Born in Philadelphia in 1845, Isaac Scott came to Chicago during the rebuilding period following the Great Fire of 1871, where he worked with various architects to design richly decorated interiors. Glessner House possesses the largest assemblage of his work, including dozens of pictures frames for the Glessners’ collection of steel engravings. He also created numerous pieces of furniture and hundreds of embroidery designs.

Scott’s work represents America’s desire to establish its own creative voice in the 1870s. This was a reaction to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia which celebrated the technological marvels of the United States, but demonstrated few advances to compete with the artistic movements in England. Scott and others, while still influenced by British design, began to embrace the Arts and Crafts movement in creating a distinctly American interpretation, with Scott frequently incorporating native woods and depictions of American flora and fauna. Two of Scott’s furniture pieces for the Glessners – a bookcase and a desk – were included in the landmark 1972 exhibition at Princeton University, “The Arts and Crafts Movement in America 1876-1916.” As the two earliest pieces in the exhibition, Scott’s pieces represent the very beginnings of the movement in the United States.

This pilgrim bottle, one of four made for the Glessners by Scott, was executed during the fall of 1879 when he spent time at the Chelsea Keramic Art Works in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Established in 1872 by the Robertson family, it was the first American firm to identify as an “art pottery,” and helped to secure the reputation of the United States as a center of pottery production. Scott was familiar with the medium of clay, having worked as a modeler for the Chicago Terra Cotta Works, and carving large terra cotta blocks as architectural ornamentation.

The unglazed earthenware vessel measures 14.5 inches in height and is in the basic form of a medieval canteen, a shape being used at the time by several English potteries. To this press-molded form, Scott used his knowledge of Japanese design to incorporate a variety of raised details including a bird and medieval lizard, the latter gracefully curved to accommodate the shape of the object. The back side features delicate incised and relief decoration of long-stemmed flowers and the inscription, “To John J Glessner Esq. of Chicago from Scott…Oct 25 1879.”

Scott remained close to the Glessners throughout his life, teaching their children to carve wood, and spending part of each summer at their idyllic summer estate in New Hampshire. As a talented craftswoman herself, Frances Glessner surrounded herself with craftspeople who embraced her passion for handicraft. By the late 1880s, Scott had left Chicago, settling in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston where he spent three decades teaching his craft at the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts.