The Journal of Modern Craft Craft, Class, and Volume 4—Issue 3 Acculturation at the November 2011 pp. 231–250 DOI: 10.2752/174967811X13179748904166 Settlement Reprints available directly from the publishers Sarah Archer Photocopying permitted by licence only © Berg 2011 Sarah Archer, a former Director of Greenwich House Pottery, is Chief Curator at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Her writing has appeared in American Craft, Artnet, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Hand/Eye, and Modern Magazine. She holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MA from the Bard Graduate Center.

Abstract This article considers the Greenwich House Handicraft School as an example of a craft workshop that was shaped by contradictory Craftsman and Settlement House ideals, and suggests this duality may account for its longevity. Greenwich House’s founder, social reformer Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, believed that exposure to and instruction in the arts was an effective way to inculcate E-Printa sense of community among the diverse population of recent immigrantsPUBLISHERS that Greenwich House served. The Pottery’s first program director Maude Robinson (who reported to Simkhovitch) and its lace-making teacher Katharine Lord wanted Greenwich House to operate at a high professional level, and did not share Simkhovitch’s sense that art was important at Greenwich House primarily as a means to a social end rather than on its own terms. While other craft schools established at the turn of the century eventually collapsed during the Great Depression, Greenwich House Pottery emerged after BERGthe Second World War as the only visual arts program remaining at the settlement house. © Keywords: needlework, sewing, pottery, settlement house, social reform, , , immigrants.

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BERG Fig 1 Greenwich House Settlement’s original location at 26 Jones Street, New York City, c. 1903, prior to the street being paved. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, on deposit© from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Social Museum Collection.

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Fig 2 Peter Voulkos giving a demonstration at Greenwich House Pottery, 1962. Greenwich House Pottery Archives.

Established in 1905 by social reformer Mary visual arts program, it was once part of Kingsbury Simkhovitch and lace-maker a constellation of craft offerings that, by Katharine Lord, New York’s Greenwich the 1920s, included woodworking, lace- House Handicraft SchoolBERG has a direct making, weaving, and stone carving. Two descendant in Greenwich House Pottery, opposing ideals, professionalism and a desire the storied ceramics studio on Jones Street to democratize art education, shaped the where a young© Peter Voulkos gave a series programming of the Greenwich House of famous workshops in the 1960s (Figures Handicraft School in its first decades. The 1 and 2). Although the Pottery is currently early history of the school presents an Greenwich House’s only standalone intriguing case study of Arts and Crafts

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values at work in an urban settlement house American women. Maude Robinson, who ran context. Its legacy is unusual enough to merit the Greenwich House Pottery from 1911 investigation: unlike so many of the mission- to 1941, sought to create a ceramics guild driven craft schools founded in the United of the highest order, sacrificing nothing on States at the turn of the century, such as the the altar of acculturation, nor brooking any Marblehead or Paul Revere Potteries, most kindhearted acceptance of “mixed abilities” of which later collapsed under the financial in a community studio. A complete history strain of the Great Depression, Greenwich of Greenwich House is beyond the scope House Pottery still thrives today.1 of this essay, but an analysis of the diverse The institution that began as the impulses that governed craft education there Greenwich House Handicraft School will contribute to the existing scholarship on has adapted numerous times in order to the cultural impact of American settlement survive changing circumstances. Even in houses, and their role in the American its early decades, the scope of Greenwich Arts and Crafts movement. This essay House’s offerings spanned multiple craft identifies the disparate values that motivated genres. Like many craft studios of the era, Simkhovitch, Lord, and Robinson—the three the Handicraft School was motivated by women who were most instrumental in concerns about the degrading impact of shaping Greenwich House’s craft education industrialization: specifically, the grueling programming—and locates them within conditions of sweatshop labor and the way larger social and artistic trends of their time. that home-work among immigrant women and children was affecting domestic life in the Roots in Victorian Britain tenements. When Greenwich House began The Settlement House and Arts and Crafts offering classes in lace-making, it positionedE-Print movements are in a sense separated at its new Handicraft School as a resource for birth. Both were efforts on the part of immigrant women who were already skilled, PUBLISHERSwell-educated men and women to remedy but who needed materials and access to a social ills associated with industrialization in network of potential customers. mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Both were Greenwich House founder Mary deeply concerned with the dignity of the Kingsbury Simkhovitch, a social reformer individual, and both advocated humane who studied with Franz Boas and John conditions for workers. Education, labor, and Dewey, advocated craft instruction as a spirituality were conceptually linked in the method of acculturating new immigrants Settlement House movement, which had its and promoting a sense of community in roots in Christian Socialism.2 Settlements their neighborhoods. Lace-maker,BERG writer, were established in poor neighborhoods and Handicraft School director Katharine where educated middle and upper class Lord acted as a kind of cultural interlocutor young people would move in with the hope between her ©students and the wider world of fostering “class exchange” with their of New York consumers: she saw it as her new neighbors. These reforming “settlers” duty to teach immigrant women in need of aimed to share their educational and cultural income how to make lace that would sell to advantages, usually in the form of classes and

