“I hate dyed hair. The color God has given to you is always the best and matches with your personality. It is never any good trying to be someone other than yourself.”

“Your way to be exclusive is to be yourself. To find in your personality the things that are different and that will make you different from everyone else. Although the scarf you wear may be one of thousands, it can still be exclusive in the way you wear it!”

“You can never take too much care in selecting shoes. Too many women think that because they are low down, shoes do not matter, but it is by her feet that you can judge whether a woman is elegant or not.” (Christian Dior)

“Don’t forget, a bag is not a wastepaper basket! You can’t fill it with a lot of unnecessary things and expect it to look nice and last a long time.”

So wrote fashion designer Christian Dior in The Little Dictionary of Fashion: A Guide to Dress Sense for Every Woman, first published in 1954.

The shy, retiring Frenchman whose haute couture creations were inspired by memories of his mother may have been famous for dressing the well-to-do, but his straight-talking approach to fashion was definitely down to earth. Any woman could be elegant without spending much money on her wardrobe, as long as she chose simple, tasteful pieces that suited her personality, flattered her, and emphasized her good features.

When the 42-year-old Dior launched his first collection of women’s clothing designs in February 1947, history was made. Gone were the practical, austere clothes of wartime, with their short, straight skirts and square-shouldered jackets, cobbled together with rationed fabric. In their place were elegant, feminine garments with tiny waists, tight-fitting bodices and rustling, full skirts. Women snapped up the “New Look.”

Dior in Ohio: 1947-1997, the current exhibition from The Ohio State University’s Historic Costume & Textiles Collection, presents Dior-designed ball gowns, daywear and suits that were worn either by Ohio women or are from the collections of Ohio museums.

The upstairs gallery features clothing and accessories from the early years of the House of Dior, as well as examples of designs from Dior’s assistant, Yves St. Laurent, who, at age 21, succeeded Dior after his sudden death in 1957.

Several items in the exhibit belonged to Elizabeth Parke Firestone (1897-1990), whose husband, Harvey Firestone, Jr., ran the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. For example, this beaded satin gown Mrs. Firestone wore in 1955 to the re-opening of the Vienna Opera House is similar to one she wore to President Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953.

Mrs. Firestone would often purchase several versions of the same dress in different hues and prints.  She wore the navy silk-and-wool tailored day dress with polka dot motif and blue chiffon trim at the neck — at the center of this trio — during a trip to England for the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II. She also owned navy versions of the two day dresses flanking it.

Two of Mrs. Firestone’s Dior creations have been turned inside out to display the layers of linings and hand-finished details that define a haute couture dress. Every Dior dress is marked with ink that is only visible in ultraviolet light.

To make his designs more affordable for his American clientele, Dior created his Christian Dior-New York line. Garments in this line with an “Original” label were exact reproductions of Dior’s original Paris designs, including the actual fabrics, but were made in the United States. Only 120 retailers were allowed to carry the Dior-New York label; Ohio stores included Lazarus in Columbus, J. M. Gidding & Co. in Cincinnati and Halle Brothers in Cleveland.

The exhibition also includes Dior garments owned and worn by Dorothy Bell Peters of Lancaster, Ohio (whose husband was the last owner of the Reese-Peters House, now the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio) and her daughter, Mary Peters Bolton, whose husband was special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1949 to 1952. Other garments belonged to Marilyn Maxwell, who modeled in New York before marrying Stewart Shillito Maxwell, whose family owned Shillito’s, the first department store in Cincinnati, and Julie Loeffell, who modeled for Dior himself in Paris.

The downstairs gallery features eveningwear created by designers following Dior and St. Laurent, as well as examples of the “little black dresses” that Dior considered the most essential piece in any woman’s wardrobe. It also highlights Dior suits, with their rounded shoulders, nipped-in waist, padded hips and calf-length pleated skirt. Later, Dior introduced skirts so slim they needed the “Dior Pleat” (a slit backed with a panel of fabric) for walking. Dior in Ohio: 1947-1997 reopens on March 20 and continues through April 28. The Snowden Galleries are on the second floor of the Geraldine Schottenstein Wing of Campbell Hall on the Ohio State University’s main campus.

