EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: 19th Century Red Earthenware Wax Sealer Purchased in Williamsville, New York and a Forthcoming Published Western New York Story

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

19th Century Red Earthenware Wax Sealer Purchased in Williamsville, New York and a Forthcoming Published Western New York Story

I wrote earlier this month that towards the end of each year, I try to go through all of my old pictures that I intended to write something about, but never did, and post an article about the objects that I photographed. This post is another example of that.

While vacationing in western New York this past summer with my niece Alexis and nephew Jason, we made it a priority to visit Muleskinner Antiques, a longstanding shop operated by Ron Korman near Buffalo in Williamsville, New York. We found a bunch of locally made nineteenth century red earthenware inside the shop, some of which we bought, and most of that I have already written about. However, I did not have an opportunity to write about this small red earthenware jar, typically referred to as a wax sealer. This was a popular stoneware form manufactured in places like western Pennsylvania and the Midwest in the second-half of the nineteenth century. But this is a red earthenware example, thought to have been locally made somewhere in western New York.

The reason I bought this piece is because I do not own the form, and it is decorated on the interior and exterior in a spotted dark green glaze. This type of glaze is found with a number of the potteries in this region, which operated throughout the nineteenth century.

Both stoneware and red earthenware wax sealers were produced with a circular grooved ring at the top; this is where liquid sealing wax was poured, with a tin lid in place. Similar formed jars were also made from glass, and in many ways were eventually replaced by glass canning jars.

I should also note that before we visited Muleskinner Antiques, we spent the morning at the Das Haus Museum near Niagara Falls in western New York. This is where Carl Ludwig Heinrich Mehwaldt (1809-87) manufactured pottery in the nineteenth century. In fact, some of Mehwaldt's production was unique for American pottery, and I consider some of what he produced to be American treasures today. All of this information that I obtained about Mehwaldt from the Das Haus Museum, as well as previous trips to the New York State Museum in Albany, New York, the collection of Gene Pratt in Victor, New York, and the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., will be published in an exciting forthcoming article in Antiques & Auction News. I am really thrilled to see this article in print because I do not think a lot of Mehwaldt's special production is recognized today.

Red Earthenware Wax Sealer Purchased in Williamsville, New York