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club activities, with the neighboring poor. The all spearheaded by women, and settlement Ruskinian idea that art education promoted houses were run almost exclusively by morality and spiritual uplift was key to its them.6 inclusion in settlement work. Ruskin himself Settlement workers believed that taught drawing at the Working Men’s College, immigrants needed object lessons in England’s first adult education program, American customs and ideals, and the from 1855 to 1860, where he advocated art religious and cultural differences they training as a way for students to appreciate brought with them were a threat to what God’s design of the natural world.3 Though had been a fairly homogeneous Protestant not technically a settlement, the Working population. The new wave of immigrants Men’s College presaged Toynbee Hall, the in the late nineteenth century was strongly first University settlement house, founded in associated with urban ills like crime and poor 1884. Inspired by Ruskin, furniture designer hygiene, which, because of the close living Charles Robert Ashbee established the conditions in American cities, were problems Guild School of Handicraft in 1888 while a for all inhabitants. There was a strong moral resident at Toynbee Hall.4 When Ellen Gates overtone in commentaries about this new Starr and Jane Addams, founders of Chicago’s population; one writer complained in 1894 Hull House, visited Britain in the 1880s, they that immigrants “took their pleasures in were deeply impressed by what they saw at eating, drinking, smoking, and society of the Toynbee Hall. Though Ashbee’s Guild School other sex, with dancing, music of a noisy was short-lived, it provided the organizational and lively character, spectacular shows, and model on which Hull House’s successful craft athletic exhibitions.”7 Even in the pages of program was based a decade later.5 The Craftsman, thinkers and writers sounded While British settlements targetedE-Print alarm at the social ills that could result poverty in purely economic, rather than from long years of factory work. Syracuse ethnic, terms, American settlements had a PUBLISHERSProfessor of Art History Irene Sargent wrote more specific cultural agenda because the an essay for the magazine in 1901 warning populations they served were comprised of crime and urban violence resulting from primarily of new immigrants. American repetitive work, making particular note of settlement houses are symbolic of the ideals the urban threat posed by Jewish and Italian of the Progressive era, broadly defined as immigrants.8 Yet, at the turn of the century, the period between the 1890s and the there was increasingly a sense that such 1920s—not coincidentally overlapping with prejudices about “immigrant types” were the Gilded Age—during which American unjust. Settlement workers thus had to strike social reformers soughtBERG to improve daily life a balance between their desire to instill for the working poor, increase government “high culture” in their neighbors and a less regulation of food and healthcare, and fight hierarchical, essentializing attitude. government© corruption. The gendered Though it had the outward appearance character of Progressive reform runs of a real workshop, with artisans making through many of its varied chapters. Suffrage, high-quality lace to sell (Figure 3), a pamphlet prohibition, and education movements were printed by Greenwich House Handicraft

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Fig 3 An example of lace from the Greenwich House Handicraft School, New York City, c. 1905–10. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, on deposit from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Social Museum Collection.

School in April 1906 described it as “a centre thanks to the social clout of Greenwich of information in regard to local hand-workE-Print House’s leaders. 10 conditions among women and children.”9 Greenwich House thus attempted to This seems a curious mission statement for PUBLISHERScreate a professional world for the women an educational institution or a craft studio, they served that could not exist in the but it aligns perfectly with the settlement free marketplace. The school’s mode of house goals of alleviating urban poverty operation in its first decades exhibited a by establishing meaningful connections distinctly middle-class, Progressive vision of between the poor and the well-to-do. In what paid work for women should, or could, their classes at Greenwich House, women look like. In her influential study Home to students learned to refine their techniques Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial using the best materials the school could Homework, historian Eileen Boris frames the afford. They were taughtBERG to adopt what their struggle to regulate tenement sweatshop teachers perceived as an American eye for labor in American cities as a prism through good design and marketability, and through which to explore evolving attitudes toward their participation© in the school they had American women and their labor, particularly opportunities to exhibit their work at local where domesticity—a labor of love, or at gallery shows in Greenwich Village, as well least filial duty—overlaps with paid work as at elite venues such as the Colony Club, performed from home. Boris’s other seminal

