EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: An Example of Early-20th Century Canadian-Made Folk Art Discovered Today in a Shop in Putnam, Connecticut

Saturday, October 3, 2015

An Example of Early-20th Century Canadian-Made Folk Art Discovered Today in a Shop in Putnam, Connecticut

I traveled to Putnam, Connecticut today with my three-year-old niece, Alexis with the intent to pick the local antique shops. My focus was directed towards pottery while her sights were set on dolls and vintage stuffed animals. Personally, I feel I did pretty-well. I discovered an early-nineteenth-century Connecticut-made red earthenware flask, an oversized nineteenth-century slip decorated English-made red earthenware dish - and, the object that I want to discuss in tonight's report.

We found a wonderful example of early-twentieth-century (likely) Canadian-made folk art buried in the basement in one of the antique shops in Putnam. There are three factors to examine when studying this object - 1) the bottle, 2) the later added exterior surface and 3) the label.

To begin, this bottle was manufactured at the Dominion Glass Company in Montreal, Quebec - and, based on the mark, the bottle was likely made in the first quarter of the twentieth-century. The company made glass products which included bottles and insulators in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries; although, this product was undoubtedly made in the 1900's.

From there, the bottle was later decorated by the owner with red earthenware and pieces of pine to imitate tree bark. I've seen bark bottles before; however, I have never seen bark bottles made from red earthenware before. The screw-on metal cap and the glass bottle are entirely decorated with the exception of the interiors and the bottle's base. It fascinates me trying to understand how someone could have possibly fired this bottle to form the red earthenware exterior after the bottle had already been manufactured.

The last characteristic that really captured my attention was the way the bottle was labeled, which seems to have imitated some American-made glass apothecary jars from the early-twentieth-century. In this case, the rectangular label was dug into the clay on the front of the bottle with the word, 'MONTREAL' written in gold paint.

According to an article written by Bill Lockhart, Beau Schriever and Bill Lindsay titled, 'The Dominion Glass Companies of Montreal, Canada,' "A bottle with a Diamond-D logo (see below) and no date, month or factory codes would have been made after 1913 and prior to 1928."

I have never seen another bottle decorated like this before. It must be a very-rare object to find today. This wasn't a style that was mass-produced - instead, it was an object that someone probably decorated at home. This is really a wonderful example of (likely) Canadian-made folk art.