Hadley Pottery

Hadley Pottery had its inception in 1939, when Mary Alice Hale Hadley made a custom set of dishware for a cruiser she and her husband George Hadley had on the Ohio River.[3] She created her own design with a nautical flag motif[4] and painted it on unfired blanks that she fired at the Louisville Pottery Co.[5] When friends saw the design of her dishes, they were interested in purchasing dishes of their own, so Hadley created a few more at the Louisville Pottery Co.[6]

With more interest and demand, the Hadleys finally purchased what became the Hadley Pottery building at 1570 Story Ave. in Louisville in October 1944 as a birthday present for Mrs. Hadley.[7] Mrs. Hadley painted all of the murals on the walls of the building[8] and the Hadley Pottery opened for business in 1945.[9] Hadley created a wide range of designs for the company, often inspired by Louisville motifs such as the fleur-de-lis.[10]

Hadley Pottery was exhibited by the American Craftsmen's Educational Council in 1947, and at the Ceramic National Exhibit at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts.[11] In 1952, Mary Alice Hadley received an award from the Museum of Modern Art's Good Design program[12] and her winning design, "Brown Dot" (or "Hot Brown Fleck"), was exhibited in New York and Chicago.[13]

• Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana
• Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

• 
  Mary Alice Hadley Ceramics at the Speed Art Museum
• 
  Mary Alice Hadley Ceramics at the Speed Art Museum

• Official company website
• An example of the "Brown Fleck" design in the Speed Museum collection
• The Mary Alice Hadley Prize for Visual Art
• Mary Alice Hadley Obituary, Louisville, Courier-Journal

• Louisville Stoneware