Object lesson: Henry Chapman Mercer and His Moravian Pottery
Benjamin Davidson and Pippa Biddle
May 3, 2021
Private collection; photograph by Benjamin Davidson, courtesy of Quittner Antiques, Germantown, New York.
It was around 9:30 on the evening of June 24, 1910, when the flames were first spotted. A fire, so went the initial reports, had engulfed a barn just outside town. But when the fire brigade arrived at the scene, they found neither a barn ablaze, nor panicked farmers with their lives and livelihoods hanging in the balance.
Mayflower tile designed by Mercer, Moravian Pottery and Tile Works.
Private collection; photograph by Bill Sheshko, courtesy of Bungalow Bill Antiques, Fair Lawn, New Jersey.