EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: The Continued Study of a Red Earthenware Figure Discovered in a Shop in New Hampshire Last Weekend

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

The Continued Study of a Red Earthenware Figure Discovered in a Shop in New Hampshire Last Weekend

I believe I have learned quite a bit more about the nineteenth-century red earthenware figure that I wrote about yesterday, which was recently found in New Hampshire - and, it is thanks to Jessica Davies, a ceramic collector from Nantwich, England. She told me this morning, "The (red earthenware) figure appears to be Jim Crow, a popular subject found in porcelain Staffordshire figures made in England in the nineteenth-century."

According to the African-American Registry in Minneapolis, Minnesota, "Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860) was born in the lower east city side of Manhattan in New York City near the East River docks. Rice received some formal education in his youth, but quit school in his teenage years when he acquired an apprenticeship with a local woodcarver. However, despite his occupational training, Rice quickly made a career as a performer.

By 1827, Rice was a traveling actor, appearing not only as a stock player in several New York City theaters, but he also performed on the frontier stages in the coastal south and in the Ohio River Valley.

The actual origin of the Jim Crow character has been lost to legend - although, Rice was identified with the character the most. He used African-American vernacular speech, song and dance to become one of the most popular minstrel show entertainers of his time. His act drew on aspects of African-American culture, while popularizing the Jim Crow character with a national, and later, an international audience.

Several sources have described a tale of Rice encountering an elderly black stableman working in one of the river towns, where Rice was performing - some suggest this person may have given him inspiration for his Jim Crow character. He had also observed and absorbed the black culture in song and dance for many years.

Rice appeared onstage in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1830's, and he also learned in Louisville to mimic local black speech.

In New York, Rice opened up at the old Park Theater, where he introduced his Jim Crow act impersonating a black slave. For the character, he dressed in rags, a battered hat and torn shoes. Rice blackened his face and hands and impersonated a very nimble and irreverently witty field hand, who sang, 'Turn About and Wheel About, and Do Just So. And Every Time I Turn About I Jump Jim Crow.'

The character was based on a folk trickster named Jim Crow, a popular folk story among black slaves.

Rice often performed in England, and that's also where he met his wife, Charlotte B. Gladstone in 1837.

As early as 1840, Rice suffered from a type of paralysis, which began to limit his speech and movements, and eventually led to his death on September 19, 1860."

Note: I have shown two porcelain Staffordshire Jim Crow figures below, and a drawing (or an advertisement) for Thomas Dartmouth Rice's performance of his Jim Crow character at the Bowery Theater in New York City in 1833.

The porcelain figures and the drawing (or advertisement) appear strongly related to the red earthenware object that I discovered in a shop in New Hampshire last weekend.

I also want to mention that this nineteenth-century red earthenware figure of Jim Crow could also be from the late-nineteenth-century since the Jim Crow Period lasted into the 1960's with the American Civil Rights Movement.

Found in New Hampshire