Tuesday, May 13, 2008

TAN CLAY Vintage American Pottery Identification

TAN CLAY potteries are more difficult to identify by area. DRYDEN pottery used TAN clay for much of their early production in KANSAS and even some of the ARKANSAS pottery. ROSEMEADE produced tan clay pottery with tiny dark specks throughout, and they were in North Dakota. There were also some other potteries that worked in the North Dakota style (particularly one that made Pine Cone designs) that used tan clay.

CANADA pottery is often a tan clay that they call MOCHA. It was made on the eastern coast--and although this discussion is about AMERICAN pottery, this one can be confusing. There are also FOREIGN potteries that use tan clay, and ITALY is one of the best, but most of their pottery is marked as to country of origin--whereas the Canadian production is tagged only.

There were also some American STUDIO POTTERS who used tan clay, but their works are usually marked on the bottom with a hand-written name.

The nice feature about tan clay is that you can usually EXCLUDE Ohio potteries and Texas potteries if you see tan clay. The production potteries from these states
did not use tan clay.

Remember, turn the pot over to locate an area that is NOT GLAZED to see the clay color. Don't let the GLAZE color confuse you. That is not the CLAY COLOR that we are looking at here.

Happy hunting until next time!

Linda
cajunC