Staying Alive: The Hill-Fulper-Stangl Pottery in a Changing Marketplace

The Potteries of Trenton Society in partnership with the New Jersey State Museum and the Trenton Museum Society is pleased to present Staying Alive: The Hill-Fulper-Stangl Pottery in a Changing Marketplace. This program has been organized in conjunction with an exhibit at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion, Utility & Artistry: Works of the Stangl and Fulper Potteries.

This year’s symposium will examine many chapters of the Hill-Fulper-Stangl pottery’s history, beginning with its founding by utilitarian stoneware maker Samuel Hill in the early 1800s, moving through the era of exciting forms and glazes related to the Fulper Pottery, and ending with many successful years as a dinnerware manufacturer called Stangl. Over this long period, the pottery produced an extraordinary body of work that appeals today to many types of collectors. Much has happened since the 1970s to keep this pottery in the spotlight, ranging from legal controversies to adaptation of historic glaze formulas to preservation activities to the collector’s market.

Program Schedule

9:30 a.m.
Registration and Coffee, New Jersey State Museum Auditorium

Morning Program

10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.

Fulper: An Overview

Gorden Gray, collector and scholar

Martin Stangl–New Directions at Fulper Pottery

Peter Meissner, collector and guest curator

Today’s Market for Collecting Fulper

David Rago, founder and principal of Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville

Lunch, New Jersey State Museum

1:00-2:30 p.m.

Afternoon Program

2:30-4:00 p.m.

Adaptive Reuse: Putting Family Documents to Work

Anne Fulper, one of the four Fulper sisters who created Fulper Glazes, Inc.

Industrial Monuments: Preserving New Jersey’s Potteries
through the Built Environment

Ellen Denker, Museum consultant and writer

Industrial film documenting the workings of the Fulper/Stangl Pottery
ca. 1935-37

Gordon Gray returns to introduce the showing of an historic documentary.

Reception and Viewing of “Utility & Artistry: Works of the Stangl and Fulper Potteries” at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion

4:00-5:00 p.m.

Advance registration must be received by April 5, 2010; after that date, you must register on site. We regret that we do not take credit cards; check or money order only. All advance registrations must be made via the mail; telephone registrations will not be accepted. On site registration is $40. Registration includes lunch.

The New Jersey State Museum is a division of the NJ Department of State.

Directions to the State Museum’s auditorium on West State Street are also available on the website for NJ State Museum.