Artful China

 

QUESTION: A friend of mine recently gave me a colorful vase that has two handles and a design of some sort of fruit on the front. The mark on the bottom says “Laughlin Art China” along with the image of an eagle. Can you tell me what company made this and when? 

ANSWER: Your vase is one of hundreds of pieces produced by the Laughlin China Company in the first decade of the 20th century. While the company made some of the pieces, such as soup tureens and platters, it made most of its pieces for display only.

At the turn of the 20th century, American potteries, formerly limited to the production of dinnerware and washstand toilet sets, took a cue from the vogue for American art pottery and began developing decorative "specialty ware" or art china.

Characterized by unusual decals surrounded by a background of solid color applied with an air brush or atomizer, these wares mimicked the standard glaze and hand-painted ware of such art potteries as Rookwood, Roseville and Weller. At first, manufacturers used a brown background but soon changed that to bright red, magenta, green, blue-green, pink and sometimes combinations of several colors. The first American pottery to popularize the style seems to have been the Warwick Pottery of Wheeling, West Virginia. 

Many potteries in the Ohio Valley quickly copied the art china concept. None, however, elaborated up on the idea with more verve and success than Homer Laughlin China of East Liverpool, Ohio, which began production if its art china in 1900. 

But neither Homer nor Shakespeare Laughlin, the founders of Homer Laughlin China Co., had anything to do with the development of Laughlin Art China. The brothers did develop a whiteware pottery on a subscription basis in East Liverpool in 1873, but Shakespeare dropped out in 1877. While Homer Laughlin expanded the company, beginning the production of semi-vitreous porcelain in the 1890s and incorporating the company in 1896, he retired two years later and moved to California.

During these early years, there was one notable and highly successful effort by Laughlin China to produce artistic china-ware. Around 1886, the company succeeded. Marked with the words "Laughlin China" in a horseshoe, workers frequently decorated it  using the French pate-sur-pate technique, with cameo-like white designs on a blue ground. But such ware is rare, as Laughlin only made it for three years.

Under new management, notably that of William E. Wells, the Laughlin pottery continued to expand, completing a second plant in East Liverpool's East End in 1900, soon followed by a third plant. In 1903,. it traded plants with the National China Co. and then enjoyed a combined capacity of 35 kilns.

Shapes that are known to have been used for Laughlin specialties include American Sweetheart, King Charles, Genesee, Hudson and The Angelus. A number of these shapes, notably Kwaker, continued in production as late as the 1940s, 

Beginning in 1903, Laughlin China marked its art china specialties with a gold stamp featuring an eagle trying its wings, over a script "Laughlin." The firm sold the first pieces that same year, but they didn’t appear in company sales literature until 1905. Actual production seems to have been limited to five or six years.

Laughlin produced more than 130 different shapes and sizes of its art china with a currant decal, the most common form of decoration. 

But the White Pets design, the best known, featured a series of dogs, cats and birds, the most common being a pair of pointers, usually shown amid a clump of cattails. The use of a decal showing a pair of white cockatoos may have been a response to Warwick China's striking use of white birds on a white ground.

Another popular Laughlin Art China pattern was Dreamland, bearing a variety of Kate Greenaway-like children's scenes, usually involving a goat, with a blended yellow, green and brown back-ground. Like White Pets, this line often lacked the Laughlin Art China eagle backstamp and simply bore the line name. Unlike White Pets, Dreamland was decorated not with a simple decal but by "pouncing," a process in which the design was enhanced by the addition of small particles of carbon pigment, particularly effective in the cartoon-like Dreamland and Holland decorations. Other cartoon-like decorative lines utilized a variety of frog decals, most likely inspired by Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.

Other companies occasionally decorated Homer Laughlin blanks using different decals and decorating techniques. Perhaps most notable was the little-known McKean Pottery of Minerva, Ohio, which specialized in a faux wood grain decorative background, a line which they called Angora. 

