American porcelain, 1770-1920.

R�er papierbedingt leicht gebr�t. - The growth of the porcelain industry in America is inextricably linked with the founding and developing of the country itself. The first documented kilnful of porcelain made of domestic materials was drawn in the year 1738 by one Andrew Duch�n Savannah, Georgia. The first recorded piece, "a small Teacup � very near transparent," constituted a modest step on a road that was to be beset with difficulties but was to lead to triumph. The establishment of native manufactories was part of the patriot dream of no less a figure than Benjamin Franklin, who saw in them the means of supplying the needs of the citizenry while at the same time casting off the shackles of colonialism. He was especially interested in the porcelain medium, seeing in it the means for American craftsmen and artists to give expression to their fresh visions and aspirations. From the gallant young eighteenth-century partnership of Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris in Philadelphia to the early-nineteenth-century pottery of William Ellis Tucker, from the Greenpoint (Brooklyn) factory of Charles Cartlidge to an ever-widening geographic circle and proliferating number of porcelain manufactories, including the firm begun in Trenton, New Jersey, by Walter Scott Lenox, still in operation today, the list of contributors to the field is an inspiring representation of determination, accomplishment, and ingenuity. The Centennial Exposition, held in Philadelphia in 1876, marked the debut of the porcelain of the United States on the world stage. The final section of the book explores in depth the matchless work of the art-potters Kate Sears, M. Louise McLaughlin, and Adelaide Alsop Robineau. In marveling at both their technical achievements-carved decoration and new and varied forms of glazes-and their inspired creativity, who could doubt that Benjamin Franklin's hopes for a domestic porcelain industry have been realized, and in so illustrious a manner that even he could not have dreamed of? ISBN 0810911787