As I noted in a post last night, titled, A Very Good Late 18th or Early 19th Century Stoneware Jug Decorated with an Inscribed Perched Bird Highlighted with Cobalt; there are some objects from the good stoneware collection that I have been writing about over the past few months currently offered by Antiques Associates At West Townsend in Massachusetts, which are published in Brandt Zipp's book, Commeraw's Stoneware: The Life and Work of the First African-American Pottery Owner.
This significant early nineteenth century stoneware jug shown below is another one of those objects, published on page 179, and described as, "...a jug perhaps made at the Croliuses' Lower East Side manufactory (in Manhattan), possibly by John Morgan:" https://www.aaawt.com/antique/late-18th-or-early-19th-century-stoneware-jug-probably-made-in-manhattan/.
It was also written in the book, "Without signed examples from the Lower East Side-Craney shop, one window into what was being made there come via the aforementioned John Morgan, who moved to Virginia and began making stoneware there. Indeed, the first decades of the nineteenth century saw Northern-trained stoneware potters moving south to help plant shops at key locales, usually lured by merchants who were keen to capitalize on the growing industry. One of of those migrant potters was Morgan, who by the 1830s had established himself as the chief stoneware producer in Rockbridge County, Virginia - a western county that was far from the cosmopolitan environment in which he had cut his teeth. But what is remarkable about John Morgan's Rockbridge County stoneware is its extreme indebtedness to the Manhattan stoneware school, in particular its Lower East Side flavor."
Interestingly, I noted in the article that I posted last night that according to information which accompanies a marked David Morgan jug from Manhattan that is displayed by Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, "In 1797 Thomas H. Commeraw established a stoneware pottery at Corlear's Hook in Manhattan. The following year, 1798, the pottery was taken over by David Morgan a potter who had previously been employed by John Crolius, Jr. in another area of the city. Morgan's work is remarkably similar in shape and decoration to those produced by Commeraw.
Commeraw returned to the Corlear's Hook pottery in 1802 and Morgan continued to work with him for a year. David Morgan is known to have been working in Manhattan in 1809, but after that he disappears from the records. It seems likely that David Morgan was related to James Morgan, Jr. of Cheesequake, New Jersey, but the link between the two has not been firmly established."The most significant example of John Morgan's Manhattan influenced production in Virginia may be a circa 1835 stoneware jar stenciled in cobalt with the word "PLUMBS," which sold at Crocker Farm in Maryland in 2008 for $6,785 including the buyer's premium: https://www.crockerfarm.com/stoneware-auction/2008-03-08/lot-256/Virginia-Stoneware-PLUMBS-Jar-attrib-John-Morgan-Sr-Rockbridge-Co/.
Nonetheless, this jug is a significant example of Manhattan's early nineteenth century stoneware industry, but it also possibly represents the migration of the Manhattan potting tradition moving to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia about 1825. The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina lists John Morgan as an active potter in Rockbridge County during the circa 1825-1850 period.
For more information about this object - contact A.A.A.W.T.: https://www.aaawt.com/about/.
Early 19th C. Stoneware Jug from New York City Possibly Made by John Morgan
Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...
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