Acknowledgments
The authors thank Rob Hunter for the opportunity to include this article in Ceramics in America. Gavin Ashworth’s photographic skills helped bring the markers to life. Two institutions have supported our research on terracotta and gravemarkers in particular: Monmouth University and the Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission. Numerous individuals at local historical societies in New Jersey and New York, as well as Susan Tunick, the dean of terracotta studies, have shared their knowledge, photographs, and artifacts with us. The title of this article was inspired by her New York City walking tour, “Terracotta: Don’t Take It For Granite.” Robert Schuyler, from the University of Pennsylvania, greatly encouraged Richard Veit’s initial research on terracotta in Perth Amboy.
1. Charles T. Davis, A Practical Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks, Tiles, Terra-Cotta, Etc. (Philadelphia: Henry, Carey, Baird, and Co., 1884), p. 310.
2. Walter Geer, The Story of Terracotta (New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1920), p. 37.
3. Anonymous, The Pottery and Porcelain of New Jersey (Newark, N.J.: Newark Museum, 1947), p. 3.
4. William C. McGinnis, History of Perth Amboy, 1651–1958, 4 vols. (Perth Amboy, N.J.: American Publishing Company, 1962), 4: 13.
5. Alfred Hall of Perth Amboy to the organizers of an exposition in Louisiana, October 1, 1884, Special Collections and Archives, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
6. Charles DeKay, “What Terra Cotta May Do,” Harpers Weekly 39 (1895): 655–58.
7. Edwin Atlee Barber, The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States, 2d ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901), p. 386.
8. Michael Stratton, The Terracotta Revival: Building Innovation and the Image of the Industrial City in Britain and North America (London: Victor Gollancz, 1993), p. 203.
9. Richard Veit and Mark Nonestied, “Bombs Away! Unearthing a Cache of Terracotta Practice Bombs From the First World War,” in Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2002): pp. 227–31.
10. Richard Veit, Skyscrapers and Sepulchers: A Historic Ethnography of New Jersey’s Terracotta Industry (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1997), pp. 31–43.
11. Gary F. Kurutz and Mary Swisher, Architectural Terracotta of Gladding McBean (Sausalito, Calif.: Windgate Press, 1989), p. 10.
12. Allison Kelly, Mrs. Coade’s Stone (Upton-on-Severn, Eng.: Self Publishing Assoc., 1990), pp. 243–45.
13. Edmund V. Gillon, Victorian Cemetery Art (New York: Dover, 1972), p. ix.
14. Kenneth L. Ames, “Ideologies in Stone: Meanings in Victorian Gravestones,” Journal of Popular Culture 14, no. 4 (1981): 651.
15. DeKay, “What Terracotta May Do,” p. 655.
16. John P. Wall and Harold Pickersgill, History of Middlesex County, New Jersey in Three
Volumes (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1921), p. 393.
17. Varick A. Chittenden, The Danes of Yates County: The History and Traditional Arts of an Ethnic Community in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State (Penn Yann, N.Y.: Yates County Art Council, 1983).
18. J. Volney Lewis and Henry B. Kummel, Geological Survey of New Jersey. Bulletin 14. The Geology of New Jersey (Union Hill, N.J.: Dispatch Printing Company, 1915), p. 126.
19. Davis, A Practical Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks, Tiles, Terra-Cotta, Etc., p. 310.
20. Frank G. Matero, Elizabeth A. Bede, and Albert Tagle, “An Evaluation of the Effects of Cleaning Methods on Unglazed Architectural Terracotta: With Notes on the Manufacture and Characterization of Nineteenth-Century American Production” (Architectural Conservation Laboratory, Graduate School of Fine Arts, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1995), pp. 8–9.
21. Hewitt Wilson, “Monograph and Bibliography on Terracotta,” American Ceramic Society Bulletin 5, no. 2 (1926): 98.
22. Harry Lee King, “A History of Architectural Terracotta,” Architecture and Building 45, no. 1 (1913): 311–15.
23. DeKay, “What Terracotta May Do,” p. 657.
24. Walter Geer, Terracotta in Architecture (New York: Gazlav Brothers, 1892), p. 56.
25. William S. Lowndes, Plastering and Architectural Terracotta (Scranton, Pa.: International Text Book Company, 1920), p. 29.
26. “Federal Plant was Organized 60 Years Ago,” Perth Amboy Evening News, December 4, 1948.
27. Matero, Bede, and Tagle, “An Evaluation of the Effects of Cleaning Methods on Unglazed Architectural Terracotta,” p. 18.
28. McGinnis, History of Perth Amboy, p. 43.
29. John Matturi, “Windows in the Garden: Italian-American Memorialization and the American Cemetery” in Ethnicity and the American Cemetery, edited by Richard E. Meyer (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1993), p. 30. |