Hank Aaron’s pottery collection had local ties
Observer-Reporter
In this file photo, Phil Schaltenbrand, owner of Westerwald Pottery in Scenery Hill, stands with some of the harvest jugs his company produced for the Pennsylvania Auctioneers Association. He has been creating and selling a variety of pottery items for 46 years at his location along Route 40.
Signatures belonging to baseball legend Hank Aaron
Washington County potter Phil Schaltenbrand was told an order he received in 1989 for mugs was going to a famous athlete.
He enclosed a self-addressed envelop containing slips of paper with the order to a West Virginia gift shop requesting autographs from the athlete.
A few weeks later, the envelop was returned with six signatures of professional baseball legend Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron.
“It’s one of our few connections to the famous,” Schaltenbrand said.
Schaltenbrand is a retired California University of Pennsylvania art professor who founded Westerwald Pottery in Scenery Hill 46 years ago.
It produces blue and gray stoneware in the style of early Pennsylvania potters, whose wares carried goods on rivers down to New Orleans.
Former First Lady Barbara Bush purchased his pottery in Maine and he did a piece for the Clinton White House.
Schaltenbrand said he didn’t know why Aaron was attracted to his pottery other than he wanted the mugs as gifts to his family. He doesn’t remember the name of the West Virginia gift shop.
He heard from Aaron in 1995 in a phone call from the former Atlanta Braves right fielder who broke Babe Ruth’s home run record April 8 1974, when he hit his 715th homer.
Aaron wanted to order 500 plates from Westerwald that he would sign and sell on the QVC television network. Schaltenbrand said it was an impossible order to fill because his pottery is signed in the studio before it’s fired.
“I didn’t think it was going to work,” Schaltenbrand said.
He did create a special commemorative trophy honoring Aaron’s 715 home runs that reportedly was displayed at Truist Park, home to the Braves.
Schaltenbrand said he was moved while watching a tribute to Aaron on TV after he died Jan. 22 at age 86 of natural causes. In the background of the video sat two of the mugs Westerwald produced for him in 1989.
“I was kind of moved in a way that they still had those pieces in their family connection,” said Schaltenbrand, who had Aaron’s baseball cards in 1954, the first year of his career.
“I wish I still had those cards,” Schaltenbrand said.