The Hall China Company
Encyclopedia
Founding
The Hall China Company was founded by Robert Hall in East Liverpool, OhioEast Liverpool, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 13,089 people, 5,261 households, and 3,424 families residing in the city. The population density was 3,010.3 people per square mile . There were 5,743 housing units at an average density of 1,320.8 per square mile...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in August 1903 following the dissolution of the two-year old East Liverpool Potteries Company. He began making dinnerware and toilet seats, but soon found that institutional ware such as bedpans, chamber pot
Chamber pot
A chamber pot is a bowl-shaped container with a handle, and often a lid, kept in the bedroom under a bed or in the cabinet of a nightstand and...
s and pitchers was more profitable.
New glaze process
Robert Hall died just a year after launching the company. One of his eight children, Robert Taggart HallRobert Taggart Hall
Robert Taggart Hall was owner and sometime-president of The Hall China Company in East Liverpool, Ohio.-Single-fire in China:...
, took over the company and almost immediately began developments to introduce the single-fire process, which had first been used centuries earlier by Chinese potters
Pottery
Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...
during their Ming Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
(1368-1644). His dream was to change from the two-firing manufacturing method; one firing to harden the ware and a second firing to set the glaze to the ware. With the help of staff chemists and ceramic engineers, Hall experimented from 1904 until 1911, when he and his staff came up with a glaze recipe that worked. The new process fused together the white body, color and glaze when it was fired at a temperature of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
The new glazes allowed the creation of brilliant colors never before seen on American china. Hall china expert Harvey Duke lists no fewer than 47 colors developed for the new process, which allowed for rapid expansion of the company and its product selections at the onset of World War I. After tepid sales of its new housewares lines in the 1910s, the company tried designing and selling decorated teapots. Hall China became the largest producer of these products in the world. The teapot business was so successful that the company decided to expand it from the original three designs to a plethora of new shapes and colors. In the 1940s the teapot business began to dwindle. By the 1960s, probably due to the increased preference for coffee by the buying public, teapot sales had fallen to insignificance.
Jewel Tea Company association
In the mid-1920s, the directors of Hall China made a decision to associate with the Jewel Tea Company to produce an exclusive line of dinnerware for them. Jewel started using Hall teapots as premiums, and then expanded the promotion to include its own line of distinctive dinnerware and kitchenware. New pieces were introduced by Hall China for Jewel until 1980.
Other products
In the 1930s, refrigerators became more common and so, a new market was created: refrigerator-ware. Hall produced china pieces for all of the major manufacturers, including Hotpoint, General Electric, Westinghouse and Montgomery Ward. Pieces produced were pitchers, covered or not, china boxes for leftovers, butter and cheese dishes. The Hall pieces either came with the appliance or were offered as accessories to be purchased later.During the mid-20th century, Hall China produced a number of renowned designs including the Ball and Donut
DONUT
DONUT was an experiment at Fermilab dedicated to the search for tau neutrino interactions. Even though the detector operated only during a few months in the summer of 1997, it was largely successful. By detecting the tau neutrino, it confirmed the existence of the last lepton predicted by the...
jugs and the Nautilus
Nautilus
Nautilus is the common name of marine creatures of cephalopod family Nautilidae, the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina. It comprises six living species in two genera, the type of which is the genus Nautilus...
, Donut and Aladdin
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
teapots.
Hall China attracted talented designers, with examples being Eva Zeisel
Eva Zeisel
Eva Striker Zeisel is a Hungarian-born industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Her forms are often abstractions of the natural world and human relationships...
's popular "Century" dinnerware design and Donald Schreckengost's cookie jars shaped like owls, casserole dishes shaped like ducks, and teapots shaped like Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
and Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
.
Manufacture process
The manufacture of Hall China begins with a mixture of quartzQuartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
, feldspar
Feldspar
Feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals which make up as much as 60% of the Earth's crust....
and several different clay
Clay
Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...
s. These ingredients are mixed together with water to form a slip. The filtered slip is then pumped into presses to remove the water and leaving filter cakes.
The cakes are processed through a pug to remove air, before shaped by jiggering or jolleying to produce plates and bowls. For items such as teapots, the cakes have water added to them and the resulting slip is poured into smould and moved through the glazing and firing processes. When completed, the pieces are decorated by hand-painting, decals or printing.
Current status
Hall China continues in production today. The company has re-issued many of its earlier designs, including some which had previously been considered rare, such as the Airflow and Rhythm teapots, the Donut and Streamline jugs, and some of the water servers from the refrigerator-ware lines. To allay concerns from collectors, the re-issued products are marked differently and use different colors.Hall China celebrated its 100th birthday in 2003 with the publication of A Centennial History of the Hall China Company by Catherine S. Vodrey.
