The lowly flowerpot.(Current and Coming)

The terra-cotta flowerpot is the workhorse of all ceramic objects, which is probably why its shape has changed little since classical antiquity. Even in the early eighteenth century the English designer Batty Langley advised that plants that had been forced in inexpensive clay pots could simply be nestled, pot and all, into more elaborate and formal porcelain containers that were then de rigueur in fashionable interiors. Unglazed terra-cotta pots were long though to be better for plants because they did not inhibit oxygen from reaching the roots and they prevented water from pooling in the soil.

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The history of the flowerpot is the subject of a traveling exhibition on view at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, from August 15 to September 11. The show was earlier on view at the Stonington Historical Society's Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House in Stonington, Connecticut, where it returns after it closes in Maine. It is entitled A Place to Take Root: The History of Flower Pots and Garden Containers in America, and comprises more than fifty objects ranging from terra-cotta urns made in Tuscany, Italy, to eighteenth-century English examples, and contemporary concrete planters and flowerpots made by Lunaform in Maine (see p. 104 of this issue). Drawings, photographs, and other documents are also on view.

The European flowerpots are included to establish the stylistic roots of American pots, which were initially imported from England. By the eighteenth century potters in this country were making both stoneware and clay pots in some quantity. With the rise in popularity of ...