Crafting Reform: The Saturday Evening Girls and the Paul Revere Pottery with Nonie Gadsden
The Saturday Evening Girls’ club was established in 1899 to provide cultural activities for Italian and Jewish immigrant girls who lived in the tenements of Boston’s North End. In 1908, the reform-minded club leaders founded a pottery to provide the girls with a clean and educational venue in which to earn money. They named the enterprise the Paul Revere Pottery in honor of the patriot’s home which stood near their clubhouse, and to emphasize their own desire to be seen as Americans, not foreign immigrants. The pottery exemplified the ideals of the early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts movement, a design reform movement which sought to alleviate the negative social effects of industrialized society by promoting hand craftsmanship, the integration of art into everyday life, and healthy working conditions for artisans.
Nonie Gadsden is the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), where she is responsible for a wide range of artwork including decorative arts and sculpture from North, Central and South America, from ancient times through the 20th century. Her recent work includes a leadership role in reimagining of the 18th-century galleries in the MFA’s Art of the Americas Wing to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation (2026), curating the exhibition “Toshiko Takaezu: Shaping Abstraction” (2023-24), serving as lead curator for “Women Take the Floor” (2019-2021); developing new 20th century galleries, including “Art and Jazz” and “Folk Meets Modernism” (opened 2022); and a publication based on the MFA’s collection of American modern design, America Goes Modern: The Rise of the Industrial Designer (2022). Gadsden received her BA in American Studies from Yale College and her MA in Early American Culture from the Winterthur Program of the University of Delaware.
This lecture is presented as a part of our 2026 Lowell Lecture Series, “Engrave, Paint, Sew, Weave: Craft and Craftspeople in Massachusetts.” Craft transcends boundaries of place, time, and culture by communicating across literal and figurative distances. Many craft traditions are also deeply rooted in the places they are practiced in, influenced by local climates, geographies, and resources. Inspired by Paul Revere’s legacy as an artisan, this series delves into four local and regional histories of craft and craftspeople.
Lectures take place on Mondays, September 14 and 28 and October 05 and 26, from 6:30 to 7:45 pm. Lectures are free to the public and can be watched online (link coming soon!) or in person at Smith Commons (5th floor), Sargent Hall, Suffolk University, 120 Tremont Street. The lectures will be recorded and available after the fact.
The in-person location is wheelchair accessible and has accessible restrooms. Seating is in free-standing chairs which may be moved. The live-stream and recording will have auto-generated closed captions only. Please contact the Paul Revere House with any questions about accessibility.
Presented in partnership with GBH Forum Network, the Suffolk University History Department, and the Museum of Fine Arts, with funding from the Lowell Institute.
Fees
This event is free to attend.
Location
Smith Commons, Fifth Floor Sargent Hall, Suffolk University 120 Tremont Street Boston, MA 02108
Latitude and Longitude 42.356887, -71.061411
Schedule
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Event Type
- Partner Program
- Talk