AbstractsWomens Studies

The aim of this dissertation is to examine Mary Louise McLaughlin and Adelaide Alsop Robineau, seminal figures in the American Art pottery movement, and their contributions to the art education of women. The dissertation is a historical analysis of the conditions in which both developed professionally, information which is placed in two contexts: (1) the context of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, and the historical roles women have played in this field, and (2) the sociocultural milieu of 19th century America, with particular attention to the issues of the Protestant Work Ethic, the Colonial Revival, and developments in the Arts and Crafts industry. Both McLaughlin and Robineau acknowledged the plight of the American women in the 19th century, who, after the Civil War and during a long period of westward expansion, were much more on their own, forced to fend for themselves financially in numbers higher than ever before. McLaughlin and Robineau sought, through a variety of educational means, to provide the late 19th and early 20th century woman with life options. Primarily this was achieved through education in the ceramic arts, by which a woman could make a decent wage while engaging in a respectable livelihood. McLaughlin and Robineau presented women with the tools they needed in the form of their own hands, and bade them step foot into the world of industry and transform it by their very presence.