EarlyAmericanCeramics.com

Sunday, June 7, 2015

A Day of Picking Todd's Farm Flea Market in Rowley, Massachusetts

This morning, my father and I woke up early for Todd's Farm Flea Market in Rowley, Massachusetts. We were there by 5:30 am; although, a number of potential buyers were already walking around when we arrived - and, we could see a number of dealers had clearly sold some of what they had brought as we looked for a parking spot. Today, was definitely the busiest I have seen the flea market this year in regards to how many dealers were setup ; none-the-less, it was still a hunt to find the kind of material that I hoped to bring home this morning.

Todd's Farm Flea Market - Rowley, MA

The first objects that I found today, came from a man, who apparently, deals exclusively in Civil War memorabilia. That's how his booth appeared today. He told me that he originally lived down south, but he has since moved north to New England. I noticed a pair of clay pipes, when I walked past booth - and, I asked him how much. The forms seemed unusual. He quickly told me a price that I couldn't resist. I asked him where he found them - he told me that he's had them for a long time. He said he couldn't remember exactly where they came from, but he said they were found somewhere in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

19th Century Clay Pipes

Purchased Today at Todd's Farm Flea Market in Rowley, Mass.

Originally Found in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia

Another View of the Clay Pipes

Another dealer, told me this next pot was discovered in a home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. The reason I purchased it is because it exhibits a number of characteristics that I have found on pottery made at Charles A. Lawrence's business in Beverly, Massachusetts in the late-1800's. I am not one-hundred-percent positive that's where it was made, but there are some features that point me in that direction. The pot only cost me ten-dollars - so, I can't go wrong.

19th/20th Century Hand-Thrown Red Earthenware Vase

Stands 10 1/8" Tall

Possibly Made at C.A. Lawrence Pottery (Circa 1866-1906) in Beverly, Mass.

Purchased Today at Todd's Farm Flea Market in Rowley, Mass.

Recently Found in a House in Haverhill, Mass.

View of the Incised Decoration

View of the Base

Lastly, this red earthenware jug was recently discovered in a house in Sandown, New Hampshire. There is some damage around the lip; however, the form and glaze are wonderful. I also enjoy the early corn cob stopper that has been placed inside of the jug. I believe this jug was made somewhere in New Hampshire in the early-nineteenth-century; unfortunately, I can not say what exact business or potter is responsible.

Early 19th Century Red Earthenware Jug Possibly Made in New Hampshire

Circa 1790-1830

Stands 7 3/4" Tall

Purchased Today at Todd's Farm Flea Market in Rowley, Mass.

Recently Found in a House in Sandown, NH

View of the Handle

Another View of the Jug

I also discovered this wonderful iron architectural object today - I was told it broke off of a brick building in Beverly, Massachusetts. The dealer told me he thought it was used to keep snow and ice from falling off of the building in large chunks in the winter.

19th Century Iron Architectural Object in the Form of a Blooming Flower

Stands 15 1/4" Tall

Purchased Today at Todd's Farm Flea Market in Rowley, Mass.

Reportedly Originally from a Brick Building in Downtown Beverly, Mass.

Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...

Saturday, June 6, 2015

An Interesting Perspective Given to the History - And, the Adaptation of American-Made Face Jugs from Southern Potters in the 1800's

This Afternoon, I was reading a book that was published in 2007 by the University Press of Mississippi - and, I thought this citation about the author's notion (and opinion) given to the origin of American-made southern face jugs in the 1800's was fascinating. The book focuses on the history of southern folk culture with an interesting study of how the face jug was first introduced to America. The author, also, discusses the connection that the Meaders family of potters in Georgia in the twentieth-century carries with this idea today, a family, who is also famous for their own brand of face jugs.

According to a book written by author, John A. Burrison, 'Roots of a Region: Southern Folk Culture, "Since they work in such a malleable medium day-in and day-out, it is not surprising that potters the world over have seen their clay as a kind of mirror and accepted its challenge to model a human likeness on a pot, pushing utilitarian craft into plastic art. The anthropomorphizing is stronger in some clay-working societies than others; in England, for example, it surfaced several times, first with Romano-British burial urns, then medieval "face-on-front jugs," and finally Toby "jugs" of late-eighteenth-century Staffordshire (England) that initiated an industrial tradition of slip-cast character mugs continuing to this day. It is my belief, though, that England was not the source for the (American) South's face-jug traditions.

