Bennington Potters: The First 25 Years, 1948-1973

CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON VERMONT | April 11, 2001

In July 1948, three years after World War II, Gloria and David Gil drove into Bennington to purchase a small, short-lived pottery, formerly a horse barn, for a studio-factory site that would become a production pottery and a design cooperative known as Bennington Potters. The arts and crafts, business, and political community and life in Bennington were very different from what they are today 53 years later. To help capture that period, Gloria Gil decided to write a book about the history of that pottery and the world in which it operated. Her "memory" of these first 25 years of the pottery covers its transition from a small, visionary design undertaking to a successful production factory with a worldwide reputation that has served as an incubator for at least five other designer art potteries. She has interviewed many past and some present employees of the Potters. With a grant from the Vermont Folklife Center, she has collected the interviews on tape as oral histories. These additional recollections provide each period of pottery operation with texture and depth.

http://uvm.edu/~crvt
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http://www.benningtonpotters.com/