Oregon Pottery Company
Formerly | Smith and Company |
|---|---|
| Private | |
| ISIN | 🆔 |
| Industry | Pottery manufacturing |
| Founded 📆 | 1866 in Buena Vista, Oregon |
| Founder 👔 | Freeman Smith Amedee Smith Freeman Smith, Jr. |
Area served 🗺️ | |
| Members | |
Number of employees | |
| 🌐 Website | [Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 665: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). ] |
| 📇 Address | |
| 📞 telephone | |
Oregon Pottery Company was established at Buena Vista, Oregon, in 1866. The largest pottery business on the West Coast of the United States at the time, it produced stoneware and sewer pipe between 1866–1897 in Buena Vista and Portland, Oregon.
History
The company was established in 1866 by Freeman Smith and his sons, Amedee (A. M. Smith) and Freeman, Jr. Originally named "Smith and Company Pottery",[1](p141) the firm was located in Buena Vista on the east bank of the Willamette River, where suitable clay land had been found.[2]
At first, Smith struggled to establish sales. Howard McKinley Corning wrote in Willamette Landings,
He (Smith) hauled his first load of earthenware to Albany, where he found the merchants skeptical of being able to dispose of it. After repeated attempts to deal, Smith in discouragement was about to haul his unsold load back to Buena Vista when a merchant, John Conner, motioned him to take the entire lot of stoneware to the store's back door. Impulsively, Conner had decided to buy the entire lot and take a chance on selling or trading it away. Eventually Conner paid him at the rate of fifty cents per gallon capacity.[1](p141)
The business prospered, having the advantage of being able to sell wares produced locally, without the cost of importing wares from the east.[2]
In 1870, A. M. Smith purchased his father's and brother's interests in the company. The company employed four turners at pottery wheels, and ten Chinese laborers who mixed the clay.[1](p142) By 1872, the company had expanded to produce sewer pipes.[3]
A. M. Smith moved some operations of the company to Portland in 1883, where the firm was incorporated as Oregon Pottery Company. The company built a three-story building with six kilns, and there manufactured "all kinds of vitrified pipes",[2] while the firm also produced pottery products (such as flower pots, fire brick, and chimney flues) in Buena Vista until 1886.[4]
After a fire destroyed the Portland facility in 1890, Smith rebuilt an even larger brick factory on the existing property and an adjoining tract. After his death in 1897, his son A. M. Smith, Jr., reorganized the company under the name, Western Clay Manufacturing Company.[2] According to the Albany Democrat-Herald, "As pottery containers were replaced by glass and tin, the firm reorganized and manufactured brick and sewer pipe until 1911, when it was sold for $1 million."[4]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Corning, Howard McKinley (1973). Willamette Landings. Oregon Historical Society Press. ISBN 0875950426. Search this book on
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Gaston, Joseph (1911). Portland, Oregon, Its History and Builders: In Connection with the Antecedent Explorations, Discoveries, and Movements of the Pioneers that Selected the Site for the Great City of the Pacific. S.J. Clarke Publishing Company. pp. 279–282. Search this book on
- ↑ Orheritage (2020-08-03). "Smith's Oregon Pottery Company". Heritage Museum Society. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Willamette Clay: Bricks, homewares, art featured in Corvallis exhibit". Newspapers.com. 31 Mar 1989. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
- ↑ Schmeer, Blaine A. (1987). Pottery on the Willamette, A History of the Oregon Pottery Company, 1866-1896. ISBN 0-9617654-0-2. Search this book on
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