Crocker Farm

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Crocker Farm, Inc. is a family business, owned and operated by Anthony and Barbara Zipp and their three sons, Brandt, Luke, and Mark. Anthony and Barbara began collecting and studying American stoneware in 1977, and began selling it in 1983. They have handled thousands and thousands of pieces of antique American stoneware and redware since that time. Brandt, Luke, and Mark Zipp all have B.A. degrees from Johns Hopkins University, where they each graduated with multiple honors and were inducted into the nation's premiere scholastic honors society, Phi Beta Kappa. All three brothers grew up handling numerous pieces of American stoneware and redware from a very young age, and in this way their knowledge in the field has been said to be unmatched. We have spent hundreds of hours conducting original research on American stoneware and redware potters in original, period sources, such as census records, city directories and newspapers. New information brought to light through our research includes ground-breaking revelations on Baltimore, MD stoneware and redware; the long-sought origin of "H. Myers" stoneware; important findings on the history of the prolific Remmey family of American potters (of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore); significant contributions to the study of Alexandria, VA and Washington, DC stoneware; new findings in the areas of Shenandoah Valley pottery, Midwestern stoneware, New York City stoneware, and many more. Exhaustive research conducted by us on James Miller, potter of Alexandria, Virginia, took the surviving examples of his work out of obscurity, increasing the value of these vessels by thousands and thousands of dollars. In March 2010, Brandt revealed that Thomas Commeraw, the famous Manhattan potter of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was actually a free African American, and his book on Commeraw's remarkable life will be completed soon. These are just a few of the important contributions we have made to the field of American utilitarian ceramics.