Making and decorating pottery appealed to early Arts & Crafts enthusiasts, especially women. Unlike needlework, which evoked domesticity, pottery allowed upper-class women to transcend traditional endeavour by establishing studios and working outside the home.Visitors to the Centennial had admired the underglaze decoration of faience pieces from Doulton and Haviland, as well as the colourful glazes of stoneware from Japan and China. Among those who returned home inspired were Mary Louise McLaughlin (1847-1939) and Maria Longworth Nichols (1849-1932), who soon clashed over the development of the Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati. They already participated in a lively art scene sparked by several Ruskinian instructors at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Design. One of them, Benn Pitman (1822-1910), had earlier taught McLaughlin china painting, or the art of decorating glazed pottery. Energized by the Centennial, she began experimenting with underglaze decoration, the painting of pottery slips prior to glazing, a process that yielded the ‘appearance of a painting in oil’. 27 Nichols approached the subject more circumspectly by illustrating a book on Pottery: How It Is Made, Its Shape and Decoration (1878) written by her husband, the art critic George Ward Nichols.A year later McLaughlin invited local pottery decorators to join her in the Cincinnati Art Pottery Club. When her invitation to Maria Nichols went astray, the latter sensed a slight and founded the Rookwood Pottery in 1880.

One of the most successful Arts & Crafts ventures, Rookwood followed a common trajectory as it moved from initial idealism to commercial success. At first the amateur club and the fledgling art pottery coexisted, sharing facilities at a commercial pottery. Nichols established a gendered division of labour that became standard at most art potteries, hiring an experienced male potter to throw blanks on the wheel. The decorators were women, at first upper-class volunteers from the club but soon replaced by paid employees. Within a year Rookwood produced several thousand pieces in 70 shapes, each uniquely decorated in lustrous floral imagery with reflective overglazing.

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