Gates Pottery Teco "Grecian" Vase
date: label: date made
content: ca 1905
name: label: maker
content: Gates Potteries
label: maker
content: Illinois
notes: label: Description
content: About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
label: Description
content: Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and were inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20th century.
label: Description
content: About Gates Pottery, Terra Cotta Pottery, Teco Pottery: Gates Pottery, also known as the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Company in Terra Cotta, Illinois, marketed its art pottery line under the name Teco Pottery (shortened from “terra” and “cotta”). Founded by Chicago attorney William Day Gates in 1886, the firm began with the successful production of architectural tiles and bricks. Art pottery was offered to the public in 1902, and production costs benefited from the extensive kilns and machinery of the existing works. Teco’s matte green glaze followed the popular matte green of Grueby Faience Pottery but had “a grayish (silver luster) effect” (Evans 1987:279). Teco Pottery’s early work was noted for its sculptured designs and elaborate, molded shapes, and some monumental vases were over seven feet high—a feat among turn-of-the-century potteries. Later work was simplified and mass produced. A few pieces were thrown, but most were molded. Glazes included matte, marbleized, and crystalline effects in a range of colors. The art pottery line ended in 1922, and the firm was sold in 1930, shortly after the stock market crash.
label: Description
content: (Evans, Paul, 1987. Art Pottery of the United States. New York: Feingold and Lewis Publishing Corp.)
label: Description
content: About the Object:
label: Description
content: Unusually shaped vessel with baluster or pear shaped body. The sides of the vessel are pulled out from the body looping up and attaching to an outward flaring rim, forming handles. The handles are flattened at the top. Commentators at the time referred to the shape as "Grecian." Overall crystalline matte glaze thicker in some areas over a buff-yellow clay body. Impressed on bottom with "Teco" and "297." This vase was designed by N. Forester.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: web subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gates Potteries
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.237959
label: catalog number
content: 237959
label: accession number
content: 45700
objectType: label: Object Name
content: vase
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 14.3 cm x 21.8 cm; 5 5/8 in x 8 19/32 in