Potting in Zion: Craft and industry in Utah, 1848--1930

Between 1848 and 1929, European and European-American immigrants founded more than forty-five potteries in at least twenty-six towns and cities surrounding the Great Basin region of North America. Leaving behind their native environment and economy, potters recreated their craft in an alien ecosystem and a new matrix of social relations that included technological, economic, social, and ideological issues. Centered in Utah, the industry spanned from Logan to St. George, Panguitch to Vernal, but also into Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada. The products ranged from storage jars to piggy banks, from flower pots to tea pots, from umbrella stands to chimney liners, brick and tile. They were traded and sold from the shop and through stores; by haul-wagons, peddlers, and in trade; by railroad and reciprocity. Contrary to expectation, local potteries continued to flourish for decades following the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Only the death of the artisans halted the craft, which was transformed during their lives, being reborn as both a capitalized industry and an art form.; An historical archaeology of the pottery industry in Utah will engage eclectic disciplines, including economic anthropology, cultural ecology, science-technology-society studies, the New Mormon History, and archaeological materials science. The lives of Utah's pottery makers provide compelling and important stories. The potters' lives reflect the experiences of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saint settlers throughout the Mormon culture area not because their experiences were typical, but because these craftsmen lived diverse and widely varied lives. The potters built a sociotechnical system that surpassed the simple application of technology to natural resources to manufacture ceramic artifacts because they also invented new social relationships for themselves and their wares. The potter's participation in social discourse on ideology was as important as transferring technology into the Great Basin. The potters struggled through industrialization in their profession and the steady growth of a heavily capitalized economy of scale in the cores of the ceramic industry. They met the increasing obsolescence of their technical skills within the “globalizing” Atlantic and national economy with a myriad of strategies in local situations.