Philadelphia movement's emphasis Detail from a plate painted at and many others, of- on objects that person- Buchanan Studio, Indianapolis, circa 1910. fered courses in china ally involve the maker. painting through the In this case, a decora- 1880s and 1890s along tor chooses the shape, decides how it is to be decorated, with instruction in sketching and painting. Indeed, china and decorates it. For the most part, however, contemporai*y painting was taught as early as 1905 at the John Herron Art collectors and scholars have ignored china painting in Institute in Indianapolis. The instructor, Alice Ross Hadley, favor of art pottery when studying the Arts and Crafts is said to have had "large classes" in the art until the course movement because china painters decorated forms that was discontinued in 1914 in favor of the more general were designed and produced by porcelain factories and courses in decoration that were becoming popular in the because these decorators tended to choose surface design United States. 10 TRACES A number of courses in china painting were taught dur- A White House observer noted that Mrs. Harrison's ing the summer months in resort areas or on college cam- china painting class was her "most cherished project puses outside major cities so that participants could renew just now . . . and twenty-five enthusiastic ladies are both their physical and aesthetic health. Famous schools in already wielding their brushes.... The class includes upstate New York attracted women from across the country. the daughters of the Vice-President, ladies of sev- In Indiana, the summer classes for teachers taught at eral Cabinet families, and leaders of Washing- Winona College included china painting in the School of ton society. Their finished work is baked in Mrs. Harrison's Fine Arts of the Winona Assembly and Summer School Asso- own kiln, which she brought here from Indianapolis." ciation at least as early at 1903. Later this instruction was In addition to the many charitable and personal gifts under the leadership of Roda Selleck, the art teacher at Short- made and bestowed by Mrs. Harrison, her interest in china ridge High School in Indianapolis, who directed the summer through her painting led to a new set of china for White art school under auspices of the John Herron Art Institute. House entertaining and the establishment of the White House china collection. As a result of her extensive China painting was important in LIBERATING housekeeping project, she discovered old furnishings of the White House CREATIVE SPIRITS women's during the early years stashed away in the attic and basement and drew of the movement. Indeed, jar MORE WOMEN together remnants of many sets of china. With the help participated in the Arts and Crafts movement of Putzki, she designed a new White House china before 4 920 by PAINTING CHINA pattern based on the Lincoln china with the than by working in clay. addition of a wide and intricately detailed border of ears of corn. Many women attended classes held in the studios of pro- Although academic instruction in china painting in fessional china painters. Mary Chase Perry, who later Indianapolis did not begin until 1905, group instruction founded the Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, took lessons that was available much earlier. Members of the Indiana Ker- likely were typical of the instruction being offered outside amic Club met monthly in Indianapolis beginning in 1897 of academies during this period: "I took lessons from a cel- to compare their work and learn from each other through ebrated china decorator—'lessons' meaning the privilege lectures and discussions. Founded by Alice Ross Hadley, of watching him twist his fluent brush into two roses with noted china decorator and canvas painter, and six other accessory leaves on a china plate, a tracery of gold added to women "to advance the interests of Ceramic Art in Indiana, the edge and the plate fired in his kiln. I was allowed to and aid its members to a higher standard of work," the club burnish the gold with a brush of spun glass, and the plate required applicants to submit "a piece of original china was then presented to me for a consideration. This system decorated without assistance" and members to exhibit reg- of teaching by observation was customary throughout the ularly in the annual exhibitions. Subjects of the lectures country, and I was drawn into it." included design issues, historical reports on well-known Another popular teaching method was group instruc- ceramic manufactories, descriptions of contemporary factory tion. It is likely that Caroline Scott Harrison of Indianapolis and studio work, and practical instruction in the learned china painting in this manner. An accomplished art. Beginning in 1905, the group met for several watercolorist, Mrs. Harrison no doubt sought to add another years in the art rooms of Shortridge High School art to her repertoire when she joined a class in Richmond, where Roda Selleck gave a series of lectures on Indiana, taught by Paul Putzki. Born near Breslau, Germany, design and color applied to china decorating. Putzki immigrated to America to be a decorator in one of The names of more than eighty members fill the many china factories in East Liverpool, Ohio, in 1880. the early annual rosters of the Indiana Keramic After a few years he opened a studio in Chicago. A wealthy Club. Members came from Shelbyville, Fort woman from Richmond engaged him to teach in her city Wayne, Dunreith, Connersville, Logansport, once a week, and Mrs. Harrison was included among the Falmouth, Richmond, and Peru, as well as Indi- students. When Mrs. Harrison took her place as First Lady anapolis. Although the organization continued in the White House in 1889, she persuaded Putzki to move until 1943, the number of members dwindled to Washington, D.C., and continue being her teacher. steadily after 1920. Even though the name of the

