Most American children have delighted in finger painting some time in their lives. Ruth Faison Shaw is the recognized inventor of modern finger painting. The idea was not new. In prior centuries, finger painting was used in murals on the walls of Etruscan tombs and in ancient Chinese manuscripts. However, it is generally accepted that Miss Shaw was the first artist to make the paints safe for children using non toxic ingredients, while at a school for English-speaking children in Rome in the late 1920s and early 1930s. boy who had cut his finger to the bathroom to put some iodine on the cut. The youngster did not return for some time. When his teacher went to see what had happened, she found that he had smeared iodine all over the tile walls as far as he could reach. This incident gave her an idea children loved to smear and what if that natural inclination could be harnessed in something constructive. Hence, her adventure in the discovery of finger painting began.
She discovered the technique purely by accident. While teaching one day, Miss Shaw sent a small She was born in Kenansville, Duplin County, NC, on October 15, 1889, the daughter of the Rev. William Mitchell Shaw, a Presbyterian minister, and Alberta Columbia Faison Shaw. In addition to his pastoral duties, her father was also principal of the James Sprunt Institute. She was the only girl in a family of four boys, with four other male cousins living nearby. She once told a friend, “By the time I grew up, I knew enough about boys that I didn’t want to marry one.”
In 1906, Miss Shaw graduated from the James Sprunt Institute for Girls. Later, she attended a teachers’ college in Baltimore, MD. She taught in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina and for a time was a teacher of piano in Wilmington and Southport. Just after the Armistice was signed ending World War I, she sailed for Europe, where she was a worker for the YMCA, spending about six months shuttling between London, Paris, Verdun, the Argonne and Romagna. After the war, she was asked to set up the school for English-speaking children in Rome, where she made her notable invention. The success of finger painting established her as a celebrity and with her wit and soft Carolina accent, she became a popular speaker. For several years, she lived in Paris, lecturing at the Sorbonne and leading workshops at the Trocadero School. Ruth Faison Shaw – Wilmington Star-News, Oct. 4, 1983
In 1932, Miss Shaw returned to the United States bringing her techniques with her. For a year, she taught at New York’s prestigious Dalton School before opening her own institution – the Shaw Finger-Painting Studio. She patented her finger painting formula and wrote a book, Finger Painting: A Perfect Method of Self-Expression (1934).
During World War II, she traveled all over the United States for the USO, entertaining servicemen with her demonstrations in finger painting and telling stories as she painted. Eventually, she purchased a home on Cape Cod and had a finger painting school there for small children.
Miss Shaw saw her experiment as a way to aid psychotherapy, since people who were disturbed could paint things that they could not express. For several years, she worked at the renowned Menninger Psychiatric Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. By the late 1950s, she was living in Chapel Hill, NC, where she worked with mental patients at UNC’s Memorial Hospital and at the Murdoch Center for Children at Butner, NC. At the same time, she continued to teach and exhibit finger painting in her home.
Miss Shaw died on December 3, 1969 in Fayetteville, NC. Her brother, William M. Shaw, was that city’s postmaster for many years. She is buried in Oakdale Cemetery. ❖ Source: Ruth Faison Shaw folder, North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library.