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work, Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and crafting is in the experience of intellectual the Craftsman Ideal in America, explores and physical training and coordination that the culture of the handmade in turn-of- it gives the maker, rather than the object the-century American society, particularly produced. This view influenced Felix Adler, as its values shaped public education. who established the Workingman’s School The use of craft education in settlement in New York City (which operates today as houses sits right at the intersection of Ethical Culture, a private day school) in 1878, these two areas of inquiry. By the 1870s, and who was a colleague of Simkhovitch’s, art education had entered the American serving on the Greenwich House Board Common School curriculum for practical from its founding in 1902. reasons, but educators also embraced The fact that much workshop training in Ruskin’s view that art training had benefits this period was designed to be experiential beyond the provision of a marketable skill.11 and character building (rather than to Art education in the United States has a constitute real professional training) makes very different history from that of Europe, the gender division of craft education appear with its tradition of royal and ecclesiastical socially mandated rather than practical. Boris patronage and its system of artists’ guilds. makes a crucial observation connecting these As Boris notes in Art and Labor, compulsory two topics: because the tasks of low-wage public education for a growing immigrant female labor share certain superficial qualities population made schools an important locus with some Arts and Crafts practices (making of cultural and social influence in the 1870s, garments or lace by hand, for example), there and by the 1880s, American educators was a special alliance between the sweatshop were well versed in Ruskinian ideals, placing seamstress and the parlor craftswoman. This a strong emphasis on art trainingE-Print as a connection may partly explain why craft way to instill an appreciation of beauty.12 practice was so often a focus of settlement The “craftsman ideal” was instrumental in PUBLISHERShouse cultural work: it was a common reuniting disciplines of drawing and shop- language shared by the female social workers work with other arts and crafts traditions and the women they sought to help. As out of a desire to desegregate the practical Boris explains in her essay “Crafts Shop or from the romantic. Sweatshop?,” the use of handicrafts allowed In Thinking Through Craft, Glenn Adamson reformers to recast unsavory labor in the draws an important distinction between sweatshops or repetitive home-work as a true vocational training and what we might middle-class activity suitable for women.14 consider “liberal arts” craft classes influenced Living history displays such as the Labor by educational theoriesBERG such as Educational Museum at Hull House demonstrated the slöjd (the Scandinavian term for “handcraft”), craft practices of immigrant women—Syrian, which was developed in the late nineteenth Italian, Irish, and Russian—in the interest of century by© Uno Cygnaeus in Finland and cultivating a sense of sisterhood between Otto Salomon in Sweden.13 Theorist John craftswomen from abroad and the native- Dewey espoused slöjd for its emphasis on born women who populated the reformer process rather than product: the value in class. The Scuola d’Industrie Italiane was

