| I have noticed when real estate agents want to attract a potential customer´s attention they always use three important words in their advertising copy. Those three words in real estate are location, location and location. The three most important words to the American dinnerware collector are shapes, shapes and shapes. Identificiation of the shapes of dinnerware is the most important knowledge a collector can have about their dinnerware collecting. The shape is the "Main Thing". NEW SHAPES
Pottery companies traditionally came out with new shapes each year and those shapes were given a name or a number. The Homer Laughlin China Company of Newell, West Virginia named their shapes and in dinnerware alone (not counting food service lines) The Homer Laughlin China Company has produced approximately 100 different shapes since its beginning in East Liverpool, Ohio in 1873. In many cases mixed shapes will make up a set of dinnerware. For example, the Brittany shape was introduced in the mid thirties but was used into the seventies sometimes with Brittany hollowware. The flatware was used primarily with a variety of hollowware shapes. While this is complicated for both the researcher and collector it gave the pottery companies an opportunity to introduce a new line without changing all the pieces in a set. This was a common practice of all pottery companies not just The Homer Laughlin China Company.
MAKING DO
When I was a youngster in the depression era, I heard many times from my mother about "making do". If you are not familiar with the term or are too young to have ever had to "make do" it simply meant you used what you had or you did without. Many times we just did without. When we think of the pottery industry as businesses struggling with all kinds of problems just to stay alive we begin to have a different idea of the business of making dinnerware. Potteries did a lot of what my mother called "making do". They had to use their equipment, raw materials and workers to the best advantage possible.
UNDERSTANDING THE POTTERY INDUSTRY
I didn´t understand much about the pottery industry early in my collecting/learning days of collecting. I have only a slightly better understanding after 25-30 years of studying the pottery industry. Once again, I consider myself only a student of the pottery industry certainly not an expert. POTTERY WORKERS
One thing that I have learned is that "pottery workers" did not sit around counting the rings on their finished ware. They didn´t worry about putting different shapes together in a set, nor did they worry about the confusion they might create years later for collectors using the same decalcomania on several different shapes of dinnerware. They weren´t concerned if they had to use ware in the same sets that were marked with different dates. It did not concern pottey workers if different knobs or handles were used. They "made do" with what they had available to them at the time. Jonathan Perry told me on one of my visits to the plant that if they needed knobs to complete an order they looked around the department and if they had any on hand they would redesign a cup or piece to make the available pieces fit. I am positively convinced that it never occurred to pottery management that some fifty or sixty years down the road, collectors would be trying to figure out why something was done a certain way. It is possible that some of the "rare" and unusual items are simply an end result of using what was available and "making do".
SOMETHING BORROWED-SOMETHING NEW
I have touched on this point many times but it is important enough to mention one more time. In the early years of the pottery industry all of the American pottery shapes were copied or designs that were "borrowed" from another company´s shapes and designs. Most of the early shapes manufactured in this country were standard shapes copied from the English potters. This was a natural occurrence since most of the potters in this country came from England. Consequently all of the American pottery company´s shapes are similar, if not identical to the older English ware. COMING SOON: DECORATIONS Click here to see photos of some of the shapes from a 1907 Homer Laughlin catalog.
Our New Book "Homer Laughlin China"
Guide to Shapes and Patterns
written by myself and Darlene Nossaman, is now available
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