Crafting Southern Modernism: Women and the Newcomb Arts Movement

Bienvenu Lecture Series

Learn more about this innovative program that championed women, the Arts & Crafts movement, and produced exceptional pottery works at the turn of the twentieth century in New Orleans. Newcomb Pottery is considered one of the most significant American art potteries of the first half of the twentieth century. Newcomb pottery was exhibited around the world, sold in shops on both coasts, and written about in art journals throughout the United States and Europe. Newcomb potters (always men) and designers (always women) were awarded eight medals at international exhibitions before 1916.

The Newcomb Pottery Company (sometimes referred to as Newcomb College Pottery) grew out of the pottery program at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, a women’s college founded expressly to instruct young Southern women in liberal arts. A radical idea at the time, it became a hotbed of innovation and provided unprecedented access to learning, agency, and resources for that generation of women. The art school opened in 1886 and began producing pottery on a for-profit basis beginning in 1895, introducing the work to an expanding art market. This meant the women-designers were paid for creative work and being exhibited on the world stage, with institutional backing.  Harriet Coulter Joor from our permanent (now on view in Fragile Matters), was one of the very first women enrolled in the school from 1896-1901 and exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1901.