Edwin Bennett (potter)
Edwin Bennett (March 6, 1818 – June 13, 1908), born in Newhall, Derbyshire, was an English American pioneer of the pottery industry and art in the United States, and founder of the Edwin Bennett Pottery Company of Baltimore, Maryland. Producing a variety of wares from the everyday to the fine and artistic, his company, originally founded in the 1840s as the Edwin Bennett Queensware Manufactory, continued in operation until forced to close during the Great Depression in 1936. Examples of Edwin Bennett pottery may be found in museums across the United States, including the Maryland Historical Society, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of American History, as well as in private collections. Life Edwin and his brothers, the children of Martha Webster and Daniel Bennett, a local Derbyshire coal company bookkeeper and Methodist preacher, apprenticed at the Staffordshire Potteries approximately from where the family lived in the Central Midlands. Arriving to the United States in 1841 Edwin, described in the sources as someone of robust constitution, first worked with his brothers James, William and Daniel in East Liverpool, Ohio, where James had recently founded the pottery industry. Soon the brothers relocated to Pittsburgh to produce their wares, after which Edwin moved to Baltimore independently in 1846 and founded his own pottery with his own designs, the business growing to multiple kilns in little time. He became a citizen of the United States in 1848, in which year he was also joined by his brother William and the new partnership named E & W Bennett. They soon added new lines in coloured stonewares and majolica, and Edwin together with his brother William have ever since been considered the first creators and originators of American majolica. Although William Ellis Tucker was the first to produce American porcelain for the American market, there have been claims that among the Bennetts' accomplishments was the first "industrial" production of porcelain in America in 1853, a line of jugs of biscuit porcelain or Parian. While it is uncertain if this is accurate or if somehow so if any of these survive, or any of those from when porcelain was produced again (or for the first time) in the 70s, examples from Bennett porcelain lines from the 1880s do, both parian and also featuring gilt, glazing and colored decoration. The acquisition of the Chesapeake Pottery increased the artistic offerings for a year of that decade before all porcelain production at both factories was ceased in 1888 due to unprofitability, even though very fine quality of different types had been reached, including the equivalent of Belleek at the Bennett factory. Perhaps as notably, the Bennetts produced exceptional Rockingham-style ware, including the famous "Rebekah at the Well" teapot, modeled by Charles Coxon in Baltimore following Edwin's inspiration. It became the best and longest selling Rockingham-style ware pattern in history. Based on the special glazing of yellow ware, at the production of which the Bennetts also excelled, their own Rockingham-style ware, even