With Laughlin art china, condition is very important, particularly in collecting art china decorated with the air-brushed background, since this type of decoration wears easily. Because Laughlin intended some of its art china to be used, the delicate nature of the decoration was a problem and may be part of the reason for its decline in popularity. However, some pieces are so rare that even substantial amounts of wear don’t rule out significant prices.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "folk art" in the 2023 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

A Thanksgiving Heirloom

 

QUESTION: For my family, Thanksgiving was the biggest gathering of the year. I remember my mother planning the event as early as October. Back in the 1950s, we'd pile into the car and drive to the local turkey farm to order a very large bird. My mother would have never considered buying a frozen turkey at the local market. I heard her speaking on the phone to my grandmother about how many were corning, what kinds of pies should be baked, or whether we would add some new recipe for cranberry sauce. At the center of it all lay the traditional turkey platter, which had been handed down for generations. Can you tell me how these platters came to be, who made them, and why they became so popular?

ANSWER: Many families still use a large turkey platter. Though large but not very sophisticated, it often features a 22-inch pattern with yellow roses manufactured by Homer Laughlin. It’s got high sides and can hold a very large turkey, and by now it’s even got a few rim chips, but it’s part of the family, so it means a lot. 

The turkey was the last dish to be brought to the table and the senior member of the family would always carve the bird. Everyone would say grace and eat more than any thought humanly possible. While sitting around the table, family members would tell stories—Grandpa always seemed to tell the same ones to the embarrassment of his wife. In many cases, this holiday feast was just as Norman Rockwell painted it. 

The first turkey platters appeared in the early 1870s, when East Liverpool, Ohio, was the setting for the founding of several important American potteries due to the existence of raw materials such as clay, coal and natural gas. One of the largest and most successful, was the Homer Laughlin China Company, founded by brothers Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin in 1897. It went on to become one of the world's major producers of institutional china, including Fiesta ware. They based their holiday platters on several of their most popular dinnerware lines and decorated them with colorful printed transfers.

Thus, the same image often appeared on many of their turkey platters—a bird with its tail feathers fanned out fully, set against a rural farmyard background. The platters featured wide rims in Harlequin yellow and turquoise blue.

In the mid-1950s, a similar design appeared on Thanksgiving platters made by Taylor, Smith & Taylor, which the company sold to retailers to use as an advertising premium. 

In its "Historical America" series, Laughlin also produced an elaborate scene from 1621 called "The First Thanksgiving," transfer printed in rose pink and sold exclusively through F.W. Woolworth. The company also produced a similar "Bountiful Harvest" platter showing Pilgrims and Indians gathering and sharing food.

A somewhat scrawnier bird appears on platters and plates made by Southern Potteries Inc., a Tennessee firm formerly known as Clinchfield Potteries. It began in 1917 by producing commercial, semi-vitreous china tableware decorated with stock transfers. 

Its better-known trademark, Blue Ridge, debuted in 1932. By the late 1930s, it had switched from transfers to underglazed hand-painted decoration. Within 15 years, it had become the largest American producer of hand-painted china, with an annual production of 24 million pieces. Some of the firm’s top artists signed a limited number of special designs, and these are among the most coveted pieces for collectors. 

For example, there’s a wild turkey platter painted and signed by artist Mildred L. Broyles, depicting a standing, long-necked bird eyeing a bug, valued at over $2,000. Another, signed by Louise Gwinn called “Turkey Gobbler,” shows a bird in a woods and sells for over $1,750.

While Homer Laughlin and Southern Potteries dominated the market, there were several other companies, from California and elsewhere; that staked their own claims. Among these are platters produced by the Nelson McCoy Pottery Company of Roseville, Ohio, featuring a solid brown embossed relief of Tom Turkey, the Delano Studios of Long Island, featuring a soaring bird in flight, and the Hadley of Louisville platter, with its whimsical, schematic turkey in blue on vitrified stoneware.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about art glass in the 2022 Fall Edition, with the theme "After-Battle Antiques," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

A Platter Fit for a Turkey

QUESTION: For my family, Thanksgiving was the biggest gathering of the year. I remember my mother planning the event as early as October. Back in the 1950s, we'd pile into the car and drive to the local turkey farm to order a very large bird. My mother would have never considered buying a frozen turkey at the local market. I heard her speaking on the phone to my grandmother about how many were corning, what kinds of pies should be baked, or whether we would add some new recipe for cranberry sauce. At the center of it all lay the traditional turkey platter, which had been handed down for generations. Can you tell me how these platters came to be, who made them, and why they became so popular?

