Kilns and Clay: Trenton's Pottery Empire

For roughly a century beginning in the eighteen fifties, Trenton was the pottery capital of the United States. The English called their industrial ceramics district Staffordshire. Americans called Trenton the Staffordshire of America, and the comparison was not flattery, it was geography.

Trenton had what potters needed. Clay deposits of the right kind were accessible nearby. Coal arrived by canal and railroad to fuel the kilns. Skilled immigrant workers from England and Germany brought the craft knowledge of their home potteries with them. By the late nineteenth century, dozens of kiln operations ran along Trenton's streets, producing everything from plumbing fixtures to decorative tableware.

One operation became internationally famous. In eighteen eighty-nine, a young craftsman named Walter Scott Lenox founded what he called the Ceramic Art Company. Lenox had spent years studying porcelain technique, including methods used in continental Europe, and he believed American craftsmen could match the finest European work.

He was right. In nineteen eighteen, the Lenox company produced a set of White House china for President Woodrow Wilson, seventeen hundred pieces, the first presidential service made entirely from American porcelain. It cost sixteen thousand dollars. Previously, every White House china service had come from Europe. Lenox subsequently produced china for five more presidents, including Roosevelt in nineteen thirty-four and Truman in nineteen fifty-two.

The broader Trenton pottery industry peaked around nineteen hundred and faded through the middle of the century as cheap foreign imports and changing tastes undercut domestic production. The kilns went dark, one by one. Lenox survived by moving upmarket and is still in business today.