Tanners Antique Retro and Craft Show March 2025 Newsletter

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Happy Early Spring!

We are ready for a fabulous new year of shows!

Our next show is

March 22nd and 23rd

Vendor Signups are OPEN! click here

Tanners 2025 Schedule

March 22,23

May 10,11

June 21,22

Boomtown Antique Show

August 22,23,24

Sept 27,28

Nov 22,23

All shows except the Boomtown show are at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center

Magic of Santa Arts and Crafts

Dec 6,7

Local Craft Shows info can be found at RenoCrafters - Click Here

Click the link below to go to the website for more information.

Click Here for the Tanne rs Marketplace Website

Click Here for the Magic of Santa Website

If you need a place to stay The Aiden Hotel just down from the Convention Center has nice rooms available.

The Vendors page will have links as soon as I get them.

We look forward to seeing everyone at the shows!

Click here for the Vendor Info Page

Click for Downloadable Vendor Signup Application

Van Briggle Pottery

Some of the finest American pottery

Despite the brevity of his life, Artus Van Briggle, and his Van Briggle Pottery in Colorado, created some of the finest art pottery in the United States during the first four years of the twentieth century. Van Briggle’s designs were linked by their monochromatic matte glazes, straightforward shapes, and quiet sophistication to arts and crafts movement makers such as Grueby and Teco. However, unlike most American makers, Van Briggle’s forms were closely tied to European design, especially the art nouveau style, which he sometimes specifically mimicked.

Artus Van Briggle (1869–1904) with the carved wood template for the Toasting Cup, William C. Holmes, and dog “Curly” in a photograph by Agnes Holmes, c. 1900. Final product below. Rare Chalice features an underwater motif with mermaid. 11.25" h x 7.5" w, Circa 1901

Born in Felicity, Ohio, Artus Van Briggle first pursued painting—including study with Frank Duveneck at the Cincinnati Art Academy—but quickly chose ceramics as his mode of expression.1 He attended the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where he exhibited a painting, but, more importantly, it was there that he discovered the extraordinary avant-garde art of the French potters. While working for the Avon and Rookwood potteries, Van Briggle’s exceptional talent became apparent. The latter sponsored him for further training in Paris, where he returned to the study of painting under Jean-Paul Laurens and Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant at the Académie Julian and embraced the imagery and styles of orientalism, symbolism, and art nouveau.

Details of his time in Paris are not well documented, but unlike most American ceramists, Van Briggle enjoyed an opportunity to study sculpture and clay modeling at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in addition to his study of painting. Perhaps more importantly, he gained intimate knowledge of French ceramics, especially the internationally admired pottery emerging from the kilns of Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat, Auguste Delaherche, Ernest Chaplet, and Jean-Joseph Carriès. Returning to Rookwood in 1896, Van Briggle began experimenting with matte glaze formulations and innovative forms directly influenced by his study and experiences in Paris.

Lorelei vase (design no. 17) by Van Briggle, 1902. Glazed earthenware; height 9 ¾ inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Martin Eidelberg.

The "Lorelei" was Van Briggle’s first figural vase form, the design of which he originally created while working at the Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio. This early model signaled the artist’s trademark of modeled decoration, whereby the motifs were rendered in relief rather than painted on the surface. While the majority of his motifs were drawn from plants and birds, his vases embodying the human figure are among his rarest, and similarly the most coveted.

Van Briggle resigned from Rookwood in March 1899. He had contracted tuberculosis, and moved to Colorado Springs in hopes that the dry desert air would improve his condition. There, he set himself up initially to work on pottery in “a corner of the [chemistry] laboratory” at Colorado College, “thanks to the interest and kindly assistance of Professor [William] Strieby.”

In August 1901 he fired his first pieces at the Van Briggle Pottery on North Nevada Avenue. The international praise Van Briggle had enjoyed for his displays at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900 followed him to his new enterprise and garnered him considerable attention in the design press. Van Briggle Pottery vases were offered for sale in a variety of major American cities, including Boston, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. The firm showed at the Salon in Paris in 1902 and won two gold, one silver, and twelve bronze medals at the Salon of 1903. But tuberculosis finally won out: the artist’s career was cut short when he died in 1904, at age thirty-five.

Above: Van Briggle Dos Cabezas vase c1907

Below: 1903 Poppy Vase

Van Briggle (left of center) with various early vases, potter Harry Bangs (in kiln window), and unidentified assistants in a photograph of c. 1902. Photograph courtesy of the Penrose Public Library, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The small pottery Van Briggle established in Colorado Springs was located in a modest workshop building manned by a small staff, including Harry Bangs, another potter from Rookwood “Equipped with the most convenient of apparatus and a commodious brick kiln,” Van Briggle could finally “devote himself entirely to the production of his ware.” In the fall of 1901, he hosted a small fête to commemorate the initial firings, at which pottery-marked souvenirs were distributed to the assembled guests. As 1902 arrived, more than forty distinct designs were being molded, glazed, and fired, and stock on hand had been built to more than three hundred vases for display and sale to the public. There was no question that Van Briggle was the artistic director of the atelier and intimately involved in the execution of the work. Assistants created molds, cast and glazed works, and fired them in the kiln. The pottery had more than ten employees by 1903, with a few more joining in 1904. Van Briggle’s workshop functioned as a school for ceramics as well, due to his inability to entice trained potters from the East Coast or Midwest to go to Colorado. Van Briggle acted as the primary vase designer but other artists contributed models, notably his fiancée and later wife, Anne Lawrence Gregory. They met when both were students in Paris in 1894, but did not marry until summer 1902. For their Colorado pottery, they developed a mark consistently used on the vases: conjoined As (for Artus and Anne).

Van Briggle produced molded wares in significant numbers even during his short tenure as head of the pottery from 1901 until his death. (His wife led the enterprise for nearly a decade thereafter.) The firm’s amazing productivity—which extended to 2014—has created a ubiquity in the market that does not enhance understanding of or connoisseurship for Van Briggle vases. Public collections offer little guidance for appreciating the best works, as many feature only typical models—ranging from floral-ornamented designs to the Lorelei and Dos Cabezas vases, both decorated with alluring art nouveau women. But in-depth discernment has arguably been scant in many cases in the formation of museum holdings.

Click the link below to read the entire article by Joseph Cunningham for "The Magazine Antiques" showing many more stunning examples of their rare pieces.