“The Hub” The Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston 15th ANNUAL ARTS AND CRAFTS CONFERENCE SEPTEMBER 19 – 22, 2013 gold lacquers. To be sold at auction Thurs., April 21 [1898]. April 21 be sold at auction Thurs., To gold lacquers. ivories and kakemono, screens, prints, embroideries, brocades, bronzes, porcelain, Descriptive catalogue of an important collection Japanese and Chinese pottery, “Bunkio Matsuki (The Collector) in Japan,” Frontispiece to Bunkio Matsuki, Henry Hobson Richardson, Trinity Church, 1872 – 1877. George Christian Gebelein for Gebelein Silversmiths, Five-piece coffee and tea service, Boston, Massachusetts, 1929. Silver, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Anonymous Gift. 1986.778-782. Frederick Wilson, Tiffany Studios, Madonna of the Flowers, Arlington Street Church, Boston, 1898. Photo by Julie L. Sloan. “The Hub” The Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. described the Massachusetts State House as “The Hub,” placing that institution at the center of the Solar System as he saw it. This description can easily be applied to Boston as the intellectual center from which styles and ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement were disseminated throughout the United States, a subject we explore in the 15th anniversary celebration of the Arts and Crafts conference. Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton, for example, was a long-time correspondent of John Ruskin, cementing Boston’s claim to fame as the leading champion of movement ideals in the United States. Boston played a key role in design reform and in the restructuring of industrial society through education of workers and consumers. Members of the city’s cultural elite founded the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) in 1870. The MFA with its affiliated school— along with the Massachusetts Normal School—was a pioneer in training applied art teachers and became a national model because many of those trained at these institutions migrated throughout the country. Another immensely important force was the nationally dominant Society of Arts and Crafts Boston (SACB), founded early in 1897 to promote “mutually helpful relations” among designers and craftsmen, many of whom were immigrants, and continuing to fulfill that mission today. The prevalence of Japanese influence in the Arts and Crafts can in no small measure be traced to Boston, the pre-eminent center for study of Japanese culture in the United Sarah Wyman Whitman, Honor and Peace. Window from Memorial Hall, Harvard University, States. The MFA, the first American institution to hire a curator of commemorating those who surrendered their lives in the “War of the Rebellion,” 1900. American Japanese art, Ernest Fenellosa, still holds the largest collection of opalescent glass. Photo: Stephen Sylvester and Yosi Japanese material outside Japan. Denman W. Ross, who played a A.R-Pozeilov, Digital Imaging and Photography Group, Harvard College Libraries. © The President key role in the SACB and a gifted teacher of design at Harvard, was and Fellows of Harvard College. one of the major donors of Japanese objects. To Boston in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps more than in other American city, the neo- Gothic and Richardsonian Romanesque were the appropriate vocabularies for ecclesiastical or public architecture while the indigenous colonial revival was appropriate for domestic purposes. Each of these vocabularies, it can be argued, was used in eloquent if different expressions of Movement aesthetics, concepts, and ideals. Boston’s MIT, home to the first architectural school in the United States, trained some of America’s most important post-Civil War architects, including Charles and Henry Greene, who took refined Arts and Crafts principles to their practice in Southern California. In the late 19th century, with the Arts and Crafts, Boston was reframing the City’s founders’ dictum that it be a “City upon a Hill,” a standard bearer for present and future generations. The conference is hosted by All Saints Church Ashmont, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Dedham Historical Society, Fuller Craft Museum, the Old Schwamb Mill, the Society of Arts and Crafts, and Stonehurst, with the participation of Harvard University, the town of North Easton, the Norwood Historical Society, and Trinity Church. We gratefully acknowledge generous funding from the Mayor’s Office for Arts, Tourism, and Special Events in Boston; the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau; Tom Bird and Joan Albin; The Felicia Fund; Barbara Fuldner; Kaminski Auctions; James D. Kaufman; Kristin A. Steensma; and anonymous donors. We are also deeply appreciative of support from Samuel T. Freeman & Co., Skinner’s, and The Victorian Society in America / New England Chapter. Marilee Boyd Meyer has been unstinting in her contributions to this project. This conference is dedicated to Cheryl Ann Robertson. Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us, so be quick to love and make haste to be kind. —Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1820s – 1881) Thursday, September 19 Formal sessions take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the Alfond Auditorium. 10:00 – 10: 05 a.m. Welcome. Elliot Bostwick Davis, John Moors Cabot Chair, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 10:05 – 10:15 a.m. Introduction. Lisa Koenigsberg. 10:15 – 10:55 a.m. Richardson / Romanesque, Cram / Neo-Gothic: The Breadth of Architectural Expression in Boston. Emilie LeBlanc and Marie de Hoa LeBlanc, Newcomb Pottery, Louisiana (New Orleans), Vase, about 1899. Richard Guy Wilson. Earthenware, with blue and green underglaze. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Anonymous gift, 1899.99.75. 11:00 – 11:40 a.m. Architects of the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston. Maureen Meister. 11: 45 a.m. – 12:25 p.m. Art, Industry and Education: Art Pottery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, at the Turn of the Century. Nonie Gadsden. 12:30 – 2:15 p.m. Optional box lunch at the MFA (Advance purchase required; attendees to be sent information after registration.) During the lunch break, conference attendees are encouraged to explore the MFA galleries and to take the rare opportunity to tour the Forsyth building. The Forsyth building, located next door to the MFA along Boston’s famous Fenway, was acquired by the Museum in 2007. Constructed in 1912 as both a memorial to the Forsyth family and an innovative setting for medical care and research, the Forsyth Dental Infirmary for Children offered oral health care to the children of Boston and served as a school to train dentists. The building’s interior is largely covered with tiles, since they were considered easy to sanitize, durable, and fireproof. Beneath vaulted Guastavino tile ceilings, many of the children’s rooms are enlivened with Arts and Crafts tiles by Delft, Grueby, the Saturday Evening Girls / Paul Revere Pottery, and Henry Mercer’s Moravian Pottery. Tours will be given in shifts and will be led by Nonie Gadsden and Maureen Melton, Susan Morse Hilles Director of Libraries and Archives at the MFA. 2:15 – 2:55 p.m. The Politics of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Past and Present: The View From Boston. Edward S. Cooke, Jr. 3:00 – 3:40 p.m. Presenting Japan and Its Wares in New England, Around 1900. Hina Hirayama. 3:40 – 4:10 p.m. Break 4:10 – 4:50 p.m. Arthur Wesley Dow, Denman Ross and Design Education in the Arts and Crafts. Marie Frank. 4:55 – 5:30 p.m. Colonial Redux: The Colonial Revival and the Arts and Crafts Movement in the Boston Area. Gerald W. R. Ward. 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Tours of the MFA’s Arts and Crafts Photo: courtesy of The Society Arts and Crafts. 54 x 28 20 in., 2013. Oedel, Richard galleries, Japanese galleries, and Arts and Crafts photography collections in the Morse Study Room. Jewelry Cabinet. Led by MFA curators and staff. 7:15 – 8:30 p.m. Reception and viewing “Creative Minds, Disciplined Hands: maple, and 23k gold, birdseye Mahogany, Selections from the New Hampshire Furniture Masters.” The Society of Arts and Crafts 175 Newbury Street Friday, September 20 Formal morning sessions take place in the undercroft at Trinity Church in Copley Square. 9:15 a.m. Meet at Trinity Church. 9:30 – 10:10 a.m. The Art of Colored Light: Stained Glass of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Boston. Julie L. Sloan. 10:15 –10:55 a.m. John Evans: H. H. Richardson’s Architectural Sculptor. Ann Clifford. 10:55 – 11:15 a.m. Break 11:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. Tour of Boston Back Bay and Copley Square. Led by Edward Gordon, Joe Cornish, and William Young. Starting at Trinity, we view the New England Life Building (1930s, a late design by Ralph Adams Cram’s firm); the Berklee Building (1905, Codman & Desperadelle); the Warren Chambers Medical Offices Building (1896, Ball & Dabney); Shreve Crump & Low Building (1904, Parker, Thomas & Rice with 1930 alterations by William T. Aldrich); Arlington Unitarian Universalist Church, (1859 – 1861, Arthur D. Gilman, with outstanding Tiffany glass); Emmanuel Church (mid 1860s, Alexander Rice Estey); Lindsay Chapel (1924); Church of the Covenant (mid-1860s, Richard Upjohn Jr. with an outstanding Tiffany interior); Museum of Natural History (1864, William Gibbons Prescott; now Restoration Hardware); Trinity Church Rectory (late 1870s, H. H. Richardson); Brattle Square Church (early 1870s, H. H. Richardson); Patrick Collins early 20th-century memorial by Henry Hudson Kitson; Hotel Vendome (early 1870s, William G. Preston with early 1880s component by J. F. Ober); the great mansions on Dartmouth St., among them: Ames Webster Mansion (early 1870s, Peabody & Stearns / early 1880s John Hubbard Sturgis); Benjamin Crowninshield House (1869, H. H. Richardson's first Back Bay House); Thomas F. Cushing House (1871, Snell & Gregerson); Hollis H. Hunnewell House (1869, Sturgis & Brigham); Arthur Hunnewell House (1876 − mid 1880s, Shaw & Shaw); Boston Art Club (1881, William Ralph Emerson); and the Hotel Victoria (1886, John L.