Left and center: Weller Claywood vases with spider plants. Right: The location of Zanesville, Ohio 300 million years ago.
We are at that point in our lives where we’ve regressed to the plants of our childhood, simple plants that can be grown in water for indefinite periods of time – as these spider plants can. They don’t complain too badly if you forget to water them. These Chlorophytum comosum are in glass jars inside the Weller vases.
Weller Pottery was founded by Samuel Augustus Weller in the 1870s in Ohio. The company mass-produced art pottery until about 1920, and producing commercial lines until the pottery closed in 1948. The Claywood line was one of Weller Pottery's well-known decorative series, which appeared around 1910.
Side note: We always wondered why Ohio was a center of American pottery, and particularly Zanesville. The area has important deposits of clay and developed into an important transportation hub thanks to first the rivers and then the railroads passing through. In addition, the country was rapidly modernizing at the end of the 19th century and there was an increased demand for utilitarian and decorative ceramics.
A fourth point for a smile on our faces: the clay that went into these pots came from the deposits laid down during the Pensylvannian period (roughly 318 to 299 million years ago)! At that time, Ohio was part of a flat coast plain with extensive swamps and floodplains. Check out the location of Ohio in this map of the USA 300 million years ago.
Other posts on Weller: Weller Claywood and Skimmia foremanii, Weller Clinton Ivory, Peters and Reed Moss Aztec Vases and Dryopteris, Weller Pearl and Lavandula stoechas Dried Flower Spikes, and Weller Louwelsa Vase with Rudbeckia nitida.
Weller Claywood vases with spider plants.
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