EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: The Portland Stoneware Company in Portland, Maine that was Established in 1867

Saturday, July 18, 2015

The Portland Stoneware Company in Portland, Maine that was Established in 1867

Today's report, discusses the Portland Stoneware Company, which was established in Portland, Maine in 1867 in an agreement that happened between James M. Winslow and his father, John T. Winslow in respect to the J.T. Winslow Pottery that is seen in Portland, Maine as early as 1858. The following citation is a very-interesting first-hand account that characterizes the birth of this business drawn from the book, 'Brick and Clay: Volumes 6 and 7,' which was published in 1897: "The extensive plant of the Portland, Maine Stoneware Works, are a monument not only to its builders, but likewise represent an interesting history in the development and manufacture of many articles made from clay. A writer in the Portland (Maine) Argus, reminisces recently as follows:

The passing away of Mr. John T. Winslow (stoneware potter in Portland who died in 1881), of Deering (Cumberland County, Maine), takes me back to my boyhood days when the old pottery from which the present extensive stoneware works started, was a pleasant rendezvous. In memory, I see the large two-story building with its huge square kilns, the roaring wood fires in which made the pottery a cheerful place for young and old to assemble on cold winter evenings. Those were merry times and many are the happily remembered faces that pass in review as I conjure up the congenial spirits that would gather around the clay ovens. I occasionally wonder how the world has used the good fellows who were members of that story-telling, fun-loving circle. Some I know have passed into eternity, several I see now and then hereabouts, while most of them have drifted away, their fate and fortune unknown.

At that time the present head of the Portland Stoneware Works was superintendent of that pottery for his father, and he doubtless has in his possession a fine gold watch and chain as evidence of his popularity with the workmen who all knew him as "Ed," as in the fact did everyone who was favored with the acquaintance of the genial and hustling overseer of the modest plant which he was even then scheming to develop into the large and flouring industry of today. He saw the opportunity for something more pretentious than the manufacturing of pots and jugs, and the purpose to achieve that end once formed, there was no such thing as failure for a man possessed of such rare business capacity and tireless energy.

I well remember how the wise acres shook their heads deprecatingly when the young man began his experiments in the making of drain pipe. Nor have I forgotten the not altogether satisfactory results before the proper combinations of clays and glazing were struck; not how the before-mentioned old fashioned fellows would exchange their "I told you so" after each new trial ended unsatisfactorily. But pluck and brains won a victory after awhile, and one day a lot of pipe came from the oven done to a turn. From that time the old pottery began to assume new life. The knowledge of the superiority of the Winlsow drain pipe extended day by day and orders steadily increased. So rapidly did the business grow in fact that it was not long before the manufacture of pottery became an insignificant side issue, to be shortly abandoned altogether. In the meantime, a fine quality of fire brick had become a part of the product, as well as terra-cotta ware. These innovations necessitated extensions of the plant from time to time, and even with the two immense shops and the labyrinth of kilns now constituting the Portland Stoneware Company's Works, in the busy season the facilities are found inadequate. In fact, it is often the case when the pipes have to be shipped almost "piping hot." It is still known among the "old boys" as the pottery, but there is little indeed to remind one of the place as it was a quarter of a century or more ago."

The Portland Stoneware Company is one of the few nineteenth-century stoneware businesses that operated in America, which is actually still in business today; however, the company has expanded to include building products that are not only exclusive to stoneware products.

I have very-little doubt today that "lunch-time" wares and "end-of-the-day" products were produced at this business by the company's workers during downtime in production. This production was a product of the environment and the people, who occupied that time and space in the nineteenth-century. This production certainly happened at related businesses in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania during the same period. Unfortunately, I don't believe any of these whimsical examples have ever been attributed to this business before. If they do exist, which, I firmly believe they do (because why wouldn't they - it seems like almost all pottery businesses of this size and purpose in the late-nineteenth-century were involved with this kind of "off time" production), then, they are probably attributed to another state today.

Aside from the industrial wares, the Portland Stoneware Company also produced a wide array of garden products that were intended for a formal garden in the late-1800's, some of-which, were monumental in size. Many of these wares were inspired after ancient-style forms. The company also produced decorative household products like umbrella stands. Some of the stands were formal products that drew encouragement from ancient styles (see below) - while others, were actual tile that had been repurposed into a stand often with a painted scene by one of the workers employed at the company. I have found that most of these repurposed stands (that I know of today) are left with no proper identification today. You may also recall that I discovered a large painted stand (see below) last year in a shop in central Maine that had been stamped "Portland Salt Glazed Pipe." I believe this is a very-rare example of a pipe that had been repurposed that was adorned in a company stamp - most of the stands that I know of today bear no company mark, but the form, the clay and the painted decoration conform with the known products, which includes an example owned by the Maine State Museum in Augusta, Maine. The object that I discovered (see below) is the only repurposed stand that I know of today that is marked by the Portland Stoneware Company.

Shown below, are a variety of wares that were made at the Portland Stoneware Company after 1867; however, this kind of output is not well-documented today. Many of these products are accomplished, which indicates the skill that went into producing such forms. Personally, I believe these examples are a beginning point for the range of household and outdoor decorative wares that were produced at the Portland Stoneware Company in substitute to just the industrial wares that are known today.