Ceramics Industry East Liverpool example essay topic

Where Ceramics Once Thrived by Charles Luce Watching a skilled ceramics artist shape a creation on the wheel is a thrilling experience. Under her or his hands, a spinning blob of mud grows into a work of art. It's not unusual, after witnessing such a display of virtuosity, for the audience to realize that the ware on their own kitchen shelves pales by comparison. So it's logical to ask: Is every thrown piece made the same way?

By hand? Even the cheap stuff at home? Of course the answer is: No. Production ceramic ware comes from highly automated assembly lines. A question with a more elusive answer might be: Where are the factories? Where does production ceramic ware come from?

The answer: Until recently a small Ohio town. A visit today to East Liverpool, Ohio, a hamlet situated on the Ohio River just a few miles from the Pennsylvania border, reveals little of the town's history as the former world capitol of production pottery. This is a place of boarded up buildings, discount automotive parts outlets and abandoned storefronts. However for the ceramics industry East Liverpool is an historical mecca, the place America's where pottery industry fought its way to the world's center stage and thrived, albeit briefly.

It was in 1841 that British-born potter James Bennett settled here, drawn by accessible clay deposits and the sense that he could make a better living than in Jersey City where he'd worked at the Henderson Pottery Company since immigrating in 1839. Bennett's hunch turned into a family affair - he sent for his brothers in 1845 - and soon expanded. Within four years the family's successful pot-throwing operation had spun off a host of competitors. In 1849 there were six firms running 94 kilns in the sleepy town. Between 1850 and 1950, few would use the word 'sleepy' again to describe East Liverpool. Following Bennett's lead, and copying his family's immigration pattern, a flood of mostly English-born potters arrived in East Liverpool.

The work they produced was initially limited in quantity by inadequate power sources and in quality by a lack of clay varieties. Still, the town's early potters were successful. By the time of the opening shots of the civil war, a scant 20 years since Bennett's first endeavors, East Liverpool ware was being shipped throughout the United States and the town was booming. More than large amounts of red and yellow clay and a steady supply of immigrants figured into East Liverpool's growth. Its location on the Ohio River was crucial; from here transportation to the rapidly growing western states was easy and cheap. In the middle nineteenth century the Ohio River was one of America's foremost highways, according to historian William Gates, whose book City of Hills and Kilns details the Ohio town's life.

Gates points out that during the year 1834, for example, 1,639 steamships departed nearby Pittsburgh alone. Many of these stopped at East Liverpool to load up on ceramics for new western markets. There was also plenty of fuel; nearby lumber to fire the kilns and, as miners soon discovered, plenty of coal too. (Later generations would find the Ohio hill country also contained large reserves of natural gas). Social conditions in England and New Jersey also contributed to the Ohio town's success. In England, where potters were among the world's best, conflict between kiln owners and workers produced so much turmoil that increasing numbers of skilled craftsmen decided to abandon their country for this side of the Atlantic.

And crowded, industrialized New Jersey, where everything cost more, was not as profitable an environment as cheap, open Ohio. This inspired more immigration - and more benefits for East Liverpool. Once East Liverpool became a ceramics center the very fact of its existence stimulated further growth. Successful potters sent home for siblings, spouses and relatives. The immigrants helped make this city one of the most ethnically homogeneous in the region; they also arrived hoping to practice innovations their more conservative homeland had spurned.

In a steady stream of inventions that ranged from automatic form-shaping machines to driveshafts that transferred power throughout a factory, East Liverpool potteries tweaked production and profits upwards. During the greatest production years from 1865-1910, the city's ceramics factories produced and sold the majority of America's pottery. At its peak the town contained more than 250 separate pottery factories. Its populace, which doubled in size every decade from the end of the civil war to the beginning of World War I, was almost completely employed in the production of ceramic goods.

And the names of its larger production houses graced tables from elegant hotels to soldiers' mess halls. Turn over a piece of pottery made before 1940 and you have a better than even chance of seeing the words 'East Liverpool. ' Chances are you " ll probably also recognize the company name: Knowles, Taylor and Knowles, Sterling, and Hall are some examples of the city's firms. A visit to the place today reveals few traces of the once-thriving industry. A drive down Main Street passes half a dozen antique malls, a few discount pharmacies and one department store. The most well-kept building in town contains the offices of military recruiters.

There is not a trace of the most prominent feature of every 19th century photograph of East Liverpool: a skyline crammed with smokestacks. Discovering what killed East Liverpool's ceramics industry takes a bit of detective work. You won't find a cohesive explanation in the Ceramics Museum or get one in a visit to the still-functioning Homer Laughlin factory just across the river in New all, West Virginia. You can get a clearer picture from Gate's City Of Hills And Kilns, and you " ll better understand East Liverpool's decline if you " re familiar with the de-industrialization process as it occurred in other places in the region, like Steubenville and Youngstown. East Liverpool's ceramics factories died from multiple causes: economic conservatism, international politics and the city's limited size chief among them.

Part of the problem arose from the industry's ownership and workforce patterns. Most production houses were owned and staffed by English immigrants and their descendants. This lack of diversity translated into resistance to new ideas such as rationalization, the process that divides repetitive industrial tasks into carefully organized components. It was the invention of rationalization and its accompanying emphasis on efficiency that propelled American industry to a dominant world role in the period 1880-1920. Yet the fragmented, under capitalized pottery industry resisted this concept. Also pottery owners colluded to exclude other industries from settling in East Liverpool and worked to discourage such things as Union organizers.

As a result, the city became a socially stratified place where innovation and economic cushioning were unwelcome. Protective tariffs, which had guaranteed profitability for the clay industry from its infancy, fell victim to a larger geopolitical agenda after World War I. When the tariff barrier crumbled in the mid-twenties foreign pottery flooded the market (Japanese goods accounted for 60% of all U.S. sales in 1928). Finally, the city, located on a narrow spit of land just above the Ohio River and Beaver Creek floodplains, just wasn't big enough. The invention of such time-saving production equipment as continuous firing kilns could have unraveled the foreign competitors, but such machines just wouldn't fit in the city's small factories. And so the ceramics industry, or most of it, collapsed. Not a single production unit exists within the city limits today, and the largest factory that uses the name 'East Liverpool' is Homer Laughlin, situated in West Virginia.

The Homer Laughlin company escaped the industry holocaust through two acts: moving to West Virginia, where there was room to install a continuous firing kiln, and hiring a designer who hit upon the Fiestaware style in 1936. Still, the town has echoes of glory. You can find them in the patterns of yellow fired paving stones that grace its older streets, in the baroque facade of the Carnegie Library, or in the splendid collection of the Ceramics Museum. And for those who would study the face of production pottery there is no better place on domestic soil.