Ribbed Chartreuse Art Pottery Window Box Planter, Footed, c. 1950–1970

The Piece

A rectangular window box planter in molded American art pottery, ribbed all the way around and glazed in the deep chartreuse that sits between olive and mustard, raised on four small bun feet. The form is the classic mid-century planter shape: a long rectangle with gently canted sides that flare out to a plain flat rim, the corners softened, the walls fluted with closely set vertical ribs that run from the foot to just under the rim. The glaze is glossy and thick, pooling to a darker olive in the hollows of the ribs and thinning to a warm yellow-green on the ridges, so the fluting reads as stripes of light and shade from across the room. The inside is glazed the same color over a smooth well with a raised rectangular panel in the floor, which is what keeps a liner or a row of pots level. The feet show the pale buff clay body where the glaze was wiped for firing.

The glaze has the fine, even crazing that this kind of pottery takes on with age, visible only up close and part of its character, and a scatter of the small raised specks and pinholes that came out of the kiln with it. The piece is whole, with no chips to the rim, corners or feet and no cracks, and it rings clean. The base is unmarked, which is usual for the window box planters of the period, many of which left the factory with a paper label and nothing more.

History & Provenance

The low rectangular planter was the workhorse of the American pottery trade from the late 1940s through the 1960s, turned out by the Ohio and Illinois factories in the millions for florists, dime stores and housewares counters. McCoy, Brush, Haeger, Hull, Cookson, UPCO and a dozen smaller concerns all made versions, and the ribbed and fluted forms in a single bright glaze were among the most popular, because they suited the long low furniture of the ranch house and the picture window that needed something green in front of it. Chartreuse and avocado were the colors of the moment, and the glossy drip and pooled glazes of the 1950s and 1960s gave an inexpensive molded piece the look of a studio glaze.

No maker's mark is present and the planter is offered as unattributed American art pottery. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the buff earthenware body, the molded ribbed form on bun feet, the thick pooled chartreuse glaze and the crazing are all consistent with manufacture between about 1950 and 1970.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is the planter that does the most work for the least fuss. Filled with a row of succulents, a fern or a line of small pots it brings green to a windowsill, a console or a kitchen counter; empty it holds mail, remotes, bottles on a bar or bread on a table, and the color carries a room on its own. The chartreuse glaze is the shade that mid-century, boho and modern interiors all reach for, and it sits as well with walnut and teak as it does with white and black. For a shop or designer client it is the clean, undamaged, big-color mid-century planter that moves on sight and photographs like a jewel.