Winter 19 9 4 33 club was retained throughout its life the focus of the group was broadened considerably to include any artistic activity. This expansion was typical of groups across the country that were formed to learn china painting and eventually studied many other artistic subjects as well. lizabeth Nicholson's career is a good example of how china painting contributed to an artist's growth. Born in Ohio in 1833 and educated at the Ohio Female College, College Hill, and the McMicken School of Design, Cincinnati, Nicholson also studied watercolor in Paris and china painting under Mr. EGriffith of Griffith and Howe, retailers of china paints in Philadelphia. She returned to College Hill and taught art at the college where she painted both landscapes and portraits. Eventually she settled in Indianapolis where she taught from her home studio. After 1890, "her idealistic nature and genial interest in people found expression in literary and club activities." Her watercolors of wild and culti- vated flowers, considered "the most distinctive examples of her work" because of a "certain poetic delicacy and sincerity of presentation," formed the basic vocabulary of subjects for her china painting. During the 1890s and until about 1915 regular exhibitions of china painting featured the work of Indiana artists. Some exhibitions were mounted separately as with the Indi- ana Keramic Club, while the work was included under "applied arts" in general art exhibitions such as those of the John Herron Art Institute and the Richmond Art Asso- ciation. China painters from across the country exhibited in Richmond beginning in 1898 along with canvas painters, sculptors, metalsmiths, and leatherworkers. The first decorated china exhibited by the Art Associa- tion of Indianapolis (later, John Herron Art Institute) was sent from Purdue University in 1897. No doubt this was put together by Laura Fry, who had worked as a decorator for the Rookwood Pottery before being appointed head of the Department of Industrial Art at Purdue beginning in 1891. Decorated china was also included in the landmark 1898 Arts and Crafts exhibition at Shortridge High School. After 1900 the work of Indiana china painters was included in national and international exhibitions. For example, members of the Indiana Keramic Club sent their work to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis (the club received a silver medal) and the 1915 Panama-Pacific Top: Visitors to the President Benjamin Harrison Home International Exposition in San Francisco (two members in Indianapolis can see a Caroline Scott Harrison watercolor received silver medals). on display in her sitting room. The style associated with most late-nineteenth-century Middle left: Using the Lincoln china as a basis, hand-painted china is not identified today with the Arts Caroline Scott Harrison and Paul Putzki developed this' and Crafts movement. Instead of the flat conventionalized presidential china. The new pattern incorporated a wide ornament that characterizes the Arts and Crafts style, china painting frequently exhibits an illusionistic natural- border of ears of corn because it was a plant native to America. ism. The work of Caroline Harrison or Elizabeth Nichol- Lower left: Caroline Scott Harrison's mark. son, for example, would not usually be included today in an Right: Caroline Scott Harrison. Arts and Crafts exhibition even though the spirit of their