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established at New York’s Richmond Hill form of manual labor, depending on the House by an Italian aristocrat, Countess circumstances. Amari, who taught lace-making to Italian Immigrants’ farming background would immigrant women in an effort to revive have prepared them well for life in the traditional techniques.15 In Boston, the American colonies had they arrived North Bennet Industrial School (now the centuries earlier, but in a rapidly urbanizing North Bennet Street School) offered an America, they were woefully unprepared. array of services similar to those offered by The primary challenge they faced was the Greenwich House, including a day nursery. need to earn enough income required to Founded in 1885 by Boston socialite Pauline support the large families that had been Agassiz Shaw, North Bennet was also heavily assets on family farms but became liabilities influenced by slöjd philosophy. It was home in tightly packed urban areas. In the rural to the Paul Revere Pottery, which established contexts of Italy and Eastern Europe, labor a weekly gathering of young immigrant on the farm and in the household was women called the Saturday Evening Girls, interconnected—men, women, and children who decorated pottery for sale.16 all helped to keep the farm afloat in a At the turn of the twentieth century, household division of tasks. The notion of the United States absorbed the vast a man selling his labor to support a family changes wrought by industrialization and was unusual, and for a woman to do so by immigration from new ethnic groups was unheard of. Immigrant women faced simultaneously. The immigrants who arrived contradictory pressures in America. On the in large eastern cities during this period one hand they felt compelled to hew to the hailed primarily from Eastern Europe, Italy, cultural expectations of both their native and and Ireland, and for the most partE-Print they adopted countries and focus their efforts came from poor rural areas. Settlement on traditionally feminine labors of keeping work during the Progressive era sought PUBLISHERShouse, cooking, cleaning, and taking care to establish connections between the of children. On the other hand, urban life classes, but in fact they were already deeply necessitated income on a scale that most intertwined by trade. In urban centers at fathers could not earn alone. Thus immigrant the turn of the century, people of means women and girls began earning money by now consumed what they would have working in garment sweatshops and by produced themselves in the first half of the producing goods at home. Home-work in nineteenth century, while low-wage workers particular muddied the waters of domesticity, produced goods they themselves could not family life, work, and gender so profoundly afford to consume.17 TheBERG advent of urban, that it became one of the primary concerns female consumers who did needlework for of urban social reformers. Reformers recreation but never made their own or their attacked home-work in the tenements for families’ clothes© at home created a new social disrupting family life, distracting mothers from nuance in textile work. Making lace could be caring for their children, and preventing child viewed as a refined hobby or a degrading workers from attending school.18

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Women’s Work Simkhovitch had the benefit of Though they came from starkly different working directly with Columbia University backgrounds and led very different lives, anthropologist Franz Boas, a pioneering the settlement workers and the immigrants advocate of cultural relativism, who served they served were natural allies. In addition on Greenwich House’s Committee on to aiding the disenfranchised, settlement Social Investigations at the turn of the work also significantly benefited the women century.23 She was also deeply influenced who chose it as a vocation. Because they by the work of educator John Dewey, operated outside the sphere of established who headed the Education Committee institutions with long-entrenched gender at Greenwich House for several years.24 barriers, settlements afforded well-educated Dewey argued for an understanding of women rare opportunities for administrative art and aesthetic experience as part of an and intellectual leadership. Victorian women integrated life, rather than an ornamental were the accepted guardians of virtue, and or auxiliary experience—a necessity they wielded this influence in public schools, rather than a luxury.25 In her first annual settlement houses, clubs, societies, and above report Simkhovitch presents the scope all, at home.19 Some settlement workers of Greenwich House’s activities with a adopted a paternalistic view of the families, clear emphasis on the importance of and particularly the young women, they cultivating a robust community social life. served. Concerned that families were unable Her understanding of the benefits of social to adequately police their children’s activities, reform had a decidedly patriotic bent, Mary Simkhovitch remarked that “the immediately evidenced by the frequent community itself must become foster mother appearance of the terms “democracy” and father.”20 E-Printand “citizen” in her writing. At the time A social reformer who was educated at of her education in social work in the Boston University, Simkhovitch established PUBLISHERS1890s, the United States was absorbing an the Greenwich House Settlement at 26 unprecedented volume of new immigrants Jones Street in 1902 (Figure 1). She was from places that had never before been raised outside Boston by well-educated, significantly represented on the American prosperous parents who had opposed demographic map.26 “The democracy,” she slavery during the Civil War. She met her wrote in 1906, “to which we as Americans husband, Russian-born economist Vladimir are pledged, demands cultural advantages Simkhovitch, while studying social sciences in for all, and this is impossible without a larger Berlin.21 In 1902, when Simkhovitch founded industrial opportunity.”27 Simkhovitch draws Greenwich House, BERGJones Street was an a connection between effective participation overcrowded, unpaved street populated in democracy and “cultural advantages,” but predominately by immigrants from Ireland, nowhere in her writings is there evidence Italy, and the© Middle East. The settlement had that she was concerned with profit—that is, fifteen residents in its first year, in addition she viewed the process of making things as to Mary, Vladimir, and their two young an end unto itself, and did not regard the end children.22 products as potential sources of revenue for

