Dazed,
Glazed and Confused!
The Many Glazes of Gonder Ceramic
Arts
We now find ourselves at one of the most confusing and
controversial topics in the Gonder collecting world. How many times have we
have scratched our heads over the glazes created and used at Gonder? I'm
certain we all wish a nice color chart existed showing each glaze and its proper
name. Sadly, no complete list has surfaced to date. We do have information
from a few Gonder sales sheets and Bradley catalog pages. That information will
allow us to make an educated guess at a good number of glazes we see throughout
our collections.
Let's start with what we know, and through a process
of elimination we will end up with a pretty good list of glaze names and
accompanying photos. For those veteran collectors, hear me out - I think I can
reason my way through this discussion without spawning too many emails with a
subject line questioning my sanity!
As we make our way through this
large topic I will
share some general guidelines for the glazes and the lines on which they were
used. It has been my observation, that as new lines of wares were introduced,
new glazes were also released. Popular pieces from previous lines would
sometimes be re-issued in these new glazes - often with a modified mold number as mentioned earlier. However, as you will quickly see, these are only guidelines, and there will be
many exceptions!
To simplify the discussion, I have grouped the
glazes as outlined below. Note that for each glaze I will indicate its known
use on the various lines ware. It is possible that nearly any glaze could be
ordered or used on any item - Gonder routinely produced pieces by special
order. However as the sales sheets or catalogs indicate, most lines were
produced in a small subset of glazes. If a particular glaze is not known to
have been used on a line of ware, the line is noted as "not generally used on
this line". Items from those lines, if found in that glaze, should be
considered more rare and perhaps produced as special order or end of day pieces.
Click on the links below to see details for each glaze group.