PRESIDENT BENJAMIN HARRISON HOME work can be identified with the movement. During this 10 TRACES early period, amateur china painting in America is most was teaching for the John Herron Art Institute, to closely related to watercolors. Women who learned to paint instruct members in design and composition. No watercolors applied their talents to china painting because doubt his course in Kokomo was similar to the they were already familiar with the handling of brushes and course he taught at the art institute from 1902 to because the white china gives a luminous effect to the 1909 called "Modern Ornament, the study of translucent colors in the same way as paper affects water- nature and its application to design." Afterward colors. Despite these similarities, however, china painting the club expanded to include groups from Wabash and watercolors require different skills, for china colors and Anderson. change considerably in the fire. By 1920, much of the creativity in china paint- While many china painters have continued ing that marked the years immediately after 1895 to prefer this naturalistic style because of its was turned toward other media. Many china close association with watercolor and canvas painters eventually chose watercolor or canvas painting, there were other artists who broke painting as their primary vehicle of expression. away from the naturalism that defined the art For example, Alice Ross Hadley "went back to of china painting in the late nineteenth century. painting pictures on canvas." Other china painters learned Using historic ornament as a source of inspiration, some to control the total clay process and established their own women learned to abstract the essential elements of flowers studios for art ceramics. In this phase of china painting, into repeatable patterns rather than to re-create flowers on the Overbeck sisters of Cambridge City, Indiana, offer a china. Design books such as Owen Jones's Grammar of good example. Margaret studied at the Cincinnati Art Ornament, first published in London in 1856, offered innu- Academy and in New York with prominent teachers of merable examples of how ancient craftsmen in Europe and design and china decoration. She also worked briefly in a Asia used conventionalized ornament derived from nature Zanesville art pottery. Hannah attended classes at Indiana to devise patterns for rugs, tiles, cooking pots, and jewelry. State Normal School. She painted china and was a regular These two very different styles—naturalistic and conven- exhibitor at the John Herron Art Institute's annual shows. tional—coexisted uneasily for a number of years. Rena She also contributed conventional studies frequently to Tucker Kohlmann's review of the 1915 Indiana Keramic Keramic Studio, a monthly magazine for china painters, Club exhibition at the John Herron Art Institute explains between 1904 and 1916. Elizabeth, the potter, studied at the College for Clayworking and Ceramics at Alfred Uni- the debate in plain language: versity, New York, with Charles Fergus Binns in 1909. By the time they started their studio pottery as their primary A revolution in the style of china decoration has taken place in the last means of financial support in 1914, they had collectively experienced the background that seems in retrospect to few years, for we used to see informal designs such as realistic paint- have prepared women to produce ceramics successfully in ings of wild roses, poppies and the like flung upon a plate. The inap- the small studio setting: academic design training, tho- propriateness of eating food placed on top of a naturalistic painting rough craft preparation, and familiarity with exhibitions and regular craft markets. has been overruled by a more conventional treatment in better taste.

Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far the other way, for straight he Overbecks' embrace of studio pottery was not unique in Indiana. Other china painters in the line designing amounts almost to a craze in this generation, in furni- state preferred making the pottery they decorated ture as well as in all objects of use. The straight line design is easier to after they learned the arts of the wheel. Mrs. Wal- ter S. Day, a member of the Indiana Keramic Club, invent than those involving curves which requires a real love and showed more than a dozen "pieces of pottery that appreciation for the beauty of line. Tshe turned or modeled during the summer, mixing her clay, doing the coloring and burning them" for the club's Some serious American amateur china painters orga- 1903 exhibition. nized local groups to study these principles and think criti- Despite the abandonment of china painting by studio cally about design. Like the famous Atlan Ceramic Art artists that has served to prejudice our contemporary atti- Club in Chicago, the Kokomo Keramic Club in Indiana tudes toward china painting, the work produced by china hired professional design teachers to discuss historic orna- painters between 1870 and 1920 deserves a serious look by ment and teach the principles of design and methods of enthusiasts of the Arts and Crafts movement both for the conventionalization. Only work produced with these princi- decorations produced in the conventional style and for the ples in mind could be submitted for the exhibitions spon- nature of the craft. While the art potteries were closely related sored by these clubs. The Kokomo Keramic Club grew out to the ceramics industry in America by virtue of their factory of the Kokomo Arts and Crafts Guild in 1905. In the first organization and use of industrial and semi-industrial year, Brandt Steele traveled from Indianapolis, where he processes, china painting was primarily a studio art.

