Hull marks

How to read it

Addis E. Hull's company took over the Acme Pottery in Crooksville, Ohio (the Hull Pottery Association dates the purchase to 1903; the Zanesville Museum of Art dates the start of production to 1905). Its first products were utilitarian stoneware, semi-porcelain dinnerware and decorative tile; by 1917 it was making art pottery for stores, and in 1925 it is believed to have produced 3 million pieces. From the late 1930s through the 1950s its lines included Little Red Riding Hood kitchenware and matte pastel art lines with floral themes, and from the 1940s to the 1960s a florist's delivery often came in a Hull pot or figural planter, the association says. In June 1950 a flood and the fire that followed destroyed the plant; it reopened on 1 January 1952 as The Hull Pottery Company. After strikes and foreign competition it closed in March 1986. The Hull Pottery Association now uses the potter-at-the-wheel logo that Hull used on its advertising, letterhead and foil labels throughout its history.

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Hull marks over the years

The Hull Pottery Association gives the sequence. The earliest Hull mark, from about 1910, is a wreath with the Hull name and a number giving the size in gallons, on utilitarian jugs and jars; the Acme Pottery before it used its name surrounded by an eagle. For the next several decades Hull used a capital H in a diamond or a circle, sometimes with a mold or size number. An oven-proof mark went on kitchenware from the 1930s, and Hull Ware marks on 1940s kitchenware, cookie jars and Little Red Riding Hood pieces. The embossed, flowing script Hull first appeared in 1949 on the Woodland line, and Coronet and other lines used a script mark too. A lower-case hull came in during the 1960s on the House ‘n Garden dinnerware, later sometimes with a copyright symbol. USA or U.S.A. often appears with the name. Some art lines, such as Sueno, carry only an incised style number, and some 1930s and 1940s novelties are unmarked or marked Hull Made. Brenda Roberts's encyclopedia of Hull counts 85 variations.

The letters and numbers in the mark

On art pottery the letter names the line and the numbers give the mold and the size. The association's example is Bow Knot, marked B with a mold number and a size. In the Zanesville Museum of Art, a Woodland ewer reads Hull / W24-13 1/2" / U.S.A. and a Wildflower cornucopia vase reads Hull Art / U.S.A. / W-7-7 1/2. Decorators added their own identification number, such as 28, and some lines had only a foil label with the line's name, such as Rosella, Granada and Classic.

An H in a diamond on glass

Hull's H in a diamond is on pottery. The H in a diamond on glass is a different maker's mark, the Heisey Diamond H: the National Heisey Glass Museum says it first appeared in an advertisement in 1900, and that Heisey was the first glass company to mark its glass with a trademark.