I had my monthly massage yesterday.  While I LOVE massages, I don’t like appointments.  Ha!  But they are a must for me.  My shoulders and back muscles will get so tense, which in turn give me terrible headaches.  Headaches that are so bad that I have shooting nerve pain into my head.  It has actually woken me up in the night and it’s so awful.  So I never miss.  All that to say, I decided while I was in town yesterday that I needed to go to the thrift stores.  I used to stop at the thrift stores every single time I went to town.  But, I haven’t been doing that recently because I never find anything anymore.  But, something was telling me I needed to go.  Here is a small antique haul that I found yesterday.

A Small Antique Haul

I was actually recording my entire visit to the thrift store so that I could create some content for social media. 

See this reel the moment that I found my Watt Pottery.

I had absolutely no idea that I would find four pieces to add to my Watt Apple Pottery collection. My collection started YEARS ago when we still lived at our old house in town.  A friend text me about a garage sale that was getting ready to close but they had a ton of antique pottery left.  So I hopped in the car on a Saturday afternoon to go see what they had.  Oh.. My.. Gosh. The person having the garage sale was an auctioneer who had access to lots of things people didn’t want.  I came home with a TON of things to add to all of my collections that day.  Most of his pieces were marked $5 and under.. including several Watts Apple Pottery pieces.  That day was the start of a new collection.  Ha!

For those of you who love to know prices, I paid $8.99 each.

I love the base color of the creamy gold and the apple design.  Watts Pottery made some with a flower pattern, too.  Which I have a few pieces of that, as well.  I really didn’t know any history of the Watts Apple Pattern and did a quick search to find out some fun facts.

The following information was found online:

The Watt Pottery started in 1922 in Perry County, Ohio.  It was started on the site of an old pottery factory, and remained in business from 1922 to 1965 when the factory was destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. 

At the beginning, they manufactured stoneware crocks, butter churns, preserve jars and jugs. These were marked with an eagle or an acorn stamped in blue with the size marked in a circle.  The company finally dropped the stoneware line in favor of a more modern oven ware, as the market decreased for the churns and other pottery as it was slowly going out of use.  The earliest of these oven wares were not well defined and identified.

In the late forties, the pottery was focused on the kitchen ware glazed in solid colors with patterns called moon and stars, arcs, loops and diamond and grooves. All of these names were given by collectors and not the company. 

The Markings of Watt Pottery

The items were marked in the forties “MADE IN THE U.S.A.” or “OVEN WARE” or they were marked with the bowl size.  Most pieces of Watt ware are well marked. The marks are large, often covering the entire bottom of the piece. They usually consist of one or more concentric rings deeply impressed into the bottom. The words, “Watt” and “Oven Ware U.S.A.” are impressed as well, although some pieces have only one phrase and not both. Classic Patterns often feature a script “Watt” with no circles. Most pieces also have the mold number impressed in the center, making identification easy. The pieces which were not marked are the ice bucket (all patterns), and the Apple dinner plates.  

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to find the dinner plates.

The Patterns of Watt Pottery

In 1949, the Watt Pottery began hand decorating its wares. The patterns are simple in nature, with as few brush strokes as possible to allow low production costs. Teams of three decorators designed these pieces. The bright colors against the deep cream clay give Watt Pottery its unique country appeal.  The first hand decorated patterns are called the Classic Patterns and were produced from 1949 until about 1953.

They are: Rio Rose, Moonflower, Dogwood, White Daisy, and Cross-Hatch.

The hand decorated patterns favored by today’s collectors and their introduction dates are as follows:
Starflower – 1951
Apple – 1952
Cherry – 1952
Silhouette – 1953
Rooster – 1955
Dutch Tulip – 1956
American Red Bud (Tear Drop) – 1957
Morning Glory – 1958
Autumn Foliage – 1959
Double Apple – 1959
Tulip – 1961

The last new pattern was the Kathy Kale Royal Dutch pattern introduced just before the fire in 1965 that destroyed the manufacturing plan.  Only a few pieces were manufactured and they were sold through Kroger’s.  The pottery had close to a hundred patterns and over four hundred molds during their time of producing pottery.

Have you seen Watts Pottery before? 

I bet you will now notice them when you see them as you are out and about. Some day soon, I will share my entire collection with you as I don’t think I ever have.