Winter 19 9 4 35 THE PICTORIALISM of Mary Lyon Taylor

From the time of its invention, PHOTOGRAPHY has been seeking its place among

the fine arts. In the nineteenth century many regarded photography as merely a

SCIENCE or TECHNICAL PRACTICE, arguing that it required little artistic talent to record whatever subject happened to appear before the camera. By the turn of the century, a group of photographers known as PICTORIALISTS had joined the battle to gain recognition for photography as an art form. Pictorial photographs, synonymous with artistic photographs, were impressionistic and painterly going against the accepted opinion that excellent photographs must have a sharp focus and the "correct" exposure. 10 Although some critics misunder- photograph technology made photog- and later moved with her prosperous stood the so-called fuzzographs, the raphy an acceptable hobby for women, family to Minneapolis. In her reminis- movement was widespread. On the who took up pictorialism with enthusi- cences she described her childhood: high end were Alfred Stieglitz and his asm. One such amateur was Indianap- Photo-Secessionists, a group that olis resident Mary Lyon Taylor, who in Living the conventional life of the city my received great recognition for its picto- 1906 turned her photographic hobby sisters and I attended private schools, finish- rial images. Forgotten, however, are into a profitable business. ing schools, and after that there were trips hundreds of photographers who Mary Gertrude Lyon was the young- abroad—debutante parties . . . my life was worked individually and collectively est child of Daniel Brayton and filled with all the social gaiety a young girl outside of the Stieglitz circle. Influ- Tirzah Lyon. Born in 1872, she lived enced by camera clubs, salon shows, her early years- in Ripon, Wisconsin, could desire, cotillions, dinners, teas, etc. and photographic magazines, these and this with church and charity occupied amateurs often imitated the style of my time until I came to Indianapolis and the Secessionists. Improvements in JOAN E. HOSTETLER was married.

TRACES Known portrait subjects: middle row, left: "The Goldfish," Mrs. Alexander Paton and daughter,

middle row center: James Whitcomb Riley, middle row right-. "Blowing Bubbles,"

Meredith Nicholson's children, bottom row right: Mrs. Horace Nixon and daughters.

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ARE FROM THE INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY'S MARY LYON TAYLOR COLLECTION Like many young, upper-class women Mary Lyon Taylor photographed her dow highlighted the delicate lace of the period, Mary Lyon received children, Edward (top) and Heber (bot- gowns, plumed hats, and beaded artistic training at home and abroad, shawls. Exposures were made with a tom), on the steps of their Indianapolis specializing in miniature portraits on camera onto 6'//'x 8/2" glass negatives, porcelain and ivory. home at 194 1 N. Pennsylvania Street. which Taylor developed after her fam- It was during a visit ily had gone to bed. to her sister in Indi- Often she worked in anapolis that Lyon met her darkroom long her future husband, into the night until the handsome Edward she felt that she A. Taylor. The Taylor would faint with family, owners of a exhaustion. After the belting company in negatives dried she the city's wholesale carefully retouched district, shared the the emulsion with same comfortable life- graphite pencil, soft- style to which Lyon ening the lines on the was accustomed. The faces of her older sit- couple married in 1898, ters. Sepia-colored and by 1906 the Taylors prints were made by and their two young contact printing the sons, Edward and Heber, negative onto Kalli- were living on India- type paper, a photo- napolis's fashionable graphic printing-out north side, known today process that was pop- as the Herron-Morton ular around the turn Place neighborhood. of the century. Al- though at first she When the family had many failures, was hit with financial Taylor soon succeed- problems in 1906, ed, and acquaintances Mary Lyon Taylor requested her to come decided to ease the to their homes to take burden by selling their portraits. photographic portraits. Up to that time, her With perseverance only experience was she mastered the with a Kodak Brownie pictorialist style and camera that she had received recognition used to take snap- for her sensitive shots of her family. images. Her works But with determination she began the Below: Mary Lyon Taylor poses suggested a quiet peacefulness of serious study of the art by reading for a portrait at the corner cupboard domestic life and captured the amateur photographic magazines and of her home, circa 1910. intimacy between mother and child. buying supplies at H. Lieber Company. Taylor's work was featured in the She undoubtedly was also influenced November 1907 issue of the Craftsman, by photographic exhibitions held at Gustav Stickley's magazine promoting the nearby John Herron Art Institute. the Arts and Crafts movement. The Family and close friends were the eight-page article noted that Taylor's first models to pose in her upstairs photographs were of special interest drawing room studio. Up to half a day because she had only taken up photog- was spent artistically posing her sub- raphy within the year, and she "already jects, mainly women and children, has gained a charm and individuality with an open book or holding a basket in her work that entitles it to a place of flowers in front of a tapestry back- among the best efforts of many Seces- drop. Diffused sunlight from the win- sionists of far greater experience and 10 TRACES extent of achievement." In addition, Mary Lyon Taylor won first prize of this genre. Surviving prints show Taylor's photographs were accepted in a 19 11 Kodak advertising signs of improper processing and in the fifth and sixth American washing. Her compositions were often contest with this portrait. Photographic Salons (national travel- direct copies of images she saw in the ing photographic photograph journals exhibitions that in- of the era. Surely cluded showings at the published photo- the John Herron Art graphs of well-known Institute) and the pictorialists, such as 1909 Annual Exhibi- Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. tion of the Richmond and Gertrude Kase- Art Association. bier, inspired Taylor Her camera took to arrange a mother Taylor into the homes and child looking at a of some of Indianap- goldfish bowl or chil- olis's most prominent dren blowing bubbles. citizens, from whom The true value of she received orders Taylor's photographs for $100 to $200 worth is that they demon- of photographs. Among strate the widespread her sitters were James influence of the pic- Whitcomb Riley, Mrs. torialist movement in Josiah K. Lilly Sr., the first decade of Meredith Nicholson's this century. children, Evans Wool- Throughout her len, Mrs. John Worth life, Taylor also ex- Kern and children, pressed her artistic and William C. Bobbs. side through other Many of her clients mediums. She served were fellow members as president of the of Christ Episcopal Indianapolis Women's Church, neighbors, Needlework Guild, or her mother-in- wrote poetry, and law's club friends. published more than Taylor was at her twenty pieces of sheet artistic prime in music. After an un- 1908 when her work successful attempt at stopped abruptly. running a dairy farm Angered by her hus- north of Indianapolis, band's harsh disci- the Taylor family pline of their youngest moved to California boy, she moved her during the Great sons back to Minneapolis where she Below: Mary Lyon Taylor. Depression. After her husband's death rented a flat near her father's house. in 1934, Taylor eventually returned to Although Edward and Mary recon- Indianapolis, where she died in 1956. ciled within the year, she took very few Nearly four hundred of Mary Lyon photographs after her return to Indi- Taylor's glass plate negatives sat for- anapolis, and her studio became a son's gotten in the attic of her old Indi- bedroom. She did, however, copyright anapolis home until discovered by several earlier images and won a $500 David Stahl while restoring the house first prize in the 1911 Kodak Advertising in the 1980s. The Indiana Historical Competition. Society acquired the collection, which The images by Mary Lyon Taylor are will be on exhibition at the Indi- important not because they are among anapolis Museum of Art in the spring the best—technically or stylistically— of 1994.

