The House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association as we know it today was established in 1910 and had grown out of the philanthropic work of our founder, Caroline Emmerton and the Salem Settlement Committee to serve Salem’s immigrant population. Over the last nearly 120 years, Settlement work has changed with the needs of the groups it serves. While many Settlement Associations closed over the course of the 20th century, the legacy, and in many cases the community offerings, remain. Additionally, the immigrant groups in Salem, their stories, and their contributions have changed, creating a more colorful and diverse cultural fabric here in Salem and the North Shore. This year’s Community Conversations series will focus on the history of the Settlement movement, the cultures of the groups with whom we work, and what Settlement and Salem looks like today.

 

Join The Gables as we welcome Nonie Gadsden, the Katharine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, as she talks about The Saturday Evening Girls’ Club. Established in 1899, this group provided 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. 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 handcraftsmanship, the integration of art into everyday life, and healthy working conditions for artisans. The playful ceramics produced at the Pottery feature barnyard animals, native flowers, and rural landscapes in the stylized manner of the Arts and Crafts style. Gadsden will tell the remarkable story of the SEG and their Pottery through the life of Sara Galner, a young Jewish immigrant who worked there.

 

This event is free, but registration is requested.

 

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About the Presenter

Nonie Gadsden earned her B.A. from Yale College and her M.A. from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. Gadsden is responsible for a wide range of artwork at the MFA including decorative arts and sculpture from North, Central and South America, from ancient times through the 20th century. Her recent work includes mounting 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 publishing a book based on the MFA’s collection of American modern design, America Goes Modern: The Rise of the Industrial Designer (2022).