EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A Very Rare Late 19th Century Red Earthenware Form Found in a Vintage Shop in Salem, Massachusetts

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

A Very Rare Late 19th Century Red Earthenware Form Found in a Vintage Shop in Salem, Massachusetts

When I think of what the idea, rare red earthenware form means - I think of whippets made by the Bell family in the Shenandoah Valley (Virginia and Pennsylvania) in the nineteenth-century - I think of the folky figures also made in Virginia and Pennsylvania in the nineteenth-century - I think about the red earthenware made in New York City in the eighteenth-century - I think of red earthenware made at the Upton Pottery in Rhode Island in the late eighteenth-century - I think of any surviving red earthenware made in Charlestown, Massachusetts before June 17, 1775 - I even think of all the eighteenth-industries elsewhere in America in places like North Carolina, Philadelphia and coastal Massachusetts; however I discovered a form today in Salem, Massachusetts that I had never previously considered as a product made by a utilitarian red earthenware potter. It's never even been a consideration. It is surely an unlikely and an unexpected form. Let me explain.

The use of smoking tobacco has been in use for centuries. In the late nineteenth-century, rolled cigarettes became fashionable in America. I don't condone their use, but for the sake of this story - they will be discussed.

Their use really began to mainstream in 1865, when a man named Washington Duke began to market and sell hand-rolled tobacco in North Carolina. There was a time (especially in the Victorian Era) when cigarettes were thought to be a healthy practice - it was the new popular trend with some of the masses. Even though I have never considered it before - naturally, some utilitarian potters must have taken notice of what was happening with this new trend.

While picking my way through a few shops in Salem, Massachusetts today - I found what I believe to be a red earthenware ashtray with an orange-colored glaze. It shares strong characteristics to some products made in Essex County, Massachusetts after 1860/1870. It actually matches some known glazes applied at the Joseph Reed Pottery in the 1860s and 1870s. The major potter's business (or at least the centralized business) in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries in Essex County - was arguably the Osborn Family Pottery. Dozens of family members and non-related potters worked and trained at this pottery. It was started in the early eighteenth-century - and the business flourished as the Industrial Revolution began around 1860 - and as the Industrial Era altered the face of the potter's industry - the living Osborn family members chose to sell their business. A potter who had previously worked for the Osborn's, Joseph Reed purchased the business, likely its supplies, maybe its business contacts and all the original standing buildings that went along with the business. This new operation became known as the Joseph Reed Pottery.

I feel Reed Pottery is likely the best assumption for the ashtray's manufacturer - this assumption is based on glaze color and clay color; although many other businesses applied this colored glaze, too. The clay color is a brick-red color, which is also how many of the products made in Maine appeared. As simple as this piece can be seen - it is still a fascinating idea considering potters saw this new shift with American culture - and they went right along with it. Simply put - how many red earthenware ashtrays attributed to New England have you seen!? This is a first for me.

I have no-doiubt this ashtray was made in the nineteenth-century. The glaze corresponds with products made in this era. The clay color also matches accordingly. The ashtray is also visibly hand-turned on a potter's wheel - similar to how a larger bowl would have been made. I feel the ashtray was likely made in Essex County (where it was found), but there are also small arguments that could be made for a New Hampshire or Maine attribution. As simple as it is, this is really a fascinating form to see!

Take a look - if you notice, the bowl has three spots (what I call dimples) where a cigarette could rest.