Win le r 199 4 39 10 TRACES The Arts and Crafts movement's stress on SIMPLICITY based on practical considerations extended to architecture. In England, William Morris found a suitable architectural along the Meridian Street corridor and vicinity and east in setting for his crafts in the adaptation of the vernacular or the Irvington Historic District. regional English village house of the mid-sixteenth cen- Consistent throughout the city's Arts and Crafts resi- tury. In America, architectural periodicals between 1900 dences is the emphasis on broad horizontal lines and 1908 featured established by the new house designs exterior materials and new building and their compo- technology. House nent textures and plans showed up in the extension into popular magazines the landscape with such as House and open and roofed out- Garden and Ladies' door living spaces. Home Journal and in Perhaps the first the published works Arts and Crafts-style of Fran k Lloyd house in Indianapo- Wright and Gustav lis was the Adams Stickley. Each issue house, built in 1903, of Stickley's Craftsman which House Beauti- contained a house ful and Architectural plan, some with Record featured in photographs, of what 1906. Designed by was called a Craftsman the noted Chicago House. No stylistic architect Robert C. creed was advocated. Spencer Jr., it dis- Individualization played a broad, open within a broad spec- gable roof with deep, trum of form al- overhanging eaves. lowed the American The second-story public to regionalize finish was stucco and personalize the and half-timber. expression of the Bands of casement American Arts and windows were set be- Crafts movement in Above: Dining room oj the Morrison house. tween the decorative the Craftsman style. blocking of the tim- The "House Beautiful" Opposite: Frank X. Morrison, president of the Premier Printing bering. The contrast- in the Midwest after Company, built his house at 4560 North Broadway in 1910. ing brick veneer base 1900 was a statement wrapped the entire of values that em- The broad gable and its extension are repeated house and then con- phasized common in the one-story, L-shaped porch. tinued into the site, sense and a robust providing a walled relationship to Amer- terrace. The Eli ican regional land- Lilly family lived in scape. Natural materials and healthful living were the basic the house from 1913 until 1921, at which time it was demol- considerations of Craftsman design. ished. Each of the architectural or structural elements In Indianapolis, the construction of the House Beautiful found in the Adams house could be found in variations took place primarily north of Monument Circle in prime elsewhere in the city. residential neighborhoods, now National Register Historic The steep pitch of a roof could be lowered to increase the Districts, such as Meridian Park. Concentrated groups of perception of horizontality such as in the Frank X. Morrison residences in the Arts and Crafts house. The gabled roof system style could be found also in could be further reduced in scale, neighborhoods farther north SUSAN SLADE while still preserving the natural

