Hughes to form the Wahpeton Pottery Company. He continued to direct the WPA project until it closed in 1942. After the move to Mandan, Margaret Cable and Frieda Hammers at the University assisted in the formulation of glazes suitable for use with the local Mandan clay. WPA products included many utensils for the State school hot lunch programs. These include plates and bowls for eating as well as serving bowls, pitchers, etc. They also made hand thrown or molded items for various state institutions. Functional products include ashtrays, spoon holders, trivets, paperweights and salt and pepper shakers among other items. A popular series nursery rhyme characters was also produced including Humpty Dumpty, Old King Cole, Old Mother Hubbard, and others. These figurines were sent to North Dakota nursery schools for use as teaching aids. Some WPA ceramics items are identified by a rubber ink stamp, WPA Ceramics N. Dak. Others were hand etched or incised. Pieces marked WPA and not identified by state, or not marked at all can not be attributed to the North Dakota project as several other states also had WPA Ceramics projects. Wahpeton Pottery Company (Rosemeade) The Wahpeton Pottery Company was formed in 1940 by Robert J. Hughes, a local Wahpeton, North Dakota business man and Laura Taylor, a potter trained at the University of North Dakota. Mr. Hughes was the business manager of the Company and Laura Taylor provided the creative talent. The two were married in 1943. Laura was born in Rosemeade township in Ransom County, North Dakota and named the pottery after her birthplace. The success of the business allowed a modern production plant to be built in 1944 and Howard Lewis, a ceramics engineer formerly with Dickinson Clay Products, became a partner and production manager. Initially, Rosemeade was marketed in the Midwest, but later expanded to all of the United States and many foreign countries. Laura Hughes did the majority of the design work for the company. Her many animal figurines and salt and pepper designs used live animals as models, but she also worked from pictures, sketches and mounted animals. While there are wheel thrown vases, especially the swirl pieces, most of Rosemeade production was from plaster cast molds made from Laura's clay models. Pheasants in many variations were probably the most popular sale item. "By 1953, more than 500,000 Rosemeade pheasants in 19 different designs had been sold." (Dommel, Dakota