Pitcher

Title:

Ski Heil Pitcher

Object Name:

Pitcher

Object ID:

2025.021

Creator:

Norton Company -- Manufacturer

Place of Origin:

Worcester, MA

Date:

1938

Description:

Pitcher. Glazed ceramic pitcher with a ski theme connecting White Mountain and Austrian ski resorts. Directly beneath the spout is a five-petal yellow flower with crossed skis and ski poles with a text box reading "SKI HEIL," a traditional skier greeting. Beneath this are stylized pine trees and ski trails on a white background. On one side of the pitcher beneath the rim is an eagle with text on either side reading "SCHWARTZ. ADLER" and "St ANTON c/ ARLBERG". Below the eagle is a bowtie separated from a loosened collar with a red apple in place of an Adam's apple and a black suit jacket. There is a red heart pinned to the jacket with an inscription which reads, "WORCESTER / MAY 1938". The other side of the pitcher beneath the neck has the text "JACKSON TRAILS / THE HAWTHORN". This side of the pitcher has three partial names: "MILTON MON AMI / MIKE THE BISCUIT / ALICE's TERTIUS", with images of musical notes, a feather, flowers, and the Eiffel Tower.

Material:

Ceramic

Dimensions:

H-10.875 W-5.5 D-8 inches

Provenance:

The seller, Scala Antiques, recalled that the pitcher was "from a wealthy family from Worcester MA that owned the Norton Company." This detail identifies "Milton" as Milton Prince Higgins Jr. (1903-1997) and "Alice" as his wife, Alice Lord Coonley Higgins (1906-2000). "Tertius" refers to either the Peroneus tertius muscle or tendon that connect the shin with the foot. It's a frequent site of injury for skiers.

Milton Prince Higgins (1842-1912) was one of seven partners who purchased the Franklin B. Norton Company in Worcester in 1885, a maker of pottery and stoneware. They incorporated the firm as the Norton Emory Wheel Company but shortened the name in 1907 to the Norton Company and focused on making grinding wheels and abrasives. Milton Prince Higgins Jr. was born on October 29, 1903 to Edgenie Gertrude Brosius Higgins (1865-1911) and Aldus Chapin Higgins (1872-1948) - the eldest son of the Norton co-founder. Milton Jr. graduated from Milton Academy in 1923 then Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1924 and finally from Harvard University in 1928. He began skiing in his senior year at Harvard, and joined the Ski Club Hochgebirge in 1931, which formed in Brookline, Massachusetts, the year before. The "Hochies" began holding annual downhill races in the White Mountains in 1931.

Born on August 15, 1906 in Lake Forest, Illinois to Mary Belle Lord Coonley (1882-1944) and Prentiss Loomis Coonley (1880-1970), Alice Lord Coonley graduated from Hathaway House of Milton Academy and then attended Vassar College. She married Milton P. Higgins Jr. on November 13, 1936 in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the couple settled in Worcester where Milton worked for the Norton Company. The couple had five children over the next decade: Milton Prince Higgins III (1938-2023), Prentiss Coonley Higgins (b.1939), Mary Edgenie (Higgins) Rice (b. 1942), Patricia Brosius (Higgins) Arnold (b. 1944), and David D. Higgins (b. 1947).

The couple regularly visited New Hampshire over the years to ski, including in January 1938 with the Hochgebirge Club to Plymouth - when Alice was two months away from delivering their first child. In May 1938 Milton began a two-year position as resident manager of an electric furnace plant in Chippewa, Ontario, owned by the Norton Company. This event may connect to the tuxedo pictured on the pitcher, which has a red heart on the jacket reading "WORCESTER / MAY 1938". Milton had been working his way up the corporate ladder at Norton since 1928; he became president of the company in 1946. In 1961 he transitioned to chairman of the board until his retirement in 1974. Both for business and pleasure the Higginses traveled the world, including to Europe, Asia, Australia, and South Africa. Starting in 1949 Alice kept travel diaries, which she turned into the 300-page book Our Magic Odyssey, published in 1999 by the Friends of the Robert Hutchings Goddard Library. Milton died in Worcester in 1997 at the age of ninety-three; Alice died at the age of ninety-three in 2000.

This unique pitcher was most likely made at the Norton Company for the Higginses, and it focuses on their shared loves of skiing and travel - including to the White Mountains. It is noteworthy for pairing skiing in the White Mountains with the Tyrolean Alps, which both attracted wealthy American skiers in the 1930s and '40s and hosted schools taught by famed alpine instructor Hannes Schneider. The Hotel Schwarzer Adler, referenced on the pitcher, has been operated by the same family in St. Anton am Arlberg since 1885, and dates back to the sixteenth century. Hannes Schneider began teaching tourists how to ski in this resort village in the Tyrolean Alps in 1907. Also referenced on the pitcher are the Jackson Trails and The Hawthorne. The phrase "Jackson Trails" refers to either hiking and/or ski trails around Jackson, New Hampshire, in the 1930s and '40s, with Ralph C. Larrabee helping to found the Jackson Trails Club by 1928, and the Doublehead, Black Mountain and ten-mile Valley Circuit cross country course among the many options for skiers by the mid 1940s. "The Hawthorn" was the Hawthorne Inn, which J. E. Meserve built and opened as Hawthorne Cottage in 1889 in Jackson; by 1938 it was advertising in the U.S. Eastern Ski Annual as the place "Where Skiers Gather." It burned in March 1973. Jackson was just north of North Conway, where Hannes Schneider arrived in February 1939 from St. Anton to oversee the ski school at Mount Cranmore.

Credit Line:

New Hampshire Historical Society Purchase, Katharine Prentis Murphy Fund

People:

Higgins, Milton Prince (1903-1997), Higgins, Alice Coonley (1906-2000), Schneider, Johann "Hannes" (1890-1955)

Subjects:

Ceramic industries, Ceramicists, Ski resorts, Skiers, Skiing, White Mountains, Eagle, Eiffel Tower