This is a nineteenth center three-gallon stoneware crock with a cobalt decorated wreath that I recently saw, which I thought was worth sharing on this website. This type of wreath design was rather popular with some stoneware manufacturers in the American Northeast in the 1800s, such as companies based in Rochester, New York, Fort Edward, New York, Somerset, Massachusetts, Charlestown, Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts, among certainly other locations, as well.
Interestingly, this crock is stamped "J R. SIMPSON & CO / 343 ESSEX ST / LAWRENCE;" this represents the mark of a late nineteenth century grocer in Lawrence, Massachusetts, whereas I suspect this crock may have been manufactured at the Norton Pottery Worcester, Massachusetts, circa 1880
Nevertheless, this grocer businesss was owned by James Rae Simpson (1832-1913), a businessman and merchant who was born in Canada in 1832; he eventually migrated to America working in Boston, Lowell, Massachusetts and Manchester, New Hampshire, before landing in Lawrence, where he was very successful in a number of business ventures and real estates holdings.
Furthermore, another company that the Norton Pottery may have produced stoneware for in the nineteenth century was Bullard & Scott of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts: https://www.crockerfarm.com/stoneware-auction/2016-10-22/lot-110/BULLARD-SCOTT-CAMBRIDGEPORT-MASS-Stoneware-Crock-w-Cobalt-1878-Date-in-a-Wreath/.
For more information about the Norton stoneware business in Worcester - see a story I posted to this website last week, titled, A Significant 19th Century Stoneware Gemel from Worcester, Massachusetts that Sold Today at Cottone Auctions in New York: http://www.earlyamericanceramics.com/2024/11/a-significant-19th-century-stoneware.html.
19th Century Stoneware Crock with Cobalt Wreath Decoration
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