Christmas Lights, Brighter Than Ever Before

The Newcomb Pottery of New Orleans

Questions & Common Sense Answers

The Antique Detective: Sulphides a Unique Art Form

What Is It Worth?

Common Sense Antiques

The Newcomb Pottery of New Orleans

By: Carol Perry

As seen in The Antique Shoppe Newspaper, November 2006

Back in 1884, a lot of changes were taking place in New ... Orleans. One important event was The World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial of 1884-85 which opened just across St. Charles Avenue from Tulane University. President Chester Arthur pressed a telegraph key which signaled the exposition to illuminate the lights in the Main Building. It was the very first use of electricity in New Orleans. Pretty exciting stuff! But even the momentous coming of electricity paled in, comparison to the exhibits in the Women's Department of that remarkable exhibition. For the first time the women of New Orleans were exposed to the Women's Suffrage movement.

Famed suffragette Julia Ward Howe headed up the Women's Department and it was at her suggestion that Tulane's Newcomb Art School began teaching ceramics classes to women. Many of  these women were Civil War widows. They had had to learn to hold their families together financially. Now they were ready and eager to become more independent.

The classes were a great success and before long Newcomb ware was being sold at Arts & Crafts Society facilities and shops throughout the country. For more than forty years, talented women designed and decorated Newcomb pottery. Over 70,000 pieces were produced. The many examples of Newcomb. Pottery are still considered to be among the finest examples of American Art Pottery.

The Newcomb Art School, under the direction of Ellsworth Woodward (who was only in his early twenties at the time) began with experimental designs and techniques. Mary C. Sheerer helped with the organization of the school. Sheerer had helped to start the successful Rookwood pottery in Cincinnati, and at first the Newcomb potters followed the styles popularized by Rookwood. Designs were often floral paintings covered with a transparent glaze. After a few years buff-colored clay became fashionable among potters, and at Newcomb they began to incise the designs into wet clay.

Glazes were glossy and blues, greens and lavenders were often used. In 1910 the college employed Paul Cox, their first professional ceramist. While he was at Newcomb, Cox perfected a transparent matte glaze which defined the look of Newcomb ware from then on.

Throughout the 45 years of the pottery's existence the designers and decorators were always women. The potters and ceramists were men. All the designers were required to take their motifs from nature, and the lovely and varied Louisiana landscape provided inspiration for many of the artists.

One of the most famous of the women who worked at Newcomb was an artist named Sadie Irvine. It was she who created Newcomb's most popular scenic design. It was a matte- glazed, misty depiction of moss-draped trees with a full moon in the background. Other famous decorators include Marie de Hoa LeBlanc, Sabrina Wells, Harriet Joor, Henrietta Bailey, Anna Frances Simpson, Leona Nicholson and Salina Bres Gregory. There were more than ninety women, graduates of Newcomb, who earned a living by the sale of pottery which they designed.

Every single piece which left the pottery had to be approved by a college faculty committee. Then, each piece was marked with the "N. C." mark for Newcomb College, along with the decorators (and sometimes the potters) initials.

Today the products of this remarkable institution are judged among the very best examples of American Art Pottery. Items from the Newcomb College are not by any means inexpensive. A Sadie Irvine vase with trees, moss and fences was tagged $6300 at a recent Florida show. At a summer, 2006 auction a 9t'r floral cylinder vase designed by Harriet Joor brought $6600 and another Newcomb College piece, a 10trr high- glaze, barrel-shaped vase with a banded Art Noveau motif went for $7700.00 at the same auction.

A pair of Anna Frances Simpson 6rf bookends with cypress and palmetto design currently books for $2000.00. An err vase with yellow daffodils by Alma Mason, circa 1914, books for $3100.00. Newcomb Pottery items are not apt to show up at garage sales or flea markets, but sometimes strange things do happen in the world of antiques. Watch for that distinctive matte finish and the N.C. mark, and good luck!