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The following article appeared in WPA Press, Vol. 7, January 2001
The best part of being the Webmaster for the WPA is that I get people asking me questions all the time. The worst part of being the Webmaster is that I get people asking me questions all the time! After all, how many times can you answer a question about the value of a "white piece of Haeger Pottery"? Now, lest you think I am disparaging Haeger, one of my favorite pieces is an early Haeger. But since I don't have a book to look up the values and I collect so little of it, it’s a lot of work to come up with a value on something that usually ends up under $20. Also, I don’t always learn that much from all the work. (See related article on what helps us to find information for you.) But I love a good mystery! The questions I enjoy the most are people asking for help in finding something. And when one person asks something, it seems others ask the same thing soon after. This summer someone emailed me to see if I could help him find a plaque made by Trinity Pottery from Wisconsin. He was cleaning & broke the plaque, which was a present from his father to his mother & had a lot of sentimental value. I was able to track down the Pottery's telephone number & several stores that sold it. He contacted the Pottery & was able to get a replacement. Less then a month later, a woman wrote me looking for Trinity Pottery. Her mother died & one of her prized possessions was a Trinity plaque. This woman wished to buy some more so all of her brothers & sisters could have one. In the fall, two people asked for help finding replacements for some mixing bowls & some cookware on the same day. At first I didn't think they were related but eventually found out after a couple of emails back & forth that they were both talking about the Friendship Pottery from Roseville Ohio. The first person to ask only knew it was from Roseville & had FP on it. I checked my reference books & came up with Friendship Pottery. The reference book mentioned that they had two plants in Roseville. Then I started searching the web for the pottery. I found shops that sold it but I wasn’t able to find a web-site for the pottery. I couldn't find the Pottery in yellow page directories, but I could find the probable addresses & phone numbers of the owners in Zanesville, which is 20 miles away. Then I found an article from a newspaper that mentioned that one of the factories was destroyed in a fire in 1996. Since it was one of the two factories, maybe the other one was still in business, so I contacted the Zanesville Chamber of Commerce. The next day, I found out that the fire destroyed the total business.
In November, I found out all about "Potter's Field". I got a message from a women who was trying to find a Wisconsin Pottery called "Potter's Field" because she had a vase she really liked & wanted to purchase another. I started doing searches on the term "Potter's Field" and kept getting hundreds of sites. It was making it very difficult to find this pottery, so I started looking at some of the sites. I never knew that the term, "Potters Field" meant a cemetery for the poor or the unknown. I found it came from the Gospel of St. Matthew (27:3-8) where the silver Judas received from betraying Jesus was used to purchased a field from a potter to bury strangers in. In one of my searches I came across what appeared to be an ad for "Potter's Field pottery" (pictured above). I emailed the webmaster, Brian Huebert, to find out if he could give me an address for the pottery. It turns out that the ad was a class project for a web design class. Brian decided to look at the Wisconsin Pottery Associations website. One night, Brian sent a logo that incorporated a vase of Pauline into the words "Wisconsin Pottery Association" replacing the "o" in Wisconsin. Brian did a great job, and you can expect to see it soon on the website. (see bottom of page) Nice, but none of that got me any closer to finding Potter’s Field pottery. After a few more emails back & forth, I found out the lady could barely make out "??k Creek" on the bottom of the vase. Oak Creek clicked into my mind instantly & I check the yellow pages and found it. It turns out to be a block away from my sister's house & I had passed by the place several times & never noticed it. Finally, we get a lot of questions about our pottery. Members know we don't make pottery, we barely have time to collect it! But, people assume that we are a firm in Columbus known as Wisconsin Pottery. So I email back the firm’s telephone number and address and we’re all happy. Firms mentioned in this article (accurate 12/2000): Trinity Pottery, Inc. Friendship Pottery (out of business) Potters Field Stoneware Wisconsin Pottery Editor's Note: Above is the logo that was done by Brian, but after discussions with members about the logo, the existing logo was kept. Click here to learn about its significance. |
