By the summer of 1868, French had left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was working on his family farm. May Alcott, an enthusiastic artist in Concord, gave him modeling clay, tools, and encouragement. Although French began receiving commissions in 1873, he was only recompensed for his actual current expenses, and so continued to make plaster figurines to make ends meet. These he sold to a Boston ceramic and pottery firm, Clark Plympton and Company. This firm had the little figurines, based on popular literature and anecdotes, manufactured in Parianware in England. The sales of the tabletop figures provided French with a modest financial return.