EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: American Red Earthenware Face Jug Owned for Many Years in Connecticut

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

American Red Earthenware Face Jug Owned for Many Years in Connecticut

I recently acquired this unglazed American red earthenware face jug, which was previously owned for many years by a prominent collector and Americana dealer in Connecticut. And while I cannot say where exactly it was made, the base appears to have been hand-thrown on a potter's wheel, while the rest of the object was modeled by hand and then applied. The jug opening is on top of the figure's head, and it extends through the applied neck into the body.

Earlier this year, I viewed a variety of unglazed red earthenware face jugs from the Mr. and Mrs. George H. Myer Collection, which are on display as part of a larger face jug exhibit at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. But I also saw another unglazed example made by Carl W. Bach in Allentown, Pennsylvania circa 1880-90 in an exhibit at the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, titled "Thrown, Fired, and Glazed: The Redware Tradition from Pennsylvania and Beyond." That jug was on loan from the collection of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center in Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

According to a book published in 1914 by the Lehigh County Historical Society, History of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Its Families, "Carl Wilhelm Bach, a native of Constadt, Schwovenland, Germany, was born December 2, 1829. He married Elizabeth C. Englert, born June 8, 1833, and died in 1890. They came to this country with their four oldest children, and shortly afterwards they settled at No. 417 North Penn Street, Allentown (about sixty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia) where he pursued his occupation as a potter, and conducted what was known as the Allentown Pottery. They had five children: Charles, Pauline, Eberhart, Herman and Emma."

Based on a billhead or ledger table from the collection of the Lehigh County Historical Society, now displayed in the pottery exhibit at the Landis Valley Village and Farm Museum, Charles Bach succeeded his father in the Allentown Pottery about 1890, which continued to operate until 1908.

By no means am I saying that this jug was made at the Allentown Pottery, and even though I cannot say where it was made, this shape of jug and its unglazed appearance are styles found throughout the American pottery industry in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century.

American Red Earthenware Face Jug