EarlyAmericanCeramics.com: A Very Large Circa 1876-1930 Red Earthenware Flowerpot Made at the M.B. Paige Pottery Found Yesterday in Peabody, Mass.

Sunday, May 4, 2025

A Very Large Circa 1876-1930 Red Earthenware Flowerpot Made at the M.B. Paige Pottery Found Yesterday in Peabody, Mass.

I took my niece to her soccer game yesterday in Beverly, Massachusetts, and I was quite surprised to find this very large late nineteenth or early twentieth century hand-thrown double-handled red earthenware flowerpot on our way home. We found it in Peabody, Massachusetts, less than one-mile from where it was originally made at the M.B. Paige Pottery in Peabody, circa 1876-1930. One of the handles even retains some glaze from another piece of red earthenware that accidentally spilled on the pot, whether it was in the kiln or during the manufacturing process.

Among the customers for the Paige Pottery flowerpots in the early 1900s was Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) and her family in Boston. Some of the flowerpots were used at Fenway Court for trees and shrubs. There is even an original circa 1920 photograph of these types of handled flowerpots in storage owned by the Peabody Historical Society (see last picture). But some (most?) of the pots shown in that photo only had one drainage hole, whereas this pot has five, which really demonstrates its size, measuring 10 3/4" by 12 3/4" (rim to rim). I suspect this is the type of pot that was used by Gardner at Fenway Court.

However, I also suspect that the Paige Pottery may have been the most prolific producer of large hand-thrown red earthenware flowerpots in New England, although there were other potters, who produced these types of large unglazed flowerpots. Those manufacturers include two circa 1770s-1790s pots recovered at the Narbonne House in Salem, Massachusetts and the Navy Yard in Charlestown, Massachusetts, likely from the same potter's business in the Boston or Salem area, as well as the Abraham Hews Pottery in Weston and North Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Hervey Brooks (1779-1873) Pottery in Goshen, Connecticut.

But the Paige Pottery was really marketing itself to the types of high-end gardens influenced by British and European landscape design during the post-1900 period in the Boston area, even though the company's production was shipped elsewhere in America, too, including New York City. This is a type of flowerpot that is still produced today by Guy Wolfe in Connecticut, which he calls a "Peabody Pot": https://www.guywolff.com/red-pots-collection.

This pot will also be illustrated in my forthcoming 600-700 page, tenth book, titled, An Early Industry of Household Wares: The Red Earthenware of Salem Village, South Danvers and Peabody, Massachusetts. Interestingly, I actually just came across a waster of a stack of red earthenware flowerpots from the Paige Pottery that will also be included in the book.

In the meantime - for more information - see my second book, titled, The Moses B. Paige Company: The Last of the Peabody Potteries: https://historicbeverly.net/product/the-moses-b-paige-company-the-last-of-the-peabody-potteries/.

Note: I posted about another type of flowerpot made in Peabody a few months ago, which I found in a thrift store in Peabody: http://www.earlyamericanceramics.com/2025/02/thrift-store-find-red-earthenware.html.

Circa 1876-1930 Red Earthenware Flowerpot Made at the M.B. Paige Pottery