I think this is a wonderful object! My niece Alexis and myself were walking through downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire last week to get lunch, and we unexpectedly spotted this incredible multi-colored glazed twentieth century earthenware pitcher in a collectible/vintage/antique type shop’s storefront window. The person who own’s the shop told us that a woman recently brought it into the store; he said she lives in an old house near the corner of Pleasant and Court Streets in Portsmouth, where she said it has sat on a mantle in her house for decades. The pitcher is marked on the base “A.R. Cole Pottery Sanford, N.C.” It stands about twelve inches tall.
Nonetheless, it is unclear how this object made its way to New England, although it is documented that in the 1960s that Nancy Sweezy (1921-2010) established the nonprofit organization "Country Roads" in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and among the projects that were included was a country store that was opened which sold pottery from Jugtown, the Meaders, the Coles, Bybee, and other southern potteries, as well as many Appalachian handcrafts (The Potter's Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery). It should also be noted that the Nancy Sweezy Collection is owned today by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Furthermore -- Arthur Ray (A. R.) Cole (1892-1974) operated his first pottery shop in 1926 in Steeds, North Carolina (near Seagrove), but in 1934 opened Rainbow Pottery in Sanford, North Carolina to be on the main North-South highway at the time, U.S. 1. In 1941, he began operating as A. R. Cole Pottery of Sanford.
The Cole family is among the most prominent in North Carolina pottery history and among the pioneers of the North Carolina art pottery movement. A. R. Cole was the son of the potter Ruffin Cole and the nephew of potters Wrenn Cole and the well-known J. B. Cole. Following A. R. Cole's death in 1974, the pottery continued to operate under the control of his daughters Neolia and Celia, who were already established as highly skilled potters in their father's pottery at that time.
Note: A great floor vase standing eighteen inches tall, bearing the same company mark and decorated with a related type of glaze sold in August 2021 at Leland Little Auctions in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Related objects are also owned by the North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove.
An Outstanding Example of North Carolina Art Pottery Discovered in Portsmouth, N.H.
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