Frankoma Pottery is an American pottery company located in Glenpool, Oklahoma, but originating in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. The company is known for its sculptures and dinnerware although the company made many other products including figurines, trivets, and vases. All Frankoma pottery is made in the US from locally excavated clay. [1]
Frankoma was founded in 1933 in Norman, Oklahoma, by John Frank, who was a professor of ceramics at the University of Oklahoma from 1927 to 1936. The name Frankoma was derived from "Frank" plus the last three letters of "Oklahoma". Frank moved the company to Sapulpa in 1938, but rebuilt the factory later that year after a fire. [2]
Frankoma used light-hued local Ada clay in its early products. The light clay was replaced by a Sapulpa OK based brick-red local clay in 1953. [2] John Frank operated the pottery with his wife Grace Lee Frank until his death in 1973; Grace designed a second line called Gracetone for the firm. The factory was rebuilt in 1984 after a September 1983 fire destroyed most of the facility. [3] [4] The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1990. [2] The Frank's daughter Joniece ran the pottery until 1991 when she was forced to sell the struggling company. The buyer, Richard Bernstein of Maryland, resold the business in 2005 to Det Merryman. [5]
The company was closed for six weeks and then sold again during the summer of 2008, reopening on August 18 under new owner Joe Ragosta. Ragosta planned to bring back all the employees and continue the Frankoma line of pottery. [6] The year 2008 marked the company's 75-year anniversary. [1] The company closed in 2010 and was auctioned on May 18, 2011. Over a thousand pieces of pottery plus showroom fixtures and equipment were sold. The 1,800 original molds and the Frankoma name were not included in the sale, nor was the real estate. [7] [8] In August 2012, the factory building was sold to a non-pottery manufacturer and the original Frankoma molds and trademark name were sold to FPC LLC. As of April 2020, pottery continued to be made [9] but in lower volume, focused on artware.
The 2012 exhibition, Oklahoma Clay: Frankoma Pottery, documented Oklahoma culture through pottery; it took place at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. [10]
In November 2022, Frankoma opened a new manufacturing site and storefront in Glenpool, Oklahoma. [11] Owner Dennis Glascock constructed the facility in hopes of exposing more people to the company’s products and revitalizing the program. [11]
Sapulpa is a city in Creek and Tulsa counties in the U.S. state of Oklahoma and a suburb of Tulsa. The population was 21,929 at the time of the 2020 census, compared with 20,544 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Creek County.
Glenpool is a city in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, United States. It is part of the Tulsa Metropolitan Statistical Area (TMSA). As of 2020, the population was 14,040, which represented an increase of 29.9% since the 2010 census, which reported the total population as 10,808.
State Highway 97 is a 19.86-mile (31.96 km) state highway, maintained by the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It connects two towns in the northeast part of the state: Sapulpa and Sand Springs. Several communities of West Tulsa are along the road between these two towns, including Pretty Water, Allen, and Prattville.
North Dakota in the United States has been the scene of modern era pottery production using North Dakota clays since the early 1900s. In 1892 a study was published by Earle Babcock, a chemistry instructor at the University of North Dakota (UND) that reported on the superior qualities of some of the North Dakota clays for pottery production. The UND School of Mines began operations in 1898 with Earle Babcock as director. With the assistance of several eastern potteries, pottery made from North Dakota clay was first displayed at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
State Highway 67, abbreviated as SH-67, is a 9.94-mile-long (16.00 km) highway on the south side of Tulsa. It begins in the west at U.S. Route 75 Alternate in Kiefer and runs east along 151st St. South before ending at US-64 in Bixby. Along the way it crosses US-75 in Glenpool. It has no lettered spur routes.
Royal Doulton is an English ceramic and home accessories manufacturer that was founded in 1815. Operating originally in Vauxhall, London, and later moving to Lambeth, in 1882 it opened a factory in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in the centre of English pottery. From the start, the backbone of the business was a wide range of utilitarian wares, mostly stonewares, including storage jars, tankards and the like, and later extending to drain pipes, lavatories, water filters, electrical porcelain and other technical ceramics. From 1853 to 1901, its wares were marked Doulton & Co., then from 1901, when a royal warrant was given, Royal Doulton.
Bybee Pottery was a pottery company based in Bybee, a community in Madison County, Kentucky, USA. It was founded in 1809 by Webster Cornelison and members of the same Cornelison family continued to make and sell pottery until 2011. Bybee Pottery sold a wide variety of products and encouraged customers to interact with the artisans and tour the building that had survived six generations and the Civil War.
Crown Lynn was a New Zealand ceramics manufacturer that operated under various names between 1854 and 1989.
