EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: The 20th Century Art Pottery that was Produced in Mountainside, New Jersey

Monday, July 11, 2016

The 20th Century Art Pottery that was Produced in Mountainside, New Jersey

Recently, I learned about a hand-inscribed mark that was used on twentieth-century art pottery produced in Mountainside, New Jersey. The pottery is usually inscribed on the base with the mark, 'MP.'

The Mountainside Pottery was established by John Kovacs, a Hungarian immigrant in 1929. Kovacs was reportedly a member of the Rutgers University ceramics club in New Brunswick, New Jersey before he established the Mountainside Pottery.

The majority of the output at this business consisted of skillfully-made bowls, figures and vases that were made with red clay bodies and white clay bodies. The company's use of a white and red clay is similar to how other American art potters operated potteries in the early-twentieth-century, such as Thomas Nickerson's Merrimac Pottery Company in Newburyport, Massachusetts, circa 1897-1908, and William Grueby's Pottery in South Boston, Massachusetts, circa 1894-1920.

The Mountainside Pottery closed in 1941; however, it seems that there are a variety of wonderful objects that survive from this relatively unknown pottery today. It appears that Kovacs produced hand-thrown and molded pottery; although, the majority of the pottery that I have studied is hand-thrown and made from red earthenware.

I have a feeling that there are objects, which survive from the Mountainside Pottery today that are unmarked, and they may often be mistaken for objects that were produced in North Carolina during the circa 1920-1950 period.

Nonetheless, I feel the skilled wares that were made in Mountainside, New Jersey are important to understand today as-a-result of the fantastic forms and the remarkable vibrant colored-glazes that were regularly applied to the pottery.