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Perhaps the very first examples of Newcomb’s lamp-making efforts were those included in its display at the Buffalo Pan-American Exhibition of 1901. The one pictured at the left side in the vitrine has a tall pottery base surmounted by a custom Tiffany Studios shade made of either a floral-patterned textile or bent glass panels. (6) The lamp on the right brought together a baluster-shaped ceramic base with a brass shade executed by a Newcomb artist. Because of other examples that have survived, we know that the shade was formed from sheet brass, the floral design worked in repoussé, and the background stippled with an awl tool. Its conventionalized design corresponded to the floral decoration on the pottery base. Early on, Edwin Atlee Barber, the ever-observant chronicler of American ceramics, wrote favorably about such Newcomb lamps: “Among the latest developments are some exceedingly original and artistic lamps, with perforated shades.” (7)

While the first craft endeavors at Newcomb focused primarily on china painting and pottery, other media were gradually introduced. Theirs was an expanding empire, and metalworking was officially introduced to the curriculum in 1900. Thus, making lamps with pottery bases and metal shades brought together two of the school’s basic crafts. Representative of these early efforts is a graceful lamp with peacock feathers in both the base and shade that was illustrated in the February 1902 issue of Keramic Studio. 

Very few lamps with pottery bases and brass shades have survived intact. An often-cited example is a lamp in the Newcomb College Collection (fig. 3). However, it is somewhat problematic because while the pottery base is decorated with cat’s claw, the shade has a design of magnolia blossoms, suggesting that perhaps the two elements were combined sometime after their creation. This lamp reveals yet another, slightly different approach to fabricating the shade. It too was made from sheet brass, but the background was entirely cut away from the sheet metal, leaving the floral motif as an openwork screen. A sheet of fine brass mesh or gauze was laid underneath, giving the shade a measure of greater solidity, and cutting the glare of the flame. Such table lamps were evidently popular. A reporter for a local New Orleans newspaper wrote in April 1902 that, “The shaping and decoration of sheet brass for lamp shades has grown into something of an industry.” (8) While “an industry” is unquestionably an exaggeration, still, this does indicate a greater degree of activity at Newcomb than might have been thought. 

The turn of the 20th century was a period of great experimentation at Newcomb, and still other ideas for lamps were being tried. One type was comprised of simple pottery vessels enriched with cascades of colored glaze and fitted with leaded glass shades (fig. 4) like those introduced just a few years earlier at Tiffany Studios. 

Newcomb also made lamps with beaten metal bases, presumably brass, and pierced or repoussé shades, but these seem to have been exceedingly rare (fig. 5). There is no indication that they were made for an extended period of time and no known extant examples of such all-metal lamps, suggesting that no more than a handful were ever made.

Mary Sheerer’s Iris lamp should be understood against these forays in different directions. Its combination of a pottery base and metal shade was standard practice, as was the use of fine mesh screen as an underlayer, but the inclusion of glass beads was truly novel. If the Iris lamp was exceptional, its novelty fits in with Newcomb’s experimental openness in these early years. Sheerer’s shade is also closely related to ideas stemming from Newcomb’s embroidery department. The sewing of the glass beads onto the mesh was, in essence, an extension of how Newcomb students applied colored silk thread onto a linen ground (fig. 6). Indeed, it is allied technically and aesthetically. The directional arrangement of the strands of beads, in patterned formations, corresponds to the way that the textiles were executed. 

Mary Sheerer, a highly talented professional in every sense of the word, took on an enormous project in committing to this beaded shade—a challenge not unlike the thousand hours that Adelaide Alsop Robineau expended on her famous Scarab vase. It is understandable that few other Newcomb craftswomen emulated Sheerer’s daunting feat. The patience necessary to gather each bead on the wire thread and sew it in place required a great commitment. The endless hours expended on this repetitive task must have been exhausting, and it is not surprising that the lamp was still not yet ready when the Newcomb display was sent off to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. 

A large measure of this lamp’s artistic success, beyond its material aspects, is certainly due to its related yet subtly different floral designs. The base represents a modern approach to decoration, then generally termed conventionalization. Although clearly recognizable as iris, the plants are arranged hieratically, constrained both frontally and symmetrically. The blossoms are in a stepped formation, on two alternate levels, and form a richly organic border. Below them, a series of broken horizontal dashes establishes a sense of ground but as abstract pattern, rather than depicting spatial depth. This was a favorite device of Arthur Wesley Dow, the leading American proponent of conventionalized design.

While the design of this lamp was conceived by Sheerer, Dow’s name must also be intoned. He brought together the tenets of both Japanese and modern Western art and forged them into a viable visual language. Through his classes in New York and Ipswich, and his publications, especially his enormously influential book Composition (fig. 7), he taught American painters, printmakers, and designers to transform visual data into a language of balanced, abstracted forms in harmonies of tasteful tones. 

Sheerer’s indebtedness to Japanese printmaking, via Dow’s teachings, is especially apparent in the arrangement of the shade’s floral design. Each panel features a striking depiction of a lily flower and leaves—all pushed to the surface so that there is no spatial depth and adjusted to the side in a dramatically asymmetric manner. As Dow advised in his writings, Sheerer concentrated on the composition and not on botanical accuracy. She was not alone in this new approach to decoration. One finds such designs in the work of many china painters and ceramic decorators, and they appear throughout the pages of magazines such as Keramic Studio. Sheerer was very much an artist of her time. 

The work numbers underneath the vessel—"AD 130”—indicate that the decoration of the pottery base must have been begun in 1903-04. Sheerer was still at work on the shade in the first months of 1904 since it was not yet ready for inspection by the April submission deadline. But it was finished by May 23, when Ellsworth Woodward wrote to Frederick A. Whiting asking that this lamp and other recently executed products from the Newcomb workshops be allowed to belatedly join the college’s display. Of the lamp, Woodward wrote that it was “the most distinguished product of the Newcomb Pottery to date . . . one of the most satisfactory and permanent workmanlike bits of handicraft that I have seen yet from any source. So far as my expertise goes with all this sort of thing, it is unique.” (9) The lamp was accepted and shown at the St. Louis World Fair and as is evident, it indeed proved to be the most distinguished product of the Newcomb Pottery. 

1 See Mary F. Baker, “The Newcomb Art School and its Achievements,” The Sketch Book, 4 (June 1905), p. 265.

2 “Newcomb Notes,” Picayune News, May 14, 1904.

3 Good Housekeeping (June 1905), p. 661; International Studio (July 1910).

4 A copy of this brochure is in the library of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.

5 Jessie Poesch, Newcomb Pottery & Crafts (Atglen, PA: 1975), p. 69; David Conradsen, Ellen Denker, Martin Eidelberg, Sally Main, Adrienne Spinozzi, and Kevin W. Tucker, The Arts & Crafts of Newcomb Pottery (New York: 2013), p. 155.

6 See the discussion of these two lamps in “Newcomb Notes,” Picayune News, March 2, 1901.

7 Edwin Atlee Barber, Pottery and Porcelain of the United States, 2nd edition (New York: 1902), p. 502.

8 “Art at Newcomb,” Times-Democrat, April 29, 1902.

9 Ellsworth Woodward to Frederick Allen Whiting, May 23, 1904; Records of the Art Department, Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis. Woodward was the director of the Newcomb art program.  Whiting was the supervisor of the applied arts division of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition.