Make Me Cry

Pickle Dish Stand.  6″ tall.  Soft paste porcelain.  American China Manufactory.  Philadelphia, PA.  1771. 

 

Anyone familiar with this stand wont find anything groundbreaking here.  Anyone who has never seen it before might wonder why they should bother.

These two caveats are critical to understanding what follows.

The most striking thing about the stand is it’s mere existence.  It is a study in extremes; exacting materials never before used here, complex assembly, intended for the finest dining experiences of the wealthiest Philadelphians, a coral theme that only the intelligentsia could fully appreciate.  The sheer audacity of its makers to presume so much!

Gousse Bonnin was a Huguenot dilettante whose only previous potting experience was a brief attempt at crucible making.  George Antony Morris’ forte was asking his dad for financing and connections.  Together, they formed the American China Manufactory in 1770 and immediately aimed for the stars.  The pickle stand was their magnum opus.

It was a perfect plan – a skilled production team (partly lured away from the Bow Porcelain factory in England), local materials Josiah Wedgwood was envious of, boiling secessionist fever, and for good measure a Nonimportation Agreement passed in the 1760’s to placate colonists after the French Indian War.  Local Brahmins Sir Charles Palmer and Benjamin Franklin joined the band wagon.  Customers from as far away as Albany, NY were interested.

Then came the perfect storm.  The Bill lapsed.  Wedgwood, with help from the East India Company, flooded Philadelphia with porcelain five times cheaper than Bonnin and Morris’.  This sort of collusion would soon lead to harbors filled with tea…

Bonnin and Morris literally begged for help.  But people who knew their work preferred imports.  People who didn’t just didn’t care.  In 1772 Bonnin and Morris ignobly kicked their master potters out on the street.  Morris moved to South Carolina and promptly died.  Bonnin moped back to England.

Encountering one of their six known remaining pickle stands today in the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a humbling experience.  It’s in a small case next to a passageway, easy to pass without noticing.  Considering the epic struggle behind the stand’s creation it seems inconsequential, nondescript among the room’s finer artifacts.  But all that work.  All those crushed hopes riding on that fragile little thing.

It’s heartbreaking.  Almost enough to make one cry.

Readings:
Ceramic in America.  Robert Hunter, ed.  Chipstone Press/Williamsburg, VA.  2007.

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Peace

One of the early settlers of the village of Tarrytown, New York, was a  French potter named Claude Requa.  He settled there in 1729 after fleeing from his native France.  He was a Huguenot, a French Calvinist.  At the time, Huguenots were being rounded up by French authorities and given a choice: convert to Catholicism, or life in prison.  Over a century before, King Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing religious tolerance.  But Henry was now gone, and so was the edict.  Huguenot potters like Requa, and his more famous predecessor Bernard Pallisy, were fair game.  Pallisy ended up dying in the Bastille of Lyons in 1589.

But Requa got away.  He and his family gave up everything to spend the rest of their life in a foreign country.  An excavation of the Requa pottery site in Tarrytown revealed many earthenware shards with geometric patterns slip trailed on them.  There was only one exception:  An almost complete platter with the word “Peace” trailed on it.

I have often thought of this platter.  Today, if one sees “Peace” trailed onto a plate, they might think “Yeah, like, peace-out dude.”  But what was Requa trying to say?  Had he finally found peace?  Was he still looking for it?  Was it his testament and warning to the world?  Was it his cherished wish for his fellow humans?

Whatever his motives, I am sure that this must have been a very powerful word to him.  I find that thought very moving.

Peace Plate by Stephen Earp

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