made and sold in exchange for general merchandise. After several changes in the firm name, the business descended to the present proprietor in 1865, and five years later was transferred to its present location, where it is said that more flower-pots are produced than at any other factory in the world. Here also are made the usual line of fancy garden terra-cotta and a large variety of art pottery for decorators.
Toward the latter part of the last century potteries for the manufacture of earthen and stone ware had become numerous throughout the States. During the Revolutionary period considerable china was imported from India, Holland, and England for the use of the wealthier citizens, but pewter utensils were also much in vogue. The common people used earthenware, generally red pottery, on which the first attempts at decoration were made with yellow slip. Dishes and flower-pots, with pie-crust edge and rude floral designs or dates, were common (see Fig. 17).
Before the beginning of the present century several stone-ware and earthenware potteries were started in Connecticut. In 1791 John Curtis was making a good quality of pottery in Philadelphia from clay obtained where the brewery now stands at Tenth and Filbert Streets, and his name is found in the directory as late as 1811 in the same business. In the former year Andrew Miller also made earthenware in the same town, and continued the business until 1810, when it passed into the hands of Abraham and Andrew Miller, Jr., who carried on the business jointly for about six years. In 1824 Abraham Miller displayed, at the first annual exhibition of the Franklin Institute, "red and black glazed tea-pots, coffee-pots, and other articles of the same description. Also a sample of platinated or lustre pitchers, with a specimen of porcelain and white ware, all of which exhibited a growing improvement in the manufacture, both in the quality and form of the articles." Quoting from the report of the committee: "It is but a few years since we were under the necessity of importing a considerable proportion of this description of ware for home consumption, but since our potters have attained the art of making it equal, if not superior, to the imported, and as cheap, they have entirely excluded the foreign ware from the American market." Miller continued to manufacture a fine grade of earthenware, such as plates, vases, and ornamental flower-pots, until 1858, but we can not discover that he carried the manufacture of porcelain beyond some successful experiments.
John and William Norton established a pottery in Bennington, Vt., in 1793, for the production of red ware, which was discontinued about 1800, when the manufacture of stone-ware was substituted. This ware has been made continuously ever since, the business being now carried on by Messrs. Thatcher and Nor-
