From: Gary Tefft / locustent@aol.com
Location: Menomonee Falls, WI
Date: 02 Jul 1999
Time: 23:34:03
No Dale, Red Wing did not decorate all of their jugs with a wing. The answer to your second question is not however, found in the answer to the first.
It is hard to imagine that there were once many makers of stoneware pottery across the nation. Their wares all looked pretty much the same, at least on a basic level. If you study enough examples you begin to notice subtle differences, but can these be used to reliably identify them by maker? Because there were once so many, how would you be able to say with certainty that all of the pieces having a certain type of rim or a distinctively shaped curve at the neck had been made exclusively by one company? To do so represents inductive, rather than deductive reasoning and is, therefore unprovable by logic alone. It's like reasoning that since Tommy is tall and Tommy is a boy; therefore, all boys named Tommy are tall. You might never have met a boy named Tommy who was not tall, but that doesn't prove that they don't exist.
It was 1909 before Red Wing began putting wings on their ware. When pottery making was taken up there, in the 1870's, the pieces were not glazed in the familiar white-glaze at all. Small jars and jugs were glazed a deep brown using a dark-firing, natural clay from Albany, New York. The surface of larger pieces was sealed by a transparent glaze created by interaction of the clay with vapors of common rock salt introduced into the kiln heat. On pieces of 2-gallon and larger sizes, decorations were drawn by hand in dark blue and fired in place under the salt-glaze. Leaves, butterflies, flowers or graceful, geometric swirles were the most popular styles.
Beginning at the turn of the century the salt-glazing was replaced by white-glaze and the decorations were applied by rubber-stamp. The first decorations were two different styles of leaf, one tapered, the other broad and out-turned; either applied in blue or in black. The red wings which began us in 1909 continued until stoneware was no longer made in Red Wing in 1947.
During all of these periods there were many, many pieces produced without any decoration or written identification. While it can be said with confidence that no company outside of Red Wing ever decorated using red wings, it is known that the Fort Dodge Stoneware Co. of Fort Dodge, Iowa made ware using the tapered, rubber stamp applied leaves during a brief period when they were owned by the Red Wing firm. While there are subtle clues to identify which ones were produced in Fort Dodge, vs. Red Wing, the clues are sometimes frusratingly subtle in hte case of pieces without identification by decoration or company name.
-Gary-