Thesis: Yerxa

Thesis: Cyrus Yerxa

Plus Ultra: Interpreting Craft at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works

The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works of Doylestown, Pennsylvania is a vehicle for exploring how the meanings of craft, craft preservation, and public perceptions of craft are embodied in our built heritage. As the 111-year-old National Historic Landmark transitions from tile factory to museum, the building will become available to interpret the business and its intersection with past and present meanings of craft.

The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works of Doylestown (MPTWD) from within its courtyard, looking northwest, 1989.
This thesis explores opportunities for such interpretation by investigating perceptions of craft authenticity during three stages in the site’s development. Henry Chapman Mercer founded the Tile Works as a contributor to the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and thus relied on natural materials and minimal machinery to distinguish his product from the 19th century Industrial Revolution. The County of Bucks acquired and preserved the factory as a site of historic significance before reactivating tile making in the 1960s and 1970s, largely adopting Mercer’s notions of authentic production.
“Plus Ultra” a Latin phrase meaning “more to come,” adopted and made locally famous by MPTW founder Henry Chapman Mercer.

An apprentice making a tile mosaic inside MPTW, 1989.
The business today relies at once on the historicity and handmade nature of its product granted in part by the legacy of their founder, but also on the growing community of small- to medium-scale American tile enterprises embracing modern methods, machinery, and facilities with whom they share success. This identity makes the Tile Works an appropriate place to discuss broadening the interpretation of craftwork because doing so means reconstructing long-held notions of authenticity in order to remain relevant in today’s market and among their tile making peers. Such reconstruction requires closer inspection of how things are made and distributed in the world today, as well as questioning the existence of a clear empirical distinction between handmade and machine-made. In this light, the totality of global craftwork becomes clearer. The work of craft interpretation at the Tile Works’ museum should clarify the business’s position on the landscape of global manufacturing while contributing to a broader conception of craft as we think of it.

Thesis: Cyrus Yerxa

Plus Ultra: Interpreting Craft at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works

Students

Faculty