Some Ville Pottery History

Yesterday at the River Museum the Wellsville Historical Society presented histories of two potteries that got their starts in the ville. One is still in existence but is now located in East Liverpool and the other is Sterling China.

Sterling China got its start in 1917 when three gentlemen by the name of Charles Pomeroy, A.B. Allen & William Wells bought the building from the Patterson Brothers which sat at 12th & Commerce Streets. The Patterson Brothers manufactured yellow ware. Nick Rettos & Chris Park were both engineers at Sterling until it's recent close and gave us the story of this once thriving business. During the war years of WWII Sterling was the main supplier of dinner ware to the U.S. military. Maybe that is how I found a Sterling plate in a restaurant in Hong Kong when I was there for R&R in 1968. The place had a hodge poge of dinner ware. No two plates were the same.

Sterling's main claim to fame was their under glaze procedure on their products. They would apply an under glaze, decorate it and then apply an over glaze. I think it was a patented process. Mr. Park said Sterling had over 1,000 colors available for their decorating. Restaurant ware was their bread and butter products but over the years with constantly innovated designing they seemed to try it all.

The decade of the 1950s was their big growth years. In 1951 they opened Caribe China in Puerto Rico. In 1954 they bought Lamberton-Scamell China in New Jersey. It was also in the late '50s that they remodeled adding the then new office space and expanded the plant.

Over the years they had a huge international market sales supplying china to Canadian, Mexican, Saudi Arabian and even Russian customers to name a few. For many years they were exclusive suppliers to many hotel chains across the nation. Before their demise they were the biggest employer in the village.

Toward the end labor costs, energy costs and foreign competition forced them to close their doors. I imagine paper and plastic dinner ware added a big dent in their business too. When I was growing up we didn't have much paper and plastic available. With us kids doing the washing of the dishes we contributed to a lot of repeat business to replace the ones we cracked, chipped or broke.

In 2003 Sterling's last big customer pulled out and that sounded the death knell for that business. Lost business and lack of cash on hand forced them to shut down.

Although no longer located in the ville W.C. Bunting is still in operation. That company got started up on Highland Avenue in the basement of Delmar & Janet O'Hara. W.C. Bunting was a business man in Wellsville and was considered fatherly to Delmar. Mr. Bunting operated a confectinary that was the "in place" at one time in the ville in the early part of the 20th century.

Following his discharge from the military after WWII Delmar went to law school. After graduation he returned to the ville and hung his shingle. Being from part of the "pottery capital of the world" as a favor for his fraternity brothers he arranged to get a memento made for the fraternity. That memento was a ceramic pig. It proved so popular that a chapter of that fraternity at Ohio State wrote Delmar asking if he could get some of those pigs for them. Click the light went off and before Janet knew it she was in the pottery business. I think Terry said this was in 1946. Just being out of school Delmar didn't have the kind of credit it takes to finance a start of a business. Searching around he found that Mr. Bunting had a good rating with Dunn & Bradstreet, a commercial finance rating company. Using that reference Delmar was able to get a bank loan for his start up money. Thus the W.C. Bunting company was born and is still going strong some sixty years later.

From Highland Avenue the business was moved to 331 Main Street, the site of the old Bunting store. With continued growth the company was moved to Clark Avenue and in 1957 they doubled the plant size to 10,000 square feet. That's the building that Buckeye water is in today. The popularity of their product line kept growing and in 1963 they moved to East End to allow for additional growth.

Today W.C. Bunting is run by brothers Terry, Tim & Patrick O'Hara. All three are children of the company's founders and they grew up in that house on Highland. Bunting is strictly a decorating company and use outside suppliers for their raw product. They have a varied array of customers from different businesses, colleges, government entities to entertainers like Josh Graban to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. You can see their product line at http://www.buntingware.com/. Once you do you will recognize many of the items they produce. At present they employ about 30 people.

The pottery business, just like in East Liverpool, was a very big part of the ville's history. It goes back practically to the start of Wellsville. Over the years there were over 30 different potteries that operated here. These companies were just two of them. The Historical Society has many different samples on display in the Pottery Room at the River Museum. Stop over some Sunday afternoon and check it out.

The picture above was sent to me from Sparky Miller many moons ago. It's from an ad in the WHS 1949 yearbook and I finally found a good place to use it. Thanks Sparky and thanks to the folks at Wellsville Historical Society for sponsoring this trip down memory lane.

ole nib