Lynn’s eBay ezine Volume IV, issue number 37

Dear eBayers,

I went out on a limb and had my first Webinar. How exciting! A webinar is an event where we are all on the phone together and you watch what I am doing on my computer on your own computer screen.

The computer screen was recorded and the audio was also recorded so you didn’t have to be live with us this past Tuesday. There were about 40 of you with Mo and I live. Thanks for being there!

I showed how to make the changes for the max media rates that are required by October 5th.

I was also able to show how to make the global changes for the required handling times and the required return policy that needs to be done by late October. Selling Manager Pro worked great for us but Turbo Lister crashed, so I am doing a 10 minute bonus video/audio about how to use Turbo Lister for all of you who have already purchased or are a Queen’s Court member. Watch for this bonus next week.

This is The Queen’s Court member’s free gift for September. And if you aren’t a Queen’s Court member you can still order the web archive here. This introductory pricing will be available until the bonus is posted next week so order now.

‘Blue Ridge Southern Potteries’‘

by Lynn A. Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions’

I got home with my box full of Blue Ridge and started to do my research. My goodness, one web site said that there are over 2,000 Blue Ridge patterns and another said that there were over 5,000! My Apple pattern was not shown on the Replacements site at all and it wasn’t even on PriceMiner! I finally found it on a Blue Ridge web site. Here is a link to that site.

It literally took me two hours to track down the pattern name, but I was determined (as usual). With the pattern name (Joe’s Apple) in hand, I was able to start writing up my listings with confidence.

Another piece of the Joe’s Apple Pattern.

As I was writing up these listings this past Friday, my cell phone alarm went off at 2:10 pm. It was time to go wait in line to pick up Houston at the middle school. I grabbed a stack of I Sell sheets and rushed out of the house. I take my I Sell sheets with me so that as I am sitting in the car for those 20 minutes I can fill out the shelf letters (storage location), starting bid price and shipping and handling on each sheet. I NEVER waste time! In fact, I am writing this ezine at a restaurant while we are waiting for our dinner.

But back to the Blue Ridge. Once Houston gets in the car after school we have about 30 minutes until Indy gets out. Pretty poor planning on the school district’s part, but what do you do? So I asked him if he would go and get gas with me (for driving to the weekend’s baseball tournament) and I also thought we should get Indy a treat for making the Odyssey of the Mind team.

We got two slushies and gas at Arco and still had 10 minutes until the final bell at Indy’s school. I asked Houston if he would mind stopping by a thrift store on the way. “No problem,” he said.

I ran in and you won’t believe it…but there on the back table was a complete set of Blue Ridge china with flowers done in Yellow and pink. And it was only $40.00. What a score! I quickly paid for it, asked for a box and was out the door before that final bell rang at Indy’s school.

Here is a photo of one of those pieces. The auction is here.

This one was easier to Identify. It is called Wrinkled Rose and I found it on Replacements quite quickly.

In my last 10 years of eBaying I have never had a Blue Ridge set, much less two. It is very strange how things like that happen. Both were in very good to excellent condition and it was fun to list both of them during the same week.

I often get emails from my ezine readers after an ezine comes out. They say, “It was the weirdest thing, but once I read about Le Creuset, or Arthur Court or Mideke, I found a piece at a garage sale.” I bet some of you find some great Blue Ridge pottery this week!

So, let’s learn more about Blue Ridge Southern Potteries. From my research, I have found that Southerners have known about and used Blue Ridge for years. Being a West Coast girl, I didn’t learn about Blue Ridge until I worked in my grandmother’s antique store and even then it wasn’t very common to find in Washington state. Still pretty unusual to find complete sets of Blue Ridge here in Southern California.

But back to the Blue Ridge history, three railroad companies, Ohio, Clinchfield and North Carolina Railroad came together in 1916 and wanted to diversify. They had seen all the great monetary successes coming from American Pottery companies like Weller, Hull and Roseville (which were all located in Ohio). So they decided to start a pottery company.

They picked the town of Erwin, Tennessee for the location. They chose this town based on the fact that there was a Railroad stop, it had good local natural resources and it was a small town with a population of 300.

The first pieces were signed Clinchfield hand painted Erwin Tenn. The Clinchfield mark in many variations was used from 1917 to about 1923.  Even though these early pieces were signed hand painted the patterns were all just decals (like a sticker).

In 1920, the Clinchfield Crown stamp was added to the signature.

Also in 1920, Clinchfield incorporated. They went public with $1⁄2 million worth of stock and became Southern Potteries Incorporated. So some pieces are also called SPI (Southern Potteries Incorporated).

In 1922, Charles Foreman bought out the stockholders and owned 100% of the company.

In 1932/1933 The name was changed to Blue Ridge because of the famous mountain range.  Even though the name was changed to Blue Ridge, pieces were still marked with both Blue Ridge and Southern Potteries Inc.

In 1938, Charles Foreman decided to make all the pieces truly hand painted. He is credited for really making Blue Ridge what it became. The brush strokes and techniques were hand painted mostly by women and a few men. They produced the now hard to miss and very recognizable “Blue Ridge” look. Paint strokes soon became flowers, fruit, leaves, stems, scenes and animals that are common in many of the patterns.

Usually an outline of the central object of the pattern would be hand stamped on the piece. Then the painter would do the hand detailed brush strokes. This helped to keep the pieces more uniform. However, each piece of Blue Ridge pottery is still considered an individual handmade piece of art.

Production reached a peak in the early 1940s with an estimated 17 million pieces made per year during this time frame. Wow! There were also over 5,000 known patterns and originally the patterns were NOT all named but had numbers. The famous Blue Ridge Pottery books written by Frances and Joe Ruffin are credited with giving many of the patterns the names that they are known by today.

Hmmmm, maybe that is why one of my patterns was called Joe’s Apple, for Joe Ruffin?

Sears and Montgomery Ward were a few of the major retailers that carried Blue Ridge. By the mid 1950s, more and more American potteries were going out of business due to the increased competition from overseas imports. Unfortunately, this also happened to Blue Ridge. And in January of 1957, the Southern Potteries Board of Director’s decided to close their doors.

As far as signatures go, It seems like my Wrinkled Rose (the yellow pattern) has the older signature. I read that the script signature like this was used in the late 1930s.

The round logo signature like I found on my Joe’s Apple pattern was supposedly used in the late 1930s to 1940s.

I also read that many pieces were not marked at all. Within both my sets, only some of the pieces were marked. As an example, none of the Joe’s Apple serving pieces were signed. Luckily the salad plates, dinner plates and bowls were. As an ending note, anything that is signed with “Blue Ridge China” came after 1945. Also, anything with “detergent proof” or “oven safe” would place the pieces in the 1950s.

Let’s hope you all find some Blue Ridge sets this week while out hunting!