For more on Christian Dior, read Dior in Vogue, by Brigid Keenan; Dior: The Legendary Images: Great Photographers and Dior, edited by Florence Müller; Christian Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New, by Marie-France Pochna; and Girl in Dior, a graphic novel by Annie Goetzinger.

“Have you seen the newest girl with her hair all in a whirl?,” asked Harry B. Smith in his lyrics for “The Nell Brinkley Girl,” a song from the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908.

This sweet curly-haired girl was not to be missed, he continued. In fact, if you ever found one like her, you would have a pearl. With her never-failing smile, her pretty tilted nose and her mouth just like a rose, she had a certain air and style. And she wore the smartest clothes!

The Nell Brinkley girl was the creation of Nell Brinkley, a cartoonist for the New York Journal. American women were so captivated by her distinct style of clothing and hair that they even bought “Nell Brinkley” hair curlers.

Visit the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to see Cartoon Couture and you, too, might consider reviving the Nell Brinkley look.

The exhibition pairs depictions of fashion fads, trends and innovations in cartoons, comic strips, comic books, and paper dolls with real-life examples of garments and accessories from the time period during which that artwork was produced, loaned from the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection.

It begins in the 18th century, when migration to cities sparked nostalgia for country life, classical civilization and its simple fashions. Growing industrialization and the advent of new technologies like sewing machines and chemical dyes changed how garments were produced and even designed in the 19th century. At the same time, the art of caricature and cartooning emerged. Fashion was an irresistible topic of comment in these mediums.

By the early years of the 20th century, mass-produced, ready-to-wear clothing and the rise of the department store made affordable reproductions of the latest Parisian fashions accessible to American working women. The Sunday newspaper introduced them not only to department-store advertisements for the latest ready-to-wear fashions, but also to popular syndicated cartoon characters like Richard Fenton Outcault’s Buster Brown. In this December 17, 1905 comic strip, Outcault comments on Buster Brown’s line of licensed fashion accessories.

The cartoons that Barbara Shermund and Helen Hokinson created for the New Yorker capture the personalities and fashion tastes of both independent young women…

and the well-to-do matrons who tried to keep up with them, especially with the changing trends in women’s hats.

With her “Flapper Fanny” and other cartoon characters, Ethel Hays set the standard for how young women of the 1920s and 1930s were depicted.  Gladys Parker, Hays’s successor, later created her own comic-strip version of herself, named Mopsy after her short wavy hair that looked like a mop. Parker, who studied fashion illustration, also was a fashion designer, creating costumes for Hollywood film actresses and garments that were sold in department stores under the name “Gladys Parker Designs.” The exhibition provides a QR code to watch “Femininities by Glady Parker,” a February 4, 1935 fashion show of Gladys Parker Designs in which Parker is the first to emerge from the comic strip backdrop.

Young newspaper-readers turned to the paper dolls cartoonists created in comic strips, dressing their favorite characters in new outfits every week. Dale Messick, the creator of the fashionable Brenda Starr, Reporter, designed some dreamy outfits for Brenda in both her comic strip and in its paper-doll counterpart.

From Christian Dior’s romantic, feminine “New Look” and the practical, comfortable “American Look” for suburban housewives to the blue jeans, poodle skirts and saddle shoes favored in young wardrobes, cartoonists of the 1950s explored new fashion tastes of the day. They continued doing so by documenting the individual fashion styles of the mods and hippies of the 1960s…

and the groovy 1970s… perhaps inspired by a halter top and pants designed – and given to the Historic Costume & Textiles Collection – by Oleg Cassini.

Cartoon Couture continues through April 15 in the Robinson Gallery of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

Study the cartoon Jimmy Swinnerton created for the March 18, 1898 edition of the New York Journal and you’ll find some interesting Irish-American trivia to share on St. Patrick’s Day.

