Milwaukee’s waterfront location and its role as a regional marketplace made the city an ideal site for the large-scale production of durable and affordable salt-glazed stoneware. By the late 1850s, the largest stoneware manufacturer was Charles Hermann and Company, located along the Milwaukee River. As Hermann’s dock workers shoveled tons of clay brought by boat from Ohio and Illinois, his potters and kiln operators crafted all manner of useful wares for sale throughout the region.

As was the convention at the time, Hermann pottery typically was stamped with the company name and adorned with relatively simple cobalt blue glaze decoration, usually flowers or birds. The jug inscribed “Milwaukie 1856” commemorates the year the pottery was founded. Another jug that may have been used to hold locally made beer reads “A M not a tembrentz man mey felo” or, read phonetically, “I am not a temperance man, my fellow.” This humorous inscription plays on a widely published comment by Abraham Lincoln on the subject of the temperance movement: “I am not a temperance man, but I am temperate to this extent—I don’t drink.”

Find more Wisconsin stoneware in the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, including works from the Hermann pottery and other Milwaukee producers as well as examples from the Bachelder pottery of Menasha and the Gunther pottery of Sheboyga here.

“An army of men was employed to model jugs and jars on revolving discs operated by foot power…The raw clay was brought in schooners from an Ohio port. These schooners brought their cargoes up to the nearby river dock. By means of shovels and wheelbarrows, the clay was transported from the vessel to the pottery.

The pottery personnel proved as interesting as was the industry itself. The potters were German, who hailed from various parts of Germany. There were Pomeranians and Mecklenburgers from the North, Bavarians, Badensers, and Swabians from the South.

When the kilns were in operation the heavens were crimson with the glow of fire. There was something inspiring about these night scenes. They noted that the potters were at work, which meant more pots and jugs for domestic use.”

—Excerpt, “Memoirs of William George Bruce,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 16:4 (1933).