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Alice Egan Hagen (1872-1972) is considered a pioneer of studio pottery in Nova Scotia. The craft revival was gaining momentum in other countries when Alice Hagen decided, in 1931, to learn to make pottery to teach it to others. She was then about 60 years old. Working in isolation, she experimented with different pottery techniques and clays native to the area. Soon, she had set up kilns at several locales and was conducting pottery classes. She continued to sell pottery from her home in Mahone Bay well after her 90th birthday.
In the early 20th century, women who actively pursued education and professional careers were referred to as “new women.” Alice Hagen fits this description: she financed her education as a china painter and made her living in this profession before transforming herself into a self-taught ceramicist. Her contemporaries, Helen Creighton, the Nova Scotian folklorist, and Mary Black, the Nova Scotian craft promoter, were also “new women.” All three of these entrepreneurial women shaped the cultural profile of Nova Scotia as we know it today.
This exhibit presents Alice Hagen’s life through images of her china and pottery, paintings, notebooks, family photographs and other documents. The storyline written by Dr. Janet Guildford, an historian at Mount Saint Vincent University, provides new insights about this artist as a woman of her times. Marie Elwood, Homer Lord and Mary Sparling paved the way with their ground-breaking research over the period 1975 to 1985. We gratefully acknowledge, among those who contributed to the present exhibit, members of the Campbell family (Alice Hagen’s descendants) and the director of the Mahone Bay Settlers Museum, Wilma Stewart. Christine Lovelace organized and entered the texts and images. Production of this exhibit was made possible by CHIN and a Cultural Activities grant from Nova Scotia Tourism and Culture.
An alumna of Mount Saint Vincent Academy (now University), Alice Hagen donated a large collection of her work to the Mount in 1966. Many of our photographs document the University’s collection of Hagen’s pottery and painted china. These items are identified by accession numbers in the image captions. Alice Hagen rarely gave titles to her china wares and pottery. For the most part, titles cited in the exhibit are provisional and intended solely for ease of reference. It should be remembered that the artist enjoyed distinction as a professional china painter before her marriage to John
