A Porcelain Putti Pitcher

Slip cast porcelain pitcher with putti figurines in high relief. Late 19th or early 20th century? English or American? Does it matter? At first glance, this pitcher may seem like an over-wrought left-over from another time. Maybe there isn’t much to recommend it today, even for the asking price of one dollar at some random yard sale on some random summer morning.

Except for one thing. At some point time it had been repaired. With staples. Thise staples, rivets actually, offer a window into a very curious world.

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The repair of broken pottery by drilling holes for hot rivets that shrank upon cooling goes back into antiquity and spans continents. Here in the US pottery menders, male and female, advertised their trade in newspapers throughout the colonial era. It was a curious practice, as often the repair was more expensive than the broken pot itself.

By the late 19th century this mending practice (and skill set) was nearly extinct, due to the flood of inexpensive but refined ceramics by then readily available to practically everybody. Unfortunately, that mass-production steamroller had also by then killed the initial ‘wild west’ creative manufactory spirit embodied by Spode, Wood, Warburton, Greatbatch, Wedgwood and others.

Still, once upon a time somebody was moved enough to originally buy this particular pitcher. Why? Did it spark some cultural interest? Or did it just look kinda neat? Then it broke. Again, why? Hard use? Bonked by some careless oaf? Curiously enough, it held sufficient value, or meaning, or something, for it’s owner to seek out a practitioner of a dying craft to repair it. What was that ‘something?’

In the end, it’s not the pitcher, or even the rivets, that attracts my attention. It’s the questions.

Caveat: When I hear somebody say ‘I don’t have any answers, I’m only asking questions,’ my first thought is ‘if you don’t have an answer (an opinion, a perspective, a hunch, something, anything), then how am I to evaluate your commentary? What am I getting out of this? Why should I bother listening to you?

This is different. The pitcher is asking the questions. The pitcher, it’s history, it’s provenance, it’s rivets, sparks my curiosity. It makes me wonder.

History as question mark. Ceramics as a medium of wonder.

Reading:

Ceramics in America, 2016. Robert Hunter, Ed. Chipstone Press/New York. 2016