The Bidwell House Museum in Monterey, Massachusetts - and a Wonderful Slip Decorated Red Earthenware Lidded Pot

Nestled in the hills of western Massachusetts, rests a relatively unknown gem of a museum known as the Bidwell House. The museum is hidden in Monterey, Massachusetts quietly planted between mature English-style gardens and remotely placed in the middle of the area's woodlands. I visited this eighteenth-century saltbox museum earlier this year to see its collection of early American utilitarian pottery - and outside of being impressed - I was rather surprised and intrigued by one particular slip decorated lidded pot.

The Bidwell House can be described as, "off the beaten path"; I drove west along the Mass Pike for roughly two (almost three) hours from my house on coastal Massachusetts before veering off the highway near Lee, Massachusetts and taking a number of back roads that eventually brought me to a long dirt driveway that led to the museum. The driveway probably extended for a few hundred yards before I arrived at the parking lot. Beautiful perennial and annual gardens terraced down towards me as I parked and stepped out of my Jeep onto the green grass. I was met by a stone walkway with stone steps that brought me up a hill towards a porch, where a museum tour guide and expert led me into the Bidwell House and all of the secret treasures it held.

The house was built in 1760 for the Reverend Adonijah Bidwell, who served the region's religious needs for many years around the American Revolution . The area later divided into Monterey and Tyringham, Massachusetts. The spectacular furnishings found inside this dignified home were mostly collected by Jack Hargis and David Brush; two men who purchased the property in 1960. From my understanding, they mostly collected New England antiques over the next three decades that were purchased privately from dealers, antique shops and antique shows throughout New England. 

In 1990, Hargis and Brush donated the Bidwell House property and all of the decorative arts they had collected preserving what was their passion into the museum that is seen by a countless number of visitors today.

I was really surprised to see the range of New England-made red earthenware upon immediately entering the home. The first room I entered reminded me of a meeting quarters. It appeared to be the largest room in the house that all the other rooms on the first floor were connected to; it appeared to be the central room. I could clearly see rare forms and glazes applied by potters in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. My favorite was probably an impressive collection of red earthenware found inside a small eighteenth-century cupboard (possibly made nearby in Deerfield, Massachusetts) that included nineteenth-century wares made at the Safford Pottery in Monmouth, Maine and also a collection of colorful nineteenth-century stew pots from the Corliss Pottery made in the Days Ferry neighborhood in Woolwich, Maine.

I was very fortunate to have received a private guided tour from the museum that brought me upstairs into the storage facility, which housed additional examples of utilitarian pottery. This was also where the museum offices were found. As soon as I entered the storage area (which I would describe as an attic-type atmosphere), I was quite surprised to see a colorful painted red earthenware jar that was undoubtedly made at Charles A. Lawrence's business in Beverly, Massachusetts in the 1870's. I have only seen about a half-dozen products with this style from Beverly thus far. I asked the museum guide where the jar was acquired and she told me it was likely purchased locally in New England; however she wasn't sure if it came from a private sale, a shop or an antique show. As we continued deeper into the storage collection, I saw an incredible green glazed red earthenware lidded storage jar likely made in southeastern Massachusetts around the turn of the nineteenth-century. There was actually quite a few examples of coastal Massachusetts red earthenware and additionally, there was also pottery from Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

A pot that really stood out to me above everything else was a covered handled pot with splashed slip decoration; a newer piece of paper was stuck to it that read, "North Carolina." While I am not a hundred percent sure how this attribution was developed - it dawned on me last week that the decoration on this pot is very similar to a large eighteenth-century pitcher I purchased a few years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The decoration on the lidded pot and the pitcher seem similar, but even more importantly, they both seem very similar to a chamber pot that was uncovered from a privy (trash pit) at the Narbonne House in Salem, Massachusetts inside a (circa) 1770 archaeological context. 

The Narbonne House was built as a middle-class occupancy in the seventeenth-century on Salem's waterfront. It remained a middle-class occupancy into the twentieth-century before it was shuffled from a residence into a historic site that is now owned by the National Parks Services. 

I have personally seen many of the artifacts recovered at this site and most of the recovered red earthenware (if not all of it) was likely made locally in Essex County, Massachusetts. Based on this information, I also believe the chamber pot with the similar splattered decoration was also made in Essex County. With this idea, I wondered last week if the lidded pot from the Bidwell House could be related to the pitcher and the chamber pot. All three glazes seem similar. I think it's an interesting subject to bring up. 

For now, I will show you the three pieces below - and you can make your own interpretation based on the information I have provided above and how these pieces appear below.

 18th/19th Century Red Earthenware Lidded Pot with Splattered Slip Decoration

Origin Not Completely Known - Suggested to Have Been Made in North Carolina

Slip Decoration is Similar to a Sherd Found at the Narbonne House in Salem, Ma

Photo Courtesy: Bidwell House Museum - Monterey, Ma

View of the Lid and the Splattered Slip Decoration

Photo Courtesy: Bidwell House Museum - Monterey, Ma

(Left) Chamber Pot Recovered at the Narbonne House in Salem, Ma
Similar Splashed Slip Technique to the Products Seen in this Report
Ca. 1770 Archaeological Context
Photo Courtesy: National Parks Services Narbonne House Archaeological Report - Salem, Ma

18th Century Red Earthenware Pitcher with Splattered Slip Decoration

Purchased a Few Years Ago in Cambridge, Ma
Stands 13 1/4" Tall

Slip Decoration is Similar to a Sherd Found at the Narbonne House in Salem, Ma

Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...