A pottery was operated in Baraboo from 1851 to 1857 by Philip Pointon and his son. Two earthenware pieces that initiated our research, a molded tobacco jar and a wheel turned cream pot with strong attributions in the collection of the Sauk County Historical Society...
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These pieces of a 3-gallon cream pot were found in a privy Portage in 2022. We attribute them to the Baraboo Pottery (1850 – 1857). They are the first Baraboo Pottery shards found since a truckload of shards were recovered from the pottery site in 2021. They resemble Whitewater pottery but have several distinguishing features. First, the rim is not prominent or sharply tooled like Whitewater cream pots. Secondly there are no documented examples of Whitewater with three incised lines. Three lines are typical of Baraboo cream pots. The manganese decoration is more translucent than Whitewater. The style of the “3” is distinctive. The fact that it appears on both Whitewater and Baraboo pottery is more evidence to support our hypothesis that an unidentified potter moved from the Fremont Street Pottery in Whitewater to Baraboo in the early 1850’s, bringing with him the decorative style of looping scroll below a flower
