Dickinson Clay Products Company
Seeing a need for winter work at the Dickinson Clay Products Company, Howard Lewis started pottery production in 1934 to keep the plant running year round. In 1935 he was joined by Charles Grantier who had trained under Margaret Cable at the University of North Dakota and who was very familiar with the properties of North Dakota Clay. The pottery produced by this company was known as Dickota, usually scratched or incised on the bottom of the pottery pieces. In addition a gold and silver sticker with the Dickota name was placed on some items
Margaret Cable worked at Dickinson Clay Products in the summer of 1936 designing a dinnerware set which became known as "Cableware". Laura Taylor, another UND student also worked for the company for a short time.
Some of the items made by the company include vases, advertising ashtrays, pitchers, mugs, book ends, curtain shade pulls, animal figurines, cookie jars, salt and pepper shakers, sugars and creamers and tea pots. In addition to glazed clay products, Dickota Badlands pieces were produced. This process was brought to Dickota by Howard Lewis who learned the technique while working at Nilok. It consisted of several colors of clay swirled together in one product. (Dickota Pottery by Arley and Bonnie Olson)
Another popular item was the ball water pitcher and glasses patterned after Cambridge Glass. This led to legal problems for the company as Cambridge held the patent for the pitcher shape. Those legal problems and other economic issues led to the closing of the pottery operation in 1937.
Read more about this topic: North Dakota Pottery
Famous quotes containing the words dickinson, clay, products and/or company:
“Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“Archaeologists have uncovered six-thousand-year-old clay tablets from southern Babylonia that describe in great detail how the adults of that community found the younger generation to be insolent and disobedient.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land, and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet, from seaweed to a sailor’s yarn, or a fish story. In this element the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and are strangely mingled.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)