An elongated bell-form molded white earthenware vase with a black and white decoration, circa 1922, was made by Michael Powolny at the Gmundener Keramik for Wiener Werkstätte.
:When John Cotton Dana established the Newark Museum Association in 1909, his stated goal was "to establish in the City of Newark, New Jersey, a museum for the reception and exhibition of articles of art, science, history and technology, and for the encouragement of the study of the arts and sciences."
For Dana, the hand crafted and the mass produced were each of value. With that in mind, he set about creating a museum that would be useful to the community it served. Since New Jersey was an early center of American ceramic production because of the exceptional clay available there, art pottery was an essential component. Dana was a pioneer in recognizing ceramics and other decorative arts as art forms at a time when many museums held the view that the contemporary decorative arts, and even fine art, were not serious subjects of study.
Dana's dreams and his legacy are the soul of the exhibit "100 Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880–1930," a celebration of the first century of the Newark Museum. It comprises some 100 pieces of art pottery and porcelain drawn from the museum collection, with the exception of two pieces on loan from the American Decorative Arts 1900 Foundation. The exhibit follows the evolution of the American art pottery movement from the Gilded Age to the emergence of studio pottery at the beginning of the Depression. The exhibit includes American, European and Asian examples, delineating the influences of one upon the other.
Much of the museum's collection was acquired in its early years, under Dana's discerning eye. The year after its 1909 founding, the museum mounted the exhibit "Modern American Pottery." That exhibit was the acorn from which sprung the oak that is today the museum's mighty collection of art pottery. Dana purchased 110 objects (including 60 tiles) from that exhibit. Sixteen of those objects are on view in the centennial exhibit.
The iridescent glaze of a figural earthenware jardiniere heightens the interplay of light and line. The 1900 piece was created by French ceramicist Clément Massier, whose student, Jacques Sicard, introduced those glazes to the United States.
"100 Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880–1930" was mounted with the aim of showcasing ceramic objects acquired before 1930, mostly by Dana. Ulysses Grant Dietz, curator of decorative arts at the Newark Museum and exhibit curator, describes Dana as a visionary, a man who loved art pottery, which he saw as the application of art to pottery. He loved the handwork involved and had a keen eye for fine design. The classical principle "dulce and utile" prevailed: he appreciated the skill required to produce an object as well as the designer's talent. Moreover, in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, art pottery was far more accessible to the general population than those paintings and objects associated with the Grand Tour that were considered "fine art."
What made Dana an anomaly in his time was his view that the "handmade" was of equal artistic importance as the manufactured, as long as the design was beautiful.
Dietz, who is the 18th president's great-great-grandson (one is compelled to ask), says the exhibit explores the questions of the meaning and exact nature of an art object. He refers to Dana's exhortation, "Study your teacups," which is carved above a door of the museum. Dana urged readers of his 1914 volume
American Art: How It Can Be Made To Flourish
to consider the modest household object and what went into its creation. He cited the everyday drinking vessel as an object that has drawn time, care, labor and skill for centuries, that it has taken "a million forms" and been adorned in a million ways.
