Overbeck Sisters
The Overbeck sisters (Margaret, Hannah, Elizabeth, and Mary Frances) were American women potters and artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement who established Overbeck Pottery in their Cambridge City, Indiana, home in 1911 with the goal of producing original, high-quality, hand-wrought ceramics as their primary source of income.
The Overbeck family's Cambridge City home/studio was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976; the present-day home is maintained as a private residence.
[5] Sarah Ann Overpeck discouraged her daughters from marrying; she felt that marriage would "limit their ability to fulfill their creative potential.
Ida and her husband, Martin Funk, and Charles and his wife, Hallie (Hill) Overbeck, relinquished their rights to the family's Cambridge City home to Hannah, Elizabeth, Harriet, and Mary Frances after Margaret's death in 1911.
She also studied with the influential designer, Arthur Wesley Dow, of Columbia University, and with Marshall Fry, a New York china painter and potter.
Margaret is generally credited with the idea of the sisters establishing Overbeck Pottery in the family's Cambridge City home.
[9] She lived long enough to see the business established in early 1911, but died in Cambridge City on August 13, 1911, of complications attributed to her earlier injury in an automobile accident.
After her graduation from college in 1894, Hannah taught school for a year in Clinton, Indiana, but ill health forced her to return home.
[13][14] Chronic neuritis during the final years of her life made it difficult for Hannah to hold a pencil and draw, but she continued to work on designs until her death on August 28, 1931.
[16] She died on December 1, 1936, leaving her younger sister, Mary Frances, to continue making pottery on her own.
Trained as an artist in the mediums of oil, watercolor, and pen-and-ink illustration, Mary Frances's specialty was bird paintings.
"[17][18] Mary Frances continued to operate Overbeck Pottery after the deaths of her sisters, but she primarily focused on making decorative figurines instead of large ceramic pieces.
Harriett gave private lessons in music and foreign languages at the family home in Cambridge City in addition to her role as housekeeper for her sisters.
The frugal women handled the artistic operation and the financial aspects of the business themselves, and as a result of their efforts they made a modest living from the sales of their art and were economically independent.
[10] When Margaret died in 1911, the same year the women established their studio, Elizabeth, Hannah, and Mary Frances carried on the work.
The sisters set up a design studio on the main floor of their home, a ceramics workshop in the basement, and a coal-fired kiln in a small shed behind the house.
To supplement earnings from the sales of their art, the sisters taught ceramics classes during the summer in their home at Cambridge City.
They also created and sold their other handiwork, which included furniture, jewelry, knitted goods, tie-dyed fabrics, enameled copper, and lacework.
[29] As with other artists of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Overbecks strived to produce simple, functional objects that were handmade, beautiful, and inspired by nature.
The sisters also produced decorative pieces, as well as small figurines and fanciful figures they called "grotesques," which were popular with buyers.
[24] To produce their pottery the sisters' designs were created on paper, transferred to damp clay forms, and decorated and glazed before the final step of firing the pieces in the kiln.
[11][33] After the deaths of Margaret, Hannah, and Elizabeth, Mary Frances operated the family pottery business on her own beginning in 1936.
The remains of the Overbeck siblings are buried at Riverside Cemetery, Cambridge City, Wayne County, Indiana.
The Overbeck sisters operated their studio at a time when female roles were confined and limited; however, these women managed to become self sufficient and earned a modest living from their art.
[35] The sisters' small, home-based studio became "nationally-recognized for its artistic contributions to the Arts and Crafts movement,"[11] despite some critics who saw their work "little more than maiden ladies practicing a quant hobby.
[13] As Flora Townsend Little remarked in Art and Archaeology following a visit to their studio in 1923: "'True artists all, their results show much variety and originality of shape, style of decoration, and glazes.
[18][28] In addition, the Overbeck sisters were praised for the originality they demonstrated in the simple shapes and decorative styles of their pottery.
Articles related to the Overbeck sisters' art have appeared in magazines such as Antique Week (April 25, 2005) and Today's Collector (October 1994).
[17] Ball State University hosted a tribute exhibition called "The Overbeck Potters" from December 7, 1975, to January 25, 1976, at its campus art museum in Muncie, Indiana.