ANSWER: Many families still use a large turkey platter. Though large but not very sophisticated, it often features a 22-inch pattern with yellow roses manufactured by Homer Laughlin. It’s got high sides and can hold a very large turkey, and by now it’s even got a few rim chips, but it’s part of the family, so it means a lot.

The turkey was the last dish to be brought to the table and the senior member of the family would always carve the bird. Everyone would say grace and eat more than any thought humanly possible. While sitting around the table, family members would tell stories—Grandpa always seemed to tell the same ones to the embarassment of his wife. In many cases, this holiday feast was just as Norman Rockwell painted it.

The first turkey platters appeared in the early 1870s, when East Liverpool, Ohio, was the setting for the founding of several important American potteries due to the existence of raw materials such as clay, coal and natural gas. One of the largest and most successful, was the Homer Laughlin China Company, founded by brothers Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin in 1897. It went on to become one of the world's major producers of institutional china, including Fiesta ware. They based their holiday platters on several of their most popular dinnerware lines and decorated them with colorful printed transfers.

Thus, the same image often appeared on many of their turkey platters—a bird with its tail feathers fanned out fully, set against a rural farmyard background. The platters featured wide rims in Harlequin yellow and turquoise blue.

In the mid-1950s, a similar design appeared on Thanksgiving platters made by Taylor, Smith & Taylor, which the company sold to retailers to use as an advertising premium.

In its "Historical America" series, Laughlin also produced an elaborate scene from 1621 called "The First Thanksgiving," transfer printed in rose pink and sold exclusively through F.W. Woolworth. The company also produced a similar "Bountiful Harvest" platter showing Pilgrims and Indians gathering and sharing food.

A somewhat scrawnier bird appears on platters and plates made by Southern Potteries Inc., a Tennessee firm formerly known as Clinchfield Potteries. It began in 1917 by producing commercial, semi-vitreous china tableware decorated with stock transfers.

Its better-known trademark, Blue Ridge, debuted in 1932. By the late 1930s, it had switched from transfers to underglazed hand-painted decoration. Within 15 years, it had become the largest American producer of hand-painted china, with an annual production of 24 million pieces. Some of the firm’s top artists signed a limited number of special designs, and these are among the most coveted pieces for collectors.

For example, there’s a wild turkey platter painted and signed by artist Mildred L. Broyles, depicting a standing, long-necked bird eyeing a bug, valued at over $2,000. Another, signed by Louise Gwinn called “Turkey Gobbler,” shows a bird in a woods and sells for over $1,750.

While Homer Laughlin and Southern Potteries dominated the market, there were several other companies, from California and elsewhere that staked their own claims. Among these are platters produced by the Nelson McCoy Pottery Comapny of Roseville, Ohio, featuring a solid brown embossed relief of Tom Turkey, the Delano Studios of Long Island, featuring a soaring bird in flight, and the Hadley of Louisville platter, with its whimsical, schematic turkey in blue on vitrified stoneware.

 To read more articles on antiques, please visit my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 17,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac.

The Bluebird of Happiness

QUESTION: Some time ago, I purchased six dinner plates, each with a large bluebird design on it, from a church sale. I love the bold design on these plates and have yet to see any others like them. On the back is the mark of the Buffalo Pottery. I thought they only made restaurant china. What can you tell me about my plates.

ANSWER: What you bought is commonly known as bluebird chinaware. The large, bold bluebird on your plates is one of over 50 different variations made by as many potteries. And while Buffalo Pottery did make a lot of restaurant china, they also made some for home use.

