NEWCOMB POTTERY: An Introduction
By Edla Brabham
The Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, Louisiana, was one of the most important art potteries
in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. It produced a distinctly Southern art form,
“made of southern clays, by southern artists, decorated with southern subjects.” (Mary Sheerer,
quoted in Poesch, p.18)
The Newcomb Pottery was a workshop extension of the Art School at H. Sophie Newcomb
Memorial College, the women’s college of Tulane University in New Orleans. Ellsworth Woodward, a
graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and head of the Newcomb College Art School, believed
that training in creative work could enable a young woman to learn a respectable trade and provide
her with a source of income. Strongly influenced by the English Arts and Crafts Movement, Woodward
decided that that objects produced by Newcomb College students should be one of a kind, welldesigned, made by hand, simple and utilitarian. The products of the Newcomb College art studios
included needlework, jewelry, metalwork, leaded glass, and fine book bindings, but the pottery, first
produced in 1895, was the most significant.
Although the purpose of the Newcomb Pottery was to provide young women with vocational
training, the work was strictly divided by gender. Men did the heavy, dirty work of throwing the pots,
loading and firing the kilns, and adding the glazes. For nearly thirty years, about 60% of Newcomb
pottery was thrown by Joseph Meyer (1848-1931), considered the “father” of the Newcomb Pottery.
Meyer was a gifted potter who could execute shapes from students’ drawings, and “could throw a fine
piece of work faster than any man living.” (Paul E. Cox, quoted in “Shaping a Legacy”.) Until about
1904, Myer was also in charge of all the firing and glazing of the pottery.
The women of the Newcomb Pottery did the clean, painstaking, feminine work of decoration,
adding designs with a “delicacy that only young ladies can do.” (Unattributed quote in “Shaping a
Legacy.”) Mary Sheerer (1865-1954) was appointed to teach pottery design and supervise the women
decorators; she was a graduate of the Cincinnati Art Academy, an inventive ceramics designer, and
skilled china painter. Sheerer was a major influence on the Newcomb style, and developed the earliest
glazes.
At its height, the Newcomb Pottery had a core group of about ten salaried, professional
designers, typically graduates of Newcomb College, who worked full time in the pottery. Students in
advanced courses in the Art School also designed and decorated wares in the studio. Over the course
its history, about ninety women, at an average of ten a year, worked in the pottery full- or part-time, or
intermittently. Whether most of them earned enough to support themselves is questionable. Many
lived at home, or were primarily supported by their husbands. At first, payment was by piece-work;
each woman had to pay for her own materials, and was paid only after her work was sold, earning
nothing if a pot was broken during firing. A designer might spend $.25 of her own money on the
materials for a piece, and in time receive the sales price of $2.00. (In New Orleans in the early 1900’s,
ten cents bought an adequate lunch, and $2.00 bought a seven course dinner with wine. [Poesch p.
19] ) Eventually, after demand for the wares increased and the pottery became profitable, each woman
was paid for her work whether or not it was sold. Every decorator had the freedom to choose and
execute her own designs, but the quality of the pottery was uniformly high, because before a piece
could be offered for sale, it had to be approved by a jury headed by Mary Sheerer.
Clay for Newcomb pottery was dug from a bayou near Lake Pontchartrain, and materials from
other southern sources were added to achieve the necessary body. Mary Sheerer was instrumental in
creating Newcomb Pottery designs, which were inspired by the flora and fauna of the Louisiana bayou
country: trees, flowers, vines, birds, insects, shells, rabbits, and even alligators, but no two pieces
were identical. Plant drawing was a required course in the Newcomb College art school, and each
woman had a portfolio of her own drawings, often of plants from her own garden. Designs were
painted on pots that had been fired once. In the early period, decorations were flat, highly stylized,
with bold outlines, and typically in shades of yellow, black, blue, and green. The finished pieces were
covered with a clear shiny glaze and fired a second time. All pieces were designed to be used—plates,
vases, lamps, candlesticks, inkwells—but each was primarily a decorative object.
Although Mary Sheerer developed the early glazes, she was not an expert in this area of
production, and problems with firing began to occur. Ceramic chemist Paul E. Cox (1897-1968) joined
the Newcomb Pottery in 1910, and took over responsibility for the technical direction of the pottery.
Mary Sheerer’s role in directing the pottery appears to have been reduced. Sheerer had “made
significant contribution to the development of clay bodies and glazes…but she was never recognized by
the Newcomb management.” (Perry, p. 19) Paul Cox developed a soft matt glaze that allowed the
designers to use more subtle colors and naturalistic designs. Perhaps as a way to reassert her own
role in the production of the pottery, Mary Sheerer developed a technique in which decorations were
modeled in low relief, which she emphasized in her classes. (Poesch, p.70.) The most familiar
examples of the “Newcomb Style” are in shades of blue and green, with modeled decorations, and
finished with the matt glaze.
