THE SATURDAY EVENING GIRLS: ART AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL IMPROVEMENT IN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY BOSTON

Johanne Durocher Norchet

or a long time, art historians dismissed the Saturday Evening Girls Club’s (SEG) output. Commercialized under the name of Paul Revere Pottery, it was produced in Boston at the turn of the centuryand proved to be an interesting experiment in both artistic production and in social improvement and inclusion.1 Specialists long thought its clean shapes and designs had neither the originality of the Grueby and Weller potteries, for example, or the finesse and delicacy of the decorations on Rookwood or Tiffany pieces2. In fact, in the foreword to Noni Gadsden’s book on the SEG, Gerald W. R. Ward, a senior curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, mentions that the pottery was not even represented in the museum before 1979.3 This essay documents the beginnings of the Arts and Crafts Movement, first in the United Kingdom and then in the United States, in order to trace the origins of the SEG Club. It defines its main social objectives and philanthropic mission at the end of the Victorian era, and it presents its founder and the other women who were closely involved with it. The essay ends with an outline of the SEG’s artistic output in the almost fifty years during which the pottery was in production and the role it played in helping poor and immigrant women find honest and creative work at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Literature on the Arts and Crafts Movement shows that this period was a time rife with upheavals during which various social

114 115 improvements, including the women’s suffrage, started to take In the United States, the Arts and Crafts Movement sprang up slightly form. The foundation of the SEG Club, at that time, reached all later. Visits to that country by prominent British figures like Oscar classes of women: from working class and immigrant women to Wilde, Edward Ashbee, Walter Crane, and William Morris’s daughter the philanthropically-inclined aristocrats, destitute gentlewomen all contributed to its growth.8. Although the American Arts and and educated women were involved with the men who, as artists, Crafts Movement emerged from the British, it developed in a unique were Arts and Crafts practitioners.4 The Arts and Crafts Movement manner. As Wendy Kaplan notes, many concepts were shared by the was founded in the late nineteenth century by a group of British movement on both sides of the Atlantic, for example, the notions artists and social reformers inspired by John Ruskin, A.W. N. Pugin of “joy in labour,” “the simple life,” “truth to materials,” “unity in and William Morris. It sought to stem the tide of Victorian mass design,” “honesty in construction,” and “fidelity to place.”9 However, production, according to Pamela Todd,5 and it encompassed all these similarities came with differences. Artists of the American Arts aspects of artistic production whether they be architecture, furniture and Crafts Movement “believed that art and industry could work design, metal working, pottery, painting, sewing and embroidery, together.”10 In this respect, the American movement differed from among others. It aimed to reinsert the artist and artisan at the heart that of England, where all matters industrials were frowned upon.11 of the artistic production and distance itself from the decorative excesses of the prevailing Victorian style. Supporters of the This rapprochement between art and industry, however, did not movement “championed the moral and spiritual uplift that would extend to accepting the presence of women among the ranks of come with the revival of making objects by hand.”6 Many artists, artists. In fact, women had long been kept at arms’ length in all designers, writers and social commentators of the period were closely matters related to the arts. They were considered dilettantes, mere associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, namely: Walter “dabblers”, when they tried their hand at anything resembling Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, and George Bernard Shaw, the whole of artistic pursuits. The question “why is a woman’s work like a man’s the Pre-Raphaelites, William de Morgan, Charles Rennie MacIntosh only weaker and poorer?”, asked by the President of the Royal and the Glasgow School of Arts. Though often thought to be simply Scottish Academy in Edinburgh12, aptly describes the prevalent a visual arts style, the Arts and Crafts Movement was also the result sentiment of the period. Women could give free reign to their of social upheavals, which brought many important social changes creativity within the home; however, Bird contends that it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many other influences when they started to gain access to training in the fine and applied also helped give rise to the movement, including the presentation arts that women artists started to make a place of their own.13 of many World Exhibitions, the opening of Japan to international trade -- with its endlessly-fascinating approach to all aspects of visual According to Anthea Callen, the Arts and Crafts Movement was arts -- a renewed interest in the medieval era, the suffrage movement motivated by disenchantment within the middle class, with the cheap machine-made goods produced during the Industrial Revolution and a greater awareness to the welfare of less fortunate members and the thought that “society produces the art and architecture it of society. The Arts and Crafts Movement also swept Europe to deserves.14 Callen also adds that, in the United States, emigration varying degrees, not only in countries like Germany and Austria, to the West and the Civil War had depleted the male population but also in Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Norway, with in New England and more women found themselves alone and different visuals and vernaculars, as well as impetus which called in need of earning a living.15 Furthermore, conditions of hygiene upon various political landscapes and resistance movements.7 and the lives of children were dismal, especially in large cities, and proponents of the temperance and social improvement movements

