EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A 19th Century Toy Red Earthenware Bird Whistle Discovered Earlier this Year in Western New York

Monday, August 29, 2016

A 19th Century Toy Red Earthenware Bird Whistle Discovered Earlier this Year in Western New York

This article is an extension from the article that was also posted today, which discussed Charles A. Mehwaldt (1808-1897), who was an important German migrant red earthenware potter located in the Niagara Falls region in New York.

According to an article written by Ada Walker Camehl in September 1922 for 'The Magazine Antiques,' called 'Mehwaldt, a Pioneer American Potter,' "Mehwaldt produced quantities of chimney crocks, red earthenware crocks of all sizes, butter-crocks with handles to be hung in wells to keep butter cool; cooking utensils, candlesticks, all manners of tableware - platters, plates, sauce-dishes, cups and saucers, mugs, pitchers, sugar bowls, vegetable dishes, teapots and teakettles. He also produced finer products like inkstands and tile stoves.

At Christmas-time, he usually turned out many little dinner-sets for children, and toys made in the form of pigs, owls, roosters, and birds with whistles in their tails. When these figures were filled with water the whistles gave out a variety of tones."

Earlier this summer, I vacationed in upstate New York with my nephew, Jason, and we visited a few antique shops in our travels. We discovered the following nineteenth-century dark-brown glazed red earthenware rooster whistle in a huge group antique shop in Farmington, New York. Initially, I had suggested that this bird could have been manufactured in either western New York or Ontario.

It appears (to me) that the manufacture of this object may compare with the toy rooster (and animal) whistles, which Mehwaldt reportedly manufactured for children during Christmas-time before 1887.

I can only imagine that there must be some of this whimsical production, which survives from Mehwaldt today. However, I wonder how much of it could be inaccurately attributed to Pennsylvania today, where there was a much larger production of related whimsical or 'end-of-the-day' objects.