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the women that Greenwich House served. of the program as the training of women Simkhovitch’s two primary goals for arts and girls in “lace-making, weaving and allied programming were to acculturate the Jones crafts, and to develop an appreciation Street residents through activities, club life, of the beautiful.”29 Lord wrote a lengthy and classes, and to curtail vice by providing article about the Handicrafts School for them with attractive alternatives to the The Craftsman in 1908, which expands on saloon and the dance hall. these goals. The program, she wrote, “was The programs of Greenwich House were established to meet the needs of two classes played out on a stage that social reformers of women: foreigners skilled in some form of referred to as “club life.” Clubs formed the hand-work who needed direction in design network of social and educational activity and choice of material, and girls and women that enabled settlement workers like physically unfit to enter the regular industrial Simkhovitch to work closely with young field; and to foster and develop a love of people and to supervise their working the beautiful, and encourage its application together. The exercises in cooperation and to daily life.”30 Lastly, Lord notes: “[w]orkers group governance afforded by club activities among our foreign population are constantly were as much part of the agenda as the meeting women who have been trained activities themselves. Simkhovitch wrote in in some of the hand industries of Europe, 1911: “The purpose of these clubs is training especially lace making and embroidery, for community life. Democracy has to be for whose skill there is practically no worked for. The constant fights, struggles, employment in America.”31 Lord’s view readjustments, co-operation, building up of differs strongly from that of Simkhovitch standards that make up club life is the most in terms of both professionalism and her valuable training possible.”28 The craftsE-Print were evaluation of the relative marketability of taught alongside an array of acculturating lace-work. While Simkhovitch seems to activities that ranged from patriotic pageants, PUBLISHERShave been primarily interested in the welfare lectures, dances, concerts, performances of of individual students, Lord was concerned Shakespeare, and practical services like milk with the larger economic context of their sterilization and medical care. labor. While Simkhovitch was focused on Tenement lace was one of the primary process and experience above all else, manifestations of a trend during this her colleague Katharine Lord was more period known as “immigrant gifts.” Hull pragmatic and determined to help the House founder Jane Addams, concerned women in her classes earn money by making with alienation between foreign-born and selling lace when BERGshe established the mothers and American-born daughters, Handicraft School in 1905 (Figure 4). Lord saw the production of traditional lace and was a native of Burlington, Vermont, a textiles (Figure 5) as a tool for conveying graduate of Wellesley© College, and had cultural pride between the generations pursued graduate work at Bryn Mawr. A and promoting the benefits of a society brochure written by Lord, published the year that embraced new cultures. She sought of the school’s founding, describes the goal to “Americanize” new arrivals, but also to

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E-Print Fig 4 Lace-makers at the Greenwich House HandicraftPUBLISHERS School, New York City, 1905. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, on deposit from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Social Museum Collection. make them feel comfortable with their own from Eastern Europe, Ireland, and the cultural background rather than attempting Middle East alongside live demonstrations to erase that identity.32 This point of view, of techniques, recalling a world’s fair display. Boris asserts, is a peculiarly American Numerous similar workshops sprang up incarnation of the Ruskinian romantic ideal, in east coast and mid-western cities, but wherein the proverbialBERG “medieval craftsman” none of them, even the well-organized and is replaced by an Italian or Irish woman ambitious South End House lace workshop possessed of centuries-old patterns and in Boston, managed to enable individual techniques.©33 Addams went so far as to workers to earn enough to make the establish the Hull House Museum, which enterprise economically worthwhile. If the featured exhibits of various articles of “immigrant gifts” movement had value, it was traditional weaving and spinning equipment in consciousness-raising rather than in the

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E-Print PUBLISHERS Fig 5 A handwoven table scarf and an Italian cut-work scarf from the Greenwich House Handicraft School, New York City, c. 1905–10. © President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Art Museum/ Fogg Museum, on deposit from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Social Museum Collection. facilitation of entrepreneurship for immigrant complete. Many such pieces of lace and women.34 embroidery have been brought to residents Lord betrays some cultural arrogance of Greenwich House, often with a pathetic with regard to her charges when she writes certainty that the teacher will be able to that, although many ofBERG the immigrant women find a market for them.” Lord is not without are “endowed with natural taste capable hope for her students, however: “And of development, without the knowledge yet many of these women have the talent, of what is good,© or even practicable in originality and instinct for beauty which make design, unable to obtain proper materials, ordinary factory work distasteful to them. these women spend many hours upon With proper materials, with instruction and articles which are utterly worthless when direction in form and design, they are very

