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Show expanded into the wholesale business, sending drummers to all parts of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Nevada. By 1887 he could boast that his business, which had started with a few dollars, was now worth over $100,000 and was "the Largest Furniture Business between Omaha and Calafornia [sic]."22 Manufacturing was eventually discontinued, but the excellent traditions of the Dinwoodey Furniture Company have been maintained through the years by the founder's sons and grandsons. The experience of the pioneer furniture makers was shared by nearly all other craftsmen, including the potters. At first there was a great demand for their utilitarian wares. But they soon discovered that manufacturing pottery in Utah was fraught with problems. Potters from England's Staffordshire factories were put in charge of the Church-sponsored Deseret Pottery, begun in 1850 to supply the Saints with much-needed food containers and kitchen wares. In 1851 Brigham Young confidently announced that "The Deseret Pottery is in successful operation. . . . It is anticipated that the Valley materials for making crockery and china ware, will be equal to any other place; and that the Pottery will soon be able to supply this market."23 However, Alfred Cordon, superintendent of the pottery, explained in a letter to the Deseret News, "There are many obstacles yet to be surmounted before the potting business can be made profitable."24 Apparently the obstacles were not so easily surmounted, for by 1856 Cordon had given up potting and moved to Box Elder County, where he owned a blacksmith shop and served as bishop.25 Another English potter, John Eardley, offered some insight into the difficulties and eventual failure of the early venture: What was the matter? Those men might have been experts in England, but when they came to this Territory they found everything changed and much different from what they were accustomed to in England. They found the clay they had to use was overpowered with alkali, and the glazes they were using to glaze pots in England would not touch the ware they made here.26 Before Eardley immigrated to Utah in I860, he worked in potteries in Ohio, New Jersey, and Massachusetts and learned to adapt his skills to varying conditions. The pottery which he and his brothers, James and Bedson, established in Salt Lake City thrived for several decades (Fig. 78). Eventually, however, glass jars, metal wares, and imported crockery took the place of locally made pottery on kitchen shelves; and by the early 1880s the Eardley brothers' pottery closed. James bought a small grocery store and Bedson's sons sought occupations in the emerging field of electricity. John Eardley continued to make pottery in southern Utah, where he had been 76 Fig. 75 Table. Fillmore. John Powell. Pine with inlaid checkerboard top. 1890. H: 65 cm. W:65 cm. D: 52.5 cm. Collection of DUP, Territorial Statehouse, Fillmore. In his journal for January and March of 1896, Fillmore cabinetmaker John Powell recorded that his production had slowed down but that he was making a few things including checker tables. The checkerboard top is inlaid quite simply and the turned legs and scrolled apron suggest pioneer design, although the table base is finished with the heavy mahoganized varnish used at the end of the century (John Powell Journal, manuscript, private collection of Mrs. David L. Beardshall, Salt Lake City, p. 191). |
