Humberstone
Canadian family of potters. They were the only family in the history of Canadian ceramics active during three centuries. Five generations worked in Upper Canada (now Ontario): Samuel Humberstone (c. 1744-1823), Thomas Humberstone (1776-1849), Thomas Humberstone jr (1811-95), Simon Thomas Humberstone (1846-1915) and Thomas Allan Humberstone (1887-1952). Samuel Humberstone, born and trained in Staffordshire, was Upper Canada's first recorded potter. He had worked in Philadelphia before the American Revolution; as a United Empire Loyalist he subsequently received a land grant and was settled in Grenville County, Upper Canada, by 1796. His son Thomas Humberstone was the first recorded potter in York County (1798) in an area, now part of metropolitan Toronto, where the later Humberstones also worked as potters. Samuel Humberstone and Thomas Humberstone made coarse earthenware, required in the pioneer communities. Their descendants added salt-glazed stoneware to their range. Simon Thomas Humberstone was the best-known potter; a founder of the Ontario Earthenware Manufacturers Association (1872), he experimented with earthenware bodies, coloured glazes and porcelain. His notebooks (1872-1902) are a unique, first-hand account of Canadian ceramics in the Victorian years. By the time Thomas Allan Humberstone inherited the business in 1915, production was largely dependent on stoneware churns and red flowerpots. He closed the business towards the end of World War I.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
