energy. Nor do they know that it is an individual effort, as individual as a picture or a statue, that it is never to be duplicated, and is characteristic, not only of the designer, but of her guides and her environment. "To be the voice of your environment," says their leader most happily, "is to strike the great, high note in your own, or any art." Which is the standard set for the work being done at Newcomb. The girls are encouraged to study the distinctive and varied flora of the south, to sharpen their observation and their originality, and to express their own ideas with independence. Singularly some of the happiest conceits have originated with the girls who have never passed the boundaries of their native state. The disadvantage incident to a lack of comparative study seems to have been more than counterbalanced by their freedom of expression, the unconsciousness of fixed methods that leads toward servile imitation.

Each separate piece of Newcomb ware is marked with the designer's initials, and dignified with the distinctive monogram . It belongs to the worker, unless, the object striven for, it passes the approbation of the judges, when it is regularly purchased and given a place

icism an accident of the kiln may mar an otherwise perfect "piece," and though the monogram is allowed to stay it is ranked as a "second," and sold at a correspondingly lower price. A handle may have had to be replaced by the potter, or

ent agencies, or one of the frequent expositions. If it is not accepted, the monogram is effaced, and it is returned to its owner. Sometimes, however, when design and workmanship are beyond crit

the "wizard," as the Newcomb girls call him, and though none might suspect its later setting, it is not allowed to be sold save as a second.

To talent, advancement is swift and certain at Newcomb. At the end of a few months many girls are able to recoup the expenses of tuition and materials, and as each one passes a certain stage and attains a standard of proficiency, she is ranked no longer as a student, but is retained and regularly employed in the pottery, being paid by the "piece." It is an ideal arrangement, for the girls may then come when they like, stay as long as they can, and go when they are tired. There are not more than thirty girls now taking the pottery course, but a new building, designed for a larger usefulness, is to be put up this year, the ground being already broken, and it will accommodate many of the applicants who are sending in their names from neighboring states.

"We were fortunate in having the older American potteries pioneer for us," explained Professor Woodward, the head of the art department and originator of this southern industry. "Rookwood and the others made our scheme a possibility, and pushed us toward quick success. Their larger task was to overcome the inertia of the times;

Newcomb pottery is thus greatly indebted to Rookwood, though the ideals followed are vastly different. Broadly speaking, Rookwood ware is more individual, more characteristic as a whole; Newcomb as a separate piece. At the Cincinnati pottery the leading artists furnish both color and design to the worker who is to carry out his scheme; here, each designer must complete and perfect her own conception in her own way.

În charge of the pottery department from the beginning is Miss Mary Sheerer, who studied in the Ceramic school at Cincinnati, and with a Norwegian potter who gained his skill in the many potteries of his native land. To start them in their work, one Gabry, a potter from Sèvres, who had studied under Clemens Massièr of Paris, was secured, and the first year was largely spent in experimental mixtures of clays and glazes.

Progress in the way of recognition as well as of skill, has been swift, for sales commenced almost immediately, medals have been awarded at the Paris and Buffalo expositions, and letters even more flattering from the judges have encour

never be a great deal of Newcomb ware on the market, for working as they must, slowly, giving the same dignity and attention to each vase as to a canvas, the result is modest in quantity.

The color typical of the ware is a greenish blue, though yellow and black on white and also on yellow clay are much used. Quite a feature is made of metallic glazes, and the variety being so great, there is no particularly characteristic one.

A beautiful vase in gun metal glaze was taken from the kiln while we waited. It was made to hold a lamp wherein to burn the midnight oil, and its originator, one of the most felicitous of the Newcomb artists, explained her idea for the design. Owls' heads, in verisimilitude, except for the beak, which she had tried, she said "to conventionalize into something between a beak and the nose of a professor!" surrounded the bowl, and served as quaint handles. The hammered and perforated brass shade at which she was working still further elaborated the scheme.

As a means of self-expression and of support to the woman of the south, the work at Newcomb is important; as a

no longer monopolize the enjoyment of leisure. Today, the great middle class throws its women out daily on to the large thoroughfares, well dressed, well groomed, to spend their own time and the money the men of the family have earned. In some of our American cities, where poverty is not rampant, even the poorer classes have more time than is necessary to foster the idle emotions.

The luxuries of this age are ever the necessities of the next, but never was such a quick stride taken toward the universal enjoyment of leisure and luxury as in this century just passed. "Where a woman used to dip her own candles," observed one thoughtful woman recently, "she has now but to press an electric button." Weaving and spinning and candle dipping, and even then her days were not overfull. Today, with cheap ready-made clothing, cheaper than she can duplicate by her fingers' skill, with cheap gas, cheaper candles, and with the enlightenment that each generation of progress throws into her path, the modern woman barring but the poorest, only thinks that she is busy. She has time "to burn." The result is the unskilled labor that she offers in return for her pin money, from the girl who teaches to earn her trousseau-and very poor teaching it always is, or typewrites for her party dresses and poor typewriting that usually is to the girl who cans fruit in fruit season that she may flaunt her cheap ribbons in the street the season between.

The group is enlarging which believes

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that the women who can be bread winners as well as bread eaters hold the salvation of the race in their capable hands, which hopes that that day is not far distant when it will be as much of a reproach to say of a woman as today of a man: "Oh, she does nothing." Which is equivalent to saying even of a gentleman that he is good-for-nothing. So far we have progressed. And we have followed part of the march with the vital interest that attends a personal observation.

The conditions limiting woman's work are the more definite compared with the freer sex-as the obligation is the more binding. Therefore an occupation that solves the problem for a few women puts the whole Nation under an obligation. A work that can be fitted in between other duties that does not imperil domesticity, that brings self-respecting prices, that encourages beauty and originality, in short, that insists on self-expression, is of profound importance to the community as well as to the individual woman. And such is the work being done at Newcomb.

"Express yourself!" thundered Carlyle through his lusty life, and surely it was no empty preachment. No matter how-but express yourself! Which is the idea regnant at Newcomb, with happy results for that southern region, so long stunned and stunted out of its normal growth, a beautiful art is developing which is the expression of its environment as truly as each vase is the individual expression of one woman who has found herself.