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Description: Blue Buds/Vine, Yellow, Green, Blue Bands

Pattern: Orleans by Pfaltzgraff

Status: Active. Actual: 2001 -

The Pfaltzgraff Company

Learn more about the Pfaltzgraff Story and Lifetime Brands

For over 200 years the Pfaltzgraff brand has been associated with the highest quality ceramic products available for the home. The company grew from a modest-size pottery shop that produced simple earthenware, salt-glazed stoneware crocks and even flower pots into one of the best known designers and marketers of dinnerware, drinkware, ceramic accessories, giftware and other products. Several Pfaltzgraff patterns are among the best-loved dinnerware designs in America, including Yorktowne, Folk Art, Naturewood and Pistoulet.

The Pfaltzgraff family immigrated to the United States in the early 1800's and set up a small potter's wheel and kiln on their modest twenty-one acre homestead in York County, Pennsylvania. The earliest Pfaltzgraff market was defined to be "as far as you can get with a horse and a wagon and then get back home the same day." Today you can find Pfaltzgraff products in department stores, gift and specialty stores from coast to coast. In addition, Pfaltzgraff products are available on this website.

In 2005 Pfaltzgraff joined the family of Lifetime Brands, Inc. Lifetime Brands is a leading designer, developer and marketer of home products by some of America's best known and most respected brands including Farberware®, KitchenAid®, Hoffritz®, Wallace®, Towle®, Sasaki® and a host of others. By joining Lifetime Brands, Pfaltzgraff is now able to offer its customers a full assortment of innovative kitchen prep and cook tools, as well as the world's finest dinnerware, drinkware and flatware for the table.

Pfaltzgraff has a long-standing tradition of excellence in craftsmanship, quality and service. Today, like never before and like nowhere else, this tradition extends to the finest, widest variety of home products available in the best home brands. This commitment to being responsive to its customers, and to adapting its products and policies to their ever-changing needs, has enabled Pfaltzgraff to prosper for almost two centuries.

It Began With a Voyage

Johann George Pfaltzgraff was born in Germany in the early 1800's. He learned the potter's trade, but because of a restrictive guild situation he had trouble establishing himself. So he and his new bride Elenora decided to emigrate to Pennsylvania, perhaps on the urging of a relative named George Falsgraff who had been a potter there since 1811. Johann and Elenora boarded the Brig Charles Ferdinand in Germany in May 1833 and arrived in Baltimore, Maryland almost four months later. By 1835 they had established themselves in George Falsgraff's home township of Conewago in York County. Look at the two tax entries on the left. They are almost identical, detailing both men as potters living on 21 acres in Conewago Township, and owning one cow, presumably not the same one!

Johann George Pfaltzgraff was aware of the needs of the farmer (a main occupation at the time) as well as the general community. He created products such as pitchers, plates and mugs to meet domestic needs, as well as utilitarian storage vessels like crocks, jugs and jars, which were necessary for food preservation. He fashioned these simple wares out of the locally abundant red clay. His family grew, and he taught his craft to his sons John, Henry, George, Cornelius and Isaac. These first three would make names for themselves as highly skilled potters.

In 1839 Johann George decided to grow his family business by moving to Freystown, a small community that is now incorporated into the east side of the City of York. The family remained there until 1848 when they moved back to a more rural location north and west of town. Johann George's nephew Henry Miller eventually purchased the Freystown Pottery. Four pieces of redware attributed to Miller have survived. However, as part of a research project into the history of The Pfaltzgraff Co., an archeological dig unearthed pottery shards that could date back to Johann George, and confirmed the exact location of the historic site.

Pfaltzgraff: The Second Generation

By the time Johann George and Elenora Pfaltzgraff sold the Freystown Pottery in 1848 they had seven children. They would have ten in all. In 19th Century America, farmers and craftsmen relied on family members to supply much-needed help in the fields or, in the case of the Pfaltzgraffs, in the pottery. All five of Johann George and Elenora's sons would therefore become skilled potters.

Upon Johann George Pfaltzgraff's death in 1873, his land was divided among his widow Elenora and their children. The five sons, John, George, Cornelius, Henry and Isaac, would continue as potters. There are no known examples of the work of Cornelius or Isaac (who died at the young age of twenty). The Pfaltzgraff archives, however, contain a rich collection of pieces from the potteries of John, George and Henry.

The earliest known samples of Pfaltzgraff pottery are by John B. Pfaltzgraff. An advertisement from an 1872 York newspaper claims that his Manchester Pottery supplied "all kinds of earthenware." By this time, however, John, George and Henry Pfaltzgraff had all begun to import (probably from Ohio) higher quality clay than the local red clay. Their customers—the farmers, merchants and small industries of South Central Pennsylvania—began to favor stronger, salt-glazed stoneware pieces over their traditional earthenware. The Pfaltzgraffs needed to adapt, or risk the future of their potteries.

This ability of the Pfaltzgraffs to adapt and develop new products and new manufacturing technology would be fundamental to the growth and success of Pfaltzgraff potteries and businesses to the present day. As the Pfaltzgraff brothers expanded their potteries and business horizons, the nineteenth century Industrial Revolution was changing the United States from a farm-based society to an urban, manufacturing-driven economy. And so, in 1889 George and Henry Pfaltzgraff created a partnership that would grow into the Pfaltzgraff Company.

Our First Factory

In 1894 brothers Henry B. and George B. Pfaltzgraff joined forces to create the first Pfaltzgraff company called simply "The Pfaltzgraff Stoneware Co." and soon outgrew their home-based York pottery. They decided to build a new, modern plant that would streamline production, and to locate that facility on a railway line to expedite shipments to customers in a wider geographic area. Up until that time a Pfaltzgraff potter's market had been defined as the distance a horse and wagon could travel and still return home within a day.

The following year the brothers constructed a three story plant next to a railroad near the western outskirts of York City in south central Pennsylvania. They added two additional buildings over the next eight years. This comparatively large facility was the first "true" Pfaltzgraff stoneware factory.

The first photograph shows factory employees standing in front of and sitting upon a boxcar with the factory visible behind them. The gentleman standing in the boxcar door, on the right, is George W. Pfaltzgraff, son of George B. Pfaltzgraff. George W. would play a key role in the expansion of the company in the twentieth century.

This first factory burned to the ground in 1906. The Pfaltzgraffs managed to salvage some bricks and girders and used these materials in the building of a new factory further west. The new "West York" facility still stands today.

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