The Onondaga Pottery Company was organized in 1871 and initially only made earthenware.
However, after James Pass joined the organization in 1885 he soon developed a new type of translucent chinaware which came to be known as “Syracuse China.”
The Onondaga Pottery Company began producing the first American-made vitreous china in the early 1890s and by 1895 the name “Syracuse China” appeared in the back-stamp. Syracuse China would come to be used in hotels, clubs, airplanes, trains, cruise ships, and restaurants around the world.
Prior to World War II, Onondaga Pottery Company (O.P. Co.) had been manufacturing a variety of ceramic products at its Fayette St. and Court St. plants in Syracuse. The company was world renowned for its fine residential china and commercial hotel and restaurant ware. In 1893, Onondaga Pottery Company won the High Award Medal for its ornate vitreous china known as Imperial Geddo at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and in 1904, the company won the Grand Prize of Clays and Table Ware at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. In 1896, the company installed the ceramic industry’s first in-house lithographic shop for printing decals that decorated the ware. In 1921, the company opened the Court St. plant to make its hotel ware, the first linear, one-story plant in the American china industry. By the late 1930s, O.P.Co. was decorating its ware with Shadowtone, an airbrush design that sprayed colors onto the ware through stencils. Although still in the midst of the Great Depression, the 1930s proved to be one of O.P. Co.’s most successful decades for design, reputation, and even sales.
By the fall of 1939, a new world conflict had begun in Europe, and two years later the U.S. joined its allies in Europe and the Pacific to fight the Axis powers. At the time, O.P. Co. employed 1,150 people. Once the U.S. declared war on Germany and Japan, local men, and some women, joined the armed forces, and O.P. Co.’s workforce became predominantly women. Wartime production dramatically increased as these women assisted with filling large military orders for bowls, mugs, and plates for the Army Quartermaster and Medical Corps, Navy bases, and the Marine Corps. O.P. Co. also supplied large quantities of ware to the burgeoning wartime government agencies and bureaus, as well as the cafeterias at aeronautical factories and munitions plants throughout the U.S. During the four war years, the women employees contributed to making almost 60 million pieces of china for these military and civilian entities.
Later employees followed their parents and grandparents to work at Onondaga Pottery Company, even after the company officially changed its name to Syracuse China Corporation in 1966. Syracuse China continued to produce ware until it closed in 2009. At its closing, the Onondaga Historical Association acquired the remnants of the 138 year old establishment: business records & documents, decals & other designs, tools, and tens of thousands of pieces of ware. Although the company has closed and Syracuse China is no longer made in Syracuse, its legacy continues at the Onondaga Historical Association.
