Hall China

The Hall China Company was founded by Robert Hall in East Liverpool, Ohio, United States in August 1903 following the dissolution of the two-year-old East Liverpool Potteries Company. He began making dinnerware and toilet seats, but soon found that institutional ware such as bedpans, chamber pots and pitchers was more profitable.

Robert Hall died just a year after launching the company. One of his eight children, Robert Taggart Hall, took over the company and almost immediately began developments to introduce the single-fire process, which had first been used centuries earlier by Chinese potters during their Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). His dream was to change from the two-firing manufacturing method; one firing to harden the ware and a second firing to set the glaze to the ware. With the help of staff chemists and ceramic engineers, Hall experimented from 1904 until 1911, when he and his staff came up with a glaze recipe that worked. The new process fused together the white body, color and glaze when it was fired at a temperature of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.

The new glazes allowed the creation of brilliant colors never before seen on American china. Hall china expert Harvey Duke lists no fewer than 47 colors developed for the new process, which allowed for rapid expansion of the company and its product selections at the onset of World War I. After tepid sales of its new housewares lines in the 1910s, the company tried designing and selling decorated teapots. Hall China became the largest producer of these products in the world. The teapot business was so successful that the company decided to expand it from the original three designs to a plethora of new shapes and colors. In the 1940s the teapot business began to dwindle. By the 1960s, probably due to the increased preference for coffee by the buying public, teapot sales had fallen to insignificance. Hall continues to be a prominent supplier of commercial restaurant dinnerware.

In the mid-1920s, the directors of Hall China made a decision to associate with the Jewel Tea Company to produce an exclusive line of dinnerware for them. Jewel started using Hall teapots as premiums, and then expanded the promotion to include its own line of distinctive dinnerware and kitchenware. New pieces were introduced by Hall China for Jewel until 1980.

In the 1930s, refrigerators became more common and so, a new market was created: refrigerator-ware. Hall produced china pieces for all of the major manufacturers, including Hotpoint, General Electric, Westinghouse and Montgomery Ward. Pieces produced were pitchers, covered or not, china boxes for leftovers, butter and cheese dishes. The Hall pieces either came with the appliance or were offered as accessories to be purchased later.

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Wikipedia