Pottery/Porcelain
Stangl Pottery, an American Original -- One of the most popular American pottery manufacturers in the first part of the 20th century was Stangl Pottery. Its colorful, simple designs made its dinnerware lines a casual alternative to more formal styles, while its art pottery lines competed successfully with more expensive and sophisticated ware.
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Weller Art Pottery -- Samuel A. Weller, born in 1851, began his first pottery in 1872 serving the needs of local farmers in the Ohio area around Fultonham, where his one-room pottery turned out earthenware jugs, crocks, churns, tiles, flower pots and cuspidors. Fultonham is close to Zanesville, the center of a rich clay-producing region which was also home to many other American potteries.
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Niloak Pottery -- Every once in a while you may come across a strange-looking pottery vase, covered in swirls in the earthy tones of cream, beige, earth brown, and dusty blue. The colors aren't created by a glaze or painting, but seem to be part of the material itself. In fact, this is true. No two of these smallish vases look alike, for the process is entirely random. Characterized by an upwardly clockwise-spiraling pattern, soft colors and blurred lines, each piece is unique -- in fact at one point, the manufacturer offered a reward of $1,000 to anyone who could find two pieces with identical swirl patterns.
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The Reign of Royal China -- In spite of its regal name, the Royal China Company was all-American. In 1934, dinnerware production began in the former E.H. Sebring plant in Sebring, Ohio.
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Blue Ridge Dinnerware -- Established in the small town of Erwin, Tennessee, Southern Potteries Inc., perhaps better-known as Blue Ridge dinnerware, owes much of its popularity and success to the hand-painting technique used to create patterns of flowers, ivy, fruit, and other home-spun designs on its dishes.
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The Fine Porcelains of Limoges, France -- The history of the fine porcelain now known as "Limoges" begins with kaolin, the pure, soft white clay first discovered in China. This clay retains its pure white color when fired. Before they discovered the pure white clay, the Chinese used sandstone/stoneware. Marco Polo was one of the first Europeans to see porcelain; he named it after very white and translucent shell. Vasco de Gama brought back the first porcelain objects to Europe in the fifteenth century.
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Book Review: Pictorial Guide to Pottery & Porcelain Marks -- Chad Lang has taken a different approach to a pottery marks book--no histories, no hand-drawn illustrations of marks, and no additional information about designers. His Pictorial Guide to Pottery & Porcelain Marks uses a simple approach of showing a full-color photograph of the mark with a picture of the ceramic piece on which it’s found.
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Book Review: Collectible Vernon Kilns -- Collectors of Vernon Kilns pottery have been celebrating the second edition of Collectible Vernon Kilns by Maxine Feek Nelson for several months now.
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MORE ARTICLES COMING SOON
