The Potteries of Trenton Society in partnership with the New Jersey State Museum and the Trenton Museum Society is pleased to present the 2013 Trenton Ceramics Symposium. This year’s Trenton ceramics symposium will explore the nature and potential of the Trenton Potteries Database. The Symposium is scheduled for Saturday, April 13, in the Auditorium of the New Jersey State Museum on West State Street, Trenton.
The Potteries of Trenton Society (POTS), in association with the New Jersey State Museum and Trenton Museum Society, is pleased to announce the 2013 Trenton Ceramics Symposium, which will explore the nature and potential of the Trenton Potteries Database. The Symposium is scheduled for Saturday, April 13, in the Auditorium of the New Jersey State Museum on West State Street, Trenton.
POTS was founded in 1999 as a group effort to support and steward the Trenton Potteries Database, which is a digital compilation of basic information about Trenton’s potteries that was created as part of an agreement between the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office and the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) to offset the impacts of a couple of NJDOT projects on Trenton pottery sites. During the ensuing years, POTS launched its website and established the annual Symposium, while improving the database and making arrangements with NJDOT to assume its stewardship. The data has formed the basis for several projects undertaken by Hunter Research staff. The current effort is to open the Database to collectors, archaeologists, and scholars through POTS’s website.
The keynote speaker will be William Gates, co-author of The East Liverpool, Ohio, Pottery District: Identification of Manufacturers and Marks (1982) and author of The City of Hills and Kilns: Life and Work in East Liverpool, Ohio (1984). Gates will discuss data collection and interpretation related to his analysis of the ceramics industry in East Liverpool, Ohio and the development of the city’s Museum of Ceramics. He will also talk about the relationship between Trenton and East Liverpool as the most important cities in the US ceramic industry.
Additional speakers include POTS President Patricia Madrigal, who will describe the inception and development of the Trenton Potteries Database; Richard Hunter, principal of Hunter Research, who will use the Database to examine the general nature of Trenton’s pottery industry, especially as it pertains to the geography of the city; and Hunter archaeologist William Liebeknecht, who will talk about the Speeler Pottery Company as a case study of the type of analysis for an individual pottery that has been achieved using the Database.
We will also hear from Judi Wells and Scott Anderson about their work of finding Trenton’s potters in the city’s cemeteries. A light breakfast will be available during registration beginning at 9 a.m., and the Symposium program will get underway at ten. A lunch buffet will be served in the State Museum’s west gallery, after which talks will resume in the afternoon. The Symposium talks end at four, and they will be followed by a reception at Ellarslie.
The Trenton Ceramics Symposium is open to the public. The registration fee is $35 if paid by April 1. Members of the Potteries of Trenton Society, the Friends of the NJ State Museum, and the Trenton Museum Society may attend for $30, if paid in advance. Everyone who pays at the door will be charged $40. Registration includes all lectures, lunch, and the Ellarslie reception. A mail-in registration form (pdf) may be downloaded and printed; or interested parties may contact POTS President Patricia Madrigal at 609-695-0122 x 100 or e-mail. POTS cannot take credit cards, but checks are welcome.