QUESTION: I have been doing research on some antiques I have, as I plan to open a booth in a local antique mall soon. I have a Watt oven ware bowl that doesn’t have a number however, it has a clear mark on the bottom that looks normal except the part that appears to say “Watt Ware.” I have never seen this before and haven’t been able to find it online. Also, the blue stripe doesn’t look correct or is faded. What can you tell me about this bowl?ANSWER: Your pottery bowl came from the Watt Pottery of Crooksville, Ohio. It’s an early rare pattern of oven ware that’s highly collectible today. The color of the stripe looks odd because the pottery had problems with some of its decorative glazes earlier in the 1940s.
W.J. Watt founded the Brilliant Stoneware Company in Rose Farm, Ohio, in 1886. It began as a family business and continued so through its several transitions until 1965. The pottery made mostly stoneware jugs, crocks, and jars and jugs which it sold in general and hardware stores throughout Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Indiana. Watt sold the company in 1897.Watt then went to work for the Ransbottom Brothers Pottery in Ironspot, Ohio, owned by his brothers-in-law, until 1921 when he purchased the Globe Stoneware Company in Crooksville, in Perry County, Ohio, and renamed it the Watt Pottery Company. The firm opened for business in July, 1922, and once again, it was a family affair, employing his sons, daughter and a few other relatives.
Through the remainder of the 1920s and into the early 1930s they made stoneware butter churns, crocks, jugs, and preserve jars, which they marked with an acorn or an eagle stamped in blue, plus how many gallons the vessel would hold marked in a circle on the bottom.
Watt managed to make it through the Depression, keeping his employees working 40 hours a week. By the late 1930’s into the early 1940’s, cooking technology was changing. Porcelain self-igniting stoves began to replace cast-iron cookstoves while electric refrigerators replaced the old ice boxes. To meet the new demand, Watt created ovenware that could withstand very high temperatures.Cooks wanted to take a container from their new refrigerators and put it directly into their new ovens. Stoneware just couldn’t do this, so Watt discontinued its stoneware line and pursued the more lucrative production of ovenware.
The lightweight cream clay body, consisting of a percentage of feldspar and whiteners which prevented the clay from discoloring after firing in the pottery kilns, also made it resilient enough to withstand the extremes in temperature. The whiteners also gave the Watt’s pottery its brightness, especially when over painted with brightly colored motifs featuring apples, cherries, roosters, and flowers.. This became known as yellow ware.In 1949, the Watt Pottery began hand decorating its wares using simple patterns in bright colors on an ochre-colored clay base. Workers glazed kitchen ware in solid colors with patterns called moon and stars, arcs, loops and diamond and grooves. Collectors, not the company, adopted these names.
The first designs didn’t fare too well as they used raised decorations that either discolored or had rough edges. Watt hired a professional artist who taught 15 people at different stations how to hand-paint designs.
The first hand decorated patterns are called the "Classic Patterns" and were produced from 1949 until about 1953. They are: Rio Rose, Moonflower, Dogwood, White Daisy, and Cross-Hatch.
To minimize the cost of producing these wares, teams of three decorators used as few brush strokes as possible. The housewives of the 1950s loved the country charm of these wares. And because they were so inexpensive to produce, Watt wares began appearing as premiums in grocery and department stores. And because the pieces were all hand-painted, with no two exactly alike, this makes them highly collectible.
Altogether, Watt Pottery produced wares decorated in 16 patterns, including four variations of the Apple Pattern, introduced in 1952, one in the Cherry Pattern, two of the Tulip Pattern, six in various flower patterns, plus Autumn Foliage and Eagle Patterns.The last new pattern was the Kathy Kale Royal Dutch pattern introduced just before a fire in 1965 that destroyed the manufacturing plant. Only a few pieces were manufactured and they were sold through Kroger's stores.
Most pieces of Watt Pottery ovenware featured large marks, often covering the entire bottom of each piece. These markings usually consisted of one or more concentric rings deeply impressed into the bottom of the pottery. Although the company didn’t mark all of its wares, the bottom mark associated with 1940s Watt ware is an impressed: "MADE IN U.S.A." Pieces may also be marked: "Oven Ware" or simply have the bowl size impressed, usually in a circle. Most pieces also have the mold number impressed in the center, making identification easy.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 the Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.
