EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A Newly Acquired Large Red Earthenware Jar Made in Southeastern Massachusetts Around the Turn of the Nineteenth-Century

Sunday, July 12, 2015

A Newly Acquired Large Red Earthenware Jar Made in Southeastern Massachusetts Around the Turn of the Nineteenth-Century

I wanted to briefly tell about, describe - and, show an important large lidded red earthenware jar that I acquired privately tonight from a friend of mine, who I have learned a great amount from in recent years. With the exception of a repaired lid - this jar is in wonderful condition demonstrating a beautiful breathtaking glaze.

The jar was manufactured at one of the potter's businesses that were employed in southeastern Massachusetts around the turn of the nineteenth-century. This type of pottery is commonly referred to today as 'New Bedford (Massachusetts) redware' - but, the wares in this area were actually predominately produced in places like Berkley, Massachusetts and Somerset, Massachusetts, which is just to the east of New Bedford near the Taunton River. I assume that New Bedford was a target city for distribution of the wares made at these companies. The Chace, Purinton, Boyce and Shove families dominated production in this area in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. It's difficult to say what business (or, what potter) produced this jar; however, it is a classic southeastern Massachusetts form known today.

This jar measures over eleven-inches tall with the lid. It's also pretty rare today when you can almost say definitively that a jar and a lid are original to each other. On the base of the jar and the lid is the Roman numeral 'IX' or 'XI.' Numbers were often used to match a lidded jar up properly after a kiln firing - simply put, the lid and jar were sometimes fired in separate areas of the kiln and the number is what tied the correct pieces back together after they had been fired. Basically, in this case, the interpretation of the number seen on this lid and the jar today is interchangeable seeing that the numbers are reversible - whether, the potter meant the number nine or the number eleven - I don't know.