Wahpeton Pottery Company (Rosemeade)
The Wahpeton Pottery Company was formed in 1940 by Robert J. Hughes, a local Wahpeton, North Dakota business man and Laura Taylor, a potter trained at the University of North Dakota. Mr. Hughes was the business manager of the Company and Laura Taylor provided the creative talent. The two were married in 1943. Laura was born in Rosemeade township in Ransom County, North Dakota and named the pottery after her birthplace.
The success of the business allowed a modern production plant to be built in 1944 and Howard Lewis, a ceramics engineer formerly with Dickinson Clay Products, became a partner and production manager. Initially, Rosemeade was marketed in the Midwest, but later expanded to all of the United States and many foreign countries.
Laura Hughes did the majority of the design work for the company. Her many animal figurines and salt and pepper designs used live animals as models, but she also worked from pictures, sketches and mounted animals. While there are wheel thrown vases, especially the swirl pieces, most of Rosemeade production was from plaster cast molds made from Laura's clay models.
Pheasants in many variations were probably the most popular sale item. "By 1953, more than 500,000 Rosemeade pheasants in 19 different designs had been sold." (Dommel, Dakota Potteries) Some other of the many figures were Quail, various song birds, fish, coyotes, American bison, rabbits and others were produced in the form of salt and peppers, figurines of various sizes, cup sitters, pins, paper weights and used as figurines on ash trays. Twelve different types of dog heads were designed in 1950 copied from illustrations in National Geographic magazine.
When Laura Taylor Hughes died of cancer in 1959 the company lost its primary designer. At the same time, competition from cheaper Japanese imports hurt the company sales. Production continued until 1961 and the sales room remained open until 1964 to sell the last of the production items.
Rosemeade pottery pieces are marked in several ways. The well known prairie rose sticker was placed on many of the pieces and also many were bottom stamped in various ways. These were not, however, used on all production pieces so are not a requirement to positively identify a Rosemeade piece.
Read more about this topic: North Dakota Pottery
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