Our History

The front of Potters Yard Store Traditionals Blue Agate Stoneware Dinnerware

The Bennington Potters Story
Potters Yard History,
Store and Factory

Each year thousands of people travel from all over the country to visit Potters Yard for a shopping experience unlike any other in New England. Many first-time shoppers become life-long collectors of Bennington pottery, stopping in each year to add a few new pieces of stoneware pottery to their bakeware, dinnerware, and serving collections.

The History makes it special

What makes this store so unique is not just the stoneware pottery, country home decor items, and Vermont specialty foods sold inside, but the history behind Bennington pottery itself. One of the oldest crafts known to mankind is also what has helped put Bennington, Vermont and Potters Yard on the map.

Pottery-making has been part of the area's economy since the Revolutionary War when in 1785 a former Revolutionary War soldier, Capt. John Norton, began producing "redware" glazed pottery. Bennington was a convenient location for producing redware pottery because of the close proximity to local clay deposits, as well as deposits along the Hudson River. Bennington also had an abundant supply of waterpower from local streams, which was necessary to power the machinery used at the time. Around 1804 stoneware pottery was introduced, which was more sturdy than redware pottery, and therefore more suitable for everyday use.






*Excerpts borrowed from "Town's earliest industry still a survivor", July 8, 2004,
Bennington Banner, www.BenningtonBanner.com