* *
* *

West Virginia State Museum Carr China Collection
from the Estate of Joy Shaffer Bachman

Bachman
Bachman

Wheeler H. Bachman and Edith Carr Bachman had one son, Wheeler Carr Bachman, born in 1911. In 1947, at age 36, he married Edna Joy Shaffer (born in 1917 and known as Joy), in what has been suggested was an arranged marriage. He had been president of the company since the early Forties.

The couple was childless and seemed to have lived apart for most of their marriage, with him residing in Wheeling, and Joy in Grafton. His mother, Edith Carr Bachman, died in 1948, the year following their marriage.

Wheeler Carr Bachman died in 1975.

Joy died from Alzheimer's Disease in 2004. Many years before, she and two of her sisters approached the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston with the hope that the museum would accept pieces from her collection upon her death. An agreement was eventually reached with Jim Mitchell, the curator of the museum, and when she died the collection was transferred from her home to Charleston.

The most unusual pieces in the collection are 360 chrome-plated copper decorating cylinders from both the Carr and Warwick plants. (Carr acquired Warwick in 1951.)

Joy kept meticulous notebooks about the plant, and she also attached notes to many of the pieces that she brought home from the plant.

We visited with Mitchell in Fall 2011 and took photos of most of the china that was deeded to the museum from Joy's collection. The notes are still attached to most of the pieces, written in Joy's hand.

Photos from our visit are documented below. Where possible, we've included images large enough to be able to read Joy's notes clearly.

Scroll below the thumbnails to see a video of Mitchell talking about the museum's Carr collection and especially the decorating cylinders.



The following video was filmed during a July 5, 2011, talk by James Mitchell, curator of the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston:


Loading

 

* *