Nancy Weekly on newly acquired Glidden Pottery

The Burchfield Penney Art Center has been developing its design collection over the past few years with Glidden works that were left in a bequest from Hank Mann in 2011, and eleven works donated by Scott Goldman and Nancy Brock in 2011 and 2012—all of different patterns and forms from those listed above. Margaret Carney, a world specialist in ceramics, was director of the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art in Alfred, New York when she produced the definitive publication about Glidden Pottery in 2000. In her essay “The History of Glidden Pottery” Dr. Carney wrote:

Glidden Pottery is a unique stoneware bodied dinnerware and Artware that was produced in Alfred, New York from 1940 to 1957. In many ways it was the American equivalent to the Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279) people’s ware known as Cizhou ware. The Chinese people’s ware was a stoneware product made for the upwardly mobile merchant class. Its designs were comprised primarily of simple bowls, dishes, vases, cups, bottles, ewers and pillows, all thrown and glazed either in monochrome ivory or with hand-painted or incised decorations. Cizhou wares were some of the earliest signed Chinese ceramics.

Glidden Pottery, produced in the United States nearly a millennium later, utilized modern production methods of slip-casting or ram pressing, but each of the more than 300 shapes was individually glazed and hand-decorated. Most pieces were intentionally marked with a Glidden Pottery signature or backstamp which varied over the years.

…Glidden Parker began his venture by designing sample pieces and making molds in Miss Marion Fosdick’s studio on North Main Street in Alfred prior to beginning to fill orders for Glidden Pottery by July 1940. Miss Fosdick was one of the ceramics teachers at the New York State College of Ceramics where Glidden Parker had studied as a special graduate student during both the academic year and the summers from 1937 to 1939. Another of his well-known professors was noted ceramic industrial designer Don Schreckengost.

…Initially Glidden Parker was joined in the venture by his wife Harriet Hamill (Pat) Parker, also a former College of Ceramics student. The hand-decorated pottery was a Cone-6 stoneware that was made in molds and was marketed by the sales representatives Rubel & Fenton, Inc. located at 225 Fifth Avenue in New York City. The earliest pieces focused on designs intended for flower arrangements. At the annual New York Gift Show Glidden Pottery showed 37 samples their first year, 80 the second season and in 1941, they showed 200 different samples featuring 70 different forms.

…Glidden Parker was a key designer for Glidden Pottery, and in 1950 it was claimed that he alone had designed the 80 forms which were then in production and available in five to eight color combinations.

Many of his most popular glazes, shapes and patterns were developed in collaboration with Fong Chow (b. 1923 Tianjin, China) or created by Fong Chow alone, including the Charcoal and Rice Artware series, the Artware in Gulfstream Blue, Green Mesa and Sandstone which Fong Chow refers to as his “Flower Line”; the New Equations buffetware created by Fong Chow; shapes such as the handsome Fish covered casseroles which are attributed to the designer Philip Secrest, c. 1952; and the Alfred Stoneware Buffetware in Saffron, Cayenne and Parsley created by Sergio Dello Strologo (1928-1999). Fong Chow worked at Glidden Pottery from 1953 to 1957, after graduating from Alfred in 1953. Fong Chow has clearly stated that Glidden gave him a free hand in designing and he created both shapes and glazes. High Tide and Boston Spice were Fong Chow glazes, the Boston Spice pattern making reference to baked beans plus an “oil spot” effect. Fong Chow credits the naming of the patterns with such “poetic names” as Green Mesa and Boston Spice to Glidden Parker.

Nancy Weekly
Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator

Email Nancy at weeklyns@buffalostate.edu.

Nancy Weekly is the Head of Collections and the Charles Cary Rumsey Curator for the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the world’s only museum dedicated to American watercolor master Charles E. Burchfield and artists of the Buffalo Niagara region. She also serves as an adjunct lecturer in Museum Studies for the Department of History and Social Studies Education at Buffalo State College.