EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A Slip Decorated Red Earthenware Harvest Jug Adorned with Hand-Modeled Decoration that was Discovered in a Junk Shop in Woolwhich, Maine in July of 2014

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

A Slip Decorated Red Earthenware Harvest Jug Adorned with Hand-Modeled Decoration that was Discovered in a Junk Shop in Woolwhich, Maine in July of 2014

After writing today's report, which focused on the important collection of folk pottery from the John and Heather Harbinson Collection kept at the Canadian Museum of History in Quebec - I realized, that I may own a slip decorated red earthenware harvest jug that could be included in this realm of production.

The following harvest jug was found last summer in a legitimate junk shop in Woolwich, Maine. I asked the shop owner where the jug came from - and, he told me that all of his inventory is brought to him from homes (house clean-outs) and junk auctions (he gets the leftovers that do not sell) within a fifty-mile radius of his shop. He said everything is found in Maine. Unfortunately, he didn't know exactly where the harvest jug was found.

Ed's Stuff - Woolwich, ME

The reason I wanted to briefly bring this harvest jug into discussion is because it demonstrates similar multi-colors of slip - with hand-modeled figures and objects that are comparable to some of those that were used for decoration on some of the German-Ontario products that are included in the museum's collection.

Originally, I had questioned if this jug could have been made in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia - or, by one of the Stahl family members in Pennsylvania; however, that idea quickly vanished - and, the jug has sat in my house for the past year. None-the-less, I now wonder if the harvest jug could be related to the German potters, who worked in Ontario in the nineteenth-century.

Written in slip across the handle is a word that I have, yet to transcribe - it reads something like, 'rricgo' or 'l'ricgo.' I have tried researching the word; however, my results have turned up empty.