EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A 19th Century Red Earthenware Colander that Recently Appeared in Vermont

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

A 19th Century Red Earthenware Colander that Recently Appeared in Vermont

An auction catalog that I have always admired was published a few years ago by Crocker Farm for the William Kelly Young sale, which took place in Maryland on January 30, 2010. The Fort Worth,Texas collection was a diverse selection of folk pottery, which basically spanned every major nineteenth-century American potter's region with a wide selection of hand-picked red earthenware and stoneware.

'Antiques and the Arts Weekly' recapped the sale, "The stoneware and redware pottery collection of William Kelly Young attracted serious attention as it crossed the auction block.

An unusual assortment of pottery, the 300 lots from Young's collection featured wares from around the entire country, including whimsical stoneware jugs from Texas, a selection of Ohio crockery, a collection of North Carolina stoneware and redware, colorful pieces from the Shenandoah Valley, as well as the usual assortment of wares from the Northeast.

Young began his collection in the mid-1980's and was said to have been a familiar sight at antique shows and auctions, easily identifiable by his Western garb, from his cowboy hat all the way down to his boots.

A friend, recently sent me photographs of a nineteenth-century red earthenware colander that appeared in southern Vermont. Instantly, the decoration reminded me of a red earthenware jug in William Kelly Young's collection, which may have been manufactured in either western New York or Ontario.

According to Crocker Farm, "This rare mid-19th century redware jug with copper spot decoration was probably made in the northeastern United States. The columns of green copper dots were applied over a mustard-colored glaze."

This is a very unusual decoration. The only other objects that I am familiar with today, which may be related are a jug that I purchased from a private Annapolis, Maryland collection, and a miniature butter churn, which was published in 1991 in William Ketchum, Jr.s book, 'American Redware." Ketchum suggested that the churn may have been made in the mid-nineteenth-century in either New England or western New York; however, I do not believe it is a New England-made object.

Red Earthenware Jug