Bluebird china was everyday dinnerware. It was mostly made in America, beginning in the late 19th century. It featured  a decal of a bluebird, often with flowers or other designs incorporated into it.  Potteries made this china to be functional, and being so, it often broke from daily use. In many cases, started  out as a grocery store premium, perhaps a free gift received after collecting the required number of stamps. People could also buy complete sets from the Montgomery Ward Catalog and from Sears Roebuck & Co.

By the mid-1920s, bluebird china was available everywhere. But its popularity didn’t last long since by the end of the decade, manufacturers had begun phasing it out. By 1930, it had all but disappeared.

While many Ohio potteries, especially those in the vicinity of East Liverpool, made bluebird china, collectors prefer that made by the Homer Laughlin China Company. The pottery most often decorated its Empress dinnerware, which it introduced in 1914, with bluebirds. The company also decorated some of its other dinnerware shapes with bluebird decals, include Cable, Hudson, Kwaker, Newell, Republic, Riviera, and Tea Rose.

Homer Laughlin usually used a design showing two or three chubby bluebirds surrounded by differing shades of pink flowering apple blossom branches. Other potteries also produced china with the same motif which seemed strange. As it turns out, Ohio Valley potteries all bought their decals from the same company, Meyercord Decal, in Chicago.

Other potteries outside of Ohio also made their own versions of bluebird china. The most important of these was the Buffalo Pottery of New York. Many collectors seek out pieces by Homer Laughlin with decals showing bluebirds in flight that the company used on its wares. The bluebirds found on Buffalo Pottery wares appear to fly in flocks across the surface of each piece. Buffalo also sold bluebird dishes to restaurants.

The Larkin Soap Company first introduced a butter tub with a drainer and pitchers, both sporting bluebird designs, as a premium in its 1918-1919 catalog. Larkin’s catalogs from 1919 to 1922 featured a bluebird tea set consisting of tea plates, cups and saucers, sugar and creamer. Larkin also offered special pieces, like a baby dish, that could be specially ordered.

Another bluebird variation popular with collectors is the Flying Blue Bird pattern produced by Knowles, Taylor & Knowles of East Liverpool, Ohio. While the bluebird decals used by Homer Laughlin depict a small, pale blue, plump bird, KT&K's bluebird decals show large, bold birds in rich dark blues that seem to be circling around the china's outer edges. KT&K put their bluebird decal on pottery from their white Nina line, making the bluebirds stand out even more.

In order to compete with American bluebird china makers, European potteries began adhering bluebird decals to their dinnerware. This was odd since bluebirds aren't native to Europe.

There are many variations of the bluebird designs. D.E. McNicol Pottery, also of East Liverpool, made calendar plates with a finer, stylized bluebird floating between each month's calendar page on the plate's rim. The Edward J. Owen China Co. of Minerva, Ohio, often used a decal showing one or two bluebirds in flight among flowering rose branches.

As far as the value of bluebird china, shape doesn't seem to enter into it. Plates are common and sell for around $35 while rare large pitchers sell for lots more. Collectors especially seek the larger pitchers. A 6 3/4 inch water pitcher, made by the Buffalo Pottery, can sell for as high as $200.

And finding items in good condition is also a challenge since people used this dinnerware. Items like egg cups, salt and pepper shakers, and complete tea sets are particularly hard to find.

China decorated with bluebirds was especially popular because of what the birds represented. The 1920s was a time of optimism and the bluebird became synonymous with that. Bluebirds became a symbol of rebirth and renewal as well. Bluebirds and happiness seem to go together.

Fiesta Fun

QUESTION: My aunt had a large collection of Fiesta dinnerware which she left to me. I added a few pieces that I found at flea markets over the last few years, but now I want to sell it. Is this pottery worth much and where would be the best place to sell it?

ANSWER: Depending on what pieces you have, your collection of Fiesta dinnerware could be worth a small fortune. But before you get dollar signs in your eyes, there are a few things you should know about it.