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soon able to produce laces of the highest Art Students League in New York City for grade of excellence. Several such women three years before attending Newcomb have been earning steady incomes since their Art School in New Orleans, Louisiana (the entrance into the school, and their pleasure antecedent of the renowned Newcomb in their work and the improvement in their Pottery).36 Rather than focusing on the social general condition shows that the school is aims of the settlement as Simkhovitch and filling a real want.”35 Lord’s views suggest an Lord did, Robinson approached her work at uneasy balancing act between a traditional, Greenwich House from the perspective of Victorian understanding of high culture and her own training, which was as a professional a social worker’s desire to impart standards studio potter (Figure 6). She came of age and an appreciation of “beauty” (objectively during a period when opportunities for defined) with a genuine desire to help the American women in ceramics were opening lace-makers find a receptive audience for up, and long-held gender barriers were their designs. beginning to fall away. The cliché of women Although the Pottery began with a painting china at home as a “parlor craft” social agenda similar to that of the lace- was well entrenched during her lifetime.37 making program, there was no equivalent In commercial potteries, both in Britain and of sweatshops for ceramics in turn-of- America, there existed a belief that men the-century New York City. Thus the were suited to making pots while women, program lacked the moral imperative to due to their supposed aptitude for delicate, “correct” a social ill. Under the leadership repetitive work, were better suited to of professional potter Maude Robinson, it decorating them—a division of labor that operated less like a social experiment and persisted until the turn of the century.38 It more like a professional guild, E-Printattracting was not until the early 1900s that female prominent architects and interior designers studio potters like Mary Louise McLaughlin as clients and some of New York City’s most PUBLISHERSbegan to prove that women had both the prominent arts patrons as supporters. The aesthetic skill and technical aptitude to desire to educate, acculturate, and assimilate master both the scientific and artistic aspects immigrants through crafts might not turn a of studio pottery. profit, but Pottery director Maude Robinson From her earliest writings, Robinson’s knew what would accomplish that goal, focus is the quality and critical reception and she ignored the agendas of the social of the work produced in the Pottery’s workers who had originated the Handicraft workshops—nowhere is a reference to School. The Pottery was established as a John Ruskin or the reunification of mind distinct program inBERG 1911 and Robinson ran it and hand to be found. A summary that until 1941. she prepared for a Greenwich House Robinson was brought up in an upper- Annual Report conveys obvious pride that middle-class© family not unlike that of some of her students have found gainful Simkhovitch. She was born in 1880 in employment at a commercial pottery, and Corning, New York, where her father was that pieces made at Greenwich House were a dry goods merchant. She studied at the purchased by the New York Public Library

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Fig 6 Maude Robinson demonstrating on a kick-wheel for students at Greenwich House Pottery, c. 1915. Greenwich House Pottery Archives. and the National Society of Craftsmen. She In later years, no less a patron than J.P. describes field trips to view ceramics at the Morgan commissioned white garden urns Metropolitan Museum of Art, a visit from from Greenwich House Pottery, as did a Columbia University ceramics professor, the Garden Club of America. Pots by the and robust sales. A similarBERG summary from Greenwich House Potters and Sculptors, 1918 details an extraordinarily impressive as the emerging professional group called roster of clients for Greenwich House themselves, found their way into the wares, far exceeding© the prestige of a local collections of the Metropolitan Museum craft sale: Delano and Aldrich, the A.B. of Art and the Newark Museum, and won Houghton estate at Corning, New York, prizes such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago architect David Adler.39 Prize of 1924 (Figure 7).

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Fig 7 Vessels made at Greenwich House Pottery on display at the New York Flower Show, 1926. Greenwich House Pottery Archives.

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In addition to securing patrons for and professional basis not as a charity the pots, Robinson succeeded in finding institution.”40 In this letter, Robinson refers support for the studio itself. Contributions to consultation with experts and emphasizes from Marshall Field, Gertrude Vanderbilt her own expertise, a major departure from Whitney, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. the experiential focus of Simkhovitch and the allowed the Pottery to purchase a state- conscious-raising efforts of Katharine Lord. of-the-art electric kiln in 1929. As early as 1919, Robinson BERGused the language of Improbable Survival a small boutique firm to describe the The lace-making and other crafts programs Pottery’s activity; in a letter sent to the at Greenwich House collapsed during offices of Delano© and Aldrich in response the Depression, and the organization’s to a complaint from a client, she wrote: leaders eventually found that they could “The Pottery Department at Greenwich not manage the business side of the House is working strictly on a business Handicraft School nor provide a source of

