TITLE: Savoy
MAKER: Harker Pottery
DATE: 1897-1920
COLLECTION: Museum of Ceramics/Ohio History Connection HC1919

TITLE: Attante
MAKER: Harker China Company
DATE: 1891
COLLECTION: William and Donna Gray

The Harker China Company was one among several local potteries that put out a newsletter for employees. The newsletter included pottery news and local and plant gossip. The Harpco News covered everything from the outrageous cost of watermelons to the “vacations” of striking Laughlin employees and updates on the baseball World Series. (Harpco, 1943)

This whiteware pot features handlined gold and handpainted flowers.

The article documents how a script for $2 worth of labor could be exchanged for ware at the Harker and Smith pottery. The worker, Phillip Goodwin, entered the local general store ran by Josiah Thompson and was allowed to purchase what he needed. Later, Josiah would take the script, with others he had received, and travel to Pittsburgh to his wholesaler to purchase for his store. The wholesaler accepted the script and allowed Thompson to select what he needed. In the Fall of the year a buyer for the wholesaler would arrive at the Harker and Smith Pottery and was allowed to take ware in exchange for the script. The script was then burned by Benjamin Harker, except the one from Phillip Goodwin, that fell to the floor and was later discovered and saved proving that business could be successfully undertaken in the worst of economic times. (Cox, 1937).

Harker Pottery moved across the Ohio River to West Virginia in 1931. Many of the larger East Liverpool potteries had made the move. For most, it was a matter of cost effectiveness and protection against the losses from regular flooding of the Ohio River. Chester and Newell, West Virginia sat on a rise in the river bank whereas the Ohio side of the river sat level with the water. Potteries, including Harker, were originally built at or below Second Street in the East Liverpool. Travelling east along the river the properties were highly susceptible to flooding in the years before the water management of a series of locks and dams. Harker recorded devastating floods in 1852, 1865, 1884, 1907, 1908, 1913 and in 1924. In 1908 when the plant flooded twice within a month, “the old pumping station near Harker's pottery was kept running on both occasions though water covered its floor to a depth of four feet.” Platforms were built above the flood water, which enabled continued production. (Barth, 1926).

This teapot is decorated by a process called decalomania. Is the decal upside down? Hmmm.

In 1839/1840 James Bennett arrived in East Liverpool to build the first pottery in the then small village. Although many scoffed at Bennett, Benjamin Harker saw the value in his endeavors and sold him clay from his land along the river. In 1840 Harker opened his own pottery from his log cabin. He hired John Goodwin, a potter from Staffordshire, England to run the pottery and teach his two sons the pottery trade. In 1850, Harker, Taylor (James L.) Company entered their ware in an exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts. It was unheard of at the time, in the Eastern United States, that American ware would be on a par with or even considered better than English or European ware. The pottery won an award for achievement in Rockingham ware at the exhibition. (Cox, 1941).
At one time the Harker China Company was the longest continually running pottery in the World.

In an effort to keep business going, salesmen would go from store to store in small American towns selling Harker ware. However, when each store wanted a Harker “exclusive,” the pottery devised a plan where it customized colorful, but different, back stamps for the similar ware. There were four of these back stamps, Sun-Glow Bakerite, Hotoven, Oven Ware and the Columbia China Company. The marks were soon discontinued since the ploy was unsuccessful. (Gates, 2009).

TITLE: Waverley
MAKER: Harker Pottery Company
DATE: 1890
COLLECTION: William and Donna Gray

Tea Trivia:
 Ever wonder if Orange Pekoe tea has oranges in it?   It does not. The name was derived from the Dutch House of Orange and has to do with a term that was used to grade black teas. (Kenna, 2021).