Mischianza

There is a curious little plate in the collection of the Philadelphia  Museum of Art.  The plate was made in 1786 by a potter named Johannes Niess in Bucks County, PA.  It is about 11″ in diameter.  The plate’s sgraffito style of decoration is typical of pottery from that region.  The decoration depicts a dance scene with two colonial era couples.  Each couple consists of an officer and a well to do woman.  A fiddle player off to the left, is also in officer attire.

The scene is said to depict a particularly elaborate gala known as the “Mischianza.”  The British Army officer corp during the Revolutionary War was particularly fond of this type of revelry.  Especially General William Howe and his staff.  General Howe commanded the forces occupying Philadelphia, previously the capitol of the rebellion, during the 1777 – 78 winter.  General Washington’s Continental Army shivered in the snow at nearby Valley Forge.  Observers believe that had Howe attacked the Valley Forge encampment, he would have destroyed Washington’s army and probably put an end to the uprising.  Instead, Howe squandered the winter in frivolous entertainment.  In the spring, Washington slipped away.  Soon afterward, Howe’s army was forced to evacuate Philadelphia.  On his departure Howe threw an unforgettably (some said unforgivably) extravagant party – the Mischianza.  The Mischianza plate is a commemorative depiction of this sordid tale of Howe’s squandered chances.

What makes the plate curious, at least to me, is the legend inscribed around the plate’s rim.  Many sgraffito plates from south eastern Pennsylvania at the time bore writing, in German, around the rim.  The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection of these plates is perhaps the best in the country. The sayings could be moralisms, local wit, biblical phrases, etc.  On some plates, the sayings offer a jarring juxtaposition to the imagery they surround.

That’s where the curiosity comes in.  Or, I should say, shock.  This plate was obviously meant for display, not everyday use.  But who on earth would want to prominently display on hearth or cupboard a plate with “Our Maid, the ugly pig, always wanted to be a housewife. Oh, you ugly slut. 1786” scrawled around the rim?

Readings:
The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States. Edward Atlee Barber.  G.P. Putnam’s Sons/New York.  1909.

1776. David McCullough.  Simon and Schuster.  2005.

Technorati Tags: Johannes Niess,Pennsylvania Pottery,Revolutionary War,Valley Forge

Bartmann Greybeard; A Cautionary Tale.

In 1610 Cardinal Maffeo Berberini received a copy of “The Starry  Messenger” by Galileo Galilei.  This treatise on observations Galileo made with his newly invented telescope forever changed our understanding of the universe.  Berberini was impressed.  He befriended the Florentine astronomer.  Galileo must have been pleased, because the Cardinal became Pope Urban VIII in 1616.  Galileo was invited to the Vatican to discuss his fascinating new discoveries. 

But church bigwigs got nervous.  They told Urban in no uncertain terms that Galileo was, in fact, challenging God and Church.  Pope Urban ignored what he knew to be right and acquiesced to the powers that put him, and kept him, in the Holy See.

The heat came in the form of Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, the “hammer of the heretics.”  The Roman Inquisition had recently burned Giordano Bruno, a Dominican Friar who suggested the Earth revolved around the Sun.  But Bellarmino let Galileo go with a warning.  When Galileo defended his ideas in “The Assayer,” Bellarmino put his foot down.  Galileo was forced to recant his discoveries.  Scientific inquiry took 300 years to recover.  Galileo went to his grave muzzled by the strictures of the Cardinal.  And Bellarmino went on to fight the Reformation in the Low Countries.

People began associating the Cardinal’s name with the widely popular “bartmann,” a salt fired stoneware jug with a greybeard face applied to its side.  The bartmann had been made in Germany’s Rhineland pottery district since the previous century.  But why associate Bellarmino with this jug?  Was it sarcasm?  Endearment?  Who knows?  The name “Bellarmine Jug” stuck, though.  What’s more, as the jug’s popularity spread, all sorts of notions began attaching themselves to it.  Liquids kept in it could heal the sick.  Witchcraft could be warded off by keeping one buried under the house…

How effective any of that was, I can’t say.  But despite the Bellarmine Jug’s popularity, or its psychic powers, I’m pretty sure Galileo never owned one.

Readings:
Galileo’s Daughter.  Dava Sobel.  Walker & Co./New York.  1999.

