Fulper Pottery Vase

About the Arts and Crafts Movement:

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.

About Hill Pottery/Fulper Pottery:

One of the oldest potteries in America, Hill Pottery was founded in 1814 by Samuel Hill in Flemington, New Jersey, and produced drain tiles and mugs, bowls, jars, jugs, and churns in earthenware and stoneware. It was sold at Hill’s death in 1860 to the firm’s partner, Abraham Fulper. His sons, George W., William H., Charles, and Edward B., continued the pottery and incorporated it in 1899. Under William H. Fulper II, Abraham’s grandson, the Vasekraft art pottery line was developed in 1909. It included dozens of items such as vases, lamps, mugs, pitchers, and tiles in hundreds of crystalline and matte pastel glazes. Using locally-sourced clays and glazes, Fulper artisans transitioned from painted and carved decorations, sometimes fired twice, to an emphasis on shape and color in a single firing. Fulper Pottery was led after 1911 by J. Martin Stangl, who invented the award-winning famille rose glazes. After a fire in 1929, the pottery shifted from Flemington to Trenton, New Jersey, and continued to produce artware until 1935. Under leadership by Stangl and Frank H. Wheaton, production continued until 1978.

The green glaze on this vase has the glistening appearance of frog skin. In the heat of the kiln, reactions between minerals like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide blossom over the iridescent surface, creating a crystalline appearance. First developed in seventeenth-century China during the Yishing period, crystalline glazes only achieved popularity in the first decade of the twentieth century among Western collectors. This renewed fascination with Chinese culture continued well into the early 1930s and encouraged ceramists to mimic Chinese forms and glaze techniques.

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