Fired by Ideals: Arequipa Pottery and the Arts & Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts Movement exerted a profound influence on early-twentieth-century America, not only in the applied & decorative arts but also in the area of social reform. Standing at this intersection of art & 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 & more successful predecessors--the Marblehead Pottery in Massachusetts, the Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, & the Paul Revere Pottery in Boston (home of the "Saturday Evening Girls")--the Arequipa Pottery in Fairfax, California, had fascinating origins, & it produced distinctive wares that today are prized by collectors. Fired by Ideals: Arequipa Pottery & the Arts & Crafts Movement tells the story of the Arequipa Sanatorium & Pottery, whose roots lie in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake & fire. The dust & 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 & medical care they needed, as well as engage in a therapeutic & 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 & beautiful full-color reproductions to examine the production process at Arequipa & the types of pottery made there.Lynn Downey is the author of 'Fired by Ideals: Arequipa Pottery and the Arts & Crafts Movement' with ISBN 9780764913990 and ISBN 0764913999.