The Pottery Notebook of Maude Robinson: A Woman's Contribution to Art Pottery Manufacture, 1903--1909

This thesis focuses on the pottery notebook of Maude Robinson as a directed object study in an effort to more fully understand the involvement of women in the manufacture of pottery and, in particular, the production of art pottery at the H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College for Women in New Orleans, Louisiana between 1903 and 1909. Traditional understanding of the Newcomb enterprise holds that the female decorators were not actively engaged in ceramic chemistry. Maude Robinson's pottery notebook reveals that at Newcomb she was involved in all stages of the pottery manufacture process, especially in kiln operation and in experiments testing new clay body and glaze compositions. As such, the notebook demonstrates how the hegemonic ideal of female domesticity and the progressive impetus toward female education and paid employment interacted, allowing women to proceed from china painters to trained ceramicists and studio potters. Maude Robinson was a significant potter, whose training at the Newcomb Art School and Newcomb Pottery led to directorship of the Greenwich House Pottery and to technical consultancy for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Research for this thesis was qualitatively oriented, consisting of analysis of Robinson's notebook and analytical testing of extant examples of Newcomb pottery made by Robinson and her contemporaries between 1903 and 1909. Analysis was conducted using personal documentation, material culture, and x-ray spectroscopy techniques. Research results indicate the correspondence between historical artifacts and the significance of Maude Robinson in the history of American ceramics and the decorative arts. Continued review of the literature and further analysis of material are suggested.