Vase

Chelsea Keramic Art Works

1884-89 (ca.)

4 inches

Glazed stoneware

1995.40.5

Gift of David Cathers

Impressed on base with "CKAW" monogram

The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876 marked a turning point for Hugh Robertson and his future ambitions for his pottery. Especially moved by the sang-de-boeuf copper red glazes, Robertson returned to Chelsea with the goal of reproducing the vibrant red color on his own wares. As Walter Ellsworth Gray noted in a 1902 Brush and Pencil article, “To restore to the world a lost art, so far as the coloring and finish of pottery is concerned, was the special ambition of Hugh C. Robertson.” For centuries Europeans had sought and failed to reproduce the red coloring of Ming porcelain, and although the explosion of interest in Asian ceramics in the late-nineteenth century led numerous potters and firms to discover this secret, Robertson was amongst the earliest. While this discovery brought the firm renown, it also drove them into to bankruptcy, forcing the end of Chelsea Keramic Art Works and the eventual founding of Dedham Pottery–still under Robertson's direction, but with active investors determined to make commercially viable wares–which was firing wares by 1896.

Hugh Robertson