116 117 were becoming more vocal in their wish for better conditions for members of the group. These three women, each in their own way, what they considered to be the moral and physical well-being of helped define both the Club’s philanthropic and artistic missions. the American population. Magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal were helpful in transmitting the message and ideals of the Arts and Under the artistic direction of Edith Brown, the SEG Club produced Crafts Movement, writes Elizabeth Cummings, as well as advertising a variety of utilitarian and decorative pieces that allied simplicity of the wares proposed by the artists and artisans through their pages shape and colour with imaginative design in keeping with the tenets at the beginning of the twentieth century.16 They also disseminated of the Arts and Crafts Movement. At the height of its production, the writings of men like Ruskin and Morris, thus making the style the SEG Club would be included in the Fifth Exhibition of the “a recognizable and desirable style to middle-class people.”17 National Society of Craftsmen in New York, and its goods were sold in Boston, New York, and Chicago.24 Items were produced in matte, Three women played a defining role in the creation and artistic semi-matte, or high-glazed finishes. Some pieces, says Chalmers, output of the SEG club. The first, Edith Guerrier (1870-1958), were hand-thrown, but most were made with molds: some were also the founder of the Club in 1899, was a librarian and writer from hand-built or hand-pressed.25 When looking at Brown’s designs, it a Boston family, who was active in the literary circle of Thoreau, is clear to see that she was strongly influenced by British illustrators Emerson and Louisa May Alcott.18 Guerrier had been working at a of the time, like William de Morgan, Edward Ashbee and especially community charitable institution before being appointed librarian at Walter Crane, who frequently created his designs for tiles and the Boston Public Library19 which offered girls and young women -- other ceramics using heavy black outlines with one-dimensional mainly daughters of Jewish and Italian immigrants -- a respite from features. Crane, like Ashbee and others, had in turn been influenced the “noisy, crowded tenements of Boston’s North and West Ends,”20 by the recent arrival of wares from Japan: he had been especially and presented social and educational opportunities while promoting influenced by woodblock prints, with their “flat surface, emphasis the girls’ interest in books and ideas. They could also take classes in on line, outlining, and highly developed use of negative space.”26 music, dancing, the theatre, and other arts.21 The second important female figure was Edith Brown (1872-1932), an artist and children’s Among the many wares produced by the SEG Club, tiles figured books illustrator, who became the Club’s main designer. It was prominently just as they did in the Arts and Crafts movement in most certainly her training as an illustrator that helped her create England. They were used as trivets, fireplace surrounds, bakeware the first designs the Club would produce. Clear, simple designs of for ovens, and they were also used extensively to decorate kitchen animals and flowers on pure, unadorned shapes of functional wares walls. Edith Brown produced many of those tiles, including one would be the idea that would tie the whole production together. depicting Paul Revere in a simple matte finish with a quotation on Helen Osborne Storrow (1864-1944), the third important figure the surface. Brown also designed large panels composed of many in the SEG Club, was a Bostonian who came from a family of such tiles, including one in a highly glazed finish, called “The Goose philanthropists, suffragists and abolitionists. Storrow volunteered Girl,” which was undoubtedly made for the May 1915 Panama- at the Boston Public Library where she met Edith Guerrier. In Pacific International Exposition held at the Hall of Manufacturers 1906, she helped Guerrier purchase her first kiln22 and in 1907, and Varied Industries in San Francisco.27 The designer’s reliance on she purchased a building on Hull Street in Boston to “house the simple designs and clear, strong lines and her use of bright colours pottery and library clubs and to provide an apartment for Guerrier imbued her work with a vivacity that helped make her wares popular. and Brown.”23 Later, she would purchase another large property in East Gloucester, which would serve as a summer camp for the But the pieces produced at the SEG’s Paul Revere Pottery extended

118 119 “mostly thanks to the work of Edith Brown.”29 Edith Brown died in 1932 and although “several directors followed, none were able to solve the Pottery’s economic problems, and it closed in 1942.”30