The style and bright colors of Fiesta dinnerware look very 1950s. But actually it appeared during the Great Depression in the mid-1930s. Englishman, Frederick Hurten Rhead, designed the simple Art Deco shapes while chief engineer Victor Albert Bleininger fabricated the colorful signature glazes. Both worked for the Homer Laughlin China Company of Newell, West Virginia.

Originally, the company offered 37 different affordable pieces, ranging from candle holders and ashtrays to large serving dishes, each in five bright colors: red-orange, yellow, green, cobalt blue, and ivory. It added turquoise in 1939 for a total of six basic colors..

Homer Laughlin pioneered a whole new concept in dinnerware with Fiesta. When it first introduced the dinnerware at the annual Pottery and Glass Exhibit held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in January 1936, its line was the first widely mass-marketed, solid-color dinnerware in the country. It was also the first dinnerware that consumers could purchase by the piece instead of in complete sets, as was the custom at the time. This allowed customers to mix and match, perhaps choosing a different color for each place setting, or have all their dinner plates one color, their cups and saucers another, and so on. This concept became instantly popular with the public, and soon Fiesta dinnerware became a runaway hit.

At its introduction, Fiesta dinnerware consisted of the usual place settings of dinner plates, salad plates, soup bowls, and cups and saucers, plus occasional pieces such as candle holders in two designs, a bud vase, and an ash tray. A set of seven nested mixing bowls ranged in size from five to twelve inches in diameter. The company also sold basic place settings for four, six and eight persons. But the idea from the start was to create a line of open-stock items from which the consumer could pick and choose based on their personal preference.

The Homer Laughlin Company quickly added several additional items to their line and eliminated several unusual items—a divided 12-inch plate, a turquoise covered onion soup bowl, and the covers for its set of mixing bowls. The Fiesta line eventually consisted of 64 different items, including flower vases in three sizes, water tumblers, carafes, teapots in two sizes, five-part relish trays, and large plates in 13- and 15-inch diameters.

But with the onset of World War II, the company was forced to reduce the number of items in the Fiesta line as public demand declined and companies cut back non-war related production. By the end of the war, Homer Laughlin had reduced the items in its Fiesta line by one third.

The design of the original dinnerware pieces remained unchanged from 1936 to 1969. However, the company did change its colored glazes to keep up with home decorating color trends. It introduced four new colors—rose, gray, dark green, and chartreuse, replacing the original blue, green, and ivory. Yellow and turquoise continued in production.

By the end of the 1950s, sales again dropped, so the company reduced its offering of items and changed the glaze colors once again. This time, it introduced a medium green, to distinguish it from other green glazes which the company had produced. This shade of green is in high demand by collectors, and certain pieces in this color command extremely high prices.

Homer Laughlin removed the original red-orange color, the most expensive glaze to produce, before 1944 because it contained uranium oxide which the government needed to construct the atom bombs. Therefore, red pieces also usually command a premium price in today’s collectible market.

By 1969, the company restyled the finials on covers, handles on cups, bowl contours and shapes to give them a more contemporary style.

Fiesta dinnerware became popular once again as baby boomers began establishing their own homes. Not long after Homer Laughlin discontinued the brightly colored dinnerware line in January 1973,  collectors began buying up what remained at garage sales and second-hand shops. Prices for it hit the roof and by the mid-1980s, prices of Fiesta items reached $100 for scarcer pieces.

Generally, serving pieces such as casserole dishes, carafes, teapots, and water pitchers almost always have higher values than normal place setting pieces. As mentioned earlier, certain colors are also priced higher, no matter what the piece.

It’s also important to look on the back of each piece for the familiar “Fiesta” backstamp,
followed by 'HLC USA', 'MADE IN USA' or 'H.L. CO. USA.' You may also discover some pieces with the word 'GENUINE' stamped near the Fiesta signature.

As far as selling your collection, you might do better selling off the pieces individually. If the pieces are from the 1930s and 1940s, you might want to consider sending them to a good auction house where you'll most likely get a better return on them.