Object Details
- Description
- About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
- Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20th century.
- About Wheatley Pottery:
- Thomas Jerome Wheatley founded T.A. Wheatley and Company in Cincinnati in 1880 and carried out all the tasks of pottery production himself, from molding and glazing to firing. His designs featured the underglaze slip-painted technique developed earlier by Mary Louise McLaughlin in that city. Sales to Tiffany and Company and other outlets led to an expansion, and Wheatley joined with others in the Cincinnati Art Pottery at the end of that year. By 1882, Wheatley left the Cincinnati Art Pottery group, the T.A. Wheatley company later closed, and in 1897 he joined the Weller Pottery in Zanesville, Ohio. In 1900, he returned to Cincinnati and established Wheatley Pottery in 1903, in association with Isaac Kahn. His work featured relief decorations, covered in dark green, yellow, and blue matte glazes. Art pottery seems to have been discontinued after a fire in 1910, and Wheatley passed away in 1917. Hahn continued the firm, emphasizing tile and garden ware, until 1927. The plant closed in 1936.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- Credit Line
- Anonymous
- Physical Description
- polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
- ceramic (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 10 1/2 in x 6 1/2 in; 26.67 cm x 16.51 cm
- Object Name
- vase
