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Phil Schaltenbrand, founder and owner of Westerwald Pottery of Scenery Hill, PA, will be the guest speaker on Monday, May 19 at the monthly meeting of the Charleroi Area Historical Society. Schaltenbrand earned his art degree at Kutztown University and would eventually teach art classes for 33 years, the last 30 years as a professor at California University of Pennsylvania.

Phil has been making hand-thrown pots on a potter's wheel since 1967 when he was introduced to ceramics at the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, which awarded him a master's degree. In 1968 Phil was hired to build a ceramics program at California University of Pennsylvania. Personal research of early American stoneware began shortly thereafter. These efforts have produced three books – Big Pots, Stoneware of Southwestern Pennsylvania, and Big Ware Turners.

In 1975 Schaltenbrand responded to requests to make special ware pieces for the U.S. bicentennial. This resulted in his founding Westerwald Pottery (40 Pottery Lane, Scenery Hill). Westerwald Pottery employs twenty skilled operatives with most having been with the company for more than ten years, some as long as twenty; some are his former students. In 1997 Schaltenbrand left his university position to devote time to research and to the running of Westerwald Pottery.

Ken Thompson, President and Program coordinator of the CAHS, Inc., hopes that everyone interested in the arts will come to hear Schaltenbrand's passion for ceramics, particularly hand-thrown stoneware pottery. Bring that piece of stoneware pottery that's been part of your family's collection or that piece you picked up at a yard sale or flea market to hear what this expert has to say about it.

The program is free and begins at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m.) in the SPHS Center located in the Chamber Plaza, Charleroi (turn right at 5th St and McKean/Rt.88N). Refreshments will be served. For more information, call 724-483-4961 or 724-925-1742.

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