Swinnerton’s notorious tiger characters take to the streets for New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, carrying banners recalling popular Irish ballads like “The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls” and “The Wearing of the Green,” about the Irish Rebellion of 1798, an unsuccessful uprising against British rule in Ireland. One also refers to Maggie Cline, the Vaudeville-singing daughter of Irish immigrants who was known as “The Irish Queen.”

St. Patrick’s Day celebrations were an especially big deal 120 years ago. First, they commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Irish Rebellion. Second, they marked the first time St. Patrick’s Day postcards were sent, signaling Irish immigrants’ integration into American society. Cartoonists capitalized on the event.

Rudolph Dirks, the cartoonist who emigrated from Germany as a child, also depicted an Irish-American St. Patrick’s Day parade in his contribution to the March 27, 1898 edition of the New York Journal. His German-American Katzenjammer Kids marched in the parade, one dressed as the Yellow Kid. Richard Outcault’s bald-headed, big-eared immigrant cartoon character earned his name from the yellow nightshirt he wore, on which his dialogue appeared.

Looking Backward, Looking Forward: U.S. Immigration in Cartoons and Comics, an exhibition on display at the Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, explores how cartoonists have told the story of immigration throughout American history. For example, while political cartoons in newspapers portrayed immigrants as enemies or victims, the comic strip supplements that first appeared in the 1890s offered entertaining stories about immigrant life through the adventures of recurring characters.  One is Frederick Burr Opper’s Happy Hooligan, an Irish immigrant who was often misjudged because of his appearance.

Another is Jiggs, the star of George McManus’s “Bringing Up Father” comic strip. An Irish immigrant who wins the lottery and becomes part of high society, Jiggs wishes he could return to his old life and neighborhood haunts, like the Dinty Moore tavern where he ordered his favorite corned beef and cabbage in the July 12, 1930 edition of the strip.

Happy Hooligan’s popularity led Opper to create Alphonse & Gaston, that excessively polite pair of French immigrants whom my grandmother loved to quote.

Looking Backward, Looking Forward: U.S. Immigration in Cartoons and Comics continues through April 15 in the Friends of the Libraries Gallery of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.

Follow the Golden Rule. Love your neighbor. Show more empathy. Secure more funding for the humanities. Listen to more opera.

These are some of the answers people gave when asked what change they would make to society today. The question was posed in Publish or Perish: The Impact of Printing on the Protestant Reformation, a recent exhibition at the Ohio State University’s Thompson Library.

The exhibition commemorated the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses attacking the selling of indulgences, a practice in which sinners bought forgiveness. Luther intended to inspire debate among his Wittenberg neighbors on his notion of sola scriptura (Christian salvation was “by scripture alone”), but his action had greater consequences. It set the Protestant Reformation in motion.

Medieval and early Reformation-era printed works from the collection of Ohio State’s Rare Books & Manuscripts Library showed how printing and publishing helped Luther, his supporters and their opponents share their thoughts on these society-changing ideas. They couldn’t have done it without the help of the recently invented printing press with movable type. During the first three years of the Reformation, book production in Germany quadrupled.

Since just 10 percent of Germans were literate, sermons were effective ways to present points of view in convincing ways. After the sermons were orally delivered, they were published so they could be spread to an even wider audience. More than 100,000 copies of Luther’s famous “House Postils” sermons were published for families to read and reflect upon at home.

As public demand for Luther’s words grew, ideas were disseminated as fast as possible. Debaters on both sides of the issue relied on Flugschriften (literally, “flying writings”) to set forth their positions, respond to opposition, and appeal to all classes of society and levels of literacy. Written in the vernacular, these simple, direct pamphlets were easy to produce and afford. Many of these ephemeral documents were grouped together by theme or author, then bound together in a book called a Sammelband, which protected and preserved them.

Engaged readers often added notes, underlined text and drew attention to passages, as this annotated copy of Luther’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer shows.

