Lot 411: Exhibited Newcomb College Daffodil Vase, c. 1897

Important Exhibited Newcomb Art Pottery “Daffodil Vase,” circa 1897. This early Newcomb vase was thrown by Joseph Meyer and decorated by painter Katherine Kopman. The unique underglaze painting features long narrow leaves in varying tones of green on a background of lighter color green, and yellow blossoms encircling the shoulder. The blooms are delineated by a narrow black line, all under a glassy, faintly crackled glaze. 6 7/8 in. H x 5 5/8 in. diameter (at widest point). This vase was the featured object for the brochure for the 2013-2016 international traveling exhibit, WOMEN, ART & SOCIAL CHANGE: THE NEWCOMB POTTERY ENTERPRISE, organized by the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University and the Smithsonian Institution (an exhibit brochure and custom-made framed poster accompany this lot) and is pictured in the catalog on page 21. Note: Katharine Kopman was born in 1869 in New Orleans, LA and died in 1950. Kopman earned her Diploma in Art from Newcomb College in 1895 and was a member of the first pottery decoration class which opened in the Fall of that same year. She was a graduate art student from 1896 to 1898 and taught from 1896 as an Instructor in Drawing. In 1907, as the program began to be more defined, she became an Instructor in Drawing and Design and eventually worked in a supervisor role.  In 1918 Kopman became Supervisor of Art at Alexandria Grammar School in Alexandria, Louisiana and also taught at Louisiana College in Pineville. She exhibited pottery at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and created a series of Red Cross posters in November of 1917. (Kopman biography excerpted from Newcomb Centennial, 1886-1986: An Exhibition of Art by the Art Faculty by Judith H. Bonner, exhibition catalog, published by Newcomb College, Tulane University, 1986, p. 34) 

PROVENANCE: The collection of Ruth Weinstein Lebovitz, by descent from her father, B. Bernard Weinstein, M.D., a native of New Orleans. Dr. Weinstein received his medical degree from Tulane in 1937 and was a founder (in 1933) of the Tulane University History of Medicine Society, the oldest student run organization of its kind. He founded and led many international sterility and fertility societies in the United States and abroad, among them the American Society for the Study of Sterility and the International Fertility Association. A portion of his collections are in the Rudolph Matas Library and the Louisiana Research Collections at Tulane University.

CONDITION: Some minor glaze wear at base, otherwise excellent condition. A specially constructed padded box also accompanies this lot.