Vol. XIV. No. 9. 
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK 
January I9I3 
E are presenting this month, in black 
and white, the three prize winning 
sets in the New Year's competition. 
We regret that the time is too limited 
to produce them in color as they were 
really charming. The first prize 
breakfast set by Miss Jetta Ehlers, 
of Newark, N. J., is exquisitely dainty 
with its lavender blue border broken 
with pink posies and is, perhaps, 
from the point of view of ease of execution in one fire, the best 
of the three, but the luncheon set of Albert Heckman, of 
Pittsburgh, Pa., has a refined elegance when seen in the color 
scheme of green, silver and gold that makes it exceedingly 
attractive,'while the dinner set of Miss E. Miriam Wood, of New 
Orleans, is very restful with its wide sweep of pale sea green and 
occasional accent of pale rose. We have a number of other 
excellent designs purchased from contributors to the competi- 
tion which are not far behind the prizes and we shall give them 
in the near future. 
Believing it will be of interest to a large number of Ker- 
amir. Studio readers we quote below a few paragi'aphs from a 
recent letter of Marshal Fry in regard to the passing away of 
his mothei", whose name is a household word with hundreds of 
ceramic workers all over the United States. 
"I do not need to tell you what it means to me to be with- 
out my mother, as you know how inseparable we always have 
been. During my entire life my mother and I have been con- 
stant companions, scarcely ever being separated. During the 
last ten years we have been nearer together than ever, and as 
I have been getting older, I have more and more appreciated 
her, and realized how wonderful she was, and what a marvel- 
lous and precious thing her sympathy and love for me was. It 
is one of the things I have to comfort me now, that I really did 
in a large measure appreciate her, and she knew that I was 
absolutely devoted to her. I have very few regrets in that line. 
"Her gi'eatest ambition was for my success in painting. 
She felt that I had taught long enough, and that it was time 
that I had a chance to devote all my time to my own work, and 
so for two years I have had no classes, and have been painting, 
and have exhibited in the Academy every year for three or four 
years, having also had pictures in Philadelphia, Washington, 
and Pittsburgh. Her whole ambition was bound up in my 
making a success of painting, and she was so anxious for the 
last few years to get me fixed financially so that I would not 
have to agonize over money matters too much. To this end, 
we remodelled our beautiful old house at Southampton with 
reference to renting in the summer, the house being so at- 
tractive that it rents readily at a good price. My mother was 
deeply interested in this venture, and helped to foster it in 
every way, helped to plan it last winter, and helped me in 
furnishing it, in the Spring. Every bit of the house, every tree 
and shrub about the grounds is associated with my blessed 
mother, — her heart was there at Southampton, and our beauti- 
ful house we had helped to create, together, — we had planned 
it all together, and worked it all out together, planted the trees, 
many of them om'selves, everything reflects her blessed presence. 
"You can understand how thankful lam that our last few 
weeks together could have been spent in the beautiful house 
that w^e both loved so much. During the summer we lived in 
the little cottage which I bought, near my studio, but on 
October 1st we took possession of the beautiful big house, and 
the last weeks were spent so much more comfortably than 
would have been possible anywhere else, having steam heat, etc. 
"While mother wanted me to paint pictures rather than be 
engaged in any keramic work, she always had a great affection 
for the latter, and nothing gave her greater joy than to get out 
her lustres and experiment for interesting and unusual color 
combinations. When I gave up teaching keramic work 
mother had in stock many hundreds of dollars worth of white 
china, and she has been so attached to it that we have kept it 
all these years, intact. She has always hoped that I would be 
able to make use of it. One of the things she has been doing 
the last two or three years is to make a very large dinner set of 
beautiful plain shapes in china, and treating them with wide 
bands of gold. She was planning to have enough dozens of 
things so that they could be divided among Howard and myself 
and Charlie's children. She had nearly completed the set, a 
large number of pieces being finished ready to fire at the time 
of her death. The set was exceedingly handsome and dis- 
tinguished, all the pieces having been selected with great care 
as to form, etc. The completing of this set is one of the 
things I shall feel it a sacred privilege to do. 
"I am constantly receiving beautiful letters from friends 
all expressing so much love and affection for mother, such 
beautiful lettersl Have received so many letters from people 
who had only met her in a business way in the old days when 
we were teaching and doing firing, and everyone who knew her 
was impressed with her rare qualities, her gifts, her strong 
mentality, her courage and her sweetness. People who per- 
haps only met her a few times never forgot her, and some of 
the letters I have had tell of the wonderful impression mother 
made on them, how much comfort sheTwas to them at times 
when they needed comfort, etc. 
"It has been'one of the gi'eat comforts to'us to learn how 
much she meant to other people, how much she was admired 
and beloved." 
Two valuable new books on design have just come to the 
editorial table and we [would advise all students who can 
afford it, to add these to their equipment. They are books to 
keep always on the work table for reference. Both are fully and 
beautifully illustrated in black and white. 
"Theory and Practice of Teaching Art," by Arthur Dow, 
Columbia College. 
"Text Book of Design," by Charles Kelly, of University of 
Illinois and Wm. WouU, of Harvard College. 
We have received for the October competition designs by 
E. Senderling, M. Philhps and J. Slocomb, which we were 
unable to return to their authors because their address was not 
written on the designs and had been mislaid or lost in some 
way. We also had offers to make them for some designs we 
wish to keep. Will these three designers be kind enough to 
write to us ? 
