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The Curious Story of the Most Famous Unknown Art Pottery Company in America
Researched & Written
by
Stephen Visakay
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Illustrated
By
The Rocky Mountains Trading Post
The Hudson River Valley has a rich history of earthenware and stoneware production from the 17th to the early 20th century. It was, in fact, one of the primary pottery producing areas of the country. Natural resources were easily available; banks of red clay lay along the river, and there was timber to fuel the kilns. Wares were effortlessly distributed up and down the river and canals. This is the true and curious story of one of the most famous and yet unknown Hudson River Valley potteries.
White Cloud Farms pottery company began life in the early 20th century and lasted for almost 40 years. It was the originator and designer, in 1928, of a well-known drinking vessel produced to this day, and yet there is little information about it to be found in pottery books*, and there is not a trace of the pottery, kilns, house, or even the road that bordered the pottery. It's as if it were wiped clean from the maps, gone from history without a trace.
I have been searching for over 20 years for any word of the White Cloud Farms pottery company. I have visited local libraries, town halls, and record rooms. I have bought pottery book after pottery book and found only a sentence or two about the company. I've hired genealogy and search companies that boast "we can find anyone, we can find missing persons," hoping to find a relative of one of the owners; it was all without fruition.
Even one of the most comprehensive books on the market, Lehner's Encyclopedia of U.S. Marks on Pottery, Porcelain & Clay by Lois Lehner, lists only the potter's mark of an apple with the author's notation: "I would give a great deal to have the whole story. Information was very scarce. The listing in the 1931 and 1932 Newburgh, New York, directories was for the White Cloud Farms, fruit growers, poultry raisers, and pottery manufacturers on Rough Ride Road. They were not listed in directories before or after those two years." (There is apparently an error in the Newburgh listing. The house was at the intersection of Ridge and Thew Roads. No matter, you will not find that address on any map today either.)
It took the Internet and its long reach to unearth the story. I started to subscribe to genealogy sites, leaving pleading message after message on the bulletin boards. One day last year from one of the sites, and maybe with help from above, I was put in contact with Gene Bacher, the son of Holland Robert Bacher, president of White Cloud Farms.
All too often designers, artists, and craftsmen remain unknown and fail to receive the credit and accolades they rightly deserve and are lost to future generations. It's with the kind and generous help of Gene Bacher that this story comes to light.
White Cloud Farms
Of the hundreds of items produced by White Cloud Farms, it is most famous today for the design of a nude flapper. She's draped over the bottom of a drinking cup, arms and legs spread wide, her bottom up. The cup can't sit upright because of the rounded bottom, only upside down on the rim. If using the cup, you need to finish your drink before setting it down. Bottoms up-a double entendre.
Ask any Depression glass collector, any antiques, ceramic, or Art Deco dealer; we've all seen her, held her in our hands, and wondered about her life. Here then, for the first time, is the curious story of the most famous unknown pottery company in America and a naked flapper.
Painting By Otto Henry Bacher
The story begins a generation before her creation with one of the early Impressionists in American art, Otto Henry Bacher. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1856, Bacher had his early training in Cincinnati and then became a student in Munich, Germany, where he studied in the late 1870's. He studied at the Académie Julian in Paris with Boulanger and Lefebvre and with Frank Duveneck in Bavaria. In 1880 he traveled to Venice and formed friendships with James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Henry James. Bacher became an apprentice of and a collaborator with Whistler, who described him as one of his favorite pupils. Bacher would publish the book With Whistler in Venice in 1908. Today his paintings and etchings hang in major American museums and were included in the traveling exhibition Whistler and His Circle in Venice.
In 1885 Bacher settled in the art colony of Lawrence Park in Bronxville, New York, with his wife, the former Mary Holland of Cleveland. Mary had been a student of Otto Bacher while he was teaching at the Cleveland Academy of Art. They resided at 5 Lookout Avenue in a house designed by the architect William Bates, who also lived in Bronxville. The hilltop house, with commanding views across the village, was filled with light at almost any point in the day and with good northern light most of the day; it was perfect for Bacher's large studio.
