EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A Wonderful 17th/18th Century Marbled Red Earthenware Pot from North Italy Recently Discovered in Ontario

Friday, June 8, 2018

A Wonderful 17th/18th Century Marbled Red Earthenware Pot from North Italy Recently Discovered in Ontario

This is an object that I am quite excited to have just received from a friend in Ontario, which also happens to be where this sweet little red earthenware pot was discovered. In fact, the only other example I have ever handled was owned for decades by Sheffield, Massachusetts antiques dealer, Sam Herrup. Otherwise, this is a style of production that I am only familiar with today based on archaeological evidence.

I first encountered this type of marbled red earthenware production while in the process of studying the dozens of boxes that makeup the Charlestown, Massachusetts Archaeology Collection at the Boston Archaeology Department in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The vast majority of the sherds had been recovered within a seventeenth century archaeological context. But I later learned about related sherds that had been recovered in Salem, Massachusetts, as well as artifacts discovered by archaeologists from Salem State University within a circa 1639-1676 archaeological context at the site of the Phips Plantation in Woolwich, Maine.

This type of production is attributed to potteries in North Italy today, which apparently was intermittently shipped to the American colonies in the seventeenth and possibly early-eighteenth century. I can only begin to imagine the history that this object must retain.

North Italian Pot Recently Found in Ontario

My Niece Pictured with the Pot to Demonstrate the Size

See Article for More Information

17th/18th Century Marbled Red Earthenware Pot

Attributed to North Italy

Recently Discovered in Ontario

This Type of Production has Been Recovered in Various 17th Century Contexts in New England

Stands 4 3/8" Tall