While out and about yesterday afternoon just to the north of Boston, we came across this unmarked early twentieth century black spotted and blue glazed vase that matches some shapes, as well as some glazes applied on similar objects made at the Saturday Evening Girls’ Paul Revere Pottery in Boston’s North End neighborhood, circa 1920s.
According to an article written by Nonie Gadsden, titled, The Story Of The Saturday Evening Girls And Their Paul Revere Pottery, "The Saturday Evening Girls was a club for young immigrant women living in Boston’s North End neighborhood at the turn of the twentieth century. The club was established in 1899 as a library reading club that met once a week under the guidance of librarian and reformer Edith Guerrier. Guerrier had been working for several years at the North Bennet Street Industrial School (NBSIS), a community charitable institution turned settlement house, when she was appointed the librarian of the North End branch of the Boston Public Library, located in the reading rooms of the NBSIS. Combining the missions of both organizations, Guerrier established a reading club to fill a void she saw in social and educational opportunities for girls. The group gathered on Saturday evenings for discussions of classic literature and for lectures by prominent Bostonians, soon adopting the name the Saturday Evening Girls (SEG).
Attending the weekly meetings were the daughters of working-class Italian and Jewish immigrants living in the densely populated tenements of the North End. Their fathers were street peddlers, tailors, shopkeepers, and laborers, and their mothers worked in local sewing or dressmaking factories, or at home. The majority lived in crowded quarters, often sharing small apartments with extended family members and boarders.
As the group's popularity increased, Guerrier expanded the library club into several groups based on age, each with its own curriculum meant to supplement school studies. In addition to core course work, the girls could explore folk dancing, dramatics, music, and other arts. The success of these groups, each named after the day of the week they met, attracted the attention of Helen Osborne Storrow, a noted Boston philanthropist who was particularly interested in the education and empowerment of girls. Storrow’s involvement with the library clubs was not limited to monetary donations; she spent time with the girls, leading folk dancing classes, and encouraging genteel behavior. Her dedication led her to build a summer camp, first in a small rented cottage in Plymouth, Massachusetts, before building a permanent camp in Wingaersheek Beach, West Gloucester, in 1906. The weeks in West Gloucester introduced Sara, and the other girls, to nature and rural life, a far cry from their lives in the North End.
In 1907, Guerrier approached Storrow with the idea of establishing a retail pottery to give club members a way to earn their camp dues and additional funds. The philanthropist encouraged her to pursue the idea. With the help of her friend Edith Brown, an artist and illustrator, Guerrier began to develop a pottery business. Storrow purchased a building at 18 Hull Street in the North End to house the pottery and library clubs, and to provide an apartment for Guerrier and Brown on the top floor. Due to its proximity to the Old North Church, from whose steeple Paul Revere received his lantern signals before his famous ride, they named the enterprise the Paul Revere Pottery (PRP). The name also emphasized the American nature of the pottery’s wares, and by association, its workers.
The new enterprise settled into its home in the basement of 18 Hull Street. An English-trained ceramicist, the only male in the organization, monitored the kiln. Club members took on the responsibilities of making and decorating the pots, caring for the workrooms, and staffing the Bowl Shop, a retail store on the first floor. Edith Brown, now the director and head designer of the PRP, developed the playful designs to decorate the wares. Drawing on her training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and her experience as a children’s book illustrator, she produced stylized images of animals, birds, flora, and rustic scenes outlined with heavy black lines. Her abstract style reveals her familiarity with the Arts and Crafts design reform movement and is similar to one of the movement’s leaders, English illustrator Walter Crane, among others.
Many Bostonians were intrigued by the reform ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, which was not only an aesthetic style, but a lifestyle philosophy that encouraged handcraftsmanship, the integration of art into everyday life, and healthy working conditions for artisans. They believed that creating art could improve a person both morally and spiritually."
Furthermore, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston owns over 100 examples of Paul Revere Pottery, many of which were decorated by Sara Galner, and the the Robert A. Ellison, Jr. Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan also displays some of Galner's work in the Americana Wing's Mezzanine Gallery, as well as other objects in the museum's study/storage section.
Note: Here is an article that I posted earlier this summer, showing another example of Paul Revere Pottery that we found in Southern Maine: http://www.earlyamericanceramics.com/2023/07/saturday-evening-girls-vase-found-in.html
Another Note: After further examination - this may have also been made at Peters and Reed in Ohio, although from the same time period.
A Blue Glazed Vase Made at the S.E.G.'s Paul Revere Pottery
Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...
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