In reviewing what is known of those traditions (today), three points should be made by way of introduction. First, although many humanoid vessels made in the United States are indeed jugs, some take the form of pitchers, cups, jars, and bottles. Second, not all depict just faces or heads; some are full figures. Third, Native Americans of the South made humanoid effigy pots during the Mississippi era (A.D. 800-1540), (which was) too early to have influenced the southern face jugs discussed here.

As with other adaptations of the jug form in the United States, face vessels -- as both a historical and a living tradition -- have been concentrated in the south. However, the oldest known Euro-American examples are from the early-nineteenth-century Philadelphia workshop of Henry Remmey, Jr., whose great grandfather, stoneware potter John Remmey, immigrated to Manhattan (New York City) from the Rhineland (Germany) in the 1730s. John would have been familiar with gray bearded jugs still being made in Germany, and if he made them in New York and passed the concept to his descendants, then Remmey face vessels are Americanizations of the German tradition.

Mid-19th Century Stoneware Harvest Face Jug - Philadelphia, PA

Attributed to Henry Harrison or Richard Clinton Remmey

Circa 1855-1865

Stands 7 1/2" Tall

Link to Auction Listing

Photo Courtesy: Crocker Farm - Sparks, MD

A substantial group (but not limited to) of early southern face vessels were made between 1863 and 1865 by enslaved African American potters at Colonel Thomas Davies' Palmetto Fire Brick Works in Bath, in the Old Edgefield District of South Carolina. The pieces are distinguished by bulging eyes and bared teeth of kaolin inset into the stoneware clay body, and the iron-rich mineral that darkened the alkaline glaze on some, along with the wax resist used to keep the glaze off the white eyes and teeth to maximize contrast, leave little doubt they were made to represent their maker's race. Pioneer ceramics historian Edwin Atlee Barber, after corresponding with Davies, was the first to discuss them in print in 1909. 'These curious objects possess considerable interest in representing the art of the southern negroes. The modeling reveals a trace of aboriginal art as formerly practiced by their ancestors in the Dark Continent.' Nothing was said, however, of the maker's motivations. Sixty years later, Yale University art historian Robert Farris Thompson advanced Barber's suggestion of African origins, arguing that later white-face jug makers such as Cheever Meaders (Georgia, 1887-1867) appropriated the 'Afro-Carolinian' tradition.

19th Century Stoneware Face Jug Attributed to Bath (Aiken County), SC

Circa Early 1860's

Stands 4 1/2" Tall

Link to Auction Listing

Photo Courtesy: Skinner, Inc. - Boston & Marlborough, MA

If American face jugs were not invented independently and had Old World roots, then I see Africa and Germany as the two most likely possibilities. Anthropomorphic clay vessels were indeed made in West Africa, perhaps early enough for the slave era. The Yunger of Nigeria, for example, made portrait pots called wiiso to honor ancestral spirits at shrines, and the Mambila of Cameroon made similar figural vessels. The angry expressions of some Afro-Carolinian face vessels, which could be interpreted as a nonverbal protest against enslavement, and a few tantalizing hints that these vessels may have been used in magic-religious or mortuary practices, at least suggest that they had a meaning distinct from the face jugs made by whites. This begs the question of whether white potters in the south made face vessels as early as the slave-made ones.

In 1995, a piece in a private collection surfaced that answers that question. It was decorated with an ash-glazed happy face jug with a monkey form, it was stamped 'CHANDLER MAKER,' the mark of Thomas Chandler, a white potter who worked in the Edgefield District from 1838 to 1852. Dating to about 1850, it preceded the slave-made face vessels from the Davies workshop by about a decade. Before moving to South Carolina, Virginia-born Chandler is thought to have worked as a potter in New York State; it is remotely possible that in his northern sojourn he learned from one of the face vessels made by one of the Remmeys. Did Chandler then introduce the concept to Edgefield slave potters, or were they working in a separate, perhaps African-based tradition? At any rate, we now know that the face jugs of Cheever (Georgian, 1887-1967) and Lanier Meaders (Georgian, 1917-1998) were part of a continuous Anglo-southern tradition, but whether ultimately inspired by slave made examples, as has been suggested in the past, may never be learned."

