The Haeger Potteries

Haeger Potteries, headquartered on the clay-rich banks of Illinois' Fox River just 45 miles northwest of Chicago, shares significant history with its giant neighbor, known as "the most American" of major American cities. In 1871, the same year of the great Chicago fire, a young German immigrant named David H. Haeger founded the company originally known as the Dundee Brickyard. Over the next 130 years under four generations of family leadership, this small town brickmaker was to become America's oldest and largest production pottery. The Chicago Fire destroyed more than 17,500 buildings and made tens of thousands suddenly homeless. The company that David Haeger founded fired the first of millions of bricks needed to help rebuild the great midwest metropolis. In this way, the young company helped a city rise from the ashes of mass disaster and restore its faith in itself. The volume brickmaker was destined to secure a special place in American artware history. For both Chicago and David Haeger's growing company, the late 19th century was a time of new confidence, energy and vision. Over the next 25 years the city's lakefront was rebuilt on the solid planning of Daniel Burnham, the legendary architect who laid the seeds for modern Chicago's magnificent shoreline, once laid low by the fire. At the same time, David Haeger, with the help of one of his sons, Edmund H. Haeger, began laying the groundwork for their company's transition from brickmakers to artisans. By 1900, the year of David H. Haeger's passing, the company was already making simple red clay flower pots for the florist trade. Edmund Haeger, with his artistic vision, was to complete the metamorphosis from Haeger Bricks to Haeger Potteries. In 1912 he introduced a more sophisticated line of glazed artware.