Grasmere Antique Accouterments page 2

Art pottery was an offshoot of the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1870s, craftspeople - many of them women - wanted to create hand-painted art objects. At the time, pottery factories focused on mass-produced ceramic ware with little aesthetic appeal.

Studio potteries and smaller commercial outfits began creating pottery objects which featured bold or delicate hand-painted designs, free-form shapes and innovative translucent glazes. Simply put, art pottery was made as an expression against the perceived onslaught of 'inane' mass produced wares and had more artistic and decorative qualities.

Collectors and curators define classic art pottery as being produced from about 1870 to the 1920s, when more than 200 potteries were operating in the United States alone and turned out wares in the spirit of the period. In keeping with this artisan nature of the time, many early pieces from the art pottery movement are hand-thrown, meticulously decorated, and signed and dated by the artists. Apart from the continued output of studio potters, pieces made after 1920, tend to be commercial production pottery, also known as industrial art pottery, and feature less individualized decorations. Nevertheless, pottery pieces stemming from the commercial side of pottery making still were first envisioned by talented designers of, for instance, the Red Wing and McCoy Pottery. The least of their qualities is that they are evocative of the period, and, more than not, the creative spirit of the initial artistic conception on the drawing board reverberates in many of the designs.