Athens Stoneware: A Buyer's Guide to Hudson Valley Crocks

If one category of antique belongs to this region above all others, it's salt-glazed stoneware: the gray crocks, jugs, and jars decorated in cobalt blue that once stored butter, pickles, cider, and just about everything else in a 19th-century household.

The Athens story

In 1805, a potter named Nathan Clark and his brother-in-law Thomas Howe started a pottery on Market Street in Athens, in Greene County. Under Clark, his son Nathan Jr., and a series of partners, it ran for almost a century, closing in 1900. A historical marker stands at the site today.

The stamps changed over the years: "Clark & Howe," "N. Clark Athens," "Clark & Fox," and "N. Clark Jr. Athens, N.Y." Dating a piece by its stamp is part of the fun. The pottery also trained potters who went on to start shops elsewhere. William Nichols apprenticed in Athens and set up in Poughkeepsie around 1819, and Clark family potteries operated in western New York, so a Clark stamp from out of the valley still traces back here.

What to know when you're holding one

• The clay wasn't local. Athens stoneware used fine clay shipped in by boat, mostly from New Jersey and Long Island. Local Hudson Valley clay was better suited to bricks.
• Redware is different. The reddish, softer, often lead-glazed pottery was made from that local brick clay by many small potters. It's older in tradition and more fragile.
• Albany slip is a Hudson Valley product. The dark brown glaze inside many American stoneware pieces came from a clay peculiar to the upper Hudson region.
• Decoration drives value. A plain crock is common and affordable. A crock with a cobalt bird, a deer, or a dated design can be worth many times as much.

Rough prices

These are rough auction-market ranges, and values depend on maker, decoration, size, and condition:

• A plain, undecorated one- to three-gallon crock in good condition often brings $75 to $250.
• A piece with simple cobalt decoration, roughly $200 to $800.
• Strongly decorated or signed pieces with birds, animals, or merchant names, $600 to $3,000 and up.
• A hairline crack typically knocks 20 to 40 percent off, and chips or restoration more.

For a sense of the middle of the market, a rare three-gallon jar stamped "ATHENS" with simple brushed cobalt flowers sold at a specialist stoneware auction in 2024 for $660, including the buyer's premium. Shop prices usually sit somewhat above auction results, which is fair, since the dealer did the finding.

Check condition and avoid fakes

• Run a finger around the rim for chips and look inside for hairline cracks. A gentle knuckle tap should ring. A dull thud can mean a hidden crack.
• Be wary of a too-perfect cobalt design, a surface that looks painted on rather than fired in, and a maker's stamp that's crisp in a way 150-year-old stamps usually aren't.
• Ask the dealer to write what they're representing the piece to be on your receipt.
• Don't glue a cracked crock. A known crack is a known quantity to buyers. An amateur repair is not.

Where to look

Greene County shops turn up Athens stoneware more often than anywhere else. Coxsackie Antique Center is a sensible place to buy a first piece, since it guarantees no reproductions. Auction houses like Mooney's Auction Service and Carlsen Gallery post sale dates online. And the Hudson Valley Bottle Club, founded in 1973, has members deeply involved in local pottery history. Check its Facebook page for meeting and show dates.

If you're driving through Athens, stop on Market Street. There's no shop where the kilns stood, but standing where so much of New York's decorated stoneware was made puts every crock you've looked at into context.