KXRAMIC STUDIO 
V 
THE ART SCHOOL OF THE Y. W. C A. OF NEW YORK 
Sophia Antoinette Walker 
THE two groups of pottery reproduced in these columns 
should be accompanied by a note explaining that the 
work is not that of a School of Pottery nor of specialists, but 
was selected from the 1902 annual pupils' exhibit of the Y. 
W. C. A. of New York. It is the work of girls who have 
been studying art there one, two or three years, without pre- 
vious art training. 
The square palm jar in the center of the first group bears 
the initials Y. W. C. A. as well as those of the maker. Three 
of the sides are decorated with Xllth century ornament 
while the fourth bears the quotation from Chaucer, " For 
thus out of the olde fieldes as men saithe cometh al this new 
corne fro yere to yere." At the left is a cone tripod with a 
rim bearing the legend " Thus man with man lifts the world's 
wide ring," upheld by three primitive figures. On either side 
of the center of the group are two unique pots which should 
have figured in the school exhibit of 1901 had they not been 
a part of the National Arts Club Exhibit at the Pan American 
at that time. The lettered one bears the inscription, "Made 
right, joy dight, fill quite." These jars are all of common 
school clay which fires a pink tinge, but the tulip design on 
the large plaque is inlaid with white clay, like the Greek mo- 
tive on a vase in the second group. Some of the vases are of 
Poillon clay, white inlaid with blue or blue with white. De- 
signs for candlesticks, etc., will be noticed in the second 
group. While the modeling is done in school, the firing is, of 
course, done outside. A hint of the other directions in which 
the girls are working appears in the carved chair-back and 
panels, the black-board design and the burned panel, forming 
the backgrounds of the two groups; their pottery is no better 
than their wood-carving.* 
For the Art School of the Y. VV. C. A. makes pottery 
not for its own sake, but for its educational value. Because the 
modeling of the pottery is regarded, not as an end, but an 
educational means, the wheel is not used and measurements 
are intrusted so far as possible to the eye. The weekly class 
schedule of twenty hours includes four hours clay work, in 
which architectural and animal forms and heads fill quite as 
large a place as pottery; four hours carving; two hours black- 
board enlargement and design (ambidextrous); cast drawing, 
water color and flat design ; — the idea being that the artist 
needs to know form through all the senses and to express 
original thought through all possible channels in order to 
grow to full soundness of development. If a form is drawn 
from the cast, and then on the black-board from memory and 
turned to face the opposite way, and if it is modeled and 
carved, the student then has that form as a permanent posses- 
sion in his mind and at his finger's end. Although we regard 
solid knowledge as the best basis for imagination, it will be seen 
from these two cuts, that our girls are not lacking in originality. 
Nor is our pottery divorced from advanced art work. 
After spending a year or two in this round of original indus- 
trial work, the girls take hold of charcoal drawing and water 
color with surprising mastery, and they are quite ready to 
appreciate the instruction in those branches given to the 
school by one of our most gifted artists, Miss Katherine 
Middleton Huger; so that the one who builds a great jar and 
carves an elaborate frame may be laying an excellent founda- 
tion for charcoal oil painting and water color. In fact the art 
school of the Y. W. C. A. of New York is doing its part to 
build up original art-craftsmanship and the individual girl as well. 
* By mistake the background of the two groups was painted black by 
the engraver, so that the woodwork mentioned by Miss Walker does not 
appear. — [Ed.] 