Philip Melanchthon, the man whom Luther considered his primary, indispensable partner, wrote hundreds of treatises, including the Loci communes, or Theological Commonplaces, which so epitomized Lutheran thought and belief that Luther said, “Next to Holy Scripture, there is no better book.”

“I am the crude woodsman who has to clear and make the path,” Luther said. “But Master Philip comes after me meticulously and quietly, builds and plants, sows and waters happily, according to the talents God has richly given him.”

Others did not hold Luther in similar esteem. Johannes Cochlaeus, a Catholic priest and university professor, pointed out Luther’s inconsistencies in The Seven-Headed Luther. Contradictory passages from Luther’s own texts led Cochlaeus to conclude that Luther simultaneously embodied a professor, a monk, a Turk, a preacher, a fanatic, a church visitor and a criminal, all quarreling over Christian doctrine and religious practice.

Both Catholics and Protestants died for their beliefs. This 1592 work by Richard Verstegan, chronicles the torture and murder of Catholics like this Englishwoman being pressed to death by weights.

Acts and Monuments, John Foxe’s famous collection of Christian martyrs’ lives, was so popular that it was abridged numerous times. This rare unfolded half-sheet paraphrase of Foxe’s work was formatted to allow printers to assemble 64 pages of text on one sheet of paper. It reduced the massive work to a portable, simple series of memorable rhymes chronicling the torture and death of Protestant English martyrs.

Two Bears. Baboon with Chimpanzee. Baboon with Sleeping Child. All sculptures by a Michigan sculptor named Marshall Fredericks, on view at the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“How do I know that name?,” I wondered, as my visit there continued. “I’ll check it out when I get home.”

So I did. Marshall Fredericks designed “The Man on the Cross,” the seven-ton, 28-foot-tall crucified figure of Christ at the National Shrine of the Cross in the Woods in Indian River, Michigan, which I saw last year.

A little research led to a big discovery. Marshall Fredericks was here in Columbus!

A graduate of the Cleveland School of Art, Fredericks was a professor of sculpture at Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy during the 1930s. His work was known for its restrained, modern style; animals were a favorite subject. In 1952, The Ohio State University commissioned Fredericks to create a series of unique sculptured bas-reliefs to be placed in succession along the side of an austere building on campus that would become the Ohio Union.

With help from Ohio Historical Society staff and Ohio State faculty members, Fredericks researched and selected six subjects that would powerfully illustrate highlights from the history of the Ohio River Valley. He submitted small-scale preliminary drawings for approval, then made full-scale drawings, followed by sculpturing full-scale clay models and making plaster casts. Fredericks and two assistants worked on site at the Ohio Union, placing the full-size models on the facade of the building, and then carving each eight-foot-tall sculpture on limestone blocks that had been placed in the facade.  Standing on scaffolding, they used compressed air chisels at first and then finished with hand tools. Although it was hard work, this process allowed them to take the actual light conditions into consideration, and afforded students the opportunity to watch the project unfold until it was finished. You can see Fredericks and one of his assistants at work on the project here, and what the reliefs originally looked like here, thanks to images from the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum Digital Archives and Objects Collection.

I’ve admired those reliefs for years, but never realized Marshall Fredericks created them. So, I stopped at the Ohio Union recently to take a closer look.

The series begins with a tribute to the Native Americans who once inhabited the Ohio River Valley, represented by abstract mound designs in the upper right hand corner of the first panel. An 18th-century Miami Indian in tribal dress, holding a peace pipe, stands next to a bear, representing the wild animals that were native to the state.

