Blue Ridge (dishware)

Blue Ridge is a type of American dishware manufactured by Southern Potteries Incorporated from the 1930s until 1957. Well known in their day for their underglaze decoration and colorful patterns, Blue Ridge pieces are now popular items with collectors of antique dishware. The underglaze technique made the decorations more durable, and while basic patterns were reused consistently, the fact that each piece was hand-painted means that no two pieces are exactly alike.

Blue Ridge dishware is rooted in a pottery established in Erwin, Tennessee around 1916 at the behest of the Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Railroad and chartered as Southern Potteries Incorporated in 1920. During the late 1920s, under the guidance of Charles Foreman, Southern Potteries implemented its underglaze decoration technique, which it began stamping with "Blue Ridge Hand Painted Underglaze" and similar variations in the following decade. Blue Ridge's free-style decorations helped it stand out against competitors, most of whom used dull, decal-decorated dishes.

Although Southern Potteries eventually employed over 1,000 workers and had gained a foothold in major markets across the United States, the company was unable to overcome the onset of plastic dinnerware in the 1950s. The rise of various collectors' organizations in the 1980s helped make Blue Ridge a popular collectible item.

The Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Railroad constructed a railroad line through the mountains of northeast Tennessee in the early 1900s. In an attempt to encourage industry along this line, they sold several acres of land along what is now Ohio Avenue in Erwin to several investors for the establishment of a pottery. The kaolinite and feldspar deposits in the adjacent hills made Erwin an ideal place for the manufacture of ceramics, and the pottery plant was likely in operation by late 1916. The plant initially had seven beehive kilns— four for glaze and decorator firing, and three for bisque firing— and was surrounded by approximately forty houses for company employees.

The earliest dishware produced at the Erwin plant consisted of gold-trimmed, decal-decorated dishes stamped under the name "Clinchfield Potteries." In April 1920, the pottery was incorporated under the name "Southern Potteries, Incorporated." E.J. Owen, an associate of the Minerva, Ohio-based Owen China Company, was named the initial president of Southern Potteries, but, in 1922, the company was purchased by another Owen manager, Charles Foreman. Foreman expanded Southern Potteries in 1923, and within a few years replaced the coal-fired kilns with the newer oil-fired continuous-tunnel kilns, and introduced the underglaze painting technique. Dozens of local women were trained in the freehand painting process.

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