Another Little Known Alberta Pottery Company

Provincial Industrial Enterprises (P.I.E.) 1939 is a pottery company from Medicine Hat that operated for a very short time, before Hop Yuill took over Wyatt's Alberta Potteries Limited the plant was occupied by P.I.E.

There is not much information available about this company as it appears no one has done much research to this point in time, perhaps because it was short lived there is not a whole lot of interest in the company or perhaps there is not much information to be found on the company.  What ever the reason there is very little information to be found.

P.I.E. starting operating in 1939 for a short time and produced a number of items including vases, jardinieres, bulb bowls, cream pitcher and sugar bowl and a mixing bowl just to name a few.  Some of the pieces were decorated with the Dutch Windmill scene, others a sailboat scene.

No one knows why the company was so short lived and if the records survived no one knows who has them or where they may be.  Either way the P.I.E. pieces are difficult to find and often will show up in the strangest of places and without research not many people know the significance of the pottery.

In the "Kilns of South Eastern Alberta" the author Ron Getty states:  "Whatever the reasons there is no doubt in my mind that this small factory could not effectively compete with the two larger ones in Medicine Hat.  Its product line was not different enough from Medalta's or Medicine Hat Potteries' to fill a niche in the market.  So after being open for less than a year, they closed."

It is interesting to note that many of the vase styles were made by Medalta,  Medicine Hat Potteries and P.I.E.  There have been vases found in collections that have had stamps from two different companies and decorated in a style usually found by a third company.  Medicine Hat, although a good sized city, had a closely knit pottery production occupying different factories and producing products similar to each other, often with the employees from one pottery moving to work in a different one.  Perhaps this is why the companies have similar  styles or perhaps it is molds left behind when one company closed and another one took over the factory, we may never know for certain.  It is these things that keep us interested and always looking to find pieces, talking to people and doing some traveling.

We only have two pieces of P.I.E. in our collection and in both cases we were very fortunate to find them in good condition, although the painting one on is quite faded.  It has been fun looking for other pieces to add.

Here is a webpage with more information:   https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17156/22857

Once again the photos are pieces in our collection, I have also included photos of the stamps on each piece.

And the Search Continues.....

The Place Where History is Housed

I am always amazed at how many things have survived the test of time and are still such things of beauty so many years after they were produced.  Many things that are decades old are still being used to this day for the purpose they made for, I often wonder in the generation of plastic and throw away if there will be anything from the 21st century that will still be around in the 22nd century.

I have read that Medalta Potteries was so sure of its products that it offered a 3,000 year warranty on the things they produced.  I have seen pieces that are 100 years old but there are many more years to go to fulfill the remaining 2,900 years to go.





A hundred years ago there were not that many things that were produced just because they looked pretty, rather they had to serve a utilitarian purpose to be used in peoples homes on a daily basis such things as crocks, jugs, beater jars, fridge jars, chicken waterers, cookie jars, teapots, butter churns and butter crocks just to name a few.  My grandparents used crocks to make things like sauerkraut and butter, in fact I have helped make butter in a stoneware butter churn and have the scar on my chin to prove the fact.









There are many small towns that take great pride in the museums they have developed and the artifacts that they have in their collections.  We have been to few small town museums and plan to visit more as we have time.

As we get further in the the digital age the small town museums have to work harder than ever to maintain the building and their collections, that being said the larger museums are starting to record their collections in digital images for people to see.  The Medalta Museum in Medicine Hat has been doing that if you have not checked out the digital images it certainly is worth having a look.

Photos in the blog are all taken at the Medalta Museum in Medicine Hat, Alberta, some photos from the collections gallery and some from the storage area.

Now it is time to sit down with a map and a list of small museums and see where we are off to next....

And the Search Continues.......