There is certainly no more influential 19th century exhibition to the history of American majolica than the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. It was here, for the first time, that American ceramic manufacturers saw the potential of the innovative Victorian majolica coming from Europe. Henry Griffen of Griffen, Smith & Hill attended the show and was inspired by the English majolica shown at the exhibition. When he later became a founding member of the Etruscan Works, majolica was one of the first items included in their line of pottery. The Phoenixville pottery had another connection to the show as well. First a little background.
History
The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was a centerpiece of the United States’ celebration of the 100th anniversary of its founding. The fair was the idea of John Campbell, a professor at Wabash college in Indiana. The proposal was presented to the Philadelphia City Council in 1870 by mayor Morton McMichael who then took the idea to Congress in March of 1871. Congress approved of the idea providing that the federal government not be responsible for funding the fair. In 1872 congress agreed to form The Centennial board of Finance to raise funding for the exhibition by selling $10 bonds.
The goal was to raise $10,000,000 for the fair but funding ran short. In early 1876 the government loaned the United States Centennial Commission $1.5 million to finalize construction on the chosen grounds, 450 acres in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, one of the largest city parks in the U.S..
The were five main structures built on the grounds to accommodate the 200 exhibitors: Memorial Hall, Agriculture Hall, Exhibition Hall, Horticultural Hall, and Machinery Hall. There were also smaller building built on the grounds by states, nations and for other purposes such as comfort stations.
The Main Exhibition Hall was the largest structure at the fair, covering 21.5 acres and designed by Joseph Wilson. It housed exhibits dedicated to science, manufacturing, education, mining and metalwork. It featured four observation towers for visitors who wanted an arial view of the grounds.
Machinery Hall held the latest advances in industry, Agricultural Hall held advances in agriculture, while Horticulture Hall and Memorial Hall, the dedicated art gallery.
There was a Women’s Hall that was meant to advance the contributions of women, a U.S. Government Building, a Floral Hall—a large greenhouse—as well as other buildings from England, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Spain, France and Japan; the states and territories, Ohio, New Jersey Massachusetts, New York, Delaware, Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland and Iowa, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Utah. A total of fifty-seven countries and thirty-seven states and territories contributed displays to the exhibition
Displays
The most well known display was the hand and torch from from the Statue of Liberty which was not slated for completion for another ten years. Innovations included the Corliss Steam Engine, Heinz Ketchup, Hires Root Beer, popcorn, Bell’s telephone, the first bananas the be imported into the country, Edison’s electronic telegraph, the first monorail, powered by steam, and the Remington typewriter. It also introduced the kudzu plant from Japan which was promoted as a means of soil erosion control. Unfortunately, kudzu was an invasive species that took all too well to the climate in the United States, particularly the South, earning the reputation as the “vine that ate the south!”
Artwork at the show in Memorial Hall included Thomas Eakins’ masterpiece The Gross Clinic, Edmonia Lewis’s Death of Cleopatra and Franz Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff‘s The Dying Lioness.
Each discipline represented at the fair had its own supervisor. In charge of the Crockery Department was W.H.A. Schreiber who had abandoned the failing Phoenix Pottery to take the position at the Exhibition. His abandonment of the pottery caused the pottery to close and the stock to be liquidated. This opened the door to the sale of the pottery shares and its subsequent purchase by John Griffen, the Phoenixville Iron Works supervisor, as majority stockholder. Eventually this led to the management of the pottery by John Griffen’s two sons Henry and George and the foundation of Griffen, Smith & Hill.
Majolica
Among those ceramic manufacturers displaying majolica at the fair were Minton, Wedgwood, Copeland, Doulton & Co., Brown-Westhead Moore and the New York City Pottery, all at the Main Exhibition Hall.
Attendance
The fair was opened to the public by President Ulysses Grant on May 10, 1876 to an attendance of over 100,000 people. Also present at the ceremony was Emperor Dom Pedro ll of Brazil. Entrance to the park was 50 cents, the equivalent to about $15 today.
During its six month run the fair attracted between 9-10 million visitors. The fair closed on November 10, 1876. While not deemed a financial success it assisted in the recovery of the country from the ravages of the Civil War and led to the so-called “American Century” of innovation, industry and progress.
Today, the only remaining structures from the fair are the Ohio House and the former art gallery Memorial Hall, both still in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, and the Swedish School House, now in Manhattan’s Central Park, NYC.
