By Ben Marks — Some of us look at an eight-place setting of fine porcelain china and see a family gathered for Thanksgiving dinner. Gazing upon a curvaceous piece of art pottery, we immediately picture it up on the mantel, lit by a pin spot and casting seductive shadows on the wall. But when Jim Robinson of Rookwood Pottery looks at a ceramic mixing bowl, a stoneware jug, or even a single piece of architectural tile, he sees rocks. "You don't formulate colors and clay bodies and all that stuff just for...

Diablitos in the Details: The Curious Tale of Mexico's Most Peculiar Pottery

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — In the rural Mexican state of Michoacán, devils, mermaids, saints, sun gods, and drunks can all be found mixing it up and having a great time. Each of these characters, and many more, inhabit the strange universe depicted in sculptures produced in the tiny town of Ocumicho. "Though sanitized into angels and last-supper scenes for tourist markets, authentic Marcelino figures are almost always obscene." These bizarre pottery tableaux feature hybrid scenes from everyday life, religious...

On the Trail of an Art Pottery Mystery

By Marianne Dow — Back in 1996, I picked up this small pottery display plaque/sign advertising Rozart Pottery's Twainware line. I love Mark Twain—and art pottery—and the fact that it was an advertising piece made it a "must-have." I remember that I bid $30 on it, which was high for me back then, as I had finally quit my day job and moved to Ohio to be a full-time antiques dealer. I usually kept my bids pretty low, but this one was personal, and I won—yay! I keep it on my library's literature shelf, with...

Cowan Art Pottery of the Art Deco Era

By Maribeth Keane — I’m the curator here at the museum in Rocky River, a suburb west of Cleveland. I look at Cowan pottery from a historian’s angle because this is part of Rocky River’s cultural history. I’m not a collector, but I personally enjoy and value Cowan pottery. I was on the board of trustees of the library about 10 years ago and did a lot of work to make sure that the Cowan Pottery Museum continued and was a strong entity. It’s been a part of Rocky River public library since 1978. I have a library...

American Art Pottery

By John Ramsay — Art pottery may be defined as intentionally decorative or ornamental ware but while the term "pottery" is usually limited to clay ware with a non-vitreous opaque body, "art pottery" must include vitreous porcelain or china as well. Also, art pottery as a separate type or classification is of fairly recent origin. In this age of specialization many plants make only this ware, yet in older days many potters from the great masters to the frontier "blue-bird" craftsmen turned out tableware or...

Pennsylvania Pin-Decorated Slipware

By Edna Deu Pree Nelson — A goal for the collector is old pin-decorated slipware. Even run-of-the-mill slipware does not grow on trees, since its value was not appreciated until about a quarter of a century ago, but pin-decorated examples are scarce. Early American slipware was either undecorated, trimmed with slip, or the design scratched into the clay surface (sgraffito work). Now and again a piece turns up which indicates that its decoration was produced by means of a set pattern. That is, the design was...

Stuart Lonsdale Explains the History and Design of Gouda Pottery

By Dave Margulius — I think it all started with a small pottery vase my mother obtained from the art pottery shop where she worked in the early 1920s and ‘30s. After she died in 1988, I didn’t initially didn’t take much notice of the vase, but then one day I just happened to look underneath and wondered what all the marks meant. I started trying to research it, but it was very difficult because we didn’t have the Internet then. I came across a book by Phyllis Ritvo, The , and it started from there. Then we got...

Bowes Curator Howard Coutts on Meissen, Staffordshire, and Sèvres

By Maribeth Keane — I’m the curator of the ceramics bit of the Bowes Museum. It’s a big museum with 30 galleries of which three or four are devoted to ceramics alone. Within Britain, it’s got one of the biggest and most expensive groups for people to see. We have about 5,000 or so pieces in the collection. We’re not sure exactly. It’s all registered, but of course we get tea sets registered under one number, so I think in total it’s about 5,000. I’ve collected both cups and saucers over the years, which...