If These Pots Could Talk.  Ivor Noel Hume.  Chipstone Press.  2001.

Stoneware: White Salt-Glazed, Rhenish and Dry Body.  Gérard Gusset.  National Historic Parks and Sites Branch, Parks Canada, Environment Canada/Ministry of the Environment, Ottawa, Canada.  1980.

The Concise Encyclopedia of Continental Pottery and Porcelain.  Reginald Haggar.  Hawthorn Books/New York.  1960.

Technorati Tags: Bartmann,Bellarmine Jug,Galileo,German Salt Fired Stoneware,Rhennish Pottery,Pope Urban VIII

Luman Norton’s Barn

John Spargo was a big fan of the Nortons.  The Norton family of Bennington VT, was a powerhouse pottery dynasty from 1793 to almost to the end of the 19th century.  They initiated or excelled in virtually everything being made at the time; Redware (at first), Rockingham, Yellow ware, Sponge ware, Parian sculptures, Flint Enamel, Agate (“Scroddled”) ware, Granite ware, Porcelain, and of course, that quintessential American classic: salt-fired cobalt slipped stoneware crocks.  Begun at the foot of a mountain named after Susan B. Antony’s family,  the Nortons were one of a very few American pottery firms to successfully compete with the post-Revolutionary War British pottery invasion.  Bennington was even for a time called “The Staffordshire of America.”

Only the first few generations of Nortons were actual potters, though.  Captain John Norton, his son Luman, and Luman’s son Julius.  Most of the rest were content being local Brahmins, sitting atop the wealth created by their pottery making progenitors.  Except Edward, who tried to revive the then flagging pottery in the late 1880’s.  But he died young.  From then till today, the Norton name became affixed to their refractories and abrasives businesses.

Anyway, John Spargo was a Marxist agitator turned pottery collector (really).  He wrote several books early in the 20th century about American ceramics.  His “The Potters and Potteries of Bennington” is a landmark text.  It’s also a hagiography.  A paean to the Norton family.  The book is peppered with glowing accounts of the Nortons by their friends and neighbors.  The Nortons were gregarious, true enough.  They regularly strolled through the pottery, top hat in hand, chatting with the workers.

Luman, the second of the line, wasn’t as gifted as his father or his son.  But he put the Pottery on a solid footing.  So what a scandal when somebody burned down his barn in 1812!  Shortly after, someone tried to burn the rebuilt barn.  Luman posted night guards to protect it.  This was the very eve of the War of 1812.  A tense time.  Sitting under the stars, I wonder what the guards talked about.  Soon armies would rage across their countryside, possibly directly into their homes…

Luman Norton was, according to Spargo, well liked and well respected.  How ironic, then, that the arsonist wasn’t a British agent or an interloper from any number of rival potteries.  It was one of the trusted boys guarding his barn.

There must be a story here.

Readings:
The Potters and Potteries of Bennington.  John Spargo.  Cracker Barrel Press/Southampton, NY.  1926.

Early American Pottery and China.  John Spargo.  The Century Co./NY.  1926.

Early New England Potters and Their Wares.  Lura Woodside Watkins.  Harvard Univ Press/Cambridge MA.  1968.

The Jug and Related Stoneware of Bennington. Cornelius Osgood.  Charles Tuttle Co./Rutland, VT. 1971.

The Art of the Potter.  Diana and J. Garrison Stradling.  Main Street-Universe Books/New York.  1977.

Technorati Tags: Norton Pottery,Bennington Pottery,John Norton,Luman Norton,Julius Norton,John Spargo,Redware,Spongeware,Yellow ware,Parian ware,Agate ware,Granite ware,Porcelain,Stoneware crocks

The Poor Potter, Third and Final Part.

All the poor potters in the early days of the United States struggled to help their country survive.  But Ben Franklin’s exhortations to produce much and admit little eventually backfired.  Ben’s son, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, sided with the Loyalists during the Revolution.  Charleston, MA, a long standing and major colonial pottery center, was burned to the ground during the British occupation.  Production there never recovered.  Worst of all, the notion of competing with work coming from England morphed into a curious form of self-depreciation.  If locally made fine quality items wanted to sell, they’d do best to not be signed.  That way, they could be passed off as imported.

