pottery

Detroit’s Pewabic Pottery on Model D TV

Detroit’s Model D TV aired this episode on this past September 25:
Pewabic Pottery is a living Detroit treasure and offers visitors a glimpse of a little known part of American history.
Founded in 1903 during the Arts & Crafts Movement,
Pewabic is nationally renowned for its tile and pottery in unique
glazes. Today it is a non-profit ceramic art education center,
welcoming 70,000 visitors annually to its building on E. Jefferson in
the Villages.
Producer-director Tom Hendrickson takes us on a visual tour in this week’s episode of Model D TV. Watch it here or go to YouTube.
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Ebay roundup, October 2007, part 1
This month, there are more knicknacks than you can shake even the fanciest stick at over on the mother of all online auction sites. The following aren’t necessarily excellent deals, but everything here is at least interesting.
As usual, I’m avoiding everything labeled misleadingly (i.e., "Roycroft era," "Stickley style," "maybe Stickley?," etc. … I’ll have plenty more up next week and the week after.
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Gladding, McBean

The firm of Gladding, McBean has produced materials for hundreds – and probably thousands – of beautiful historic homes here in California. The Greene brothers used their stuccoed planters at the Gamble House, and Bernard Maybeck used their roof tiles, chimney tops, planters and more in both his residential, civic and commercial projects. While it is now a division of Pacific Coast Building Products and no longer independently-owned, they are still making the clay and terra cotta items they’ve become known for since 1874. Today they are the only remaining maker of ornamental hand-made terra cotta in this country.
The company is still going strong today, producing those items and all sorts of architectural terra cotta work, fire flashed clay floor tiles, and a whole range of garden pottery. Their website has a number of photo galleries; their garden pottery, especially the big oil jars, are beautiful, as are the tiles and decorative chimney tops, the perfect finishing touch to any A & C home.
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Cole Pottery in Sanford, North Carolina

Booth Mountain Retreat is a family blog "about establishing a family homestead outside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina." They "started with a two-story timber frame coach house and later will build an attached 1909 Gustav Stickley-designed main house." I enjoy their articles on various aspects of timber frame construction, but was especially struck by something last week – an account of the family’s visit to Cole Pottery in Sanford NC.
Whenever I head into Sanford I need to stop at Cole Pottery. It is just
before you get to Sanford and it is a great place. It is run by Neolia
and Celia Cole and Neolia’s grandson Kenneth George. Today Neolia and
Kenneth were there. It is an old building with dirt floors covered with
tar paper. The exterior is cover in vinyl siding and it is not showy.
They have a back room that they are usually throwing pots. Neolia will
usually have a cigarette going and Kenneth is quietly working.
Cole Pottery and its family owners was also the subject of New Life, a 55-minute documentary made by Jim Sharkey and distributed by folkfilms.com.
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