The hardships men experienced after arriving in the Ohio country are the subject of the second panel. A guide leans on his musket while a traveler who has fallen on his knees to gives thanks for a safe journey to Ohio – the first state in the Northwest Territory. The wagons in the upper left corner represent the arrival of settlers on the National Road, now known as Route 40.Ohio’s agricultural bounty is celebrated in the third panel. Foliage, fruit and birds symbolize the abundant corn, wheat, beef, hogs and dairy products which attracted settlers and later led to the establishment of the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College – now known as The Ohio State University — in 1873. At the center of the panel, Johnny Appleseed teaches a boy how to plant a tree while his mother and sister look on. Statesmanship and education are the subjects of the fourth panel. In front of the Great State of Ohio stands Rutherford B. Hayes, who dissuaded his fellow members of Ohio State’s Board of Trustees from selling to storekeepers a strip of land bordering N. High St. from 11th Ave. to Woodruff Ave. – the same land on which the Ohio Union stands. On the right is William Holmes McGuffey, whose influential Eclectic Readers shaped the 19th-century American mind. An early school bell and school desk complete the picture.In the fifth panel, the kneeling figure on the left represents Ohio’s ceramic industry, made possible by the area’s rich chemical and mineral deposits, and then strengthened by the founding of the nation’s first ceramic engineering department at Ohio State in 1894. The standing figure holds a model of the airplane invented by Ohioans Wilbur and Orville Wright, while the scythe symbolizes the importance of agriculture to the state. Fredericks’ final panel represents Ohio’s steel, coal and milling industries. A figure wearing a foundry apron holds a ladle in one hand and a model of a great ore boat in the other, symbolizing the strategic position of Great Lakes cities in shipping iron ore. A crucible is filled with molten steel used in making automobiles, scales, cash registers, electrical machinery and other related products. Miners load their coal into cars in the lower right section of the panel, while the central figure stands with a wheel representing the milling industry. The reliefs won an Honorable Mention in Sculpture from the Architectural League of New York in 1955. When reconstruction of the Ohio Union began in 2007, the reliefs were covered. When the building reopened in March 2010, two new, complementary panels by artist Linda Langhorst and sculptor William Galloway were added to the 12th Ave. facade.

Pathways of Courage honors Ohio’s contributions to the abolition movement. It depicts Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Cincinnati author who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Dayton poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose writings championed civil rights; the symbolic “Freedom Stairway” and a lantern that represents the escape from slavery through the Underground Railroad. Celebration of Arts represents Ohio’s artistic heritage, with artist George Bellows shown with his paintbrush and author/cartoonist James Thurber seated at his typewriter.In 1965, Fredericks created two reliefs conveying the joys of nature, recreation and work — Industry and Other Employment Activities and Recreational Activities — for the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services. He also created two more reliefs — Motion in Nature, expressing how young people take great enjoyment in movement in nature, and Transportation by Man, showing the evolution of transportation from primitive beasts of burden to the modern expressway — for the Ohio Department of Transportation in Columbus. Each relief was made of aluminum and measures 14 feet long. The first two reliefs, which were displayed in the lobby of 145 S. Front St. in downtown Columbus, have been placed in storage by the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services, which provided this photo of Recreational Activities.

I’m hoping to see all four in person sometime. Until then, click here to discover more about them through the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum Digital Archives and Objects Collection.

For more, read The Story of the Ohio Union Reliefs, by Marshall Fredericks, and Marshall M. Fredericks, Sculptor, edited by Suzanne P. Fredericks.

That’s what many are saying this year, as The Ohio State University celebrates its 150th anniversary. In this Buckeye’s case, though, happiness was seeing my relative’s dress on display as part of exhibitions celebrating the traditions and experiences that have made campus life at Ohio State so memorable for generations of students.

Remember Ruth Weinman Herndon, the other CSG girl in my family who lived in a Frank Packard-designed home in Marble Cliff and was a member of the River Ridge Riding & Polo Club of Columbus? A black silk dress with ribbon work embroidery and lace that she wore in 1925, during her first year studying sociology at Ohio State, is front and center in “Campus Fashion: 150 Years of College Style,” an exhibit from Ohio State’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection.

Dozens of garments highlight what students wore to class, football games, special occasions, and in their dorms. The formal silhouettes of bustled dresses and morning coats worn during Ohio State’s early days in the 1870s progressed to shorter, yet still appropriate, attire of the 1920s and 1930s.

