Churn

Creator

Gunther, Theodore, 1826-1885

Date

• 1866-1885

Summary

• Stoneware churn, Theodore Gunther, Sheboygan, 1866-1885. Slightly ovoid gray-bodied salt-glazed stoneware butter churn with tall straight-sided collar. Incised line encircles body at the level of the two applied lug handles. Bulb-shaped turned lid glazed in dark brown slip. Interior coated with dark brown slip.
• Maker's mark impressed in oval: "Th. Gunther/ Sheboygan" and impressed six-gallon capacity mark
• In 1855, potter Theodore Gunther left the Alsace-Lorraine region of France for the United States. He worked as a potter in Detroit and Milwaukee until settling permanently in Sheboygan, Wisconsin in 1863, where he opened the Eastern Stoneware Factory in partnership with local potter Peter Berns. An 1863 announcement of the new pottery works in the Evergreen City Times, a local newspaper, states that "the oven or kiln in which the ware is baked and glazed, and which not a little resembles some ancient fort or tower, is up and enclosed in a large building at the rear of the lot, and an apartment for grinding the clay has been constructed in the cellar of the building in front, so that it can be used in the winter as well as summer." Gunther and Berns produced stoneware churns, crocks, jugs and bottles using clay imported from New Jersey and Illinois. In 1866, Gunther bought out Berns' share of the company for $1,000. The pottery closed following Gunther's death in 1885.