THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



DEGEMBEE, 1891 



THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY. 



By EDWIN ATLEE BAEBEE. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE 

 COLUMBUS. X. 



FOREIGN writers would have the world believe that the 

 United States can boast of no ceramic history. Even our 

 own chroniclers have, singularly enough, neglected a branch of 

 our industrial progress which is not altogether insignificant nor 

 devoid of interest. On the contrary, it can be shown that the 

 fictile art is almost as ancient in this country as in Great Britain, 

 and has been developed in almost parallel lines. 



The first European settlers found the American natives pro- 

 ficient in the manufacture of earthen vessels, and we would not 

 be justified in supposing, even in the absence of documentary 

 evidence, that our ancestors were more ignorant of the useful 

 arts than the Atlantic Coast Indians, who, less cultured than the 

 prehistoric mound builders and the Pueblo races of the West, 

 were in possession of rude, but often ornamental, utensils made 

 of baked clay and sand. 



Primitive potteries for the production of earthenware on a 

 small scale were operated in the provinces at an early period, but 

 as only the coarser grades of ware were needed by the simple 

 inhabitants of a new country, no extended accounts of them 

 appear to have been written by the older historians. As early as 

 the year 1649, however, there were a number of small potteries 

 in Virginia which carried on a thriving business in the communi- 

 ties in which they existed ; and the first Dutch settlers in New 

 York brought with them a practical knowledge of potting, and 

 are said to have made a ware equal in quality to that produced 

 in the ancient town of Delft. Prof. Isaac Broome, of the Beaver 



TOL. XL. — 12 



