A Potter's Progress: Emanuel Suter and the Business of Craft

Born into a traditional culture in 1833, Emanuel Suter cultivated the art of pottery and expanded markets across the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, creating a thriving company and leaving thousands of examples of utilitarian ceramic ware that have survived down to the present. Drawing on Suter’s diary—rich with meticulous descriptions of his ceramic wares, along with glazing recipes and the quotidian details of nineteenth-century business—as well as myriad other primary and secondary source...