Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/172

160 pronounced by the judges superior to the English ware. A "tortoise-shell" pitcher, eight-sided, with human head molded in relief under the mouth, which is still in the cabinet of the Institute was awarded a silver medal.

Messrs. Alanson Potter Lyman and Christopher Weber Fenton embarked in the manufacture of yellow and Rockingham ware m Bennington, Vt., about 1847. Three years later they commenced making white ware. Their workshop was known as the United States Pottery. In 1851, or the year following, Mr Fenton had a large monumental piece of Rockingham made, ten feet in height, in which was placed a life-sized Parian bust of himself surrounded by eight glazed columns, the work being surmounted by figures of a woman and child in Parian. This was modeled by Daniel Greatbach, formerly connected with the Jersey City Pottery. The base of the monument is made of several varieties of clay mixed together, having the appearance of unpolished marble. It stands at present on the porch of Mr. Fenton's former residence in Bennington, having been first placed on exhibition at the New York Crystal Palace in 1853, with other productions of this factory, including a group of "patent flint enameled ware," which was probably analogous to the so-called majolica of the present day. Common china, white granite, and Parian were made here extensively. A limited amount of soft porcelain was produced also, but chiefly in small ornamental figures and statuettes. These, like the Parian pieces, were often copied from old English works. A graceful pitcher of the latter ware, in the collection of the writer, is molded with white figures in relief on a dark-blue "pitted" ground, and is almost an exact, though enlarged, reproduction of a sirup-jug from the Dale Hall Works, England. The jasper-ware of Josiah Wedgwood was also imitated in Parian. The art of the American potter had not yet reached that point where competition and public demand stimulated originality in body, design, or decoration. Fig. 10 shows a group of pieces made at the Bennington factory between 1850 and 1855. In the center may be seen a large Rockingham figure, beneath which are two small mantel ornaments of artificial porcelain. The central pitcher above the dog and the two small pitchers to the right are white granite, decorated in gold. The three remaining pitchers and the small vase are Parian, with ornamentation in relief.

The United States Pottery was closed in 1857, and two years later Mr. Fenton, with Mr. Decius W. Clark, his former superintendent, went to Peoria, Ill., and there established a manufactory of white and granite wares. After a period of three years this experiment proved a financial failure, and the factory passed into other hands. At present it is being successfully operated by the