Doll head

Boston Progressives started the Paul Revere Pottery in the first decade of the 20th century as an outgrowth of a program for young Jewish and Italian immigrant girls living in the gritty North End of Boston. Conceived by a librarian, Edith Guerrier, the program offered girls storytelling, dancing, and singing at the North End branch of the city library. The young girls, meeting at a time of the week when they did not work, learned to read, to appreciate the arts, and, the reformers hoped most, to think for themselves. The girls became known as the Saturday Evening Girls, and the talented among them began producing arts-and-crafts style ceramic tablewares, vases, and other products. Working conditons in the pottery surpassed the conditions of nearby sweatshops. At the pottery, girls handcrafted their works in well-lit and well-ventitated rooms decorated with fresh flowers. As they made their dishes, works by Dickens, Shakespeare, and other great writers were read to them. The pottery received its name from its first location in an old tenement building near the Old North Church where Paul Revere hung his signal lanterns in 1776. It moved to larger quarters in 1915 and continued operations until 1942.