“Important works are now in operation at Baltimore, Maryland, and at Trenton, New Jersey, making varieties of pottery, plain and decorated, and stone-wares of excellent quality.”
At the Exhibition at Philadelphia good exhibitions were made by Messrs. Otto and Brewer, Mercer Pottery Company, James Moses and Isaac Davis, of Trenton; also by Laughlin Brothers, of East Liverpool, Ohio.
Some twenty firms, mostly from Trenton, were collected in the southeast corner of the Main Building, where they made a creditable display of what is known as the “white granite” ware, so useful and so detestable; thick, that it may resist the hostility of the Milesian maiden, clumsy because of that, without color or decoration of any kind, and cheap: can we expect or demand much? Looking more carefully, we found in Otto and Brewer’s exhibit a modeler named Broome, who had made some base-ball players which were full of life and spirit; also some unglazed vases which had excellence of form and precision of modeling and decoration, showing that good things may be done here. In Fig. 163 we show one of the Parian vases designed by Broome, who only needs encouragement to develop into excellence. James Moses, too, had some white-and-gold work which was good. Isaac Davis, one of these granite-potters, had ventured to turn his cups with a sense of good form, and with a thin lip from which one might drink without being reminded of the horse-trough; he must beware lest it should not pay!
Fig. 163.—Parian Vase.