Weller Claywood and Skimmia foremanii

In this pots and plants series entry, we have a two small Weller Claywood pots with Skimmia foremanii looking very festive with its red berries.

Weller Pottery (1872 - 1948) of Zanesville, Ohio was a prolific pottery company that created pieces ranging from high-end art ware to functional commercial ware. 1910 generally marks the beginning of Weller's middle period, and the pottery's chief designer at this time was Austrian native Rudolph Lorber, who created some of Weller's most recognized lines, among them Claywood. Introduced circa 1910, Claywood, along with the related Burntwood line, features naturalistic design motifs primarily of flora and fauna, with the scenes divided into panels on the Claywood line. The Weller Claywood pieces shown here are smaller pieces, less than four inches high. For examples of more Weller Claywood pottery see the images from the 2001 Wisconsin Pottery Association and Show & Sale feature Weller Pottery.

Featured with the Weller pieces is Skimmia foremanii. Skimmia is a genus of a few evergreen shrubs and small trees in the Rutaceae (citrus) family. S. foremanii has been in our yard for about ten or more years. It isn’t watered but by natural sources and is in a shady location. The leaves are smallish and slightly waxy. The bright holly-like berries appear in the late Fall. We find sprigs (with berries) of the Skimmia scattered around our yard. Some animal or bird snips the end off and drags the berries off but occasionally leaves them for us to find. In our notes we recorded that we purchased both a male and female so we get the berries, but currently, the two look like one plant. S. foremanii is a dwarf.

The genus name Skimmia comes from a Latinization of part of the Japanese name for Skimmia japonica. The species name foremanii is named after one Mr. Foreman of Dalkreith, Scotland sometime in the late 1800s. Mr. Foreman exhibited the S. foremanii (a hybrid between S. japonica and S. reevesiana) in 1881 in Edinburgh. More details can be found in Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, Volume III, April, 1922, Number 4. The journal entry is titled:
New Species, Varieties and Combinations from the Herbarium and the Collections of the Arnold Arboretum, by Alfred Rehder. The article is on page 211.


In the mantle photo,the painting in the center is Padre e figlio (1997) by Alessandro Gambetti, an Italian artist. To the left is a piece by AJ Power, a Seattle artist.