Though the Saturday Evening Girls Club only existed for barely fifty years, it was able to produce a vast array of very distinctive pottery pieces which were the epitome of the Arts and Crafts Movement with its clean, simple lines, naturalistic motifs and colours and by using local clay and other basic products and tools. It also served as a method for the daughters of immigrants to get an education, which would otherwise not have been within their Figure 1: “Assortment of items in the ‘tree’ pattern, produced between 1913 and 1914.” In grasp. It opened their hearts and minds to literature, music, and Art and Reform:Sara Galner, The Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery by Nonie Gadsen (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2006), 53. Photo reproduced with permis- visual arts, while giving them the opportunity to learn a craft and to sion from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts eventually earn a good living. At a time when women were starting far beyond the production of tiles. Under the tutelage of Edith to assert their presence and have their voices heard in society, the Brown, the girls worked on a variety of functional and decorative SEG Club acted, in this way, as a beacon for local women’s self- items such as children’s set (bowls, plates and glasses), cups, desk sets determination and helped them gain agency through meaningful (inkwells, stamp boxes, etc.), tea caddies, salt boxes, vases and bowls work. However, though there were fine examples of women’s of all shapes and sizes, tea sets, mustard and spice jars, jugs and accomplishments in the arts at the turn of the century, women still could not fully integrate into this mainstream “ideologically other kitchen items. The vast majority of the wares bore the typical 31 Brown motifs of linear landscapes, farm animals (mainly rabbits, masculine movement” says Callen. Society still had a hard time dogs, cats, wolves, cows) and flowers (irises, tulips, sunflowers –a coming to terms with women as masters of their own destiny, but frequent motif during the Arts and Crafts period – and daffodils), groups such as the SEG Club at least tried to make inroads into along with motto ware and their very popular “Paul Revere” line. women’s self-determination. At the confluents of philanthropy, art, and consumerism, the SEG Club allied the lofty ideals of Arts and Crafts, allowed some wealthy people to do good work, helped Production continued apace through to the beginning of the First women find honest work, and produced a series of wares which are World War and the pottery was incorporated in 1916 as the Paul gaining a renewed appreciation with American collectors as well as Revere Pottery Company. In the meantime, a store, manned by those interested in various facets of the Arts and Crafts Movement. the SEG Club’s employees, was opened on the premises to sell the items produced. Through those years, the three women extended their pottery and their philanthropic work with the help of local girls who, by then, had become employees and numbered twenty. Anthea Callen, in her book dedicated to the women of the Arts and Crafts Movement, says that the SEG Club “was never a financial success and [it] needed heavy subsidies to remain in production,”28 though she adds that the wares were popular and highly acclaimed,

120 121 ENDNOTES 14 Callen, 2. 15 Ibid.,43. 1 See, for example, Meg Chalmers and Judy Young, “Saturday 16 Elizabeth Cumming and Wendy Kaplan, The Arts and Crafts Evening Girls: Paul Revere Pottery,” Journal of Antiques Movement, (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 144. (Jan. 2006): 3, accessed November 24, 2012, http://www. 17 Ibid. journalofantiques.com/Jan06/feature.html. In fact, the name was 18 Chalmers and Young, 2. chosen because the building used by the Club was located close to 19 Nonie Gadsden, “The Story of the Saturday Evening Girls and the Old North Church where Paul Revere hung his signal lanterns. their Paul Revere Pottery,” Antiques and Fine Arts Magazine: 1, 2 Ibid. accessed November 6, 2012, http://www.antiquesandfinearts.com/ 3 Nonie Gadsden, Art & Reform: Sara Galner, The Saturday articles/articles.cfm?request=697. Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery, (Boston: MFA 20 Gadsden, Art & Reform, 13. Publications, 2006), 7. The museum now has a large collection on 21 Gadsden, «The Story of the Saturday Evening Girls and their hand thanks to a donation of over 130 pieces by the descendants of Paul Revere Pottery,» 3. Sara Galner, one of the first members of the group who worked for 22 Callen, 91. many years as a decorator. 23 Chalmers and Young, 3. 24 4 Anthea Callen, Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ibid.,4. 25 1870-1914, (New York: Pantheon, 1979), 2. Ibid. 26 5 Pamela Todd, The Arts & Crafts Companion, (London: Thames Jude Burkhauser, “The Glasgow Style,” in Glasgow Girls: Women and Hudson, 2004), 11. in Art and Design 1880-1920, ed. Jude Burkhauser, (Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 1990), 97. 6 Wendy Kaplan, The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe and 27 Gadsden, Art & Reform, 76. America: Design for the Modern World, (London: Thames and 28 Callen, 91. Hudson, 2004), 11. 29 Ibid. 7 Rosalind P. Blakesley, The Arts and Crafts Movement, (London: 30 Ibid. Phaidon Press Limited, 2006), 8. 31 Ibid., 218. 8 Kaplan, 248. 9 Ibid., 11. 10 Tod M. Volpe and Beth Cathers, Treasures of the American Arts and Crafts Movement 1890-1920, (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, 1988), 7. 11 Ibid. He also adds that one of the main tenets of the movement was that people should not try to change Nature but to rather understand and respect it.. 12 Liz Bird, “Women and Art Education,” in Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, ed. Jude Burkhauser, (Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 1990), 73. 13 Bird, 71.

