Reporter Volume 25, No.15 February 3, 1994

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
An exhibition of fine architectural terra cotta produced by Boston
Valley Terra Cotta, a Western New York firm, is the first in a series
of spring exhibits to be presented by the UB School of Architecture
and Planning.
The exhibition, "Architectural Terra Cotta: Boston Valley Terra
Cotta," opens today with a public reception at 5:30 p.m. in the James
Dyett Exhibition Hall, Third Floor, Hayes Hall, on the South Campus.
It will run through Friday, Feb. 25, and is free of charge and open to
the public. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. 
Boston Valley Terra Cotta manufactures custom-made architectural terra
cotta and roof tile for contemporary installations and architectural
restorations. It has restored and replicated terra cotta in hundreds
of architecturally significant buildings throughout the country.
This show will include samples and photographs of intricate custom
work its engineers and artisans have produced in connection with the
restoration of several buildings in Western New York; Boston, Mass.,
and New York City.
Among them are several Buffalo structures: Louis Sullivan's Guaranty
Building, known for its elaborate and intricate facade and capital
detailing; the white-glazed Niagara Mohawk Building; Liberty Tower,
which is faced with a pulsachrome-glazed terra cotta, and the more
recently restored Calumet Arts Cafe on Chippewa Street.
Also represented are the ornate, white-glazed Berkeley Building in
Boston, Mass.; Baskerville Hall at City College of New York; the
200-year-old Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, and the French SPA
Apartments in Clifton Springs, a former tuberculosis treatment center
built over sulfur springs.
Terra cotta--literally "baked earth"--is one of the most successful
architectural materials known to mankind, possessing unique properties
of plasticity, richness of surface and glazed colors. Produced from
kiln-fired clay, it is timeless in its articulation of architectural
intent. There is no other material that can be so readily impressed,
and its fireproof qualities and resistance to acid outlast almost any
other material.
Small terra cotta figures from as early as 3000 B.C. have been found
in the Mediterranean region. Because of its cheapness, versatility and
durability, terra cotta was employed throughout the ancient world for
more utilitarian purposes as wellQas housing bricks, roof tiles and
temple facing. Then, as now, terra cotta architectural reliefs have
employed elaborate floral or abstract designs, as well as figured
representations often seen in extensive friezes.
Terra cotta died out as a building and facing material between the end
of the Roman Empire and 1400 A.D., but reappeared in 15th-century
Italy and Germany and spread wildly in the form of glazed and highly
colored sculpture and ornate pottery. Its modern revival dates from
the early 20th century when both potters and architects renewed their
interest in the aesthetic properties of the material.
 Boston Valley Terra Cotta was once a brick factory and later
manufactured flower pots. Purchased by the Krouse family in 1981, its
30,000 square foot factory sits on 80 acres of clay and shale deposits
20 miles south of Buffalo. The factory houses 8 kilns containing 5,000
square feet of firing space and employs highly skilled ceramic
technicians, engineers and artists who tend to each piece of terra
cotta through the intricate processes of production.
At Boston Valley Terra Cotta, molds are made to match original pieces,
in the case of a restoration project, or from models sculpted for new
installations. Clay is hand packed (in the case of detailed pieces) or
machine Ram pressed into plaster molds. It is hand finished when
leather hard and sprayed or hand painted with color matched glazes and
fired to 2,150{ F.
This exhibit will be followed by "L'Enfant's Plan: Visions of
Washington," March 2-25 and "Buffalo Harbor and Aquarium: Horizons
Waterfront Commission," April 6-29.