Dorchester Pottery Works
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Dorchester Pottery Works was a Massachusetts stoneware manufacturer founded in 1895 by George Henderson in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Henderson founded the pottery after having worked in New Haven as manager of the S.L. Pewtress Pottery, a stoneware factory established in 1868. The Dorchester Pottery Works began as a producer of commercial stoneware used in industry and farming, and its output in the early years included acid pots and dipping baskets in demand by jewelry manufacturers, and Henderson's popular foot warmer known as a "porcelain pig." Henderson also engineered the company's massive production kiln, an enormous beehive kiln 28 feet in diameter of his own design, built in 1914 using unmortared bricks.
After George Henderson's death in 1928, Ethel and Charles Henderson assumed running of the business, and it was under their stewardship that the pottery became known for its distinctive tableware. After sales of industrial items suffered during the Great Depression, the company shifted focus to its signature blue and gray stoneware, and in 1940 the pottery's line of distinctive gray and blue tableware was introduced. Ethel Hill Henderson, a former clothing and design teacher who eventually became superintendent of the kiln, played a key creative role, and had been trained in all facets of stoneware pottery making by her father-in-law, later becoming responsible for designing most of the company's production. Decoration was also carried out by skilled craftspeople such as Nando Ricci, an Italian potter whose family had worked for George Henderson during the pottery's early years.
The company operated for roughly eight decades before closing, and the company produced earthenware pottery for eight decades until it closed in 1979. Its hand-thrown, hand-decorated stoneware—particularly pieces in the well-loved blue-on-gray motifs such as the "Blueberry" pattern—is now sought after by collectors of American folk and regional pottery, prized both for its handmade New England craftsmanship and for the company's storied, century-long history as a working industrial pottery in Boston.
Sources:
- Dorchester Pottery Works, exterior and kiln (1914), 101-105 Victory Road - Dorchester Atheneum
- Dorchester Pottery Works: Ethel Hill Henderson (1896 – 1971) - Boston Women's Heritage Trail
- Exhibits | Dorchester Historical Society
- Dorchester Potteryworks: The history of a community icon - Dorchester Reporter