Storer, Maria (1849–1932)

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Storer, Maria (1849–1932)

American arts patron and ceramist. Name variations: Maria Nichols; Maria Longworth Nichols. Born Maria Longworth on March 20, 1849, in Cincinnati, Ohio; died on April 30, 1932, in Paris, France; daughter of Joseph Longworth (an arts patron) and Ann Maria (Rives) Longworth; educated privately; married George Ward Nichols (a journalist), in 1868 (died 1885); married Bellamy Storer (a lawyer), in 1889 (died 1922); children: (first marriage) Joseph Ward Nichols; Margaret Rives Nichols.

Selected writings:

Probation (1910); Sir Christopher Leighton (1915); The Borodino Mystery (1916); In Memoriam Bellamy Storer (1923).

Born in 1849, Maria Storer was the daughter of Joseph and Ann Maria Longworth , distinguished Cincinnatians. Her paternal grandfather Nicholas Longworth had become wealthy in real estate and moved from New Jersey to Cincinnati in 1803, and her father, in addition to administering the family's estate and serving in various civic capacities, was a generous financial supporter of the arts in that city. As well, Storer's maternal grandfather Landon Cabell Rives was a prominent physician who had moved to Cincinnati in 1829 from Virginia. Educated privately, Maria married writer George Ward Nichols on May 6, 1868, and the couple continued the family's patronage of the arts.

In 1873, Maria founded the May Music Festival, which became an annual event. That same year, she took up ceramic painting and over the years experimented with different techniques. During a visit to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, Storer viewed an exhibit of Japanese pottery and returned home to write a manual of pottery-making. In September 1880, she opened Ohio's first art pottery, calling it Rookwood after the family's estate. She assembled a staff of designers and artists, a Staffordshire potter and a chemist, who developed a number of notable glazes, colors, and designs that earned the pottery national acclaim. In 1889, Rookwood pottery was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition. The following year, Maria sold her interest in the pottery venture and pursued other interests. In 1890, she earned another gold medal at the Paris Exhibition for her decorative bronze work.

George Nichols died in 1885 and Maria then married Cincinnati attorney Bellamy Storer, who served two terms in Congress between 1891 and 1895. When his friend William McKinley became president in 1897, Bellamy was appointed minister to Belgium. The Storers, who had joined the Catholic Church in 1896, were close friends of Archbishop John Ireland, a supporter of the Republican Party. They urged another friend, then-governor Theodore Roosevelt, to appeal to President McKinley to write a letter to Pope Leo XIII on Ireland's behalf, hoping to influence the Vatican to name Ireland a cardinal. McKinley cooperated and later sent the Storers to Rome to make a personal appeal; however, when Roosevelt became president, he gave his support instead to Archbishop John M. Farley. Storer continued to visit Rome frequently, actively campaigning for Ireland and repeating Roosevelt's earlier endorsement. Roosevelt, however, who had appointed Bellamy ambassador to Austria-Hungary, denied his previous endorsement and sternly reprimanded Storer, asking her to remove herself from Vatican politics while her husband was working as a diplomat. When the president received no reply, he removed Bellamy from his diplomatic post in 1906. The controversy was widely covered in the press, especially when Storer defended her actions and published some of Roosevelt's private letters. The rift between the Storers and President Roosevelt was permanent. When Storer's nephew Nicholas Longworth married Alice Roosevelt (Longworth) , the president's daughter, Storer refused to attend the wedding.

The Storers lived out their lives in Paris, Boston, and Cincinnati, where they continued to travel and support the arts. In her later years, Storer also wrote several books of popular fiction and a memorial to her late husband. She died at the home of her daughter Margaret Rives Nichols , the wife of the marquis de Chambrun, in Paris on April 30, 1932.