While walking around the antique fields last week in Brimfield, Massachusetts, I learned about this large twentieth century stoneware vase that was found in one of the fields, which was made at the Roadside Craftsmen in East Bloomfield, New York, circa 1930s-1940s. In fact, this is the largest vase that I have seen from this business, whereas the base is stamped with the company's circular ink stamp. The vase is also decorated with a color of glaze that was popular with some Western New York red earthenware potters in the 1800s.
According to New York archaeologist and museum specialist George Hamell, "There was a southern potter, Guy Daugherty (1879-1958), an itinerant potter from Denton Texas, having started his pottery career in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and later worked in the summer months during the Great Depression and in the early years after World Word II in making pottery in East Bloomfield, Ontario County, New York. He and other craftspeople - such as weavers and tinsmiths worked at the Roadside Craftsmen along Routes 5 and 20 just west of the village selling to tourists.
Daughterty's southern pottery heritage is reflected in some of the small tourist pieces he made in Western New York, although he did produce some larger pitchers and vases, among other forms. He also fired his wares in a groundhog kiln. Interestingly, he perhaps knew of the earlier red earthenware heritage in the Town of Bloomfield - he used a red-firing clay, and much of his production is covered in a glaze strikingly similar to that found on a lot of the wares made in West Bloomfield around the mid-1800s (as well as some of the wares made in Morganville, New York).
The wares were sometimes stamped "Roadside Craftsmen" and adhesive labels were also sometimes used. He also made larger wares marked "Bloomfield Art Pottery." He even occasionally incised objects with his initials "GD," and the last two digits of the year that the piece was made, such as "48" or "49." The shop closed in 1953."
For more information - see a feature story I wrote that was published on page 45 in the June 30, 2023 issue of Antiques And The Arts Weekly, titled, Guy Daugherty: A Roadside Craftsmen Potter: http://www.earlyamericanceramics.com/2023/06/new-published-story-in-antiques-and.html.
Also, for those interested - I also want to note that Bruce Austin, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York has written a more comprehensive history of this business in his book that was recently published last year by the State University of New York Press, titled, Tourists and Trade: Roadside Craftsmen and the Highway Transforming Craft.
Link to buy book: https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/Tourists-and-Trade
Note: This type of pottery was also produced by Guy Daugherty at the Hillside Pottery and Smithfield Art Pottery in North Carolina in the 1920s.
Roadside Craftsmen Pottery from East Bloomfield, New York
Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...
No comments:
Post a Comment