Early Twentieth-Century American Porcelain Companies

Some of the firms making porcelain in the United States from 1900 to 1917 are listed here. Porcelain pieces from most of these companies are rare. Porcelain Company Location Dates Mark American China Company Toronto, Ohio 1894–1910 Edward Marshall Boehm, Inc. Trenton, New Jersey Malvern, England 1950-2003 1971-1992 Ceramic Art Company Trenton, New Jersey 1889–1906 […]

Syracuse China Corporation (Onondaga Pottery Company) (1871–Present)

In 1871 the Onondaga Pottery Company was started in Syracuse, New York, and soon bought the Empire Pottery Company. At first Onondaga made white graniteware, but later it added fine porcelain and semiporcelain dinnerware and toilet sets for home and commercial use. The company’s different marks included the letters O. P. Co. until the 1960s. […]

Willets Manufacturing Company (1879–C.1912)

Three brothers, Joseph, Daniel, and Edmund R. Willets, founded the Willets Manufacturing Company in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1879. The company made belleek, often hand painted, in the late 1880s and 1890s in shapes similar to those used by the Irish Belleek factory. Willets also made white graniteware, majolica, semiporcelain, and porcelain toilet sets, dishes, […]

Warwick China Company (1887–1951)

Warwick China Company was founded in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1887. It made vitrified chinaware, which was an unusual product for an American company. Its most desirable nineteenth-century pieces were decorated with portraits of monks or Indians. Other pieces featured floral decorations, birds, animals, and fraternal emblems. Until about 1914, some pieces were made with […]

Pickard China (1893–Present)

Wilder Pickard (1857–1939) established Pickard China in 1893 in Edgerton, Wisconsin, where artists decorated fine white china purchased from other firms. The company moved to Chicago in 1897. There the Pickard China Studio specialized in hand painting art pieces, vases, and dessert and tea sets. In 1911 Pickard developed a process to cover much or […]

Adelaide Alsop Robineau (1865–1929)

Adelaide Alsop Robineau began her career as a china painter and had her own studio in Syracuse, New York. She became interested in making her own earthenware and porcelain in 1899. She and her husband began publishing Keramic Studio, an influential ceramics journal in 1900. Robineau began to experiment with porcelains and developed a fine […]

Pope-Gosser China Company (1903–1958)

Pope-Gosser China Company was founded in Coshocton, Ohio, in 1903 by Bentley Pope (1847–1911) and Charles Gosser. Its early wares were high-quality decorative pieces. Later it made dinnerware. Some pieces were marked just Clarus Ware, but by 1908 Pope-Gosser had become part of the firm’s trademark. The company made wares for home use. It merged […]

Cybis (1940–Present)

Cybis Porcelains was founded by Boleslaw Cybis, a Polish painter and sculptor who was born in 1895 in Lithuania, lived in Poland, and moved to the United States in 1939. He started Cybis Art Productions on Long Island, New York, in 1940, and made plaster of Paris figurines and artware. In 1942 Cybis was a […]

Lenox (1906–Present)

Walter Scott Lenox (1859–1920) and Jonathan Coxon (1837–1896) founded the Ceramic Art Company in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1889. In 1906 the name of the firm was changed to Lenox, Inc. Designs used by the company always changed with prevailing styles. Early pieces were similar to Irish Belleek. They were often thin, with a nacreous […]

Edward Marshall Boehm, Inc. (1953–Present)

The animal and bird figures made by Edward Marshall Boehm, Inc., are known throughout the world and are found in many museums and private collections. Edward Marshall Boehm (1913–1969) was from Baltimore, Maryland. He studied animal husbandry, managed a farm, then joined the U.S. Army, married, and in 1945 returned to Great Neck, Long Island, […]