Niloak ( ) is a line of

American art pottery American art pottery (sometimes capitalized) refers to aesthetically distinctive hand-made ceramics in earthenware and stoneware from the period 1870-1950s. Ranging from tall vases to tiles, the work features original designs, simplified shapes, an ...

produced by the Eagle Pottery Company of Benton,

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

. Eagle was founded by Charles Dean Hyten and his brothers in the 1890s and was the largest pottery-ware business in the Benton area by 1904. The name is the reverse spelling of

kaolin Kaolinite ( ) is a clay mineral, with the chemical composition Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4. It is an important industrial mineral. It is a layered silicate mineral, with one tetrahedral sheet of silica () linked through oxygen atoms to one octahedral ...

, the main ingredient of

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainl ...

. In 1909, Arthur Dovey joined Eagle to help Hyten, by then sole owner of the company, develop an operation for the manufacture of art pottery. Together they produced the Niloak product, the name taken from

spelled backwards. The company was in business from 1909 to 1946. The salient feature of Niloak was its "Mission Swirl," developed by Hyten. The swirl is a multi-colored pattern using different clays and resembling

marbled paper Paper marbling is a method of aqueous surface design, which can produce patterns similar to smooth marble or other kinds of stone. The patterns are the result of color floated on either plain water or a viscous solution known as size, and then ca ...

. Niloak's Mission Swirl was usually of red, tan, blue and brown in a counter-clockwise direction. During the Depression years, Eagle manufactured a line of Niloak called "Hywood".

References

External links

Niloak Pottery information website

See also

References

External links

Further reading