EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: Extremely Rare 19th Century Tin-Glazed Products Made by American Red Earthenware Potters

Friday, March 18, 2016

Extremely Rare 19th Century Tin-Glazed Products Made by American Red Earthenware Potters

According to the Maryland Department of Planning, "Tin-glazed earthenware is a soft-bodied earthenware ceramic with a lead-glaze to which has been added tin-oxide, often painted with blue and polychrome designs. Tin-glazed wares often found on Chesapeake sites are Dutch or English in origin, although French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish tin-glazed wares are also sometimes recovered. Tin-glazed ceramics represent attempts throughout the Middle East and West to copy porcelains produced in China, and were the first white, painted pottery produced in England.

Tin-glazed earthenware was first produced in northern Europe in the sixteenth-century, although the technology was known elsewhere centuries earlier. In the Chesapeake, tin-glazed earthenware fragments are recovered from archaeological sites dating from the years of European settlement through the third-quarter of the eighteenth-century, when tin-glazed table wares began to be eclipsed by more durable refined earthenwares. The production of tin-glazed wares in England had almost ceased by the early 1800's, although simple ointment jars and storage bottles were made well into the nineteenth-century"

The import of European tin-glazed products was not limited to the Chesapeake Bay communities, either, which include Maryland, Virginia and Delaware; however, I chose this location for the purpose of this article since it relates to one of the objects in this discussion. Truthfully, imported European tin-glazed ceramics have been recovered in seventh-and-eighteenth-century archaeological contexts that span nearly every major colonial maritime community, which includes New York City, Boston and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

However, tin-glazing is not a process that appears to have been attempted by many eighteenth or nineteenth-century American potters - it is actually almost unheard of with American potters today. To my knowledge, it was not attempted by any New England potters. The only examples of tin-glazed red earthenware that I am aware of today (excluding books and museums) have sold in recent years at Crocker Farm in Sparks, Maryland - and, those few products are tied to the Bell family, who were prominent red earthenware and stoneware potters in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia in the nineteenth-century.

It should be no surprise, either that Crocker Farm has been consigned one of the few known tin-glazed American-made examples for their upcoming sale, which will take place tomorrow, Saturday March 19, 2016.

According to Crocker Farm, "This exceedingly rare and important Shenandoah Valley tin-glazed redware jar with profuse cobalt decoration is stamped 'I. BELL.' It was likely made in Winchester, Virginia or Hagerstown, Maryland." Also according to Crocker Farm, "The underside is impressed with the raised-face maker's mark of John Bell, which reads 'I. BELL,' a stamp used while Bell was still operating at the shops of his father, Peter Bell in Hagerstown, Maryland or Winchester, Virginia, circa 1820-1825."

19th Century Tin-Glazed Red Earthenware Jar Decorated with Cobalt

Made by John Bell in Winchester, VA or Hagerstown, MD

Circa 1825

Stands 6" Tall

Stamped on the Base 'I. BELL'

Photo Courtesy: Crocker Farm - Sparks, MD

View of the Base

Photo Courtesy: Crocker Farm - Sparks, MD

View of the Raised-Face Mark 'I. BELL'

Photo Courtesy: Crocker Farm - Sparks, MD

It was also about one-year ago that Crocker Farm sold another rare tin-glazed object made by John Bell with a similar 'I. BELL' mark; however, that mark was recessed, which according to Crocker Farm "was a maker's mark that John Bell used in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, circa 1830-1850. The raised-face mark was an earlier mark (as seen in the object above)."

The following, huge, six-gallon, tin-glazed jar with hand-decorated cobalt sold for $7,475 on March 14, 2015.

For a comparison, it will be interesting to see how the small tin-glazed jar does this weekend since it is from an earlier period of John Bell's production, and another state, which should cater to an additional market of collectors, dealers and museums. The small jar should not only draw interest from people in Pennsylvania, but there should be an overall interest from collectors, dealers and museums, who are located elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region.