Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/800

Rh she owned on the banks of the Ohio River. She named the pottery "Rookwood," after their country place. The first kiln was drawn in February, 1880. For ten years after that she worked there almost daily, selecting shapes and artistic designs. Her decorators were usually young men and women who had been students at the art school, an institution in which her father, Joseph Longworth, was much interested, and to which he gave an endowment of three hundred thousand dollars. Mrs. Storer was given the patent for the using of a colored glaze over colored decoration and the Rookwood pottery of that time was dipped in a very thick deep yellow glaze, which gave a rich tone to every color underneath it, like the varnish of an old master. This ware obtained a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889. In 1891 Mrs. Storer's husband was elected to the House of Representatives and, on leaving Cincinnati, she gave the Rookwood pottery to her friend, Mr. William Watts Taylor, who had been business manager for four years and had put the pottery on a paying basis. In her time it was rather an expensive luxury costing her about two thousand dollars a year more than it brought in.

Has recently come into prominence through the execution of work for Wellesley College. She has already done some of the handsomest bronze work in this country. Her work for Wellesley is a set of bronze doors and transoms for the Wellesley Library Building, in memory of the late Professor Eben Norton Horsford, who died in 1893. Miss Longman's education was acquired entirely in America, chiefly at the Chicago Art Institute. Most of her works have been portrait busts and works of a similar nature. Three years ago, however, she made her first bronze doors, and the circumstances surrounding her first selection for her first commission, placed her at once as the most successful young woman worker in bronze in America. This commission, she received through competition held for a pair of bronze doors and a transom for the entrance to the chapel at the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis. It was open to all American sculptors and conducted under the auspices of the National Sculpture Society. A jury of five men was selected to pick the winning design. The identity of the competitors was kept strictly a secret and the judges had no means of knowing whose work they were considering. Miss Longman won the award by unanimous decision on the first vote, over thirty-seven competitiors. She is rapidly forging to the front as an artist in bronze. She is a member of the American Numismatic Society, the American Federation of Arts, and the National Sculpture Society, and is one of the few women associates of the National Academy of Design.

Mrs. Chanler has recently become prominent in art circles in New York as a sculptor of more than ordinary ability. Two of her works were recently accepted by the jury of the National Academy of Design and exhibited at their spring exhibition. Mrs. Chanler is a pupil of Victor Salvator, of Macdougall Alley, the Latin quarter of New York.