About Marblehead Pottery

Marblehead Pottery began as a small studio pottery in 1904 as a convalescent therapy to sanitarium patients. A year later, Arthur Baggs became the director of Marblehead Pottery, and he brought a decorating style that focused on hand-incised or surface painted geometric designs on grounds of slightly contrasting colors. In 1915, Baggs became the owner of Marblehead Pottery until it ceased production in 1936.

In the 1920s as with many of the American art pottery companies, Marblehead began to focus almost exclusively on production art pottery. However, Marblehead's production pottery still maintained the high quality seen on the hand-decorated items. The production art pottery Marblehead produced was finely thrown and glazed in hard, pebbled matte finishes. Typical glaze colors are blue, green, pink, yellow, brown or gray. It is estimated that 95% of Marblehead's output was production art pottery. Pottery was marked with the "M.P." cipher and, in some cases, with the artist's initials.