[Newspaper]
Publication: Bennington Banner
Bennington, VT, United States
vol. 19, no. 46, p. 2, col. 6
The following extract go to show in what light the Vermont presses view the enterprise of Messrs. FENTON & CLARK:
From the Vermont Past
A New Discovery
D. W. Clark, of Bennington, who has for the last twenty-five years has associated with C. W. Fenton, in the prosecution and development of the Pottery business at the place, has, white in the prosecution of their experiments in trying to produce a glaze from which crockery ware may be made merchantable manufactured from American material that has not only removed every difficulty in the way of manufacturing table ware quite equal, if not superior to the products of the most celebrated British manufactures, but which may be used in enameling building material—such as common red brick, stone or clay blocks, and slabs of any size or shape, giving them any desired color, shade or tint; rivaling in beauty the rare qualities of marble, and which can be afforded at prices that must, in a great measure, exclude marble from use for building purposes.
These gentlemen were founders of the great Potteries at Bennington, the products of which have been a widely distributed throughout the Union, as have the celebrated scales of the Fairbanks’, winning for southern Vermont a repute equal to what the latter have done for the northern part of our own Sate, and reflecting as much credit on the manufacturing skill of our people, as any of the manufacturing arts practiced among us. They have made Bennington the great center of the pottery business of the Union, and have given to the State the credit of annihilating the barriers that have intervened in the way of the successful prosecution of the manufacture of crockery ware in the United States.
Their extended explorations in search of pottery material, has, however developed the fact that Vermont is too far removed from the locale of the material best suited to their purpose and too far from the markets most profitable to cultivate—they have, in consequence, determined to transfer their manufacturing enterprises to Peoria, Illinois, where they have already commenced the erection of a mammoth pottery.
We envy Illinois the possession of the advantages that has drawn these gentlemen from our own State, but we nevertheless wish Messrs. Clark & Fenton, and their associates, the success which their abilities entitle them to; and while we regret their loss to our own State we congratulate the citizens of Peoria, in obtaining so important an acquisition to the enterprises of their own town, as these gentlemen will confer upon them.
