Rookwood Pottery’s Earthenware Pitcher

Adeliza Drake Sehon, Rookwood Pottery, Pitcher, 1899, standard glaze earthenware, 5 ⅛ in. tall, Mead Art Museum.

Object Description

A small, unassuming vase with a pointed lip and a delicate, slightly curved handle is housed in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. Ombre tones glaze the vase: warm orange at the bottom, an olive-orange in the middle, and a darker green, almost dark brown hue at the top. Directly below the lip is a sprig of hawthorns with another sprig slightly lower to the right; the leaves and flowers overlap, but the branches do not. The hawthorns’ leaves almost blend into the green glaze at the top of the vase while the flowers, a light beige color, pop out from the background. The flowers look like cuttings from a garden, carefully placed, with only the best sprigs taken.

Adeliza Drake Sehon, Rookwood Pottery, Pitcher, 1899, standard glaze earthenware, 5 ⅛ in. tall, Mead Art Museum.

Historical Context

This vase was made by the Rookwood Pottery Company in Cincinnati in 1899. Rookwood Pottery was founded by Maria Longworth Nichols Storer in 1880 on Thanksgiving Day. Its original schoolhouse location in Over-the-Rhine (OTR) was flooded in 1884 (one of the worst floods in Cincinnati to date), and in 1890, the company moved uphill to one of Cincinnati’s seven famed “mounts” to avoid further flood damage. At the turn of the twentieth century, the company was on the upswing, having started an expansion of the facility in Mount Adams.¹ The Mount Adams facility has since been converted into a restaurant, and the company has since returned its operations to OTR. 

Rookwood Pottery Mount Adams location, circa early 1900s, from Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. 

Detroit Publishing Company, The Rookwood Pottery, Cincinnati, O., ca. 1903, offset photomechanical print on card stock, 3 1/4 x 5 1/2 in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

During the early 1900s, in what is often called the golden age of pottery in Ohio, there were around thirty pottery companies and producers in the state.² Rookwood is arguably the most widely known Ohio pottery firm out of this time period, both domestically and internationally. The firm appeared at World’s Fairs multiple times, often winning awards.³ The Art Pottery movement, characterized by pottery centered on aesthetics rather than function, was prominent in Cincinnati and was proliferated by Rookwood.⁴ The company was also involved in the Arts and Crafts movement, which aimed to restore craftsmanship to art production and advocated for labor reform.⁵ Despite going bankrupt once and experiencing several closures and periods of reduced production, Rookwood was revived in 2004 and continues to be synonymous with Ohio pottery on a global stage.⁶ What defines Rookwood Pottery, though—and what put the company on the map—is the unique combination of geologic and climatic events that created the clay deposits in the Ohio River Valley. 

Geology of the Clay

Rookwood harvested clay from states in the Ohio River Valley (Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania) and from nearby states including Delaware and New Jersey. In the early 1900s, artists at Rookwood used eight clays from the Valley, but only two clays, red and yellow, were native to the state. Red clay was from Buena Vista, Fayette County, Ohio, and the yellow clay was from Hanging Rock, Lawrence County, Ohio.⁷ These clays were formed during the Pennsylvanian and Silurian geologic periods. The Pennsylvanian-aged clay was formed in coal beds in swampy environments approximately 323.2 million years ago and was influenced by ancient soils.⁸ The climate of the Pennsylvanian period was characterized by a transition to wet and rainy, then to dry, and then back to wet.⁹ Silurian clay was formed when Ohio was covered by an ancient sea and received sediments from eroding landmasses.¹⁰ The climate of the Silurian age was stable and warm, lacking previous glaciation cycles and periods of ice.¹¹ The glaciers melted during the Silurian 443.8 million years ago, and caused the ancient seas that eventually resulted in Ohio River Valley clay deposits. Different types of clay deposits are classified by the depth they are found. The depth of the clay found in Fayette County and Lawrence County influenced the different minerals and chemical composition of the clay, as the geologic systems that formed them were different due to climate.

The depth of the clay influences the natural colors of the clay, which in turn heavily influence the tint of the item produced. The colors are a result of the weathering of clay minerals, such as chlorite and vermiculite. Those specific minerals are formed through weathering of feldspars, a group of rock-forming minerals. They are also formed when metamorphic and igneous rocks degrade into micas, a group of sheet-forming silicate minerals.¹² The formation of these rocks are directly tied to climate and weather, as changes in heat and pressure both influence their development. 

From Blankenbeker and Wolfe, a map of the geologic systems across the state of Ohio. Also shows active clay and shale mines in 2003 in the state.

The exact type of clay used in this vase could not be determined, but the formation of all the clays used by Rookwood relied on millennia of ancient geological and climatic events. Sun, rain, wind, and temperature changes all contributed to the legacy of Rookwood through the creation of the company’s clay supply in the Ohio River Valley. Changes in those factors influenced the geologic processes such as erosion and weathering that created the clay. 

Analysis in Context

This small vase, standing five inches tall, challenges modern conceptions of weather and climate as the piece does not explicitly depict either, but is a representation of the weather events that made climate, which in turn formed the materials that created this piece. Additionally, the chemical properties of the clay type interacted with the chemical properties of the glazes that Rookwood used, creating signature features such as the “tiger’s eye” glaze. While multiple factors led to the glaze’s creation—including, according to lore, a forgetful kiln watchman who forgot to turn down the temperature—the happy accident was in part made possible by the native Ohio Red clay base.¹³ This piece does not have the tiger’s eye glaze, but its clay undoubtedly interacted with the glazing chemicals to produce the final vase.

