Wheelock

The Wheelock family began selling china in Wisconsin well before the Civil War. In the early 1890’s one of the many Wheelock children, Mr. Charles Wheelock, had the vision to expand their business into the latest craze, souvenir china. The business grew quickly and soon they employed over thirty salesmen selling souvenir china in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Wheelock mid west business was no longer regional. It had grown to international proportions.

Wheelock was not the manufacturer of souvenir china, as some believe, but the importer. Because Germany and Austria had the raw material to produce high quality hard paste porcelain, those two countries were the major source of souvenir china. The procedure was as follows. The scenes or pictures were selected in the area where they were to be sold, usually from postcards. They were then sent to Europe for processing. The next step was to make a transfer print of the picture which was then applied to the china. Initially the pictures were black and white but later many were hand colored at factories. Eventually transfer prints were done in color eliminating the step of coloring by hand.