High-Style Design, Mid-Style Price 

Furnishing a home has always been a daunting, but exciting, task. Modern furniture from the middle of the 20th century included unique pieces with clean lines and subtle curves that added emotion and interest to a room. America was a leader in midcentury design. A recent sale at Barton’s Auction in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, featured more […]

Pewabic Pottery

Pewabic Pottery is known for its art pottery and iridescent glazes. It was founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1903 by Mary Chase Perry (1867–1961), a china painter, and Horace Caulkins (1850–1923), a dealer of dental kilns and supplies. The pottery started in an unused carriage barn. Early bowls and vases were marked “M.C. Perry” or […]

Walter Lamb Furniture

With outdoor entertaining undergoing a resurgence, iconic midcentury outdoor furniture is getting more attention. Furniture designed by Walter Lamb is considered some of the best from that era. Starting in 1947, Lamb designed patio and yard furniture with distinctive curved lines and durable materials for Brown Jordan, a company founded in 1945. Brown Jordan, still in […]

George Nelson

Furniture from the 1950s continues to be hot among both new and longtime collectors. And no designer says “fifties” like George Nelson (1908-1986), the design director at Herman Miller Furniture Co. from 1945 to 1972. His contract allowed him to work outside the Herman Miller Furniture Company, and in 1947 he opened his own design […]

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 […]

Dictionary Of Ceramic Terms

Coiling: A method used to make pots that uses long ropelike rolls of clay, coiled to form the desired shape, then smoothed on the inside and outside. Crystalline glaze: a glaze with clusters of flowerlike crystal designs formed by slow firing of a glaze that contains iron or rutile, large amounts of silica, and small […]

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 […]