It was a planned upscale community, a non-urban environment close to the amenities of New York City. It was geared to the artistic elite of the time: painters, sculptors, artists, authors, writers, and poets. Residents were there only by invitation of the builder, William Lawrence, and included the author Elizabeth Custer, wife of the late Indian fighter, and a few Wall Street moguls and lawyers. It was a society where friendships and connections were formed that would last a lifetime and beyond.
As an illustrator, Bacher was much sought after and did work for Scribner's, McClure's Magazine, Century, and other magazines. He was one of the founding members of the Society of Illustrators in 1901, and that same year won a prize at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
Four sons were born to Otto Henry Bacher and his wife Mary Holland between the years 1890 and 1898. They were Holland, Otto, Eugene, and Will Low. Will Low Bacher was named after one of the community residents and Otto's dear friend, the muralist Will Hicok Low. Otto Henry Bacher died in Bronxville in 1909; Will Hicok Low lived in Bronxville until his death in 1932.
In 1917 widow Mary Holland Bacher moved the family 65 miles north to bucolic Rock Tavern, New York, in Orange County. It was not much more than a mail drop. Rock Tavern is named after a pub dating back to the 1700's, a large boulder forming part of its foundation. Rock Tavern is not a town, only a hamlet of the much larger New Windsor. Census figures at the time listed a combined population of New Windsor and its three hamlets at 2984. The current population is approximately 27,000—bucolic still by any definition.
Mary purchased an apple farm, a good place away from the city for her four sons to grow up. The name White Cloud Farm reflected optimism and a new beginning. The farm comprised 125 acres, 65 planted in apples. There were Rome Beauties, Red and Golden Delicious, Red Wealthies, and McIntoshes. The farm also had all the planted produce and full complement of livestock— horses, cows, pigs, and chickens—that accompanied a self-sufficient farm. A fortuitous acquisition for the next decade with the stock market crash and ensuing depressed economy.
The four boys grew into manhood, working on the farm and going to school. Holland studied at the University of Illinois and graduated with a degree in ceramic engineering. Eugene studied agriculture at the University of Illinois, Otto Devereux studied theater in New York, while Will followed in his father's footsteps and studied art in Europe.
In the 1920's, while two brothers, Otto and Eugene, ran the apple orchards, brothers Holland and Will constructed kilns and began the pottery company. Holland, with his degree in ceramics, and Will, as artist and designer, made an exceptional team.
They produced art pottery, first in black, white, or matte green, and then in all colors. Helene Ayres, wife of Holland, joined in as decorator and hand painter. There were bird figurines, bowls, dishes, platters, dinnerware, pitchers, vases, wall pockets, face mask wall plaques, tiles, tea sets, and more. The name White Cloud Farms Inc. encompassed both orchard and pottery enterprises.
The naked flapper was born in early 1928 when White Cloud Farms produced the now famous Bottoms Up cups, designed by Will and brought to life by his brother Holland. Draped over the bottom of the upended cup, the matte green nude flapper was just the thing for the shake, rattle, and pouring late 1920's.
Original Patent Drawings
The Bachers applied for a design patent on August 23, 1928; the required sketch prudently showed only two views. She was legitimized six months later by the granting of patent number D 77,725 on February 19, 1929. The patent would be in force for the next 14 years.
White Cloud also applied to trademark the name "Bottoms Up" on September 10, 1928. It was granted February 12, 1929, and applied to the production of earthenware drinking cups in Class 30 Crockery and called for "the trademark [to be] applied to the goods by pasting thereon a label bearing the mark."
It was not long before the nude flapper cups came to the attention of the giant McKee Glass Company of Jeannette, Pennsylvania, in business since 1853 and a large producer of economical kitchenware: bowl sets, dinnerware, platters, covered refrigerator containers, and the like. Its catalog also offered crystal products and a few arty items: an art nude vase, an art nude table lamp, and pen and ink desk sets. McKee dearly loved the swell little nude flapper; she would fit right in.
It began to manufacture the spread-eagle nude flapper in a variety of colors.
Naughty art pottery by a small unknown company was one thing, but this copy by a mass-producing major manufacturer was something else. First, there was a loud outcry from the Catholic Legion of Decency, whose powers were well known to all, especially the motion picture industry. Second, McKee quickly found out it was not dealing with someone who had just fallen off the turnip truck. There was the pressing matter of an impending lawsuit for patent infringement by White Cloud Farms Inc. and its New York City attorneys.
