River Hopping 2017:
Fraunfelter

Above, a panorama of the field overlooking Hartstone. And below, part of the Hartstone facility. The hill where Fraunfelter was located is directly behind this building.

More than anything, we found clusters of broken molds in the field, plus tiles, kiln furniture, and a few shards of restaurant ware-weight china.

Carolyn, owner of the Etsy shop ShabbyMonkey was gracious enough to let us use her photo of the beautiful Fraunfelter coffee pot, below, that seems to be a match in terms of shape and color for the shard we found, above.

Above, an ad in the September 1927 Zanesville Signal touted Fraunfelter's Good Houskeeping-approved Kook-In China, an extremely heavy line of bakeware with pale gray band and dark green lines and delicate ornaments in the same green placed around each piece. Below, a custard cup photo from the Kook-In China line. Pat from CocosRoom, an Etsy shop, graciously allowed use of her photo. Below that is a pie plate and its backstamp, also from the Kook-In China line.

Above, a Google map of the site, which is on a hill behind Hartstone Pottery and in between Dearborn and Owens streets. Latitude and longitude: 39.928318, -82.030914. Zanesville is located east of Columbus, Ohio.

Panorama of the spillway and bridge on the Muskingum River in Zanesville.

We found an old reference to Fraunfelter China having been located on Dearborn Street in Zanesville, Ohio. We noticed that Hartstone Pottery, which has been in business for many years making high quality hand-painted stoneware, is also located on Dearborn Street, so we gave them a call for help.

It turns out that Fraunfelter was located on a hill at the rear of the Hartstone property, so except for taking a detour around a bridge that was out, it wasn't too hard to find.

Once we were on the hill, which is a wide, grassy field about on eye level with the third story of Hartstone, it wasn't so obvious that we were in the right place. We found a lot of shards, but mostly in the form of tiles and molds.

There was a potter, J. B. Owens, who had his business in the Hartstone building from 1902 to 1907, and apparently he also made tiles, so many of the shards we found could have been his.

But there's one dark teal shard that seems like a perfect match for a known Fraunfelter coffee pot, shown at lower right underneath the shard.

Zanesville is a beautiful little town with bridges that caught our imagination, and it seems to be the epicenter of the Ohio pottery tradition. Sadly, it was also the last stop on this year's trip.

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