Ceramics By Kirk

Description: An Illustrated Order Form

I know next to nothing about this company and I have not recorded very many of their products. Only a few collectors besides myself had the good fortune to get a copy of this illustrated order form found by a Medicine Hat picker on one of his local garage sale searches. At the time I worked for the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and I agreed to buy any of the pieces that he ran across. As it turned out, he found only half a dozen different items, and I do not even have photographs of most of them.

Kirk Ceramics was located in hanger #3 at the Medicine Hat airport. After WW II, many of the hangers at the airport were repurposed for a variety of businesses, Kirk Ceramics being one of them.

In the Hycroft invoice records, I found two mentions of Kirk. On 28 July 1955, Hycroft invoiced Kirk for supplies, likely clay, and on 14 May 1956 they were invoiced for talc and frit supplies. I am sure that if one searched the Medicine Hat newspapers from the day more information would be forthcoming. The City Archives in Medicine Hat may well have reference material, but it was not a task for me to undertake from Calgary.

Once again, I am sharing all the pictures that I have just so you can recognize their products when you see them. Obviously, the best way to identify them is by the Kirk sticker which marked their products but, in part, the sticker is what makes the pieces so hard to find as it is easily removed. So far, I have seen only green and blue coloured stickers.

The other aspect to watch for is the random line decoration found on most of the products seen to date. Please check the order form for the colours as given at the end of the order form. Also, where the order form says “Wire”, it simply means that you can get the K-1 shape with or without the wire base to hold that particular shape. I acquired pieces for Glenbow with the wire form but I have no pictures of them.