The wealthy McKee Glass Company easily solved both problems. First, with a handsome offer that one just could not refuse, it purchased all patent and trademark rights from the Bachers. And, thinking the nude flapper was a tad risqué for national audiences and advertising campaigns, it closed up the legs of the nude flappers on future cups.
McKee commenced production in six colors, proudly stamping the patent number below the woman's closed legs. It became the perfect bridge party prize, in single boxes or in sets of four.
It seems that White Cloud Farms retained the rights to also manufacture the naked flapper with closed legs, as both designs in pottery are still found today. Later, White Cloud added a martini pitcher to the Bottoms Up line, with the stopper in the form of the top half of the naked flapper. It looks like production of this line ceased in the late 1930's.
The small pottery company, successful from the start, would stay busy for the next few decades, perhaps with a little help from old-time Bronxville connections. When Rockefeller Center was completed in New York City in 1934, it contained a permanent exhibition of decorative arts and crafts featuring White Cloud Farms products.
White Cloud also produced mosaic street signs for the New York City subway system, tiles for the American Airlines terminal in New York International Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), tiles for the reflecting pools atop the Parke-Bernet Galleries, America's largest fine arts auction house at the time, a 4' x 4' mosaic Texaco star emblem, and mosaic clock faces with the Texaco star, as well as ceramic table lamps and tile-topped end tables.
The White Cloud Farms products had a maker's mark of an apple with stem. Items that could not be marked easily, such as lamps with felt bottoms, had a gold label depicting a farm scene with trees and a white cloud.
Holland Robert Bacher, president of White Cloud Farms and called Bob by one and all, with his ceramics expertise, was especially good at glazes. Today, son Gene Bacher said that during the war years, his father recalled that "he knew something was up" (the atomic bomb as it turned out) when he could no longer obtain uranium, which he used in one of his red glazes. Unfortunately, the formula for his glazes did not survive on record.
The pottery building at White Cloud Farms burned to the ground in 1945. Like many pottery structures of the time, the timbers became dried from the intense heat of a burning kiln and were easily combustible. Rebuilt in 1947 with three large oil-burning kilns, the company continued operations until 1957. The orchards had ceased operations three years before; the trees were getting older, just as the Bacher brothers were.
In the early 1970's New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller wanted to convert the small Stewart Airport near White Cloud Farms into an international airport serving New York City and its environs. This would ease the heavy traffic at the two New York City airports, Kennedy and La Guardia, and benefit all travelers, said the governor.
Much of the local citizenry was opposed to the expansion. Some pointed out that the new modern airport with increased runways would be just 90 miles south of the state capitol in Albany and 55 miles north of the Rockefeller estate in North Tarrytown and would make traveling more convenient for the governor.
Invoking eminent domain, the state condemned approximately 8000 acres for the airport. Today, White Cloud Farms Inc. and Thew Road lie beneath a standard asphalt highway, erased and wiped clean from the maps. The airport expansion project, however, was put on hold and then killed.
Now bucolic Rock Tavern is receiving worldwide recognition from the television series American Chopper, shown on the Discovery Channel and featuring Orange County Choppers, a father and son team who build custom motorcycles.
White Cloud Farms Inc. is still the most famous unknown pottery company in America.
*You will not find a maker's mark for White Cloud Farms in 1000 Marks on America Pottery & Porcelain (L-W Books, 1995); American Art Pottery by Dick Sigafoose (Collectors Books, 1998); Kovels' New Dictionary of Marks (Crown Publishers, 1986), which has 3500 marks; or Pottery Works: Potteries of New York State's Capital District and Upper Hudson Region (Associated University Presses, 1995) by Broderick and Bouck.
VINTAGE BAR WARE
BY
STEPHEN VISAKAY
PUBLISHED BY COLLECTOR BOOKS; 2000 REPRINT EDITION 2000 - ISBN # 0891457895 - 208 PAGES ~ IN HARDCOVER.
THIS BOOK IS NOW OUT OF PRINT... BUT IS STILL AVAILABLE (SOMETIMES) RIGHT HERE ON EBAY!
Stephenss' cocktail shaker exhibition, "Shaken, Not Stirred", was featured in museums nationwide, including the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Louisiana State Museum, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
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