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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

The Aristone Collection of 19th Century Red Earthenware Collected, Picked and Discovered in Ontario, Canada

According to the book, Folk Furniture of Canada's Doukhobors, Hutterites, Mennonites and Ukrainians, "Although many historical and sociological studies of immigrant groups to Canada have explored the political, economic and social dimensions that motivate these movements of people and cultures across vast spaces and through difficult circumstances, no in-depth study in Canada has, to our knowledge, examined within the perspective of material history/culture the importance of objects as an expression of cultural and psychological values intimately tied to systems of beliefs and identity, and the vicissitudes of the immigrant experience...In the past twenty-five years, the study of material culture, that is, the study of artifacts made by a specific cultural group, has assumed an increasing importance in the writing and the investigation of social structures...With a few exceptions, the many historical, political and social studies of immigrants to Canada and the difficulties they endured during settlement in a new and often hostile environment overlook the importance of these artifacts as a record of their origins and a key to their closely held religious and social beliefs."

Canadian-made country painted furniture from the nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries is a subject that is well-sought after today by museums and collectors; although, it can also be mistaken for products made in rural places like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. For example, I have a wonderful old red painted pine bench that turns into a bed in my house; it was found in Vermont, but it may have been made in Canada. It's a wonderful piece. A similar piece sold in the very-important Berdan sale in Maine in 1998. I personally find country furniture difficult to attribute if it has been removed from its original context. With that understanding, a similar notion can be applied to the stoneware and red earthenware potters of Canada in the nineteenth-century. For the sake of this report, I am going to avoid the stoneware because I believe that much of it is already well documented today. What I would like to do is show a number of examples of utilitarian red earthenware, which based on form, decoration, etc. can be mistaken for products made in Maine, Vermont and western New York - and likewise, it would not surprise me to learn that some American-made products made their way into Canada in the nineteenth-century. In fact, I believe there are a few known western New York potters who worked in both America and Canada through the span of their careers. That's rather interesting to me - and below, you will see how this interlap affects the understanding of where products were made today.

All of the following red earthenware (see below) was sold as part of the Jon and Lynda Aristone Collection of antiques and folk art on Saturday April 26, 2014 by Jim Anderson Auctions in Oakville, Ontario. Oakville is about twenty-miles south of Toronto located directly on Lake Ontario. Its my interpretation, that all of the material in this collection was purchased, picked and discovered locally over an extended period of time. The sale was held in an old fashioned on-site auction setting. It included a variety of styles of country furniture attributed to Canada - and naturally, for the sake of my writing this report - I thought the red earthenware part of the sale was an interesting collection.

The atmosphere was described as a traditional county-type of sale. This kind of sale is not regularly seen today; rather, it was much-more common decades ago. Auctions today are usually in a more formal setting removed from where antiques were originally used and kept. Unfortunately, I did not participate in the sale. After seeing the auction results, I wish I had - since much of the products below did not sell for a lot of money. For some reason, the red earthenware portion of this sale slipped through the cracks.

Many of the products seen below were attributed to the nineteenth-century potters on Ontario's southern peninsula (by the auction house), which is located between western upstate New York, eastern Michigan and the Great Lakes. However, I am skeptical of that. I feel that some of the products are American-made in places like western New York and Vermont, but I am not going to get into those specific details in this report. Above all - the point of this report is to showcase this collection and briefly describe the commerce and trade that was happening in this part of North America in the nineteenth-century - and how those dealings, may have contributed with American-made pottery migrating into Canada and further, Canadian pottery traveling into America.

Map of Ontario with Bordering Areas
Photo Courtesy: Google Maps

For me personally, the most interesting forms and glazes below - are those that are seen in the first and last few pictures. I am certain that these are not all American-made products - and they are neither exclusively Canadian-made products - but it is very interesting, since all of these were found in Canada.