EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: 19th Century Memorial Wreaths and Other Wares Made by Charles August Mehwaldt in Bergholz, New York

Sunday, January 6, 2019

19th Century Memorial Wreaths and Other Wares Made by Charles August Mehwaldt in Bergholz, New York

According to an article written in 1921 by Ada Walker Camehl for Volume 25 of the Buffalo Historical Society Publications in Western New York, titled, The Old Bergholz Pottery, "The story I have to tell is a hitherto unexploited romance of the pioneer days of our country, a tale of transplanted old-world enterprise which failed to take deep root in the land of its adoption. I came to knowledge of it quite by accident, through a chance remark. While on a china-hunting tour through the Niagara River region, a German woman, with whom I had bargained for her ancient treasures and heirlooms, handed me a small mottled, reddish brown pitcher, saying: "You may have that pitcher. It was made by my father many years ago, over at Bergholtz."

I carried the little plebeian brown pitcher home, placed it with my more showy lustres and rich blues, treasured in my memory the information as to its origin and resolved to follow up the trail.

The result of my investigations has been the discovery of the fact that not five miles of the spot where the Frenchman La Salle launched the Griffon, the first sailing vessel on the Great Lakes above Niagara Falls, a German potter in the middle of the last century set up his wheel, and using the clay of the neighboring fields, for nearly 40 years fashioned with his own hands a variety of crockery and tableware which for honest workmanship and artistic merit deserves a place beside the wares of any American potteries of his day.

In 1808 in Bruessow, a village near Berlin in Germany was born Charles August Mehwaldt (1808-1887) . He came of a line of potters; his father and grandfather before him had spent their lives at the potter's wheel. After he had learned his trade young Mehwaldt, as was the custom of the country, passed several years as a journeyman potter, in search of experience taking him over Russia and into the Holy Land. On his return to his home he found the country in a state of political unrest. Greater liberties were demanded by the people, while free America, beckoning across the sea, with an alluring hand, was welcoming many citizens of all classes into voluntary exile.

In 1844 a man of wealth, Williams by name, gathered together several families from the neighborhood about Bruessow and brought the little band to the United States. They bought a piece of land in Western New York on the Niagara Frontier, cleared the timber and built a hamlet of log houses; and in 1847 they erected the still standing German Lutheran church. Remembering the village of Bergholz from which many of them had come, they named the new home "New" Bergholz - later dropping the "New."

Fired by the glowing accounts which came back to the Fatherland from this transplanted colony across the sea, in 1851 a second company was formed to follow the first, and among these people were the potter Mehwaldt, his wife and their five children."

Furthermore, Camehl spoke in detail on that day with Mehwaldt's daughter, learning many first-hand accounts about the Bergholz pottery, "Attached to one side of Mehwaldt's house in Bergholz, New York was a little shop for the sale of his wares with many orders coming from neighboring towns. A plate could be bought for two cents and pitchers varied in price according to size. A good one could be bought for ten cents.

I found a man who was a small boy at the the time the potter came to this country, and who entertained me with stories of their long acquaintance. In his German-flavored English he told how many a time he had watched with Mehwaldt all night over the fires of the kilns. Soft wood was used for fuel, either pine or basswood, and the firing was an affair of over a day and a night, with constant watchers in attendance to keep the required temperature.

"How sleepy we used to get watching the fires! If it got too hot, it bust; if too slow they cracked," he said. The ruin of a kiln full of material was a serious loss in those days of poverty and struggle. He said that the American clay differed so materially from the clay which the potter had been using in Germany that much experiment and loss were necessary in order to get satisfactory results.

That there was no one to carry on the business after his death was a source of great disappointment to the potter. He was proud of his calling, and would tell how many generations his family had been potters, and that he did not want the business to die with him. Upon his death in 1887 however, the works were destroyed and the house was sold."

I first began to write about the Mehwaldt pottery in August of 2016, where I cited a story published in The Magazine Antiques, also written by Camehl, where she expand upon what she had written in 1921, "As the Civil War drew near, Mehwaldt's sons were swept away with enthusiasm for their adopted country. Finally, the three boys ran away, and enlisted in the northern army. Two of them met death on southern battlefields. As a memorial to his dead soldier boys, the potter made two wreaths of clay flowers to hang upon the walls of the local church. With them hung the photographs and the war records of his boys.

Mehwaldt produced quantities of chimney crocks, red earthenware crocks of all sizes, butter-crocks with handles to be hung in wells to keep butter cool; cooking utensils, candlesticks, all manners of tableware - platters, plates, sauce-dishes, cups and saucers, mugs, pitchers, sugar bowls, vegetable dishes, teapots and teakettles. He also produced finer products like inkstands and tile stoves.

At Christmas-time, he usually turned out many little dinner-sets for children, and toys made in the form of pigs, owls, roosters, and birds with whistles in their tails."

I was recently asked if I knew the whereabouts of these wreaths made by Mewaldt for his two sons, and I had forgotten that they were owned by the Historical Society of North German Settlements in Western New York and the Das Haus Museum in Niagara Falls.

Although, I have also handled examples of Bergholz pottery in recent years in the collections of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. - as well Victor, New York Antiques dealer, Gene Pratt, whose collection is a subject of interest that I plan to write about over the next month. I plan to highlight some of the best Western New York red earthenware objects owned by Gene Pratt and his wife, which is really generous since this is a private collection, much of which was assembled years ago. This also happens to be a region that is not widely publicized or published today, and seeing some of these objects may help provide a better understanding of the forms and glazes that are actually from Western New York. Aside from these objects, the Pratts also happen to own some great examples of archaeology from this region, that aside from the forms, reveal a great deal of overlap in glazes from one potter's business to the next, thus verifying why forms (before anything else) are so important today.

Charles A. Mehwaldt Red Earthenware Memorial Wreaths