Winter 19 9 4 41 T. M. SLADE PHOTOGRAPH T. M. SLADE PHOTOGRAPH

T. M. SLADE PHOTOGRAPH T. M. SLADE PHOTOGRAPH Craftsman appearance, to create the small one-story or story-and-a-half cottage known as the bungalow. The bungalow's use of rough-sawn and stained clapboards along with battered or tapered posts, stucco, and half-timbering completed the Arts and Crafts movement's exploration of natural materials. The quintessential Indianapolis Arts and Crafts bungalow of the era belonged to George and Nellie Meier at 3128 North Pennsylvania Street, a one-and-one-half- story gabled-front house sheathed in red-stained cedar clapboards. The city had a firm, the Bungalow Company, which concentrated on modest homes of that style. Along the northside of Bungalow Court, a short street east of North College Avenue in the 5400 block, small bungalows were sited side by side. Other kinds of homes that followed a bungalow profile included some rather large two- and two- and-a-half-story structures. A variant of these was termed the American Foursquare, referring to the use of a hipped roof that returned the style to a sym- metrical boxlike plan. Above: No English antecedents were used in the 1915 design of Multi-unit buildings also received Arts and Crafts Bernie Cohen's house at 45 86 North Broadway Street. treatments. The Esplanade Apartments, 3015 North Pennsylvania Street, for example, was finished with Known as the Chinese house, this hipped roof house was finished a brick veneer capped with hipped roofs and paired with prominently flared corners that simulated those of pagodas, pavilions which had a third story of half-timbering hut in actuality copied the roof form of a Japanese teahouse. set with shingles. Every residence had a front porch; most had a back Top left: An interior of the Morrison house. porch or an upper-level sleeping porch. Inside, every Craftsman residence had a centrally located fireplace Center left: George and Nellie Meier called their bungalow at with a large masonry or tile surround and matching 3 128 North Pennsylvania Tuckaway because the 1912 structure hearth. The dining room was the next most impor- was literally tucked away in a secluded site. tant space. Boxed beams arranged in a grid pattern lowered the visual height of the room, making it Lower left, Indianapolis architect Albert Scherrer designed appear cozy and intimate. Built-in furniture such as this American Foursquare house for Albert Johnson. buffets, bookcases, window seats, and linen cup- Built in 1909, the home features a hipped roof, brick veneered base, boards blended with the rest of the structure. Other decorative features included softly varnished quarter- extended front terrace, stucco and half-timbering in the upper level, sawn oak or cherry, or heavily stained fir and sweet and bands of casement windows. gum trim and framing. The upper sash of windows was typically multiply divided. Interiors often con- Center right: The entrance ball of the Kleinschmidt house, tained handcrafted leaded and stained or beveled with its staircase and bench combination, illustrates why glass. So popular were these interior motifs for apart- the home is a showplace of the city's Arts and Crafts style. ment units that buildings without the exterior frame In 1909 Kleinschmidt, president of Builders Supply Corporation, and finish of the style still received many amenities prescribed by the philosophy of the movement. The built his cubic house at 3 177 North Pennsylvania Street Buckingham, a large medieval revival-style apart- using board and batten veneer on the second story and ment building at 3101-3119 North Meridian Street sheer stucco walls with a prominent tapered chimney. carried the Arts and Crafts motif throughout. Both inside and outside, the Arts and Crafts house or Lower right.- Built in 1911, this bungalow at apartment building was to its occupants a place of stabil- 3102 North Delaware Street has a low, broad, ity and tranquillity. Today, the inherent beauty in such cross-gable roof plan. Posts composed of structures, brought about by the natural appearance of boulders support the porch gable. fine materials and from quality workmanship uniformly applied, is once again recognized and appreciated.

