Digital Extra

  3/24/02
RISD's birth: A timely bit of creativity
It was Helen Rowe Metcalf's idea to start the Rhode Island School of Design and shape it in a way that would serve a broad spectrum of students.

BY MARION DAVIS
Journal Education Writer

  The first day students in 1878 came mostly from Providence's East Side, women and teenage boys seeking formal training in the decorative arts that people of means learned casually at home.

They met four days a week in the now-gone Hoppin Homestead Building, downtown on Westminster Street, in a third-floor classroom adorned with paintings, reproductions of drawings by old masters, and plaster casts of classical sculptures.

Class began promptly at 9 a.m. Seated in rows, the boys in front, the 61 pupils heard lectures on art and design principles and performed a strict regimen of drawing exercises: freehand, geometric problems, copying models drawn on the blackboard, and drawing from objects and casts of human figures.

In the evening, another 79 students took their seats -- mostly working-class men who wanted to learn mechanical and industrial design. Their tuition was one-third the day rate, only $5, but what they studied was almost identical, with just some additional technical exercises.

Rhode Islanders had dreamed of a school like this for decades: a place where men and women of all social classes could learn to appreciate art and apply it to home and industry -- and in the process help forge a more sophisticated society.

Art-and-design schools had opened in several U.S. cities, including the prestigious Massachusetts Normal Art School, in Boston. In Rhode Island, however, art-and-design education was limited and piecemeal. A group of powerful industrialists had tried to create a great school in the 1850s, and given up after failing to raise the $50,000 they felt they needed.

But on Oct. 1, 1878, the Rhode Island School of Design had boldly opened its doors, ready to do what others had been unable to.

With $1,675 and virtually no help from their fathers, husbands and brothers, a group of Providence women led by Helen Rowe Metcalf had formed a corporation, enlisted experts, and opened what is now one of the world's most renowned art-and-design institutions.

At the time, Rhode Island women couldn't own property if they were married, and it would be two generations before they were allowed to vote. Yet history has hardly acknowledged the magnitude of the RISD pioneers' accomplishment.

Last week, to kick off a year-long 125th-anniversary celebration, RISD paid a long-overdue tribute to its creators, dubbed the "Daughters of Invention."

"They couldn't imagine that this would be a world-class institution," RISD President Roger Mandle said in an interview. But they had an "intellectual spark," he said, "the momentum of a great idea," and with cunning and determination, "they got it right."

IT IS HARD to imagine that a one-room school opened on a shoestring could have grown into an international art-and-design powerhouse. Yet look closely, and you will find that at its core, RISD still serves its original goals.

The school's circular for its founding year, a tidy booklet with a powder-blue cover, lists three objectives:

FIRST. The instruction of artisans in drawing, painting, modelling, and designing, that they may successfully apply the principles of Art to the requirements of trade and manufacture.

SECOND. The systematic training of students in the practice of Art, in order that they may understand its principles, give instruction to others, or become artists.

THIRD. The general advancement of public Art Education, by the exhibition of works of Art and of Art school studies, and by lectures on Art.

Even today, schools like this are rare. Some schools focus on the fine arts, and others on applied art and design, especially in its most technical forms. Few consider the training of art teachers to be a priority. And educating the public -- that's for museums and other cultural institutions.

Yet at RISD, painters and sculptors learn side by side with art teachers, architects, furniture makers, textile designers, and even the creators of innovative medical tools and life vests. The RISD Museum is one of the state's greatest cultural resources, welcoming 100,000 visitors annually, including countless schoolchildren. And through its continuing-education programs and the Center for Design and Business, the school teaches every form of art and design to Rhode Islanders from all walks of life.

"I think they showed extraordinary foresight and breadth of knowledge in creating a concept for RISD that was so all-encompassing and so sophisticated," Mandle said of the founders.

Like the Constitution of the United States, he added, RISD's founding principles have withstood the test of time -- so that even today, "we find that we are still true to them. I doubt there are many institutions that can say that."

THE SCHOOL that Helen Rowe Metcalf and her partners built aimed to meet long-recognized needs in Rhode Island, both within the manufacturing world that their families dominated, and throughout society.

By the mid-19th century, the Industrial Revolution had transformed the state into a bustling economic hub, complete with towering smokestacks and massive factories. Department stores sold mass-produced goods to a public that loved the innovation and convenience. But something was amiss.

The new world was dull, impersonal, lacking in beauty and creativity. The problem wasn't unique to Rhode Island or America -- people on both sides of the Atlantic were grappling with the effects of industrialization.

But Europe, already the cultural leader, had been much quicker to cultivate the art of industrial design, so the gap between manufacturing and beauty was less deeply felt.

In the United States, however, manufacturers found themselves copying European designs, trying to match their sophistication in textiles, jewelry, and household goods. They needed to catch up.

American industrialists set out to hire great designers of their own. In Providence, John Gorham, head of the nation's largest silver-plating company, started by recruiting artisans from England. But ultimately, he and his fellow business leaders wanted home-grown designers.

In 1853, 141 of the state's "foremost men" established the Rhode Island Art Association, hoping to create "a school of design and museum of art" that would train designers for industry and cultivate good taste and aesthetic appreciation throughout society.

There is no question that their goals were utilitarian: to staff their factories with skilled designers, and to shape public taste so that consumers would be sure to want their products.

Yet despite the men's power and influence, they couldn't galvanize public support, and they fell far short of their $50,000 fundraising goal. Then the Civil War came, preempting any new efforts, and throwing the nation into economic turmoil.

