The birthplace of the American china painting movement was Cincinnati, Ohio.  Karl Lagenbeck and his neighbor Maria Longworth Nichols experimented with overglaze china paints.  Classes were taught at the McMicken School of Design.
          Some of this student-painted china was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.  Millions of people attending the Exposition were exposed to the new art form and embraced it.
          Many women turned to creative occupations that allowed them to beautify their homes with their own artistic creations and china painting was one such outlet.
          Women chose their own patterns to decorate their own pieces.  But one of the difficulties china painters encountered was locating kilns to fire their pieces.  This led to the development and distribution of a portable and economical kerosene-fueled kiln specifically geared to china painters.  Later the portable gas kiln for porcelain was developed and patented.
          Around the turn of the twentieth century, romanticism with its sympathetic interest in nature was being usurped by a modern design attitude, one that preferred abstract and conventional motifs, and simpler, uncluttered settings.
       China painting grew unpopular during the Depression and world War II when discretionary income and a shortage of materials and imports decreased.
         Porcelain painting was virtually extinct until 1958 when a group of Dallas women organized a club that is still active.
         The World Organization of China Painters based in Oklahoma City, boasts a membership of over 9,000 china painters in the United States.
         However those who took up china painting predominantly did so as a hobby.  As an art form, it never regained the same number of practitioners as it had in its heyday prior to World War I.
         To see some exquisite china painted during the turn of the century by native-Dentonite Felicia Alberta Daugherty, come to the Bayless-Selby House Museum.
         Mrs. Daugherty was married to another Dentonite, Charles Lemuel Daugherty (son of Denton pioneer Christopher Columbus Daugherty).
         Mrs. Daugherty was an accomplished artist.  She bought porcelain blanks from the Rosenthal Porcelain Company and other European companies and hand painted the designs before firing them in a kiln in the basement of her home in Oklahoma City.  The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until noon and from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m.

Georgia Kemp Caraway, PhD., Director,
Texas Institute of Antiques & Collectibles
Denton Record-Chronicle, October 5, 2001