Van Briggle, Artus, History, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Colorado Donated by Sundee Maynez Dec 21, 1999 Transcribed from the Colorado Springs Gazette Sunday December 12, 1999. Used with Permission The legacy of Artus Van Briggle When Artus van Briggle arrived in Colorado Springs exactly one hundred years ago this year, ill with tuberculosis, he already became a well-known designer at Cincinnati's famous Rookwood pottery. He incorporated art-nouveau designs in his work, giving it international look even as the colors of his glazes provided a distinctly Southwestern tinge. And - most importantly-he rediscovered the Chinese matte, or "dead" glaze, the formula for which had been lost for some 400 years. For this reason, Van Briggle's pottery created something of a sensation, winning awards at the Paris salon of 1903 and the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. But it's not easy to get a sense of the man whom - more than anyone else - first put Colorado Springs on the international arts map. More question marks than exclamation points record his life. What was behind his seven-year engagement with Anne Gregory before their marriage? What direction would his designs have taken had he lived longer life? His death mask at the pioneers Museum shows a face with refined, almost equine features. The few surviving photographs reveal an intense man, for whom pottery was a passion. "You have to keep in mind he came here because he had tuberculosis", says the Pioneers Museum's Matt Mayberry. "But there he was, traveling all over the countryside looking for mineral deposits." Perhaps the most touching peek into Van Briggle's mind is another piece at the Pioneers Museum: a cast made shortly after Artus and Anne's 1902 wedding. Van Briggle's hand is touching Anne's arm, and Anne holds on of their vases. The mystery of Van Briggle is echoed in the company he left behind. Although it has been in business nearly continually since 1901- there may have been several closures during the Great Depression of the 1930s and near the end of World War II - a 1919 fire and a 1935 flood destroyed many of the company's records. As a result, a numerical list of Van Briggle designs contains many gaps. And it's simply not known how many of these numbers belonged to commercially available pieces and how many to experiments that never saw the light of day. Designs not seen before continue to turn, says Katie Gardner, curator at the Pioneers Museum, which controls what is probably the largest public collection of Van Briggle pottery. She sites the discoveries if Lois Crouch, a private collector who lived in Colorado Springs and who was the leading expert of Van Briggle pottery. "Up to the month she died (in 1966), Lois would say she was running across things she'd never seen before," says Gardner. Compounding the problem of sketch records is the sheer quantity of work produced-thousands, even tens of thousands, of pieces a year. Van Briggle was committed to producing work that was affordable as well as groundbreaking. His pieces weren't one-of-a- kind but were produced in molds that allowed for relatively easy duplication. "When you figure the number of basic designs, the number of glazes, and the variations of bottom markings, it's mind boggling how many possibilities there are," says Craig Stevenson, who today runs the company for his mother, owner Bertha Stevenson. This goal of making first-class designs readily available places Van Briggle in the tradition of the Arts and Crafts movement, championed in the 19th century by William Morris and John Ruskin in England. "Some of the plainer designs reflect Arts and Crafts influences," says Gardner. At the same time, says Briggle scholar Bob Morris; "the combination of art nouveau and the matte glaze was very avantgarde for its time." Stevenson says it's no coincidence that Van Briggle was interested in both the matte glaze and art nouveau. "To me, the matte glaze is more appropriate for sculptural pottery," he says. "You see the form in way that's impossible with a glossy glaze." While some of Van Briggle's styles made sense, other designs and pieces remain shrouded in mystery. For instance, it's often not known who designed what piece. According to Stevenson, Van Briggle excelled at designing human figures that emerge naturally form the vases, while Anne's specialty was symmetrical floral designs. They also collaborated on some pieces. And there were other designers at Van Briggle, such as Emma Kincaid, who designed the "Pine Cone Bowl." Then there's the famous Van Briggle tile. Judging from today's real estate advertisements, hundreds of homes in Colorado Springs' Old North End have a Van Briggle fireplace. But that probably is not so, says Gardner. "They made tile only from 