I first learned about this nineteenth century yellow and spotted green glazed red earthenware mug back in 2013, when it was owned as part of the Earl Curry Collection of southeastern Massachusetts, a local collector who began acquiring these types of objects decades ago. The mug was then acquired by Sheffield, Massachusetts antiques dealer Sam Herrup and sold to Larry Conklin, an authority in the rare mineral trade in New York City, who had relocated to southern Connecticut.
However, this mug just resurfaced from the Conklin Collection in the last month and it was brokered privately into a very good New England collection. The mug's glaze is one of the best that I have ever encountered on a New England red earthenware mug or a cup. It has been sort of an enigma as to where it was made seeing that there is not another mug like it known with any sort of supporting evidence for a manufacturer, whereas there is some nineteenth century red earthenware made in the Limington and Buxton, Maine area, as well as Vermont, Cheshire County, New Hampshire and Ontario, Canada, etc. that exhibits green dots in the glaze, but nothing to this degree or of this exact color pattern that I can recall.
But after seeing this mug again, I still feel the same way I did back in 2013, when I thought it was related to a handled pot owned as part of the Lura Woodside Watkins (1897-1982) Collection at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. That pot is manufactured with a very similar yellow and spotted green glaze, and it also shares some similarities in production to how this mug was made. Although, the pot is not illustrated or referenced in Watkins' book, Early New England Potters and Their Wares, but the information on file with the Smithsonian states that it was made at the James Chase (1779-1849) Pottery in Merrimacport (South Amesbury), Massachusetts; Chase was the nephew and an employee of the well-known potter William Pecker (1757-1820): https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_575169.
Furthermore, it has not been well published until recently, but James' son, Phineas Chase (1820-1911) took over the Merrimacport business, when James died in 1849. This type of production continued with his company into the 1880s.
Nevertheless, I also included this mug in a feature story I wrote for the October 2014 issue of the New England Antiques Journal, titled, Utilitarian Redware in Massachusetts: The Chase family pottery: https://www.scribd.com/doc/272780103/Chase-Family-Pottery-New-England-Antiques-Journal-October-2014.
For more information - see the fourth installment in my pottery book series, titled, South Amesbury's Red Earthenware & Stoneware: The 1791-1820 William Pecker Pottery; some of the Pecker and Chase production will also be included in my forthcoming New Hampshire book: https://historicbeverly.net/product/south-amesburys-red-earthenware-stoneware-production/.
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