Winter 1 9 9 4 43 10 10 TRACES In the mid-eighteen hundreds Billy Richardson and his father would spend their afternoons roaming the moun- tains of North Carolina searching for straight, second- growth hickory trees. It has been said that they spent more time killing snakes than collecting wood for the chairs and tables that they made. • They developed a method of bending the hickory poles and forming them into hoop chairs that would last for many years. Users described the chairs as strong and rugged. Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson showed such a fondness for the chairs that he ordered several for the K Y L L O E

Winter 199 4 45 front porch of his summer home. • Young Billy Richardson eventually migrated to central Indiana near Morgantown in

Morgan County and introduced his style of chairs to the surrounding area. He worked hard and led a Spartan life making

chairs and tables from the vast stands of hickory trees. He sold the furniture on weekends from a horse-drawn cart. It was

simple work and a simple way of life. Little did he realize that the hickory industry would soon employ hundreds of individu-

als who would produce thousands of pieces of furniture a week for worldwide consumer demand. Richardson's descendants,

who still reside in Morgantown, remember him as a kind, gentle, industrious man. • Back in Appalachia those who owned

resorts, lodges, cabins, and camps eagerly sought rustic furniture during the mid to late Victorian period. Resorts sprang up in

the lakes and mountain regions of the South and North to accommodate urban middle-class vacationers, and itinerant folk

artists and craftspeople found that they could make a living building furniture out of twigs, sticks, roots, and logs. Builders of

rustic furniture drew their styles from many sources. The grandson of one prolific craftsman mentioned to the author that

whenever his grandfather considered beginning another piece of rustic furniture he opened the pages of the Sears and Roebuck

catalog and copied its furniture designs. • Martinsville, Indiana, at the turn of the century, boasted enough mineral springs

and health spas to be called nationally "Artesian City." In 1892 M. B. Crist of Indianapolis and George Richards of Mar-

tinsville opened the Old Hickory Chair Company in Martinsville and based their products on the patterns introduced by

Billy Richardson. The company changed hands several times during the first few years. Charles H. Patten purchased the

company in 1909, and the Patten family retained ownership until 1965, when the firm closed due to lack of business caused

largely by the advent of aluminum and plastic furniture. • During the early part of this century five other companies in

Indiana, including another firm in Martinsville, and firms in La Porte, Jasper, Columbus, and Bedford also produced hick-

ory furniture. In addition, the Indiana State Penal Farm in Putnamville turned out hickory furniture. • Hickory furniture

is simple, honest furniture. It has little or no ornamentation, and the bark remains on the wood. The furniture reflects an

earlier and simpler era and directly defies the shoddy materials and workmanship of the mass production market and the

ostentatious decorative arts of the late Victorian period. • The production of hickory furniture was a simple process. The

poles were cut during the early winter months when the sap was not running. They were then transported to the factory and

treated for insects or fungus. The next steps in the process involved steaming (boilingJ, bending, and drying the poles in frames. Workers then crafted the pieces into various items such as chairs, tables, beds, settees, or light fixtures. If necessary a 10 10 TRACES chair caner would weave splint or rattan onto the chair as a seat or back. Craftspeople finished the items with varnish. •

Most of the hickory companies signed their furniture either with a brand on the back of a chair leg or under a tabletop, with

a paper label, or with a brass tag. The number in the center of the brass tag from the Old Hickory company is the year that

the piece was made. • Indiana hickory furniture quickly gained popularity. Although Martinsville's Old Hickory company

at one time offered log cabins, fences, and steamboats, it later channeled its efforts toward porch furniture. The company's

advertisements urged the public to "build your porch first then place your house." During the first cjuarter of this century,

production at the company increased to about two thousand pieces per week. Boxcars of the products rolled to the Adiron-

dacks to furnish the summer homes and retreats of New Yorkers. According to newspaper records Old Hickory did "an

extensive business, employ[ed] hundreds of men, and ship[ped] products to all parts of the United States, Canada and

Europe." All major urban retailers carried hickory furnishings, and they graced the most famous resorts and inns. • The furniture captured the attention of the public at the same time as the Arts and Crafts movement, whose mission of producing

simple, timeless, and unadorned forms of decor coincided with the philosophy of the hickory manufacturers. Gustav Stickley

and Charles Limbert, both leading designers in the movement, journeyed to Martinsville for rest and relaxation. Within a

short time, Stickley presented many different pieces of Old Hickory along with his famed mission furniture. Limbert expressed

his delight with hickory furniture by becoming a sales representative for the Martinsville company. Stickley s book, Crafts-

man Homes, contains numerous photos of his mission furniture and Old Hickory items being utilized in bungalows and

other mission style homes he designed. The Craftsman, Stickley s magazine, in 1913 commented that hickory furniture had

