Carney, Margaret, with essays by Ron Kransler and Wallace Higgins. Glidden Pottery. (Alfred, NY: The Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, 2001).
In “The History of Glidden Pottery” Margaret 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.