122 123 BIBLIOGRAPHY -- --. “The Story of the Saturday Evening Girls and their Paul Revere Pottery.” Antiques and Fine Arts Magazine. Accessed November Bird, Liz. “Women and Art Education.” In Glasgow Girls: 6, 2012. http://www.antiquesandfinearts.com/articles/articles. Women in Art and Design 1880-1920, edited by Jude cfm?request=697. Burkhauser. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 1990. Greensted, Mary. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain. Oxford: Blakesley, Rosalind P. The Arts and Crafts Movement. London: Phaidon Shire Publications, 2010. Press Limited, 2006. Guerrier, Edith. An Independent Woman: The Autobiography of Brandt, Beverly K. “One Who Has Seen More and Knows More.” Edith Guerrier. Edited by Mollie Matson. Boston: University of In The Substance of Style; Perspectives on the American Arts and Crafts Massachusetts Press, 1991. Movement, edited by Bert Denker, 117-142. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1996. Hicks, Judith. “The Educational Theories of John Ruskin: A Reappraisal.” British Journal of Educational Studies 22, no. 1 (Feb. Burkhauser, Jude. “The Glasgow Style.” In Glasgow Girls: Women in 1974): 56-77. Art and Design 1880-1920, edited by Jude Burkhauser. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd., 1990. Kaplan, Wendy. The Arts & Crafts Movement in Europe and America: Design for the Modern World. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Callen, Anthea. Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870- 1914. New York: Pantheon, 1979. Naylor, Gillian. The Arts and Craft Movement. Bungay (UK): Studio Vista Publishers, 1971. Chalmers, Meg and Judy Young. “Saturday Evening Girls: Paul Revere Pottery.” Journal of Antiques (Jan. 2006): n. p. Accessed Neuer, Roni and Susugu Yoshida. Ukiyo-E: 250 Years of Japanese Art. November 24, 2012. http://www.journalofantiques.com/Jan06/ London: Winward, 1996. feature.html. Ruskin, John. The Ethics of the Dust. New York: Frank F. Lovell & Cumming, Elizabeth and Wendy Kaplan. The Arts and Crafts Cy., 1875. Movement. London: Thames and Hudson, 1991. -- --. Sesame and Lilies. New York and Boston: H. M. Caldwell Co., Edwards, Clive. “Home Is Where the Art Is: Women, Handicrafts n.d. and Home Improvements 1750-1900.” Journal of Design History 19, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 11-21. Todd, Pamela. The Arts & Crafts Companion. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Gadsden, Nonie. Art & Reform: Sara Galner, The Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery. Boston: Volpe, Tod M. and Beth Cathers. Treasures of the American Arts and MFA Publications, 2006. Crafts Movement 1890-1920. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. Publishers, 1988.

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JOHANNE DUROCHER-NORCHET

As an adult student, Johanne Durocher is a certified freelance translator (Honours BA in Translation from Concordia Uni- versity, member OTTIAQ and ATA). She is currently pursu- ing a BFA in Art History as well as a Master’s in Translation/ Terminology. She has published three books of translations (two on photography and architecture in Montreal, one on the Montreal survivors of the Titanic) and works mainly with university presses. She is doing terminology research with the Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art (History of Canadian Photography under the direction of Prof. Martha Langford). Her areas of interest are: Canadian photogra- phy, material culture, 19th c. pottery and porcelain, fashion, world fairs, Expo 67 as well as provenance and restitution.

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