Evolution of the Guild
From G. Wolff to G. Wolff & Co.
The last few years I have been asked many times if I am still making pots here in Bantam. The answer is YES, it is the center of my life and I love making flowerpots! The pots I make here are stamped "G.WOLFF". The imported pots that I trained other potters to make around the world have always been marked G.WOLFF & CO. After many years, G. WOLFF & CO. is no longer producing pottery and stopped selling pots in the fall of 2015. However, since I have heard from many friends that with all the pots I have trained potters to make, (not made by my hands) I have caused a bit of confusion on what's what and who made which pots. This page is to help clear up most of those confusions. Around the time Martha Stewart gave Oprah Winfrey some of my pots for Christmas in front of many millions of Americas, it became clear I was not going to keep up with the demand from my personal wheel. (Thank you Martha!)
As a fan of traditional pottery I felt it an obligation to bring the audience interested in these great older style garden pots in contact with traditional potteries who deserved the support.
My great joy in this endeavor has been to let aesthetics lead commerce for once instead of the other way around. Sometimes in these projects I have succeeded better than others. Below in chronological order are all pots stamped with a G Wolff Stamp. The stamp on each pot refers directly to each project.
G. Wolff
Any pot that has this stamp or coggle on it was made by me on my wheel between 1971 and today. I usually put the wet weight of each piece on the pot and the year made. I also sign the pots on the bottom. Note: there is no "& Co." on these pots
Wolff Pottery
Any pot made with this stamp was made by either, Erica Warnock, my wife, or someone visiting at my pottery under my personal teaching and was fired and sold by us here at the Connecticut shop. The bulk of pots with this stamp are made by my wife, Erica Warnock.
Guy Wolff for Seibert & Rice
Because of my long time friendship with Mara Seibert and Lenore Rice and because all roads in historic gardens lead back to Italy, I was estatic to design a line of larger pots to be made by these shops in the best Italian clay near Florence.
G Wolff & Co: White Pots
I needed to find a great American shop that could take on the huge appetite for my work at Smith & Hawken. My old friend Peter Wakefield Jackson who has had a long time interest in American historical pots was looking for work for his potters and the partnership fit perfectly. His shop in Wisconsin made the white pots that say G Wolff & Co till 2006. He has now trained a group of throwers in China to take on this line of pots.These pots have not been in production since the fall of 2015 .
G Wolff & Co: Red Pots with Stains
This is the group of potters most close to my heart. Directly after hurricane Mitch in the fall of 1998, Peter Wakefield Jackson and I flew down to Honduras to work with a pottery Peter had helped to develop. The potters took to the traditional methods given me by the great shops I had visited in Great Britain in the 70's. It seems all those architectural laws and traditional methods almost lost in interest in Britain, had a chance for new life in the hills of Honduras. As the years have gone by these potters have gotten better and better. There is a group of women at this shop who take the finished pots and rub stain on them to get the colored finishes that have made these pots so popular. These pots have not been in production since the fall of 2015 .
G. Wolff & Co.: Large White and Red Pots
Peter and I have made friends with a wonderful Dutchman who has a beautiful pottery in China. His understanding of our large pots has been very gratifying and because of his high firing techniques we have been able to get a strong larger pot out to the American gardner at a medium price.These pots have not been in production for years now.
G Wolff Greenhouse
I have always wanted to make a line of pots that was easy enough on the pocketbook that one could "Fill a Green House with them" - traditional in form and in beautiful proportions - to answer many gardening needs. In the last few years the need to find an inexpensive line of pots for the market just coming into our gardening family has sent Peter Jackson and his new partnership with Napa Home and Garden to working with this exciting project. We started in Viet Nam with a group of wonderful potters but quickly found they could not keep up with the demand. With some scrambling a line of pots was made in China in turning mold machines with less success. This project had a hard time keeping up quality until Peter found a great throwing shop in China that he is using for the white pots.These pots have not been in production since the fall of 2015 .