Teco Pottery

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Frederick Bagge, proprietors of Bagge Drugs, St. Charles, IL
Acquired from the above by a Northern Illinois dealer, circa 1985
Richard Rasnick, Madison, WI, circa 1986
David Rago Auctions, New York, November 1, 1986, lot 115
Collection of Stephen Gray, Philmont, NY
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2001

David Gebhard, "Louis Sullivan and George Grant Elmslie," The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, May, 1960, pp. 62-68
Sharon S. Darling, Teco:  Art Pottery of the Prairie School, Erie, PA, 1989, p. 165 (for the model) and pp. 29 and 46 (respectively for related models designed by Louis Sullivan and Sullivan's lead designer George Grant Elmslie)
Alan Weintraub and Alan Hess, Frank Lloyd Wright:  The Houses, New York, 2005, p. 199 (for another example of the model shown in situ in the John Storer House, Los Angeles, CA)

Teco ware was made by the Gates Potteries, a subsidiary of American Terra Cotta & Ceramic Co., one of two firms in Chicago that manufactured architectural terra cotta for the city's first skyscrapers.  Founded in 1881 and operated for 85 years in the small town of Terra Cotta, northwest of Chicago, American Terra Cotta & Ceramic Co. fabricated terra cotta facing and ornament for more than 8,000 buildings in the United States and Canada.  Among these are many of the best-known structures by architects associated with the Prairie School, including banks by Louis H. Sullivan and most buildings by Purcell & Elmslie. 

As a 1908 advertisement in The Craftsman pointed out, "Teco pottery really represents the dreams, scholarship, patience and art impulse" of William Day Gates (1852-1935), the company's entrepreneurial owner.  For many years Gates and his chemists experimented with clays and glazes, developing artistic ware that was suitable for firing alongside the architectural terra cotta produced by the parent company.  A soft matte green glaze, nicknamed "Teco Green," became the hallmark of the pottery.  The pottery's unique shapes, ranging from simple unadorned forms to complex architectonic and organic shapes, were designed by architects, designers, and artists who were friends or employees of Gates, as well as by Gates himself.  Many of those furnishing designs were architects who had trained in the offices of Louis Sullivan or William LeBaron Jenney, who were both key figures in the Chicago School of architecture.  Other designs were contributed by Gates' fellow members in the Chicago Architectural Club, an organization of draftsmen and architects, in whose exhibition Teco made its public debut in 1900.

This octagonal sand jar with classic Teco Green glaze is one of only three that have been identified.  Sand jars are large, sturdy urns designed to be filled with sand for use in extinguishing smoking materials and are typically found in the lobbies of commercial buildings, such as banks, stores, and hotels.  The foot of the sand jar was likely designed to fit within an architectural element.  Collector and local historian Richard Rasnick acquired all three sand jars from a northern Illinois dealer around 1985.   In 1986, when the present lot appeared at auction, a letter from a former owner documented that the sand jar was formerly owned in the early twentieth century by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Frederick Bagge, proprietors of Bagge Drugs located at 122 West Main Street in St. Charles, Illinois.  The other two jars are now in important private collections in Hollywood and Washington, D.C. 

Unlike other art potteries of the period, whose designs were generally derivative of traditional forms and often quite simple, the best of Teco's works are distinguished by innovative and unusual geometric and naturalistic shapes.  The hexagonal format of this sand jar is especially bold and closely connected to three Teco vases designed by Frank Lloyd Wright:  vase #329, designed for the Susan Lawrence Dana residence in Springfield, Illinois; triplicate vase #330, exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907; and vase #331 designed for Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois.

The ornamentation is reminiscent of designs by George Grant Elmslie, chief draftsman/designer for Louis Sullivan for many years and later partner with William Gray Purcell.  It echoes two basic patterns that scholar David Gehhard noted that Elmslie consistently used, namely "a richly developed three-dimensional plant-like pattern which was flowing in total character" and "a very clear, direct, and precise two-dimensional linear pattern."  Elmslie is known to have designed Teco ware for architectural commissions, including planters for the National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota (Louis Sullivan, 1907), the W. G. A. Millar house near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (1907), and the Edison Shop in Chicago (1914).  Both he and Sullivan designed a number of banks, whose interiors may have featured sand urns.

Elmslie and Sullivan both worked closely with Kristian E. Schneider, the American's chief modeler from 1909 until 1930, who was expert at executing their designs.  It is probable that the sand urn was modeled by Schneider; it may even have been designed by him as a utilitarian item suitable for the interiors of the "modern" commercial structures being built in the Midwest before the First World War.

--Sharon S. Darling, author of Teco: Art Potter of the Prairie School, Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA, 1989