Much has been written about Brown County and Nashville, Ind., from its renowned art colony to its early settlers to the enduring lure of Brown County State Park. But little has been written about three interconnected potteries that operated from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through World War II, and into Nashville of the 1970s, when development was forever changing the face of the town.

Martz Potteries

Karl Martz, sometimes called “Mr. Indiana Ceramics,” is perhaps the state’s best known potter. He opened his own studio in Nashville in 1935 with his wife Becky Brown. Karl Martz, Potter, was the wording on his sign in those days. That’s what he always considered himself, a potter, not a ceramist. The sign also included the mark he used throughout his career, a stylized KM in a circle.

Armed with a chemistry degree from Indiana University, a year’s training at Ohio State’s ceramics program, and a year’s apprenticeship at Brown County Pottery, he set out to make one-of-a-kind pieces with his own glaze formulations. Most of his studio-potter years were spent at the aptly named Pink House, where he added to the family income by designing small pieces that Becky could make in molds. Bowls, vases and nut cups are examples, signed Becky Brown or BB.

Karl earned a national reputation in his seven years in Nashville, but was forced to close up shop in 1942 when tire and gas rationing during the war kept customers away. He sold his equipment to Indiana University, and he and Becky and their two sons moved to Chicago where he did war-related ceramics work until the war ended.

Henry R. Hope was beginning to build a formidable fine arts department at Indiana University, Bloomington, and asked Karl to start up its ceramics program in 1945. Initially using his old equipment, he began a 32-year teaching career at IU. He remained productive over the decades in his favored medium, earthenware pottery, as well as stoneware and porcelain.

From 1950 until 1961, Karl and Becky operated Martz Studio just outside Nashville in a house and studio Karl designed and built. Becky began to come into her own as a potter. Most pieces the couple made there are signed Martz Studio and either BB or KM for the maker, and the date. Earthenware was made at Martz Studio, although Karl made high-fired stoneware at IU during this period.

The family moved to Bloomington in 1961 and Karl and Becky made pottery at their home studio. After taking time to finish a degree in English started in 1932, Becky worked for a time for IU, then became a partner in The Gallery in Bloomington. In 1975, she withdrew from that partnership to begin full-time work as a potter. She started making large hand-built animals and busts. They were unglazed, and if they were decorated, stains were used. They were the highlight of her career yet they are little known, both because many stayed in the family and because when Karl and Becky’s work is discussed, his is frequently the center of attention.

Karl was generous with his vast knowledge of glazes and his love of earthenware. He wrote a couple dozen articles for Ceramics Monthly in the ’50s and ’60s which are now digitized. Karl was inducted into the American Craft Council’s College of Fellows in 1992. He died in 1997. Becky moved to an assisted living facility in Amherst, Mass., in 2004.

Brown County Pottery

(1932-1953)

Although Karl Martz collectors know he worked as an apprentice at Brown County Pottery, they typically know little else about the pottery that opened in the midst of the Depression in 1932. Anecdotal information mixed with conflicting dates of operation and a bit of local folklore has been the bulk of what was available. Two books even list Nashville, Tenn., as the pottery’s site rather than Nashville, Ind. The pottery’s owners were Helen and Walter Griffiths — spelled with an “s” that is frequently omitted.

Helen Dapprich was an artist trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Europe before opening a studio in the Tree Studio Building in Chicago in 1906. She moved to Madison, Wis., in 1909 and lived with her sister’s family until her marriage to Walter in 1911. They moved to his hometown of Fort Wayne, Ind., where he was employed as an engineer, and they had two sons there. The family then moved to Milwaukee where they lived for more than a decade before Walter lost his job.

Through friends and family in Fort Wayne, they were convinced they could live cheaply in Nashville and build a successful business. The bonus for Helen was Brown County’s art colony. Within a year, their products were being sold in a handful of major department stores, assuring a year-round business. The pottery operated in three rented rooms in an old home called the Bartley House. A rustic shed outside housed the oil-fired kiln and clay was poured into molds there.

Initially, the family duties were well defined. Helen developed the designs and decorated the pieces, which reflected the rural community and nature — apples, flowers, leaves, pinecones. Son Dick threw on his kick wheel and prepared the clay; there was an abundance of it in the local creek beds that turned a terra-cotta color when fired. Walter helped with the kiln and shipped the pottery.

Karl Martz began working there full time in 1934. During his one year of apprenticeship, Dick Griffiths committed suicide. Karl was available to teach a local handyman, Claude Graham, how to throw a pot and Claude took over Dick’s duties. Most of the hand-thrown pottery produced over the years was made by Claude, although he worked there full time for only about eight years.

Thelma Schrougham, a graduate of Nashville High School, was hired as a decorator in 1935 and worked there until she married Johnny Davis and moved to Mishawaka, Ind., in 1942. In the last year of her work at the pottery, her sister Catherine joined her as the second decorator. She left when Thelma did.

The pottery hired other decorators who worked during the 1940s, including two sisters (Eva and Geneva) and their cousin (Iva) referred to as the “Harden Girls” locally. Their photograph by noted Brown County photographer Frank Hohenberger has been reproduced many times in Nashville. During this period, with Claude working intermittently due to other employment, more pieces were made in molds.

Much of the decorated work at the pottery was done in sgraffito, but most of the vases, dishes, pitchers, flower pots and other everyday items were not decorated, just finished in matte green, yellow or blue glazes. Pieces were signed with the name of the pottery or BCP in some cases, and are often difficult to read under the engobe or glaze.

Some of the most charming pieces made by the pottery were the figurines created by Helen, then made in molds. The hands and face were not painted, allowing the reddish-brown color of the clay to show through a transparent glaze.

By the time the Griffithses died in 1953, the pottery operation had been winding down for a few years.

Brown County Hills Pottery (1959-1969)

Carolyn Ondreicka was a transplant from Chicago to Nashville. Although married, she and her husband William lived separately, he in River Forest, Ill., where she rarely visited. She was interested in art and hired veteran potter Claude Graham to set up a pottery in the basement of her home, just a couple miles from the center of town.