This mind set developed at least partly because English imports skyrocketed once the Treaty of Paris established American independence in 1782.  Most of England’s manufacturing elites, potter Josiah Wedgwood foremost among them, favored the American cause.  An independent North America was a potentially huge market, free from tax laws regulating trade with colonies.  (And we did become Wedgwood’s largest customer.)  Just as America was beginning to create a national craft identity, England’s Industrial Revolution hit high gear.  We were swamped with foreign-made mass produced goods.

It took the better part of the 19th century for American artisans to move beyond that mountain of cheap stuff and the mental block that came with it.  The spark that got things rolling again was the Centennial Exhibition of 1876.  That watershed moment initiated the first serious reappraisal of the American crafts scene.

But that story is too good, so it’ll have to wait for another time…

Meanwhile, redware production had pretty much died out.  As William Ketchum, author of “American Pottery & Porcelain (Antique Hunter’s Guide),” sadly noted: “The potters have gone, but the clay is still there.”

Readings:

Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625-1850. Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh, Ed. Academic Press/New York.  1985.

Unearthing New England’s Past: The Ceramic Evidence.  Exhibition Catalogue. Museum of Our National Heritage/Lexington, MA.  1984.

Early New England Potters and Their Wares. Lura Woodside Watkins.  Harvard Univ Press/Cambridge MA.  1968.

The Art of the Potter. Diana and J. Garrison Stradling.  Main Street-Universe Books/New York.  1977.

American Pottery & Porcelain (Antique Hunter’s Guide). William Ketchum.  Leventhal Publishers/New York.  2000.

Technorati Tags: Centenial Exhibit,Josiah Wedgwood,Redware,Industrial Revolution,Revolutionary War

The Poor Potter is Dead, Part Two.

A generation after the poor potter of Yorktown died, Benjamin Franklin advised his son William, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, to downplay local manufacture of consumer goods to William’s superiors in England.  Writing from London, Ben said that depreciative accounts of coarse, poor quality local production “are very satisfactory here, and induce the parliament to despise and take no notice of the Boston resolutions…”

This was the heyday of American redware pottery production.  It was also open rebellion.  There was a widespread feeling that the colonies could and should be self-sufficient.  They wanted autonomy.  It took Thomas Paine’s radical pamphlet “Common Sense” to finally push the colonists to completely sever all ties with England.  (Why is common sense always the hardest thing to swallow?)

American potters set out to prove they could equal the wares imported from England.  As this feeling grew, so did the number of potters.  Many greatly expanded their repertoire beyond the “potts and panns” of their forebearers.  Some modern observers believe all this activity didn’t necessarily result in an increase in quality, though.  Many new potteries went belly up within a short space of time.  But in Charlestown, MA, a major New England pottery center,  many potters consistently ranked in the top five percent of tax payers.  Somebody was doing something right.

Boycotts against anything imported caught on.  But people still needed things to put things in.  Redware fit the bill.  It was cheap and it was local.

So, potters as “local heroes?”  An interesting idea.  It might sound strange now, but once upon a time, making mugs was an act of rebellion in this country.

Readings:
Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625-1850. Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh, Ed. Academic Press/New York.  1985.

Unearthing New England’s Past: The Ceramic Evidence.  Exhibition Catalogue. Museum of Our National Heritage/Lexington, MA.  1984.

Early New England Potters and Their Wares. Lura Woodside Watkins.  Harvard Univ Press/Cambridge MA.  1968.

Technorati Tags: Ben Franklin,Thomas Paine,Common Sense,Redware,Colonial Pottery,New England Pottery

The Poor Potter is Dead, in Three Parts.

Part One:
“The poor potter is Dead, and the Business of making potts and panns  is of little advantage to his family, and as little Damage to the Trade of our Mother Country.”
- William Gooch, Royal Governor of Virginia in his 1745 status report to the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations regarding Yorktown potter William Rogers.

Gooch had regularly dismissed this poor potter  to the Commissioners since 1732.  Yet during that time Rogers operated a huge earthenware and stoneware manufactory.  He made everything from crocks to bird houses.  His specialty was Fulham style stoneware mugs, fired in special saggars.