Also on view are samples of Ohio State football program advertisements the Varsity Men’s Store at the Union and the Lazarus Collegienne Shops ran to target students. Following the fad of the 1920s, Frances Ingwersen bought this long raccoon fur coat at The Union to wear to Ohio State football games. It’s displayed alongside the letter sweater Floyd Henderson, member of the Class of 1928, earned for managing the OSU cross-country team.

While there was no official campus dress code, Residence Hall and student government association handbooks provided suggestions about what was best to wear, as this 1957 example shows: “For dinner on school days, including Saturdays: Dresses, or skirts with either blouses or sweaters. No slacks, bermudas or jeans. No shirt tails out and no sweatshirts.”

“Since OSU is a casual place, wardrobes are made up largely of skirts, jumpers, sweaters, and blouses,” another example from the 1950s continues. “To complement these outfits and add a touch of interest it is good to have a supply of scarves, collars, and tailored jewelry. Always a favorite anywhere, loafers and saddles are popular at OSU.”

While an exchange student in Ireland, Anne Clark Foltz wore this circa-1955 two-piece dress of a turtleneck and matching skirt, hand-knit by her aunt, Virginia Woolpert.

White cotton nightgowns and a blue chambray at-home gown from the late 19th century, together with Asian-inspired silk sleepwear from the 1930s, capture changing tastes in what students wore to unwind in their dorm rooms.

White dresses were traditionally worn for initiation ceremonies into honor societies and sororities because they both created a uniform look and underscored the significance of the occasion. Ruth E. Moore wore her 1922 high school graduation dress for her circa-1924 initiation into Delta Sigma Theta sorority; other white dresses were worn by Anne Clark Foltz for her 1954 initiation into the Mortar Board Society, an honor society recognizing seniors for their scholarship and service, and Margaret Jacob Dombey, OSU’s May Queen in 1927 and Rosebud in 1924, for her initiation into Kappa Kappa Gamma and for her 1928 graduation.

Projects students made for design, construction, pattern-making and tailoring classes in the Department of Home Economics, now known as the College of Human Ecology, close the exhibit.

Three dresses Susan Hunter Beall made during Home Economics classes she took at Ohio State in 1948 and 1949, including her wedding and going-away dresses, are on view in Thompson Library’s Highlights from Special Collections exhibit space. A Bergdorf Goodman advertisement in the May 15, 1948 issue of Vogue inspired the style of the dress she would wear for her marriage four days after her graduation. To make it, she used parachute silk, embroidered eyelet silk, and silk satin which her father and brother brought home from Japan.

“Scarlet and Gray: The Student Experience,” an exhibit in Ohio State’s Thompson Library Gallery, features items from the University Archives collection that highlight student life on campus.

A scarlet-and-gray bow tie worn by a member of the Class of 1888 illustrates the class rivalry that characterized Ohio State’s early years. “Ye expose your idiocy with every word and action,” an example of the good-natured teasing reads. “We came to glorious O.S.U. to learn, and to associate with cultured upper classmen. Alas! we find our guides (?) the Sophomores, to be a pack of DRIVELING IDIOTS.”

The exhibit wouldn’t be complete without the uniforms of a Buckeye cheerleader, marching band member, football player and Ohio State’s mascot, Brutus.

Next to the “fan cave” and its display of Ohio State football memorabilia, an eye-catching wall mural includes almost 40 different archival images, including songbooks, programs, ads, pennants, Homecoming buttons, football tickets, a photo of the first “Script Ohio” from 1936, and a calendar created by acclaimed artist George Bellows, a member of the Class of 1905.

“Campus Fashion: 150 Years of College Style” continues at The Ohio State University’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection, 175 Campbell Hall, through December 13, 2019. “Scarlet and Gray: The Student Experience” is on view in the Thompson Library Gallery through January 19, 2020. For more, read Time & Change: 150 Years of The Ohio State University, by Tamar Chute, University Archivist and Head of Archives at The Ohio State University — and my archives classmate.

