Modern Before its Time
TECO ART POTTERY
By Sharon S. Darling
Modern art arrived in America as an import by way of the 1913 New York Armory Show, according to traditional art historical thinking. Officially known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, the controversial show, which included such works as Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, was the first large exhibition of mostly European avant-garde Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist works to be seen in the United States (some American artists were also included). Yet the brilliant explorations of pure form in Teco pottery, produced by the Gates Potteries of Terra Cotta, Illinois, were completed primarily between 1900 and 1905, a full decade before the abstractionist movement surfaced in Europe. In quality and boldness of design, Teco’s abstract geometries and architectonic forms were without contemporary parallel.

Appropriately, Teco pottery sprang from Chicago, the birthplace of the most modern building form: the skyscraper. By 1900, the city’s skyline was dominated by tall commercial buildings whose iron or steel frames were sheathed with tiles of terra cotta (Latin for “burnt earth”). After being rediscovered in the 1870s for its fireproofing qualities, terra cotta was favored by architects for its economy and plasticity, affording opportunities for expression and enduring color possessed by no other material.
Two local firms manufactured architectural terra cotta for Chicago’s first skyscrapers: Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, on the city’s north side, and American Terra Cotta & Ceramic Company. Founded in 1881 and operated for 85 years in the little town of Terra Cotta near Chicago, American Terra Cotta & Ceramic Company fabricated architectural terra cotta 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 Sullivan and most buildings by Purcell & Elmslie.

American Terra Cotta & Ceramic Company’s rural plant was a complex of structures housing draftsmen, sculptors, chemists, mold-makers and decorators, as well as special departments devoted to the preparation, pressing, drying and firing of the clay. By 1897, the firm was producing garden pottery, including huge vases, each seven feet tall and weighing a thousand pounds, that had been designed, formed, glazed and fired by the company’s entrepreneurial owner, William Day Gates. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125