Lonhuda Vase
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 was 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 20^th^ century.
label: Description
content: About Lonhuda Pottery:
label: Description
content: The label Lonhuda combines the names of the three pottery founders, William A. Long, W.H. Hunter, and Alfred Day. The firm was created in 1892 in Steubenville, Ohio, and its production built on several years of experiments in clay and glazes by Long, a chemist, oil painter, and pharmacist. Lonhuda specialized in the underglaze decorated pottery first produced by Mary Louise McLaughlin at Coultry Pottery (called Losanti ware) and later by Wheatley Pottery. These styles were subsequently popularized by Rookwood Pottery, founded by Maria Longworth Nichols. Long also admired the shapes of Native American pottery and combined those forms with a high-gloss glaze over a brown background. Common decorations were depictions of Indians, landscapes, and flowers.
label: Description
content: Among the artists employed by Lonhuda was Laura Fry, who was an original member of the Cincinnati Pottery Club, a decorator at Pauline Pottery and at Rookwood, and the originator of the glaze application technique that used an atomizer to create delicate shading and blending of colors. After leaving Rookwood, Fry was professor of Industrial Arts at Purdue University and then joined Lonhuda in 1892. The Fry designs were Lonhuda’s primary line and were widely copied by Rookwood and other U.S. potteries, despite her patent on the atomizer technique. In 1894, Fry left Lonhuda to create the Porcelain League of Cincinnati and then returned to Purdue in 1896. In 1984, S.A. Weller acquired an interest in Lonhuda Pottery and shifted its activities to its Zanesville plant, where the Lonhuda designs were produced on a large scale. Long left Weller and joined the Owens Pottery in 1899, and then he established the Denver China and Pottery Company in 1901.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Ohio, Steubenville
topic: label: Subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Marcus Benjamin
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.379676
label: catalog number
content: 379676
label: accession number
content: 150313
objectType: label: Object Name
content: vase
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 4 5/16 in x 6 1/4 in; 10.9855 cm x 15.875 cm