Alice Cordelia Morse
Encyclopedia
Early life
Morse was born in HammondsvilleHammondsville, Ohio
Hammondsville is an unincorporated community in central Saline Township, Jefferson County, Ohio, United States. Although it is unincorporated, it has a post office, with the ZIP code of 43930. It lies along State Route 213...
, Jefferson County, Ohio
Jefferson County, Ohio
Jefferson County is a county located in the state of Ohio. As of 2010, the population was 69,709. Its county seat is Steubenville and is named for Thomas Jefferson, who was at the time Vice President....
. She lived with her parents, Joseph and Ruth Perkins Morse, her brother Joseph Jr., and her sister Mary in Jefferson county for the first few years of her life. The family then moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...
.
In a biography written in 1894 by Frances E. Willard and Mary Livermore
Mary Livermore
Mary Livermore, born Mary Ashton Rice, was an American journalist and advocate of women's rights.-Biography:...
, it was mentioned that Alice attended school at a young age but her early drawings failed to reveal any special talent. Her skills did however eventually improve as an artist and she moved from Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
to further her education. She attended the Woman's School of Art at Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
for the Advancement of Science and Art from 1879-1883 where she received her undergraduate degree in art and design. Cooper Union was one of the first few arts schools open to women in the 1900s. Cooper Union's primary mission was to provide every student, especially the working class, with an equal opportunity toward a fulfilling education that would create a solid foundation for future job security and financial independence. The school provided very flexible class schedules for those who had to work in order to pay for school. Although some students paid tuition, Cooper Union would often waive fees for students who were unable to pay. Morse was likely one of these students.
Career
After graduation, Morse studied at various art schools, including Alfred State CollegeAlfred State College
Alfred State College is a State University of New York College of Technology located in Alfred, New York in Allegany County. This college, formerly the Agricultural and Technical College at Alfred, now grants baccalaureate degrees in 18 areas, associate degrees in nearly 60 areas, as well as a...
in New York, and soon began her career as a professional designer. She worked with many famous designers of the time period, including John LaFarge
John LaFarge
John La Farge was an American painter, muralist, stained glass window maker, decorator, and writer.-Biography:...
and Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements...
, both whom were well-known for their arts in stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
. She was employed by Tiffany's studio until she returned to Cooper Union in 1889. Although she had learned a lot from Tiffany, she did not find great interest in Stained-glass and instead wanted to pursue other dreams of becoming a book cover designer. She decided this after she had won several book cover designing competitions. She applied and combined many of her skills in stained glass art with her skills in book cover design. She was accepted onto a program at Cooper Union directed by Susan N. Carter.
During Morse's final year of graduate school in 1892, the New York Times reported her winning the "Frederick A. Lane, Robert C. Goodhue, and Trustees Silver Medal" for her full figure life drawing titled "Drawing from Life." She also sold several of her book cover designs to major New York publishers of the time including Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
, Harper & Brothers
Harper & Brothers
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
, G.P. Putnam's Sons, and Dodd, Mead & Company. Carter indirectly referred to Morse's Success and talent in the 1892 copy of the Annual Report.
The Woman's Building
The Woman's Building was designed by Candace WheelerCandace Wheeler
Candace Wheeler , often credited as the "mother" of interior design, was one of America's first woman interior and textile designers. She is famous for helping to open the field of interior design to women, making decorative art affordable, and for encouraging a new style of American design...
, a member of the Cooper Union Advisory Council when Morse enrolled. She was now the director of the Bureau of Applied Arts at the Women's Building. Morse took part in planning the fair at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. Morse served as chairman of the Sub-Committee on Book-Covers, Wood-Engraving, and Illustration of the New York State Board of Women Managers. The main goal of this project was to create exhibitions illustrating women's contributions to art, industry, sciences, social reforms, and philanthropic work in hopes of winning voting rights and better job opportunities for women. Alice also created an exhibition for the exposition that displayed eleven of her book-covers. She placed well in the exhibition receiving both a gold medal and a diploma for her designs.
Morse wrote a chapter for the Woman's Building Handbook titled "Women Illustrators" which included photographs of her own book-cover designs. These books included The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani (92-1); The Chatelaine of La Trinite (92-2); Old Ways and New (94-2); The Alhambra (92-8); Scenes from the Life of Christ (92-7); and The Conquest Granada (93-3). She also created the cover for the Distaff Series which was a volume of six books written by women and published by Harper & Brothers
Harper & Brothers
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
. The series was sold in the Woman's Building. Candace Wheeler wrote the introduction for this series entitled "Household Art" which described the series as being typeset, printed, and designed by women.
Also in 1893, Frances E. Willard and Mary Livermore published their book A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life , which contains the only known photograph of Morse.
Designing book covers
Throughout the 1890s (1887–1905), Morse designed approximately eighty-one book covers, many of which were submitted to popular publishers throughout New York City. In the book Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building, Alice implied that the illustrator must be able to take the central idea of the book and depict it creatively onto its cover. She believed women were best at designing. She stated in her text that "Their intuitive sense of decoration, their feeling for beauty of line and harmony of color insures a high degree of success" . Morse designed covers for various types of books, including novels, drama, poetry, literature, art history, travel, instructional manuals, women's health and home issues, children's stories, and pet care . She also designed covers for various famous authors including Amelia Barr, Lafcadio HearnLafcadio Hearn
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...
, William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
, Thomas Nelson Page
Thomas Nelson Page
Thomas Nelson Page was a lawyer and American writer. He also served as the U.S. ambassador to Italy during the administration of President Woodrow Wilson, including the important period of World War I.-Biography:...