"personality and an aire of definite sincerity," and an advertising piece for the Old Hickory company mentioned that its furniture "was put together with mortises as solidly as the best mission" pieces of the day. The "spindle series," introduced by

Stickley in 1902, reveals the way in which mission and hickory furniture influenced each other. The Old Hickory company

had produced similar types of spindle-embellished furniture prior to 1900, and the Rustic Hickory Furniture Company of

La Porte had many items of the same influence in its 1903 catalog. • Today, Indiana hickory furniture is considered collectible and a part of Indiana history. Indiana hickory furniture is again being produced. Firms in Shelbyville and Flat

Rock, as well as the state farm in Putnamville, are once again manufacturing hickory furniture identical to the pieces from the

turn of the century, as well as forms that show a modern influence.

Winte r < 9 9 4 47 CONTRIBUTORS FURTHER READING

ELLEN PAUL DENKER is an independent scholar and museum Anscombe, Isabelle, and Charlotte Gere. consultant who has published frequently on American ceramic history Arts and Crafts in Britain and America. and many other topics in American decorative arts. In 1987, she con- New York: Rizzoli International Publica- tions, 1978. tributed to the exhibition and catalog "The Art That Is Life": The Clark, Robert Judson, ed. The Arts and Arts 8c Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920, organized by Crafts Movement in America, 1876-1916. the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is currently working on an Princeton: Princeton University Press, exhibition about the history of china painting in America and would 1972. like to hear about examples by the artists mentioned in her article that Cumming, Elizabeth, and Wendy Kaplan. may be in public or private collections. The Arts and Crafts Movement. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991. Denker, Ellen Paul. "Keeping Fires Alive: JOAN E. HOSTETLER is pursuing a master offine arts degree in China Painting and the Arts & Crafts Imaging Arts with a museum studies concentration from Rochester Movement." Arts & Crafts Quarterly 4 Institute of Technology. She is the former exhibitions coordinator of the (winter 1992): 6-11. Indiana Historical Society. Johnson, Bruce. The Official Identification and Price Guide to Arts and Crafts: The Early Modernist Movement in American Decorative RALPH KYLLOE is the author of several books and articles on the Indiana hickory furniture movement. He recently received a Arts, 1894-1923. New York: House of Col- lectibles, 1988. Clio grant from the Indiana Historical Society for further work on Kaplan, Wendy, et al. "The Art That Is Life": the subject. The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., BARRY SHIFMAN is an associate curator in charge of decorative 1987. arts at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. For the past few years, he has Kaplan, Wendy, ed. The Encyclopedia of been involved in researching the Arts and Crafts movement in India- the Arts and Crafts: The International Arts napolis. This has resulted in two publications—The Arts 8c Crafts Movement, 1850-1920. New York: E.P. Dut- ton, 1989. Metalwork of Janet Payne Bowles and Brandt Steele, India- Kylloe, Ralph. The Collected Works of Indiana napolis Arts & Crafts Designer and Potter, both for the India- Hickory Furniture Makers. Nashua, N.H., napolis Museum of Art. 1989. ' Kylloe, Ralph. Indiana Hickory Furniture. SUSAN SLADE is an adjunct professor of art history at Butler Nashua, N.H., 1988. University and Herron School of Art. She began studying Arts and Schwartz, Sheila, ed. From Architecture to Crafts architecture while attending graduate school at Northwestern Object: Masterworks of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. New York: Hirschl and University. She and her husband live in a 1910 Arts and Crafts home Adler Galleries, 1989. and collect all manner of the decorative arts of the period. Shifman, Barry. The Arts & Crafts Metalwork of fanet Payne Bowles. Indianapo- ROBERT M. TAY LOR JR. is director of the Education Division of lis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 1993. the Indiana Historical Society and a student of the Arts and Crafts Shifman, Barry. Brandt Steele, Indianapolis movement as well as a collector of its products. Arts & Crafts Designer and Potter. Indi- anapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, forthcoming. HARRIET G. WA R K E L is a curatorial associate in the Indianapo- Volpe, Tod M., and Beth Cathers, comps. lis Museum of Art's Painting and Sculpture Department. She holds a Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts master's degree in art history from Indiana University and specializes Movement, 1890-1920. New York: H. N. in American art. Abrams, 1988.

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