20th Century Lanier Meaders Stoneware Face Jug - Cleveland, Georgia Origin

Stands 10" Tall

Link to the Auction Listing

Photo Courtesy: Crocker Farm - Sparks, MD

These next two photos show some of the examples of southern stoneware face jugs that the Smithsonian owns in Washington, D.C. A number of makers are represented here from the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries.

19th/20th Century Southern Stoneware Face Jugs From a Variety of Makers

Photo Courtesy: The National Museum of American History, The Smithsonian - Washington, D.C.

19th/20th Century Southern Stoneware Face Jugs From a Variety of Makers

Photo Courtesy: The National Museum of American History, The Smithsonian - Washington, D.C.

Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...

Friday, June 5, 2015

A Rare 19th Century Rockingham County, Virginia Stoneware Jar that Sold in Virginia Yesterday

Earlier this week, I was searching through a group of auction listings in a variety of regions across the country - and, I came across a beautifully hand-thrown very rare stoneware jar that was made in Rockingham County, Virginia around the mid-nineteenth-century. It happened, to sell yesterday (June 4th) when the auction house, Headley's Auctions in Berryville, Virginia handled the jar. According to the auctioneer, "Our June 4th auction features the contents of the Front Royal (Virginia) estate of William and Kathryn Simpson, which includes a squat formed stoneware jar (possibly) made by John Coffman. The jar survives in great condition despite a repair that was made to the lid." The bulbous-formed jar is adorned with a blooming floral decoration in cobalt with the word, 'Tomato' prominently inscribed across the front - and, consequently, I assume that this jar was made to store tomatoes.

Mount Crawford, Virginia auctioneer, Jeffrey S. Evans has handled a group of these jars in the past that vary in inscription from 'Blackbury,' 'Plumb,' 'Plum,' 'Peare' and 'Straweberry's' (to name a few of those that are known today), some jars have even had the content's description written on the reverse side. The maker has varied from John Coffman to other members of the Coffman family. The results have been mixed, but all of the jars have done well selling for at least a few thousand-dollars with other results achieving much higher prices.

The significance of this squat form to the history of the Rockingham County stoneware industry and the Coffman family name is discussed in a book written by Jeffrey S. Evans and Scott Hamilton Suter, 'A Great Deal of Stone & Earthen Ware;' According to the authors, "The story of Rockingham County begins with Andrew Coffman, a potter born in New Market, Shenandoah County, Virginia, in 1795. Although not a documented fact, it is likely that Coffman and his brother John learned the craft of pottery production from Jacob and Christian Adam, potters who had relocated to New Market from Hagerstown, Maryland, around 1810. Coffman moved into Rockingham County in the 1820s, when he set to work at the pottery of John Zigler in Timberville, a few miles west of New Market. An entrepreneur, but not a potter, Zigler had built a shop and kiln on his riverside property to supplement the earnings of his tannery. Coffman eventually left Timberville, moving to the Swift Run/Beldor area of eastern Rockingham County, at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Andrew Coffman's move to Timberville may have marked the beginning of the county's pottery production on a large scale." Many family members eventually followed in Andrew Coffman's footsteps entering the potter's business. He also influenced other potter's that would later follow in the Rockingham County potter's industry.

Also according to Evans and Suter, "this kind of salt-glazed stoneware jar represents a form that originated with Andrew Coffman."

Unfortunately, I do not know what the jar sold for (updated: reportedly brought $4,600 without premiums); however, I assume it did well considering its overall condition was wonderful, the jar still retained what appears to be its original lid (or a lid that fit well) and, also, the jar was decorated beautifully by a skilled hand. Conclusively, this is an important piece!