Artus Van Briggle (Rookwood Pottery), Vase, 1898, goldstone glaze line with some tiger’s eye glaze on red clay, 8 in. tall, Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art.

The vase Amherst procured was made on-site in Mount Adams, as the facility had undergone great expansions, and the tools (kilns, brushes, etc.) were of the highest quality for the time.¹⁴ In addition to being known for their experimentation with glazes, temperature, and clays, Rookwood is known for their experimentation with molds. This item was most likely made from a mold, a hollow container into which a potter pours clay or liquid clay. The bottom of the vase is stamped with the company logo used for the period, a three-digit number and a letter, along with the initials of the painter. The three-digit number is 838, which stands as a tracker for the mold, and the letter is F, which denotes the size of the mold as the smallest used at Rockwood. A sticker was partially covering the initials, but with further inspection, the letters A.D.S. could be made out. A.D.S. stands for Adeliza Drake Sehon, a painter who worked at Rookwood from 1896 until her death in 1902. Not much is known about Sehon, and this is not uncommon, as Rookwood employed many artisans, some of whom are more well documented than others. 

Rookwood Pottery, Pitcher, 1899, standard glaze earthenware, 5 1/8 in. tall, Mead Art Museum. Photo by the author.

Internally at Rookwood, this vase represents the trends of the late 19th century. 

Rookwood pottery items were characterized by florals and nature scenes, like the one seen here, and portraits of people, especially of Native Americans. Glaze experimentation was ongoing, and Rookwood started to move away from their dark, warm tones that had made them recognizable to lighter, bluer hues. The standard Rookwood look did not disappear; rather, it was complemented by the brighter glazes. This vase is characteristic of Rookwood Pottery for 1899 as it has a warm glaze and florals (see photo of a similar vase below). This vase is a good example of both the Art Pottery movement and the Arts and Crafts movement. The latter movement emphasized the return of craftsmanship from industrial production, and the hand-painting of pottery at Rookwood represents this. The florals are indicative of the shift to Art Pottery from functional pottery. In the language of flowers, hawthorns symbolize hope and prudence, as well as the changing of seasons.¹⁵ They are native to North America and were most likely picked from the facility’s on-site garden.¹⁶ 

Albert Valentien (Rookwood Pottery), Vase, 1899, standard glaze earthenware, 36.5 cm tall by 11.7 cm wide, Museum of Industrial Arts, Norway.

Conclusion

Overall, Rookwood’s influence on American pottery can be credited to the climate and geology of the region that produced its unique clays and pieces, and those pieces simultaneously influenced the climate and aesthetics of Art Pottery in the twentieth century. Rookwood’s pioneering work in glaze chemistry, craftsmanship, and commercial strategies enabled the company to weather the test of time. From adapting to recurring flood events and using local clay in their forms, Rookwood is a representation of how weather and climate influence art at every level, especially in ceramics.

Footnotes

1.  Herbert Peck, The Book of Rookwood Pottery (New York: Crown Publishers, 1968). ↩︎
2.  Jean Druesedow, “Uncommon Clay: Ohio Art Pottery from the Paige Palmer Collection,” Kent State University Museum, 2000–2001, https://www.kent.edu/museum/uncommon-clay-ohio-art-pottery-paige-palmer-collection. ↩︎
3. Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. ↩︎
4. Martin Eidelberg, “American Ceramics and International Styles, 1876–1916,” Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 34, no. 2 (1975): 13–19. ↩︎
5.  Mary Ann Stankiewicz, “From the Aesthetic Movement to the Arts and Crafts Movement.” Studies in Art Education 33, no. 3 (1992): 165–73. ↩︎
6.  Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. ↩︎
7. Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. ↩︎
8. Steve D. Blankenbeker and Mark E. Wolfe, “Clay and Shale in Ohio,” Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Educational Leaflet No. 12, 2005, https://ohiodnr.gov/wps/wcm/connect/gov/917b2098-a1f1-4bd2-961b-3b4b6beb2aef/el12.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CVID=oV2dmAz. ↩︎
9. Tom L. Phillips and Russel A. Peppers, “Changing Patterns of Pennsylvanian Coal-Swamp Vegetation and Implications of Climatic Control on Coal Occurrence,” International Journal of Coal Geology 3, no. 3 (1984). ↩︎
10. Michael C. Hansen, “Geology of Ohio—The Silurian,” Ohio Geology (1998): 1, 3–7, https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/ohiodnr.gov/documents/geology/OGN_1998_n4Spring.pdf. ↩︎
11. National Park Service, “Silurian Period—443.8 to 419.2 MYA,” Geologic Time Periods in the Paleozoic Era (2023), https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/silurian-period.htm. ↩︎
12. Blankenbeker and Wolfe, “Clay and Shale.” ↩︎
13. Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. ↩︎
14. Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. ↩︎
15. Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (University of Virginia Press, 1995). ↩︎
16. Peck, Book of Rookwood Pottery. ↩︎