IN 1877, when RISD was founded, Rhode Island still lacked a design-education program. The best it had was Scholfield's Commercial College, started in 1846, which taught mechanical drawing and some painting, and the Rhode Island Technical College, opened that year, which focused on technical drawing and engineering.

In Massachusetts, an 1870 law had mandated that communities offer design education to students over the age of 15, and at the publicly financed Massachusetts Normal Art School, the Englishman Walter Smith was training a new breed of art-and-design teachers.

As design historian Nancy Austin noted in a speech at RISD on Wednesday, Rhode Island had a much more "hands-off" approach to education. In fact, the state had only begun fully financing "free" public schools around 1872. But state leaders were concerned enough about design education that in 1876, they commissioned a study on whether Rhode Island should follow its neighbor's lead.

Coincidentally, RISD's articles of incorporation were approved by the General Assembly just 11 days after the study was completed. It recommended offering drawing lessons in all public schools, and teaching design in workshops, as RISD would do. Among the legislators discussing these ideas was Claudius B. Farnsworth, the first president of RISD's board of trustees and a key player in shaping the new school.

THE CIVIL WAR and the unstable economy of the ensuing years created yet another audience for design schools -- middle-class women.

Drawn into the work force while the men were away fighting, many women found that they couldn't go back to staying at home after the war's end. Widows had to support their families, and young women encountered a dearth of eligible husbands. Some women who were supported by men saw their fortunes shift suddenly, and had no choice but to seek work or go hungry.

But in the Victorian era, a lady's respectability was closely tied to her home, and middle-class women who worked risked losing social status. Finding a place for women in the industrialized world became a widely discussed public-policy question, and a cause embraced by philanthropists.

The natural answer, it seemed, was to train women in the decorative arts -- an extension of sewing, china-painting, and other crafts that were already part of their domestic lives.

Several small schools offered instruction in those fields, but RISD would be the first in Rhode Island to take it beyond the amateur level.

THE WOMEN who founded RISD were part of a wealthy elite who volunteered regularly for charitable causes and, after the Civil War, formed clubs to learn and talk about literature, culture, politics, and social issues.

Helen Rowe Metcalf was married to Jesse Metcalf, co-owner of the Wanskuck Co. textile mill, and was involved in the Rhode Island Woman's Club, the most prominent women's group in Providence.

The president of the club, Sarah E. Doyle, would become secretary of RISD's first board of directors. She was the sister of Providence Mayor Thomas A. Doyle, as well as a prominent teacher and an advocate of women's suffrage.

At the club's first meeting, in February 1876, the guest speaker was Ednah Cheney, founder of the Boston School of Design for Women.

Their business at that first meeting concerned the Women's Pavilion in the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. The male organizers of the exhibit had decided there was too little space to show women's work, so women across the country raised $31,160 to erect their own display hall.

The Rhode Island group, in which Helen Rowe Metcalf was a leader, organized fundraising parties and festivals, and published a newspaper. In the spring and summer of 1876, they traveled to Philadelphia to see the product of their efforts, and they returned triumphant and energized. They were eager to do more to promote the "useful arts" for women, and after covering their expenses, they had $1,675 left over.

AT FIRST , the women discussed other uses for the money: supporting a "much-needed" public library, helping worthy charities, and donating a drinking fountain for Roger Williams Park.

They also considered giving the money to Brown University, to encourage a design program there. But it was Helen Rowe Metcalf's idea that prevailed -- to start a school of their own, right away.

Their choice met with public criticism, and the women responded with a letter, published in the Providence Journal on Feb. 3, 1877, in which they argued that "those do the best service for the world, who serve their own day and generation faithfully and well."

In the 1850s, they noted, the English had found themselves "surprised and ashamed" to see how poorly their industrial products compared with the French, Dutch, and German, and yet they quickly became leaders in design by establishing numerous art schools, "many of them on a most modest basis."

At the Centennial Exhibition, Americans had seen their own work compare unfavorably with Europeans', the women wrote. But they already had the materials to create superior wares; all they needed was "the training to be able to mould, instead of a cheap flower pot, an elegant vase."

That would be a goal of the Rhode Island School of Design, but not its sole purpose. It would be 16 years before Jesse Metcalf donated the Waterman Building in his wife's honor, giving RISD the space to create a museum. Yet from the beginning, it was part of the founders' dream:

"If only a permanent loan room could be established, in which generous possessors of art treasures would be willing to share for a while their beauty with others, we should have an abundant source of happiness and culture," they wrote.

"We may not be able to offer complete training to a great artist," they concluded. "We are doing much if we can make our lives richer and our homes more beautiful."

This story is based on archival documents at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Providence Journal, a 1928 history of RISD by Elsie Bronson, and recent scholarship by Russell Switzer, Helen Metcalf Burnham -- a great - great - great-granddaughter of Helen Rowe Metcalf -- and design historian Nancy Austin, who is writing a book that traces the evolution of design through a case study of RISD.

As part of its 125th anniversary celebration, RISD is asking alumni and their families, former faculty members, and anyone else with ties to the school to share old photographs, art work, letters and other items relating to RISD's history.

For more information, call archivist Andrew Martinez at 454-6398 or e-mail him at amartine@risd.edu.

A special anniversary Web site, including a timeline and images of historical photographs and other documents, can be viewed at http://www.risd.edu/125.cfm.

More Women in R.I. history