1904 until around 1920" she says, "so if your house is older than that, its probably not Van Briggle unless it was renovated during that period. The reality is that tons of late Victorian houses have tile fireplaces, and they're usually not Van Briggle. Crouch, the leading Van Briggle researcher, concluded that there may be as few as 25 Van Briggle fireplaces in Colorado Springs. But there are hundreds of what Morris calls "Van Briggle- style" fireplaces and many that contain a few van Briggle ornamental tiles. "If you have a real Van Briggle fireplace, you're sitting on a gold mine" says Stevenson. Perhaps the finest Van Briggle fireplace is in the Pioneers Museum; it came form a house at 1208 N. Corona St. The fireplace is the gem in the Pioneers Museum's collection, but it's only one of an unusually high number of first-class pieces. The many high-quality works stem form the collection's foundation that Van Briggle created for the 1904 World's Fair. That collection was given to the Pioneers Association that year by the El Paso County Commissioners. "These remain the most perfect pieces," says Gardner. "They were the best to start with, and nobody ever put flowers in them." In this best work likes the key to the Van Briggle mystery. After all, what makes a mystery mysterious isn't the fact that there are important gaps in our knowledge of it - that's true of just about everything. It is the elegant presence of something that makes us want to fill those gaps. And with Van Briggle pottery, our sense of mystery stems from the enduring grace of Van Briggle's art nouveau designs and the depth of color in the glazes he invented. These techniques raise the works above the level of quaint knick-knacks, making Van Briggle himself more than a pale ghost from Colorado Springs' past. TIME LINE * 1868 (July 11): Anne Lawrence Gregory is born in Plattsburg, N.Y. * 1869 (March 21): Artus Van Briggle is born in felicity, Ohio. * 1886: Van Briggle moves to Cincinnati, where he becomes an apprentice at Avon pottery and later achieves renown as a designer for Rookwood Pottery. * 1887-88: Midland Terminal Railroad house, the current home of Van Briggle Pottery is built. * 1893: Rookwood sends Van Briggle to Paris to study art with Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. He focuses on the dead (matte) glazes, especially the Ming glaze. * 1894: Artus and Anne meet in Paris. They're engaged sometime in 1895. * 1896: Artus and Anne return to the United States. * 1899 (spring): Artus moves to Colorado Springs, apparently suffering from tuberculosis. He searches the State for deposits of kaolin and feldspar necessary for pottery, and finds clays from Golden and the canyons west of Garden of the Gods. * 1900: First exhibit of Van Briggle's dead glaze in Paris. Anne arrives in Colorado Springs and takes a position at the high school. They establish a workshop at 615-617 N. Nevada Ave. * 1901 (Dec. 6) First public display of Van Briggle pottery in Colorado Springs. The entire display of 300 pieces is sold. * 1902: Van Briggle Pottery Company founded. * 1902: (June 12) Artus and Anne are married. * 1904: (July 4) Artus dies. * 1908: Anne marries mining engineer Etienne Ritter on July 14. The plant relocates at the corner of Uintah and Glen streets, on land donated by William Jackson Palmer. The Memorial Pottery building formally opens Dec. 3. * 1910: The financially troubled company is reorganized as the Van Briggle Pottery and Tile Company. * 1912: The company is leased to Edwin DeForest Curtis. Anne is no longer involved in company operations, instead concentrating on painting. * 1913-1915: The company is sold three times during this period. * 1919 (June 25): Fire destroys the central building's interior. * 1920: The company is sold to I.F. and J.H. Lewis, who own it until 1969. * 1929 (Nov 15): Anne Ritter dies. * 1935 (May 30): Many company records (including the formula for the Mountain Craig glaze) and molds (including Artus' toast cup/chalice) are destroyed in Colorado Springs' most devastating flood. * 1943-45: The company apparently was closed. * 1953: Believing that Interstate 25 will be routed through the Uintah Street plant, the company purchases the Midland Terminal Railroad Roundhouse. Operations begin at the roundhouse in 1955. * 1968: Memorial Pottery building is sold to Colorado College. * 1969: Kenneth Stevenson, who began work with the company as a bookkeeper in 1955, becomes principle owner. * 1990 (Nov 9): Kenneth Stevenson dies. Today, the company is run by his son, Craig, and his widow, Bertha. =================================================== Contributed for use by the USGenWeb Archive Project (http://www.usgenweb.org) and by the COGenWeb Archive Project USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access.