The geranium plant that cheered your hospital room probably came from a greenhouse, but do you know where they make the rusty-red pots in which the flowers are grown?
There is only one place in the Rocky Mountain Empire still manufacturing clay flower pots. In fact, as many as 15,000 of these simple pieces of pottery may be made in one day at the American Clay Works and Supply Co., in Denver.
The firm's roots in Denver go back 76 [now 116] years to the Silver Panic of 1893, when Clarence Montague turned from real estate to making clay flower pots. With a family to feed and land badly depressed, Montague was forced to find another way to make a living or leave Denver. He opened a small pottery shop at the foot of what is now the 20th Street Viaduct.
The business prospered despite Montague's lack of experience, and in 1907 he moved to a larger plant on Bryant Street just west of the Platte River. Established at that site, Montague began to manufacture clay flower pots and teach his son the business. Today there are four Montagues still making and selling clay flower pots at 857 Bryant St., Denver.
The red clay pots that Clarence Montague made in 1893 have not changed since growers learned the advantages of the porous vessels for growing plants indoors. However, the method of manufacture has been improved as well as the capacity of the factory. Today they can make more flower pots in one week than Clarence could make in one month in 1893.
The clay used in the pots is mined in rock form from a vein that runs along the foothills between Castle Rock and Boulder, Colo. American Clay buys its raw material from a mine west of Golden owned by George W. Parfet. The only processing done at the mine site is screening to remove the topsoil and foreign matter from the clay rock. It is then trucked to Denver and stored in piles outside the factory. From these piles the clay rock is shoveled by hand (to insure proper mixture) onto a conveyor belt that feeds a rock crusher. This crusher reduces the rock enough so that it can be fed into another crusher that pulverizes the clay to powder ready for mixing. The clay is then mixed with water (no adhesive or glue is used to hold the pots together), and all the air is forced out of the mixture by a compressor.
"Although there are measuring devices, we still pride ourselves in testing the mixture by feel and sight," Howard Montague says. Howard, a grandson of the founder, owns the firm with his cousin, Robert. "One of us periodically looks at and feels the mixed clay just before it goes into the pot press to insure that it will hold together."
From the compressor, the clay is formed into a tube about four inches in diameter. It is then sliced according to the size of pot to be made. The factory makes pots ranging from two inches in diameter (measured across the inside upper lip of the pot) up to 12 inches in diameter, in three different depths. This measured piece of clay is then dropped into the pot press.
The press is much like a large drill press. The clay falls into a spinning "mold" that is shaped like the outside of the flower pot. Next a solid steel punch, shaped to form the inside, is drilled (like the bit on a pot complete with the familiar hole in the bottom. The press is powered by electric motors, and one man can run the entire process. To make the larger, 12-inch pots a hydraulic press is used. It operates on the same principle, but is much slower than the small electric press. The small press can produce over 6,000 six-inch pots or 15,000 three- and four-inch pots in one day.
Once the pots have been pressed and stacked on trays, they are dried by warm air - two days for the small ones, four for the largest. After drying, the pots are sanded to trim off any rough edges formed during pressing.
"The electric sander is an invention that my Dad contributed to the business," Howard says. "By building things ourselves we have cut much of the cost of production that is such a factor when selling an item as cheaply priced as a flower pot. Our prices have not increased over 25 per cent since 1945. In 1946, you could buy four-inch pots at $30 per 1,000. Today the same pots cost $36 for 1,000 pots. Whenever we can keep production costs down by doing something ourselves, we do it."
The dried and trimmed pots are now ready for firing. In 1893 pots were pressed by hand in molds and fired in a brick oven. Today they are loaded onto a permanent platform that will hold over 4,000 six inch pots, and a giant kiln on tracks is rolled over them. The gas-fired oven reaches 1,800 degrees at the height of the cycle. The pots are preheated for 6 hours, high fired for 9 to 10 hours, and allowed to cool slowly (so they won't crack) for 8 hours. While one platform is being fired, a second platform is being readied for use. Thus, every 24 hours the kiln can be moved and fired up again eliminating the delay of moving the pots in and out of the kiln.
"After firing," Howard explains, "the pots are ready for shipping. We handle most of the pots in bulk form with no special packaging. If they are loaded and handled right, breakage is very slight. We even have one customer that drives 800 miles from Utah for his flower pots and hauls them in the back of his truck."
However, some of the pots do break, mostly in storage and handling. The only use for the broken pots is for driveway and patio fill. They make excellent driveways, the Montagues say, because the pieces are flat and will not scatter or pack like round rocks or gravel. Clarence Montague's daughter-in-law, Olga, is the firm's secretary and bookkeeper. Olga's son, Robert, and her nephew, Howard Montague, are partners and present owners with Howard's son, Richard, just entering the business. Richard will make the fourth generation of Montagues in the American Clay Works and Supply Co.
"When my grandfather began the business in 1893, there were six other potteries in Denver," Robert says. "Our last local competition quit in 1935 and now the closest potteries are in Cisco, Tex., to the south and Pittsburg, Kan., to the east."
Actually, clay flower pots are not the largest part of the Montagues' gross income. The firm also is a wholesale outlet for floral supplies such as peat pots (flower pots made from peat moss that can be transplanted directly into the ground), plastic pots, greenhouse construction supplies, and a machine that sprays an insecticide in a foggy mist. However, there is still enough of a demand for the standard clay pots for the company to make them profitably. The Montagues will gross around $70,000 on the red pottery pieces this year.
The Montagues do most of their business with the large wholesale flower growers and commercial greenhouses. Two of their biggest buyers are the Park Floral Co. and Associated Greenhouses, both Denver wholesale florists. The Park Floral Co. alone buys over 300,000 six-inch pots a year.
"Probably our most unusual customers are the mink ranchers who buy our flower pot saucers for feeding dishes," Howard says. ".Then we have the women that stop by for the small pots to make candle holders or bell chimes, or even ice cream dishes. One woman even plugs the hole and uses the pot to make coffee."
The Montagues thoroughly enjoy the flower pot industry and continue to expand the business despite several harsh setbacks.
"Part of the plant was destroyed by fire in 1952, but we kept right on going," Olga Montague says. "The June flood of 1965 destroyed all our records and carried most of our pots down the river. We found pots scattered as far away as Brighton. The water was over five feet high inside the factory and it solidified all the clay stored outside in piles; it took a lot of hand digging with pick and shovel to clean up the mess."
"We were frightened when the river came up again the first part of May this year," Howard says. "We moved all our records and office files and stored the packaged fertilizer on the second floor, but fortunately the water never broke on our side of the river."
[There are many footnotest that could be added to this Denver Post article. In 2008 we began a special program called Colorado Grows. This is our special program, designed to bring recognition to our local industry, the Colorado economy, and the quality of plants and research in this State.]
Four Generations Of Pot-Makers