Take Buckeye Biography: 150 Years of Ohio State, a free online course based on the popular History of Ohio State course. Learn at your own pace through nine modules illustrated with videos, archival documents and photographs. If you finish the course, you’ll get a digital badge to show you’re a Buckeye historian. It will be available through December 18, 2020.

With a surprise ring of the doorbell, a routine Friday evening watching The Carol Burnett Show turned into a welcome special event. During that conversation by candlelight, I rediscovered another enduring symbol of 1970s popular culture: Beer-can collecting.

Back then, beer-can collecting was a fast-growing hobby. Walls were filled with finds collectors cajoled from others or unearthed with the help of metal detectors. Whether their tops are flat or cone-shaped, or opened with pull tabs or stay tabs, some beer cans are rare and unique, but they all offer a unique take on brewing history since they were introduced in 1935.

Collections are not only beloved examples of their owners’ personalities, but also important pass-downs for future generations. Legendary acquisitions and surprise discoveries are proudly displayed — mostly at home, but sometimes as the subject of a museum exhibition.

That was the case last Fall, when the Dayton Art Institute displayed a private collection of Marblehead pottery, a subdued, but stunning product of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Known for its soft colors, simple designs, matte glazes and thorough workmanship, Marblehead Pottery got its start in 1904. A medical doctor named Herbert Hall had begun a therapy program for women with nervous disorders in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a coastal fishing village north of Boston. While recuperating in a relaxing environment, patients could choose to engage in a variety of soothing handicrafts, including weaving, woodcarving, metalwork and pottery.

Each craft was developed and supervised by an individual, and Arthur Baggs, a student at the New York State School of Clay-Working and Ceramics at Alfred University, was hired in 1905 to oversee teaching patients the therapeutic techniques of pottery-making, as well as producing the pottery.

Early Marblehead pieces were made from clay discovered nearby; then, the pottery was created from a mixture of Jersey stone and native Massachusetts brick clay. Simple forms were hand-thrown and individually decorated.

In the beginning, pieces were predominantly green and blue, with a matte glaze.  Soft, warm tones were reminiscent of the village’s gardens and streets, as well as the nearby rocks and sea. A distinctive deep blue glaze became known as “Marblehead Blue.” Other colors included gray, yellow, tobacco brown, wisteria, rose, putty and yellow. Vases typically featured two tones: an outer glaze in a slightly different color from the interior glaze.

Hand-thrown vases and candlesticks, as well as cast tiles, trivets and bookends, were common creations. Many featured abstract, geometrical decorative motifs associated with New England, such as a square rigger ship, stylized waves and harpoons. Other natural motifs included trees, vines, flowers, insects, birds, seashells, animals and fish.

Early pieces bore a hand-drawn mark depicting a seagull overlaying the capital letter “M.” Eventually, the mark developed into an impression featuring a square-rigged ship flanked by the letters “M” and “P.”

Before long, it was obvious that Hall and Baggs were on to something, and the art and design field noticed.  “The Marblehead Pottery stands for simplicity – for quiet, subdued colors, for severe conventionalism in design, and for careful and thorough workmanship in all details,” House Beautiful observed in 1912.

What began as a summer endeavor continued as a permanent responsibility. Three years later, Marblehead Pottery was established as a separate, for-profit enterprise with a staff of employees. When its output grew to over 200 pieces a week, the pottery business was sold to Baggs in 1915.

By 1923, Baggs summered at Marblehead, but spent the rest of the year teaching pottery in New York and perfecting glazes at Cowan Pottery in Cleveland. In 1928, he became the first faculty member hired by the new Department of Ceramic Engineering at The Ohio State University in Columbus, heading the program until his death in 1947. Today, the Arthur E. Baggs Memorial Library, in the Department of Art’s ceramics area in Hopkins Hall, includes a collection of ceramics-related books, objects, tools, glaze notebooks, test tiles and other material. University Archives also holds the Arthur Eugene Baggs Papers, containing his correspondence, research and class notes, and publications.

Marblehead Pottery sold its award-winning, distinctive items through mail order and in shops across the country. It closed in 1936.