Weller Pottery
Significance of Weller Pottery: Utilitarian potter Samuel A. Weller (1851 to 1925) abandoned painted flowerpots and sewer tile for art pottery in 1894. That year he formed a short-lived pottery partnership with fellow potter William A. Long. Their company’s major product was Lonhuda, a type of art pottery that Long developed to mimic Rookwood’s standard glaze. Lonhuda’s backgrounds were air brushed and its designs hand-painted with underglaze slip, techniques successfully pioneered by Rookwood. Although Weller and Long generally employed commercial talent, not fine artists to decorate Lonhuda, the line was the first successful imitation of Rookwood’s standard glaze, a staple of the art pottery market since its introduction in 1883.
When the partnership with Long dissolved a year later, Weller developed his own copy of Rookwood’s standard glaze, Louwelsa, a combination of his daughter’s name, Louise, the family name and his initials, was first produced in 1895. It remained available as late as 1924. Weller’s potters created over 500 molded Louwelsa shapes; most were artist signed and Weller marked. Backgrounds were dark brown or blue with underglaze slip decorated flowers, animals and portraits. Weller also produced a matte glaze Louwelsa, now quite rare. The unglazed Perfecto line, produced between 1900 and 1904, may have evolved from Weller’s attempts at a matte Louwelsa.
Although Weller Pottery developed some noteworthy and highly collectible lines over its 54-years, David Rago allocated only two paragraphs to Weller in American Art Pottery (1997). He gave Weller’s Ohio Valley rivals, Rookwood and Roseville, separate chapters earlier in the book.
Weller seems to have faltered in three critical areas: quality, markings and design. The company’s hand-painted pieces were no match for Rookwood’s consistent high quality. “Good, but not great,” was how Rago described the work of one Weller artist in How to Compare and Value American Art Pottery (2001). Collectors cite another quality concern: mold seams were not consistently removed. Reflecting what may have been poor supervision, Weller’s markings were notoriously unpredictable and inconsistent. Occasionally the same piece was impressed with two different line markings. Weller’s designs never quite equaled Roseville’s, especially during the production-ware era of the 1920′s and 1930′s. “Weller floral patterns, with few exceptions, never had the bite of Roseville’s,” said Rago. When Weller Pottery closed early in 1948, it had been more than two generations since its glory days.
Other Weller Lines – Early Period: 1895 to 1915. Weller also copied Rookwood’s Iris and Roseville’s Rozane Light and named the new line Eocean (pronounced E-ocean, also spelled Eosian). It had a twenty-year production run (1898 to 1918). Eocean’s backgrounds were soft shades of gray, ivory and pink with florals in slip relief topped with a clear overglaze. Corleone, Samantha and Aurora (alternate spellings: Auroro and Auroso) resembled Louwelsa except that their dark background colors were brushed, not sprayed. No examples have yet been found of Samantha; Corleone and Auroral are extremely rare. All were hand-painted, artist signed works produced between 1893 and 1897.
Another brushed background line, Aurelian, produced between 1895 and 1910, was much more available. Its underglaze slip decoration was typically brighter than Louwelsa. Its background colors were rich mahogany tones of brown, red and yellow. The line had its own stamp: Aurelian in script with Weller in block print below. Artist’s often signed their Aurelian work in slip below the decoration, a practice carried over to other hand-painted lines. Weller brought a 7.5′ Aurelian vase to the 1904 St. Louis Exposition and billed it as the world’s largest vase.
Weller’s Dicken’s line went through three distinct iterations beginning in 1897 and ending in 1905. All were produced under the artistic direction of Charles Babcock Upjohn. First Dickens resembled high gloss Louwelsa except that the dark backgrounds were solid, not blended, and some designs were outlined with an incised line. The distinguishing characteristics of Second Dickens were the hand-drawn incised designs by Upjohn. Depicted were golfers, monks, animals, Indians, portraits and various indoor and outdoor scenes, including some from Charles Dickens novels. After the scene was painted and outlined in India ink and the pottery was leather-hard, decorators incised the drawing with the eye of a needle. Backgrounds were shaded brown, blue, green blue, turquoise, and pink/gray. Overglaze was typically matte, although there are some examples of a glossy finish. Tobacco jars that resembled the head of a man from China or the Middle East were also part of Dickens II.
F.H. Rhead, who later worked for Roseville Pottery, designed the Third Dickens line. Figures were low relief slip decoration of Dickens’ characters with broad areas of color, little sharp detail and glossy overglaze. To make hand decoration easier, the designs were embossed in the mold. Backgrounds were light blue, gray and green. Charles Dickens in profile and the name of the novel the character appeared were in black circular discs affixed to the back of each piece.
Objects from the Third Dickens line, produced only in 1905, are rarer than the first two. Dickens collectors tend to favor the second Dickens line.
In 1897, the same year as First Dickens introduction, Weller himself designed Turada. It is hard to confuse Turada with any other Weller line. Delicate lacy openwork in white, light blue or pale orange was applied to a solid glossy black, brown or blue background. Its life was brief surviving only one year. The openwork proved to be easily damaged and difficult to ship intact.