Rogers didn’t just make pottery.  He flaunted it.  His wares were traded (in his own ships)  from New England to the West Indies.   His operation was probably the largest of it’s kind in Colonial America at the time.  I’ve visited his kiln site.  It’s huge.  (It’s not far from where a British army under Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army and their French Navy allies in the last major military clash of the Revolutionary War thirty four years later.)

Rogers also ran a brewery, was “Surveyor of the Landings, Streets and Cosways in York Town” (allowing him to use his shards to pave streets), and Captain of the Troop.  In short, he was one of the wealthiest people of the colony.

Royal governors were supposed to enforce laws suppressing colonial production of consumer goods.  Such goods were meant to be purchased from factories of metropolitan England.  But many governors, like Gooch, supported the locals by issuing bogus reports about “poor potters” and such.  It’s possible Rogers was just a pottery owner, given the extent of his other activities and his wealth.  Who ever heard of a rich potter?  Still, all existing accounts of him highlight his potting activities.  So I prefer to think of him as the country’s first major pottery figure.

If he wasn’t, why should Gooch mention him at all?

Readings:
Ceramics in America.  Ian Quimby, Ed.  University Press of Virginia/Charlottesville.  1972.

Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625-1850.  Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh, Ed.  Academic Press/New York.  1985.

The Art of the Potter.  Diana and J. Garrison Stradling.  Main Street-Universe Books/New York.  1977.

The “Poor Potter” of Yorktown.  C. Malcom Watkins and Ivor Noel Hume.  United States National Museum Bulletin 249.  Smithsonian Institution Press.  1967.

A Recipe for Porcelain

“Past centuries have not seen porcelains, which are merely a certain mass composed of plaster, eggs, scales of marine locusts and other similar kinds, which mass being well united and worked together, is secretly hidden underground by the father of a family, who informs his children alone of it, and it remains there eighty years without seeing daylight, after which his heirs, drawing it out and finding it suitably adaptable for some kind of work, make out of it those precious transparent vases, so beautiful to the sight in form and color that architects find nothing in them to improve upon.”

Thus wrote Guido Pancirolli in the late 1500’s.  At the time, the hunt was on in Europe for the elusive formula of true porcelain.  There were many alchemists and charlatans who boasted of knowing the secret.  Addressing this muddy state of affairs, Pancirolli offered this further bit of wisdom regarding true porcelain to his readers:

“Their virtues are admirable, inasmuch as one puts poison into one of these vessels it breaks immediately.  He who once buries this material never recovers it, but leaves it to his children, descendants, or heirs, as a rich treasure, on account of the profits they derive from it; and it is of far higher price than gold, inasmuch as one rarely finds any of the true material, and much that is sold is unreal.”

Reading:
History of Ceramic Art.  Albert Jaquemart.  Sampson, Lowe Marston, and Searle/London.  1873.

Technorati Tags: pottery history,porcelain,history of craft,European pottery

Throwing Large – What You Can Learn from Isaac Button

Throwing Large – What You Can Learn from Isaac Button.

The work of Isaac Button is simply awe inspiring.  Watching him at the wheel should be an inspiration and education for many.

We ignore our past at our peril.

Steve Earp

The Execution of Charles Stuart

I am, like many, awed by the talent of Thomas Toft (active 1671 to  1689).  His slipware dishes trace both complicated imagery, and unique perspectives of English history…

…so I will start this story a few years earlier, at 2:00pm on Jan. 29, 1649.  Charles Stuart had just ascended the scaffold erected for him in the Banquet Hall of Whitehall, London.  Had he not previously decided that he, as Charles I the King of England, could do no wrong, he might not have angered Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan “Roundheads” to revolt.

The Puritans meant well, but their Commonwealth was a dreary place.  They frowned upon idolatry and frivolous displays of art.  Had they not been so pious, perhaps Toft would not have found a market for his work after their fall.  (Nor, perhaps, would the North American Colonies have been neglected long enough for, as some believe, seeds of independence to be sown.)

Royalists saw their chance when Cromwell died suddenly in 1658.  In 1661 they brought a surprised and grateful son of Charles I to the throne.  Earlier, Charles II had escaped the Roundheads by hiding in an oak tree.  Now, the “Merry Monarch” preferred  parties over revenge.  But his royalist followers wanted blood.  As many Commonwealth leaders as they could round up were drawn and quartered (hung and hacked to pieces).