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significant employment for women in the thus attained a base of ongoing support neighborhood. The Handicraft School was as well as broad credibility in the field, in succeeded by the Neighborhood Art School a sense retaining the heritage of both the and the Pottery was the only program settlement ideals embodied by Simkhovitch that resumed operation after the Second and Lord, and the professional focus of World War. Although Maude Robinson’s Maude Robinson. By the time Alfred-trained approach lacked the moral imperative of ceramist Jane Hartsook became director in Simkhovitch and Lord, Greenwich House 1945, the Pottery was poised to become an Pottery’s continued existence may be a incubator for talent within the rich cultural credit to her pragmatism. When Greenwich fabric of postwar Greenwich Village (Figure House and other settlement house craft 8).41 The multi-faceted agenda of its founders, programs were established at the turn of which inadvertently combined a focus on the century, art instruction was rare even quality of craftsmanship with a desire to in universities and rarer still outside of the make available the social benefits of craft academy. In the century since its founding, instruction, may be the source of Greenwich instruction in fine art and studio crafts has House’s enduring strength. pervaded universities (and not without considerable debate about its place in higher Notes education). After the Second World War, 1 As it functions today, the only surviving program— when craft education in the US gravitated Greenwich House Pottery—balances an emphasis to the university on the strength of the GI on the use of craft as a tool for personal Bill, neighborhood and settlement house enrichment for the majority of its adult students, art and craft programs took on a new with providing opportunities to a small cohort supplementary role. Most of the modern of emerging and established professional artists. E-PrintOne could not exist without the other: buoyed craft centers to which Greenwich House PUBLISHERSby the tuition revenue and community support Pottery is usually compared, like Penland, of its student population, the residency program Philadelphia’s Clay Studio, or Minnesota’s and gallery can provide valuable opportunities Northern Clay Center, were founded to professional ceramists, the notoriety of which well after the Second World War, with an in turn helps Greenwich House marshal financial support for all the Pottery’s programs. educational model that acknowledged the primacy of craft education in the university 2 Mina Carson, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and system. the American Settlement Movement, 1885–1930 What sets the Greenwich House Pottery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 3. apart is that, as craft education gained a 3 Arthur D. Efland, A History of Art Education: foothold in academia inBERG the 1940s and 1950s, Intellectual and Social Currents in the Teaching of it was able to remain viable by combining the Visual Arts (New York: Teachers’ College Press, 1990), p. 140. a serious focus for a small number of distinguished emerging© professional artists 4 Sheila Rowbotham, “Arts, Crafts & Socialism,” with a broad emphasis on community History Today, 59(Feb. 2008): 44. education and enrichment. The Pottery 5 Ibid.

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E-Print Fig 8 Eva Zeisel (second from left) and Aileen OsbornPUBLISHERS Webb (far right) visit Greenwich House Pottery during a benefit event organized with Gourmet magazine in 1955. Greenwich House Pottery Archives.

6 Lewis Gould, America in the Progressive Era, 9 Greenwich House Handicraft School Pamphlet, 1890–1914 (London: Pearson Education Limited, 1906. Accessed via Harvard University 2001), pp. 3–8. Collection Development Department, Widener Library, HCL/Greenwich House 7 Hiram M. Stanley, “A Suggestion as to Popular (New York): http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/ Amusements,” The Century, 47(3/Jan. 1894): view/2574381?n=4&s=4 476–7. In Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: the Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America 10 “Applied Art Show at the Colony Club,” The (Cambridge, MA: HarvardBERG University Press, 1988), New York Times, February 9, 1912. p. 225. 11 “‘The Eye is a Nobler Organ’: Ruskin and 8 T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: American Art Education,” The Journal of Aesthetic Antimodernism© and the Transformation of American Education, 18(2/Summer 1984), Special Issue: Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Defining Cultural and Educational Relations—An 1981), p. 71. International Perspective: 51.

