Description:
Thrown stoneware, squat-bodied art pottery vase, with curved sides, round shoulders, and short straight rim, circular opening at top, vase is covered with a thick matte blue glaze, on the shoulder of the pot the thick glaze has cracked revealing a white color below; the vase has a white glaze on the interior, the vase is stamped on the underside "WJW" for William Joseph Walley. William Walley (1852-1919) was born in East Liverpool, Ohio, where his father was a potter. He was apprenticed at the Minton Factory in England before he was ten years old and spent eleven years learning the operations of a pottery. In 1873 Walley returned to Portland, ME, where he attempted to establish his own art pottery. Having no success, Walley moved to Worcester, MA, in 1885, to revive a pottery established by Frank B. Norton, grandson of the founder of the Benningon Works. In 1898 Walley began his own pottery on the site of the old Wachusett Pottery in West Sterling, Mass. He was a one-man company, producing candlesticks, vases, tiles, bowls, lamps, and his famous "devil mugs" from the local red clay. Walley became a member of the Society of Arts and Crafts Boston on 1904 and a Master four years later, exhibiting at the Society in 1907. His pieces are marked with an impressed "W.J.W."
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2014.4.174 |