But the arts flourished.  Decoration was in!  And so was a new drink, coffee.  Imagine the situation; wired on caffeine, no longer constrained by pious dictates, and finally able to decorate to your heart’s content.  This was Toft’s world.

A question comes to mind.  Was Toft as royalist to the bone as his imagery suggests?  What did he think about the butchery following Charles II’s restoration?  Was revenge as important as that first cup in the morning?  Perhaps these questions shouldn’t interfere with our appreciation of his work any more than acknowledging Renoir’s reactionary politics vis á vis the Paris Commune of 1881.  But it does add a curve or two.

Readings:
English Slipware Dishes 1650 – 1850. Ronald Cooper.  Transatlantic Arts/New York.  1968.

The Regicide Brief.  Geoffrey Robertson.  Pantheon Books/New York.  2005.

Women Who Didn’t Make Pottery

Women didn’t make pottery.

Or rather, an Interpretive Staff Director of an early American life museum once told me that.  His argument?  Lack of evidence.  No solid documentation shows women making pottery in this country before the “Art Pottery” revival of the 1870’s.  No tax rolls, no signed pots, no probate records, no diaries.

Pottery was rarely classed as a distinct occupation.  Furthermore, some “potters” owned large manufactories, while others were just rural door to door sales people.  Actual pottery makers could alternately be noted as “laborers,” “mechanics” (they worked with machines), or “farmers.”  Hardly anyone wrote about it.  So, women potters?  Where is the evidence?

Some bits and pieces include; Ann Mackdugle, apprenticing to William Kettel in Charleston, MA until 1712; a woman listing herself as an “Earthen Ware Potter Maker” upon disembarking from Ireland in 1716 (Ireland lost it’s only female potter at that time?);  Catharine Bowne, inheriting a shop in Middlesex, NJ and operating it from 1813 into the 1820’s.

More is known of Grace Parker.  She and her husband Isaac made redware from 1713 to 1742 in Charlestown, MA.  By all accounts they did pretty well.  In 1742, they asked for support from the colonial government to attempt stoneware.  They got funding.  While soliciting information from southern stoneware potters, Isaac suddenly died.  Grace carried on.  She was the first potter to make stoneware in New England.  She continued until 1754, when the French Indian War ruined her business and small pox ruined her.   (Some, however, believe Grace was just a manager – because women didn’t make pottery.)

Nobody denies that Maria Crafts Kellog made stoneware in Whately, MA in the 1850’s.  Slip decorated crocks of hers can be seen at the Whately Historical Society.  Crafts Avenue in nearby Northampton was named after the Crafts family.  Thomas Crafts, her uncle and Whatley’s most famous potter, apparently favored Maria.  He, like many potters, farmed out his relations to various locales, establishing new potteries to increase his market.  He sold each of his sons the plot of land of his they settled on.  Only Maria was given a homestead for free.

In indigenous societies, of course, women did make pottery.  It was “part of their domain”.  Even Colono Ware, native pottery for the Anglo market, was made by women.  Still, to this day in many parts of rural Meso America, women potters might rather be called “comalleristas” (cooking dish makers).  It wasn’t until the Spanish introduced the potter’s wheel and all its attendant gadgetry in the 1500’s, that men got involved (or so the evidence suggests).

It is reasonable, even sane, to deny a theory where no evidence exists.  Lots of grief could be avoided by applying this simple rule.  Case in point; our current involvement in Iraq.  But to successfully maintain a pottery culture, it takes a community.

Readings:

Ceramics in America. Ian Quimby, Ed.  University Press of Virginia/Charlottesville.  1972.

Domestic Pottery of the Northeastern United States, 1625-1850. Sarah Peabody Turnbaugh, Ed.  Academic Press/New York.  1985.

The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States. Edwin Atlee Barber.  G.P. Putnam’s Sons/New York.  1909.

The Art of the Potter. Diana and J. Garrison Stradling.  Main Street-Universe Books/New York.  1977.

Early New England Potters and Their Wares. Lura Woodside Watkins.   Harvard Univ Press/Cambridge MA.  1968.

A Guide to Whately Pottery and The Potters.  Henry Baldwin.  Paradise Copies/Northampton MA.  1999.

Pottery of the American Indians. Helen Stiles.  E.P. Dutton & Co./New York. 1939.