The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 4—Issue 3—November 2011, pp. 231–250 248 Craft, Class, and Acculturation at the Greenwich House Settlement Sarah Archer

12 Eileen Boris, Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the 22 Gerald W. Macfarland, Inside Greenwich Village: A Craftsman Ideal in America (Philadelphia: Temple New York City Neighborhood, 1989–1918 (Boston: University Press, 1986), pp. 82–4. University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), p. 63. 13 Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through Craft (Oxford: Berg, 2007), pp. 78–9. 23 October 1, 1903, Reel-7089, Greenwich House Annual Reports, Greenwich House Records, 14 Eileen Boris, “Crafts Shop or Sweatshop? The Tamiment Library, New York University, p. 4. Uses and Abuses of Craftsmanship in Twentieth Century America,” Journal of Design History, 24 Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, Neighborhood: My 2(2/3, 1989): 177. Story of Greenwich House (New York: Norton, 1938), p. 155. 15 Eileen Boris, “Crossing Boundaries: The Gendered Meaning of the Arts and Crafts.” In 25 Shannon Jackson, Lines of Activity: Performance, The Ideal Home: The History of Twentieth Century Historiography, Hull-House Domesticity (Ann American Craft, Janet Kardon (ed.) (New York: Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), Abrams, 1994), p. 40. pp. 16–17. 16 Nonie Gadsen, Art and Reform: Sara Galner, the 26 Macfarland, p. 62. Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery (Boston: MFA Publications, 2006), p. 14. 27 Mary Simkhovitch, “Annual Report of Director,” 5th Annual Report, October 1906, Greenwich 17 Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of House Annual Reports, Greenwich House Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University, 1890–1925 (New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 5–12, Microfilm R-7089. 1985), p. 23. 28 10th Annual Report, October 1911, Greenwich 18 Eileen Boris, Home to Work: Motherhood and House Annual Reports, Greenwich House the Politics of Industrial Homework (New York: Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University, Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 57. pp. 13–14, Microfilm R-7089. 19 Karen J. Blair, The Torchbearers: Women’sE-Print 29 “The Handicraft School of Greenwich House,” Amateur Art Associations in America, 1890–1930 PUBLISHERS[1906], Greenwich House Papers, Series VI: (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), Scrapbooks, SB1, Handicraft School, 1905–1910, pp. 12–13. See also Laura Prieto, At Home in the Tamiment Library, New York University, Microfilm Studio: the Professionalization of Women Artists in R-7088, Reel #44. America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 22–4. 30 Katharine Lord, “The Greenwich Handicraft School,” The Craftsman, 8(March 1908): 717. 20 Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, “A New Social Adjustment,” Proceedings of the Academy 31 Ibid. of Political Science in the City of New York, October, 1910, pp. 86–7. In Kathy Peiss, Cheap 32 Kristin L. Hoganson, Consumer’s Imperium: Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn The Global Production of American Domesticity, of the Century New YorkBERG (Philadelphia: Temple 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of University Press, 1986), p. 179. North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 215–22. 21 John Louis Rechiutti, Civic Engagement: Social 33 Boris, Art and Labor, p. 130. Science and ©Progressive-Era Reform in New York 34 Boris, Art and Labor, pp. 133–5. City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 86. 35 Boris, Art and Labor, p. 718.

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36 Emily Elizabeth Davis, “The Pottery Notebook 40 Letter from Pottery Department to Messrs. of Maude Robinson: a Woman’s Contribution Delano & Aldrich, January 18, 1919, Series V: to Art Pottery Manufacture, 1903–1909” (MA Pottery School, Box 60, F. 5, Greenwich House Thesis, University of Delaware), p. 9. Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University, Microfilm R-7088, Reel #43. 37 Paul S. Donhauser, History of American Ceramics: The Studio Potter (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt 41 Hull House in Chicago, once famous for its Publishing Company, 1978), p. 30. ceramics program, continues to offer arts instruction today, but only for school-age 38 Cheryl Buckley, “‘The Noblesse of the Banks’: children—no residencies or other professional Craft Hierarchies, Gender Divisions, and the opportunities are available for adults. Very Roles of Women Paintresses and Designers in few settlement houses currently offer serious the British Pottery Industry, 1890–1939,” Journal classes for adults or studio-based residency of Design History, 2(4/1989): 258–9. programs; among the few are Greenwich House 39 M. Elizabeth Price and Maude Robinson, and the Henry Street Settlement. It is probably “Neighborhood Art School,” 17th Annual no accident that both Greenwich House and Report, 1918 [1917/1918], Greenwich House Henry Street operate in the artistic hub of lower Annual Reports, Greenwich House Papers, Manhattan. Tamiment Library, New York University, pp. 17–19, Microfilm R-7089.

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The Journal of Modern Craft Volume 4—Issue 3—November 2011, pp. 231–250 E-Print PUBLISHERS

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