The Newcomb Pottery won eight medals at international exhibitions from 1901-1915, and each
medal brought more publicity and demand for the pottery. The pottery had its own sales floor, and for
many years a piece of Newcomb pottery was a standard wedding gift in New Orleans. Over time the
wares were sold in as many as 80 agencies across the U.S., from New England to California. At its
peak, the pottery was so popular that the potters and designers had difficulty meeting the demand.
Certain designs were especially popular, notably the romantic oak, moss, and moon motif. Sadie
Irvine (1887-1970) perhaps the greatest of the Newcomb designers, wrote: “I was accused of doing the
first oak tree decoration, also the first moon. I have surely lived to regret it. Our beautiful moss
draped oak trees appealed to the buying public but nothing is less suited to the tall graceful vases
…And oh, how boring it was to use the same motif over and over though each one was a fresh
drawing. (No Newcomb pot was ever duplicated unless the purchaser asked for it.) ” (S.A.E. Irvine,
quoted in Poesch, p. 66) The public continued to demand the more familiar pieces, and were slow to
accept more modern, abstract designs that were introduced in the 1920’s and 1930’s. When sales
agents learned about the changes in design, one wrote “don’t send us anything but oak trees. People
want them.” (Poesch p.84)
Several other factors contributed to a period of instability in the potteries during the 1920’s
and 1930’s. Chief potter Joseph Meyer retired in 1927. Ellsworth Woodward, first director of
Newcomb Pottery, retired in 1931; Mary Sheerer also retired in 1931. Ceramic chemist Paul Cox had
left Newcomb in 1918. After the departures of these key figures in the development of the Newcomb
Potteries, there was a series of other short-term directors, designers and ceramic chemists; it was also
increasingly difficult to find decorators. Production and sales continued into the 1930’s but declined,
until eventually the pottery was operating at a loss. In 1939, the Dean of Newcomb College
recommended that ceramics continue as an area of study in the Art School, but that the pottery studio
be discontinued as a business. The Newcomb Pottery ceased production in 1940.
From 1895 to 1940, the Newcomb Pottery produced 60,000 to 70,000 distinctive pieces. The
pottery is represented in the collections of most of the major art museums in the U.S., including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian Institution. The
Mint Museum of Art’s ceramics collection includes several fine examples of Newcomb Pottery. Pieces
of Newcomb are highly sought after today and at auction rarely fetch less than $1000, up to a record
$82,500 in April, 2000.
There is a sad conclusion to the history of Newcomb College itself. As part of its reorganization
plan following Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans in August, 2005, Tulane
University dissolved Newcomb College in 2006.
Submitted by Edla Holm Brabham
SOURCES
Callen, Anthea. Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914. New York, Pantheon
Books, 1979.
Cooper-Hewitt Museum. American Art Pottery. New York, Cooper-Hewitt Museum; Seattle, Distributed
by the University of Washington Press, 1988.
Evans, Paul. Art Pottery of the United States; an Encyclopedia of Producers and Their Marks. New
York, Charles Scibner’s Sons, 1974.
“Newcomb Pottery and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Louisiana” Louisiana State Museum, 2005.
htpp://lsm.crt.state.la.us/newcomb/newcomb.htm. Accessed 2/18/2009.
Perry, Barbara A. American Art Pottery: From the Collection of Everson Museum of Art. New York,
Harry N. Abrams, 1997.
Poesch. Jessie. Newcomb Pottery; an Enterprise for Southern Women, 1895-1940. Exon, PA, Schiffer
Publishing Limited, 1984.
“Shaping a Legacy: Shearwater Pottery and Its Contemporaries.” Walter Anderson Museum, 2003.
http://walterandersonmuseum.org/shaping.html. Accessed 3/5/2009
Photos by author: Newcomb pottery in the collection of the Mint Museum of Art, from left to right:
Sara Agnes Estelle Irvine, “Small Vase With Sunset Landscape,” 1910-1920. (2006.102.175)
Elizabeth M. Villiere, “Vase With Southern Coast Violets,” 1903. ( H1982.15.1)
Sara Bloom Levy, “Tall Vase With Stylized Flowers,” 1902. (1987.5.7)
Anna Frances Simpson, “Vase With Southern Pines,” 1916. (1987. 56)
Sara Agnes Estelle Irvine, “Vase With Moss-Draped Live Oaks.” 1931. (H1982.15.2)