Weller simplified Louwelsa and Eocean with Floretta (1904) and Etna (1906). For these lines, floral and fruit designs were embossed in the mold, a technique that allowed low-level technicians to decorate the pottery at reduced cost and greater output. As one writer put it, “Less prestige, but more profit.” The flowers and fruit looked “blown out” or puffy. But there is another type of Floretta where the design is incised in the greenware. Floretta backgrounds vary from soft gray/rose to dark brown. Etna backgrounds were uniformly a soft gray with figures embossed in the mold.
In 1904, F.H. Rhead developed his most famous Weller line using his British-honed squeeze bag skills. The line’s unusual name, Jap Birdimal, may have come about when Rhead or Weller combined portions of the words, “Japanese Geishas, birds and animals,” the dominant motifs of this new line. Rhead also included his long-standing signature design in Jap Birdimal – an Arts & Crafts style forest scene. Enduring characteristics of the line are circular designs outlined with yellow or white beaded slip.
Rhead was also the designer for Weller’s Art (or L’Art) Nouveau, a short-lived, high relief line produced in 1904. The line evolved from dark brown high gloss ware to matte pastel green forms with pink accents.
Also from 1904 was Fudzi, an extremely rare oriental design by Gazo Fudji (also spelled Fujiyama). The line featured heavy slip decorated flowers and leaves outlined in sgraffito, the ancient technique in which the pottery surface is scratched to expose a contrasting color. Fudzi backgrounds were unglazed, shaded and stippled. Fudzi was only produced between 1904 and 1905.
Another talented artist hired by Weller was Art Nouveau painter Jacques Sicard, who created Weller’s Sicardo or Sicard line (available from 1903 to 1917). The Frenchman perfected a popular, but expensive, metallic lusterware with understated iridescent floral designs. Sicard learned how to mix the metallic glaze from Clement Massier and kept it secret while employed at Weller Pottery. Only 300f Sicardo was marketable and many of these pieces required extensive hand-finishing. Colors included flame, rose, blue, green, bronze, purple, and crimson. Tiffany and Wannamaker bought selected Sicardo pieces and sold them in their New York City stores for $300 and up.
Middle Period: 1915 to 1936. Weller’s middle period was dominated by more commercial artware and less hand-painted art pottery. More new shapes and fewer new glazes characterize the period. Two designers were of particular importance: the German potter/entrepreneur John Lessell (active at Weller from 1920 to 1924) and the Austrian-born ceramics modeler Rudolph Lorber (active at Weller from 1905 to 1940).
John Lessell created three noteworthy lines for Weller: LaSa (1920 to 1924) was a high temperature, red gold lusterware that required six firings. Designs, usually landscapes with foreground trees, were scratched through a layer of enamel powder and lampblack. Multiple colors in horizontal bands are characteristic of the line. Pieces are typically marked “LaSa Weller” within the luster glaze on the decorated surface near the base. Chengtu or Chinese Red (1920 to 1936) was a plain red/orange glaze applied to many different molded items. LaMar (1920 to 1925) was a black lusterware with dark red background. Landscapes, water and shorelines, similar to LaSa, predominated.
Rudolph Lorber created many of Weller’s figural lines, notably Brighton (1915), Muskota (1915 to 1928), Woodcraft (1915 to 1933), Coppertone (1929) and garden animal figures. All were created from molds with embossed designs and decorated by technicians. Brighton was a popular and pricey line of bird figures on a stand. Muskota featured human and animal figures that were either decorative or integrated with functional objects such as powder jars or incense burners. Woodcraft may be Lorber’s most popular line with today’s collectors. Figures were rustic with a sandy-colored background and matte glaze. The typical Woodcraft piece was a polychrome woodland animal, a fox or bird, placed among branches and leaves or inside a hole in a tree. A highly collectible Woodcraft variation is a Muskota figure, like the kingfisher or squirrel, attached to a Woodcraft object. A Lorber garden figure dear to Arts & Crafts collectors is the Coppertone frog lawn sprinkler, a novelty that came in at least five sizes. Coppertone’s mottled colors have been described as “old bronze showing irregularly through a verdant green matt.” Frogs and fish are especially collectible.
Hudson pottery, first produced in 1917 and continuing until 1934, was one of Weller Pottery’s greatest lines. It is highly prized by collectors possibly because some of Weller’s best decorators, notably Mae Timberlake and Hester Pillsbury, worked on Hudson. The line centered on hand-painted floral designs, often in heavy slip, on shaded semi-matte backgrounds of blue/pink, cream/blue and pink/gray or soft green. A dark blue to light blue shaded background was also produced. Birds, animals, landscapes and portraits were included in the line, but not as often as the florals.
Late period: 1936 to 1948. From the mid-1930′s until it closed, Weller Pottery was in decline. It was competing with production-made Roseville and losing the battle. Of the 15 late period lines, few are found today at mid-to-high-end auctions. Most sell for under $100 and might be classified as commercial utility wares.
Reference note by p4A.com Contributing Editor by Pete Prunkl.