UI Press | Edited by Cheryl R. Ganz and Margaret Strobel | Pots of Promise: Mexicans and Pottery at Hull-House, 1920-40

Pots of Promise

Mexicans and Pottery at Hull-House, 1920-40

Presenting the Mexican artisans of Hull House and the history of its kilns and pottery

Exploring the untold stories of Hull-House arts programs in the 1920s and 1930s and the pottery program at the commercial Hull-House Kilns, Pots of Promise also addresses the story of Mexicans in Chicago and the history of Hull-House in the years when Jane Addams increasingly turned her attention beyond the settlement house she had co-founded.

This book is the first on the Hull-House Kilns; it examines Mexicans in the Hull-House colonia, Chicago's largest Mexican settlement. Pots of Promise includes 131 color and black-and-white photographs, many of them previously unpublished, and four essays: "Bringing Art to Life: The Practice of Art at Hull-House" by Peggy Glowacki; "Incorporating Reform and Religion: Mexican Immigrants, Hull-House, and the Church" by David A. Badillo; "Shaping Clay, Shaping Lives: The Hull-House Kilns" by Cheryl R. Ganz; and "Forging a Mexican National Identity in Chicago: Mexican Migrants and Hull-House" by Rick A. López.

Cheryl R. Ganz was curator and designer of the Pots of Promise: Mexicans, Reformers, and the Hull-House Kilns exhibit for the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Margaret Strobel is interim director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and professor of gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her publications include European Women and the Second British Empire, Three Swahili Women: Life Histories from Mombasa, Kenya, and Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975. Vicki L. Ruiz is professor of history and Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth Century America and other books.