The John Frank House was designed in 1955 and built in 1956 in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, United States. It was designed by architect Bruce Goff. It was designed for John Frank, founder of Frankoma Pottery. It was specifically designed to showcase the Franks' love for pottery. John and Grace Lee Frank glazed and fired the ceramic tiles located throughout the house.
Ceramics in Mexico date back thousands of years before the Pre-Columbian period, when ceramic arts and pottery crafts developed with the first advanced civilizations and cultures of Mesoamerica. With one exception, pre-Hispanic wares were not glazed, but rather burnished and painted with colored fine clay slips. The potter's wheel was unknown as well; pieces were shaped by molding, coiling and other methods,
Gladding, McBean is a ceramics company located in Lincoln, California. It is one of the oldest companies in California, a pioneer in ceramics technology, and a company which has "contributed immeasurably" to the state's industrialization. During the heyday of architectural terra cotta, the company "dominated the industry in California and the Far West."
Vernon Kilns was an American ceramic company in Vernon, California, US. In July 1931, Faye G. Bennison purchased the former Poxon China pottery renaming the company Vernon Kilns. Poxon China was located at 2300 East 52nd Street. Vernon produced ceramic tableware, art ware, giftware, and figurines. The company closed its doors in 1958.
Kenton Hills Porcelains were high-fired soft paste porcelain products manufactured by Kenton Hills Porcelains, Inc. Ceramics were produced from 1940 to 1943 in Erlanger, Kentucky, with sales continuing to 1944. All ceramic products were made from native clays. Products include vases, bookends, figurines, lamp bases, and flowerpots.
SeneGence International, Inc. is a privately owned American multi-level marketing (MLM) company that sells skincare and makeup products, including the LipSense product line. The company was founded in 1999 by Joni Rogers-Kante who is the CEO and chair. The company is headquartered in Foothill Ranch, Lake Forest, California, with facilities in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.
Stangl Pottery was a company in Flemington, New Jersey, that manufactured a line of dinnerware and other items. The company was originally founded as Samuel Hill Pottery in 1814, until 1860 when it became Fulper Pottery. The name changed to Stangl Pottery in 1955. The company ceased production and closed in 1978, but the dinnerware is still prized by collectors. Pieces can be identified by the Stangl name on the bottom. The original Flemington, New Jersey, location and showroom was bought in May 2011 to make space for a restaurant, a studio, and an art gallery.
Indiana Glass Company was an American company that manufactured pressed, blown and hand-molded glassware and tableware for almost 100 years. Predecessors to the company began operations in Dunkirk, Indiana, in 1896 and 1904, when East Central Indiana experienced the Indiana gas boom. The company started in 1907, when a group of investors led by Frank W. Merry formed a company to buy the Dunkirk glass plant that belonged to the bankrupt National Glass Company. National Glass was a trust for glass tableware that originally owned 19 glass factories including the plant in Dunkirk. National Glass went bankrupt in 1907, and its assets were sold in late 1908.
The discovery of the Glenn Pool Oil Reserve in 1905 brought the first major oil pipelines into Oklahoma, and instigated the first large scale oil boom in the state. Located near what was—at the time—the small town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the resultant establishment of the oil fields in the area contributed greatly to the early growth and success of the city, as Tulsa became the petroleum and transportation center of the state, and the world.
Tulsa-Sapulpa Union Railway Company, L.L.C. is a Class III shortline rail carrier which operates freight service between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Sapulpa, Oklahoma over 10 miles of track known as the Sapulpa Lead, and which also leases and operates a 12.9 mile section of Union Pacific track known as the Jenks Industrial Lead between Tulsa and Jenks, Oklahoma. The line connects with two Class I railroads, being the Union Pacific at Tulsa and the BNSF at Sapulpa, and additionally connects to its fellow Class III shortline, the Sand Springs Railway, in Tulsa. It is owned by the Collins Family Trust. Major customers on the Sapulpa Lead include Technotherm, Prescor, and Ardagh Glass, and on the Jenks Industrial Lead, the HF Sinclair oil refinery, Kentube, Word Industries, Pepsi Cola, and Kimberly-Clark.
Oregon Pottery Company was established in the United States at Buena Vista, Oregon, in 1866. The largest pottery business on the West Coast of the United States at the time, it produced stoneware jars, jugs, and sewer pipe between 1866 and 1897 in Buena Vista and Portland, Oregon.
Tamac Pottery was a line of mid-century modern ceramic glazed dinnerware that was manufactured in Perry Oklahoma from 1946 to 1972. The stream-lined biomorphic pottery line included tableware and housewares.