Saturday, August 22, 2009

Saturday Evening Girls Paul Revere Art Pottery Vase


Available for purchase at onlineauction.com is this beautiful Saturday Evening Girls Paul Revere Pottery vase. This is a good-sized vase, standing approx. 10-1/2" tall, and it is a rich, mustard or golden yellow color. This is not a decorated piece of SEG Pottery, but it is elegant in its simplicity. It is so smooth to the touch, and the color is so warm! It is a wonderful piece of American Art Pottery!

Looking at this vase, one might think, "What's so special about it?" What makes it special is the story behind Paul Revere Pottery and the Saturday Evening Girls. A woman named Edith Guerrier started a club, in the North End of Boston, to try to provide educational and artistic activities for young girls, to keep them off the streets. These girls were mainly Jewish and Italian immigrants. The club met in a library, usually on Saturday nights, hence the name. Around 1908, Guerrier, along with a friend, Edith Brown, and philanthropist Helen Osborne Storrow, started a pottery to provide the girls with safe and reliable work. The pottery was located not too far from the Old North Church, where Paul Revere hung the lanterns to warn the colonists about the British, as the story goes, so that is where the name Paul Revere Pottery came from. This pottery was so successful, room was needed for expansion, so a new facility was set up in the Brighton section of Boston, and production continued there from 1915-1942. The girls had much better work conditions than other places-they worked shorter hours, in a clean environment, and they were even read the classics as they worked.


This vase is marked on the bottom, "SEG", with the initials "T.M.", and a date of "6-17". "SEG" stands for Saturday Evening Girls, of course. I found some research that one of the girls who worked for the Paul Revere Pottery was named Teresa Molinari, and I am pretty certain that is who "T.M." is. "6-17" stands for the date of June, 1917.
So, knowing that this vase was crafted 92 years ago, in historic Boston, by an immigrant girl, possibly as she listened to Shakespeare or Dickens being read aloud as she worked, makes this a very special vase, indeed!

Click here to view the listing for this Saturday Evening Girls Paul Revere Art Pottery Vase.

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1 comment:

Fleapirates said...

You are an excellent researcher! I love this story, and you're right... it does make a piece more special.

Lovely vase!