, and Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
. Because of her great talent, she was often asked to design for special holiday books and expensive publications.
During the time she served for the major publishers in New York City, they would often submit her designs to famous exhibitions of applied arts and book arts , the most important one being the Commercial Book-bindings exhibition. This exhibition recognized the works of talented male and female artists and architects, includingSarah Wyman Whitman
Sarah W. Whitman
Sarah de St. Prix Wyman Whitman was an American artist and illustrator, stained glass designer, and author.-Early years:Sarah Wyman was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1842 to banker William Wyman, but by her third birthday the family moved her to Baltimore, Maryland in the aftermath of her...
, Margaret Armstrong, Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
, George Wharton Edwards
George Wharton Edwards
George Wharton Edwards was an American impressionist painter and illustrator and author of several books of travel and historical subjects. His books which included his own illustrations included such titles as Holland, London, and Vanished Halls and Cathedrals of France.Edwards was educated at...
, and Edwin Austin Abbey
Edwin Austin Abbey
Edwin Austin Abbey was an American artist, illustrator, and painter. He flourished at the beginning of what is now referred to as the "golden age" of illustration, and is best known for his drawings and paintings of Shakespearean and Victorian subjects, as well as for his painting of Edward VII's...
. Her designs Sweet Bells Out of Tune (93-1), The Odd Number (89-4), Marse Chan (92-12), and Stevenson's Ballads (90-9) were recognized in various small review articles . Stevenson's Ballads was actually featured in one of Author B.E. Hubert Jr. famous books. He also included his own brief summary of the struggle of female artists and Morse's success in the field.
Morse's two head rivals of the time were Sarah Wymann Whitman and Margaret Armstrong . The three were considered to be at the top of their generation of designers. Whitman's most famous covers of the time were designed for Boston's Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...
and today she is credited to be the overall best designer, male or female, for book covers . Whitman was also the first to design her own hand-drawn alphabet font which was often borrowed by other artists, including Morse . Armstrong was the youngest of the three but published over hundreds of book cover designs and thousands of illustrations . She was a botanical illustrator so many of her designs were admired for their beauty because they were often filled with bright colors and floral designs . She worked for many of the same publishers as Morse and eventually created several of her own hand-drawn alphabets just as Whitman did. Of the three, Morse was the one who depended most on her skills as a main source of income. The other two were wealthy women. Morse, however, when creating a design took more risks and produced a greater range of variations than her other competitors .
Morse did not stick strictly to designing book covers. Because her work become so popular, publishers often sought her out and paid her to create posters and in-text illustrations as well. Three known advertising posters include The Paying Guest (95P-1), Kate Carnegie (96P-1) published by Dodd, Mead, and Emma Lou, Her Book (96P-5) published by Henry Holt & Co . She also received commissions for adding decorative borders, vignette
Vignette (graphic design)
Vignettes, in graphic design, are decorative designs usually in books, used both to separate sections or chapters and to decorate borders.In Descriptive, or Analytical Bibliography for the hand-press period a vignette refers to an engraved design printed using a copper-plate press, on a page that...
s, and title page
Title page
The title page of a book, thesis or other written work is the page at or near the front which displays its title and author, usually together with information relating to the publication of the book...
s to publications .
Demand for book-cover designs soon subsided in the early 1900s with the invention of illustrated paper book jackets . This saved money because it replaced the expensive decorative cloth jackets that had been used in the past by Morse .
Teaching
Because the need for book-cover designs diminished in the late 1890s, Alice Cordelia Morse set out for a new occupation. In 1896 she attended the Pratt InstitutePratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
in New York City pursuing a 2-year degree in teaching.
After she graduated from Pratt Institute in 1897, Alice moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...
to accept the position of supervisor for the city's public school system. At this time Scranton was a very wealthy city and was well-known for its coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
resources. Morse made a better living as a teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
than she ever did as a designer . For her first position, she was appointed supervisor of the art and drawing programs for local elementary schools. She worked there for two years and then accepted the position as supervisor for the art and drawing programs for high schools. She worked out of Scranton Central High School which was considered to be the best school in the area at the time. It served as a college preparatory school for both girls and boys . Morse was offered her final position in 1917 as district director of all art and drawing programs in both elementary and high schools across the area. She remained in this position for the last seven years of her career until her retirement in 1924 .
Because it was not acceptable for women to live alone during this time period, Morse resided at the Leah M. Health boarding house while in Scranton . Heath was also employed by Central High School . Morse lived in the home for 12 years with Heath and two other boarders until Heath's death in 1913 . Morse and Heath established a great friendship because they shared many of the same interests, including art . In addition, Morse took care of Heath during her last few years of life . Heath left the boarding house to Morse in her will . Morse eventually sold the home and moved into another Scranton address. Over the summer months, she would often take art language courses at various universities including Harvard, the Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
, and the Atkinson School in New York City. In addition, she would travel abroad to paint and visit art galleries in Holland, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
After twenty-five years of working for Scranton public schools, Morse retired in 1924. She returned to New York City and moved into a home with her widowed sister. She donated 58 of her book covers to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
Library where they were exhibited for a short while. They then were preserved in the library's print holdings and remained inaccessible until 1997. Not much is known of her life after her return to New York City. She died on July 15, 1961 at the age of 98 in the Bronx's St. Barnabus Hospital..
Further reading
- Alice Cordelia Morse
- Dubansky, Mindell (2008). The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse. Grolier Club.
- University of Scranton Art Gallery
- Cooper Union
- Candace Wheeler
- The World's Columbian Exposition
- New York Society of Decorative Arts
- Margaret Armstrong
- Sarah Wyman Whitman
- Pratt Institute