Old Florida Pottery: Potters in Paradise

The Collector's Guide to History, Makers and Marks 1859-1966

by Alfred R. Frankel, M.D.

[Hardcover - 160 pages, 2000, Blue Dome Press, St. Pete Beach, FL ISBN:0-9672662-0-3]

Reviewed by: Bob Sindelar

Usually when an author fills a void in a category, we are just happy that someone has finally written something. In the case of this book, however, we are a good deal more than happy.

Dr. Frankel tackles thirteen Florida potteries, from the "lost pottery" of Turnley & Odom in Knox Hill (1859), to the still-operating studio pottery of Melvin Casper on Merritt Island (1937-present). And tackles them very well.

Well researched and replete with good color photos, period B&W photos and good close-ups of marks, the book gives us the facts about these little known potteries and their pots, at least some of which were judged to be "among the very finest in the United States," according to contemporary accounts. And for the facts, alone, we would be most grateful. But there is much more.

We cannot resist quoting the opening paragraph of the chapter on Turnely & Odom, the earliest Florida pottery. "The war cries of the Creek and Seminole Indians had finally quieted in West Florida. The Yuchee Indians had moved south to the Everglades and, in a hand to hand, life and death struggle, Indian Joe, a raiding Indian had been killed and his sons run off. A temporary peace had come to the land between the Yellow and Choctawhatchie Rivers in the Florida Panhandle." And so, the author lays the ground for his exploration of "Potters in Paradise."

Relying heavily on contemporary newspaper accounts and personal interviews with relatives and, in one case, the potter himself, Frankel has literally walked the ground. His account of how to find the "lost pottery" at Knox Hill reminds us for a moment of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at her "Cross Creek."

In subsequent chapters, we learn of "the only bed of kaolin in the Southern states and the best in the United States." We hear of potters and designers being brought to this new and still fairly primitive area from Royal Worcester and Rookwood; of a major New York exporter contracting to "buy the entire output of the local pottery and market it;" of the connection between similar pots marked, on the one hand, "Silver Springs, Fla." and, on the other, "Fort Ticonderoga;" and we meet the legendary Graacks, whose name and lineage are intertwined with at least four potteries.

The history of Florida Pottery, it becomes clear, is often the story of Florida itself. And, perhaps nowhere better exemplified than in the story of how Addison Mizner, the noted architect of Palm Beach fame, backed into the pottery business and his Los Manos pottery.

Most folks know Royal Hickman only as the "Royal" in Royal Haeger, Frankel gets him to Haeger, thence to his own pottery in Tennessee, and finally, for our purposes, to the Royal Hickman Pottery in Tampa. Hickman went on to design for others, but it was at Tampa that some of his best work was done.

The other Florida potteries are similarly well covered. And the very good section on Melvin Casper -- still throwing pots after 62 years at the wheel in his Merritt Island Pottery -- tells us the original Southern pottery tradition is alive and well in Florida.

Heretofore, of largely local interest, the history and collecting of Florida pottery comes into its own with the publication of Frankel's Old Florida Pottery. (And, when, pray tell, was the last time, you had a chance to get in on solid trend, on the way up?)

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