A Very-Important 18th Century Slip Decorated Red Earthenware Colander Owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston owns a small collection of red earthenware that pertains to the American industry - and, its wares from the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries. My personal feeling has always been (and, remains) that any form of eighteenth-century domestic red earthenware is exceptionally rare today. Any surviving examples are extremely scarce - whether, they happen to live in a private collection or in a museum collection today

Privately, I consider these early objects to be very-rare commodities to own today. Thus, that's why a previously undocumented example of colonial Charlestown, Massachusetts slip decorated red earthenware (circa 1760) brought a host of national phone bidders at a Tim Gould auction in Gardiner, Maine last November, which ultimately, sold for more than $15,000.

I would easily, consider, the following, slip decorated hand-thrown red earthenware colander, owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to be among that very-rare (might I say, elite) group of eighteenth-century objects that are known today. According to the museum, this colander, was gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1956 by Miss Elizabeth Tuck. The museum says it was made in the early-1780's. Unfortunately, that's all of the information that the museum has to provide about this object.

Attribution is very-difficult today, with an object of this caliber, considering, so little is known about the potters who were employed in Massachusetts before 1790. That's not to say everything is known about the Massachusetts potters after 1790, either; truthfully, a large part of this period's production is also questionable in terms of what was really happening.

Undoubtedly, there are certainly potters who were employed during this period, who are still not recognized or even really known today. From Lura Woodside Watkins 1950 book 'Early New England Potters and Their Wares' alone, there are dozens of potters listed, who would have been employed in coastal Massachusetts by 1780, who were at least twenty-five-years old.

The American Revolution was a true transition period in the coastal Massachusetts potter's industry. The centralized industry in New England before the American Revolution was based in Charlestown, Massachusetts, where forty-or-more potters (likely, many more) were employed in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. However, the industry was executed at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 by British soldiers when the town was burned to the ground ruining what had been home to a number of potter's businesses that dated back to roughly 1635.

After the American Revolution, true potter's industries began to expand on Boston's North Shore in South Danvers (today known as Peabody), Massachusetts and in the southeastern part of the state along the Taunton River a few miles west of New Bedford, Massachusetts. There were also potter's businesses that emerged west of Boston in Dedham, Massachusetts and in Weston, Massachusetts. And, despite the fact that Charlestown burned at the Battle of Bunker Hill - potters still returned after 1775 to produce red earthenware on the town's waterfront. This isn't always recognize today that quality hand-thrown colorfully glazed red earthenware was actually manufactured in Charlestown into the nineteenth-century. It's almost unquestionable that these potters had regular interactions with the stoneware potters, Frederick Carpenter and Jonathan Fenton, when they began producing stoneware in Charlestown in the 1790's.

I really feel that it would be extremely difficult to properly identify where this colander was made without further archaeological evidence or maybe even a detailed potter's daybook; although, if it is, indeed, a Massachusetts product, like I also believe it is, then there is a good chance it was produced in one of the areas that I cite above.

 18th Century Slip Decorated Red Earthenware Colander Attributed to Massachusetts

The Colander was Gifted to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1956

Circa Early-1880's

Stands 3" Tall

Measures 14" in Diameter

Photo Courtesy: Museum of Fine Arts - Boston, Mass.

This is How the Colander is Displayed in the New Americana Wing at the MFA in Boston, Mass.
Photo Courtesy: Museum of Fine Arts - Boston, Mass.

If you would like to visit the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to view this object - it is currently on display in the Lurie-Marks Gallery in the New Americana Wing. It's really a spectacular - and, exceedingly rare piece (and form) of eighteenth-century New England-made utilitarian red earthenware.

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