Fired by Ideals

Book excerpt: The Arts and Crafts Movement exerted a profound influence on early-twentieth-century America, not only in the applied and decorative arts but also in the area of social reform. Standing at this intersection of art and reform were American art potteries that taught ceramics skills to working-class women as a means of securing income, restoring health, and/or uplifting the spirit. Like its better known and more successful predecessors -- the Marblehead Pottery in Massachusetts, the Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, and the Paul Revere Pottery in Boston (home of the "Saturday Evening Girls") -- the Arequipa Pottery in Fairfax, California, had fascinating origins, and it produced distinctive wares that today are prized by collectors. Fired by Ideals: Arequipa Pottery and the Arts & Crafts Movement tells the story of the Arequipa Sanatorium and Pottery, whose roots lie in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. The dust and smoke from the disaster prompted an outbreak of tuberculosis, which afflicted "working girls" in particular. In 1911, a progressive physician, Dr. Philip King Brown, founded a treatment center in rural Marin County, north of San Francisco, where these women could get the rest and medical care they needed, as well as engage in a therapeutic and marketable pursuit: the manufacture of art pottery. In addition to its engaging historical narrative supported by dozens of vintage photographs, the book employs technical illustrations and beautiful full-color reproductions to examine the production process at Arequipa and the types of pottery made there.