Welcome To Potsdam Public Museum

       Frank Pease Burnap, a native of Parishville, and Harriet Call of Potsdam, met while students at the Potsdam Normal School, and married in 1891. Harriet Burnap owned a Staffordshire oval plate that had been in the home of her grandfather, John M. Call, who had built the first sandstone residence in the Village of Potsdam. She bought indiscriminately until 1928, when a collection of luster seen while on a trip to Boston revealed the potential of serious collecting. In 1941, Harriet Call Burnap wrote: “Every piece in the collection has its own story for us and recalls pleasant and interesting memories.” The collection eventually numbered about 2,000 pieces, of which nearly 1,500 were given to the Nelson Gallery of Art (today the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) in Kansas City, where Frank Burnap had established the F.P. Burnap Stationery and Printing Company. The initial gift to the people of Potsdam included molded and relief ornamented wares, luster ware, transfer prints, porcelain, and pottery by Wedgewood and his imitators, dating from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Later donations included delft chargers and glass flasks from England, Meissen ware from Germany, and Chinese export ware. Today the Burnap collection in the Potsdam Public Museum numbers more than 500 individual pieces representing two centuries of English ceramics.