with a quaint engraved design of leaves and round flowers. These were
undoubtedly of Dutch manufacture, and are identical in shape and
ornamentation with teapots authentically known to have been imported
from Holland. These teapots were probably used for company “tea
drinkings” and such state occasions, and thus the engraving on the soft
metal was not worn by daily use.
Pewter spoons, too, are there in every size, though Betsey Sumner surely
had silver teaspoons, for were they not inherited from her by her son,
the old parson? As these pewter spoons were liable to be quickly bent,
worn, or broken, every thrifty household had its various sized spoon
moulds of heavy metal, into which the melted pewter was poured and came
out as good as new, or, according to the apparent law of pewter, better
than new. Button moulds, too, were common enough, containing deep holes
to form half a dozen buttons at once. And perhaps Betsey Sumner turned
her old spoons into buttons to adorn John’s coat, and polished them till
they shone like the silver and cut-steel buttons of the French Court.
Many of the pewter articles in this homestead have had recently engraved
upon the underside various commemorative dates, and the names of past
owners, and the outlines of any eventful story connected with the dish,
if story there fortunately be remembered to tell. And every owner of
pewter plate or porringer, who knows by tradition the story of his old
relic, should have the statement engraved now upon the back of the
piece, for even in one generation these facts are forgotten, and the
article is rendered valueless as an historic record.
In the kitchen of the great colonial house at Morristown, N. J., now
owned and occupied by the Washington Association of New Jersey, may be
seen a fine collection of old pewter table and cooking utensils; while
at Indian Hill, at Newburyport, still is shining in cupboard and dresser
the rare pewter collected by Ben Perley Poore.
To a day well within the remembrance of many now living, round pewter
meat platters were used in farm-houses, long after the other pewter
dishes had vanished; for it does not dull a carving-knife to cut upon
pewter as it does upon porcelain or crockery, and old farmers cling
stubbornly to usages and articles that they are acquainted with; and no
“boiled dinner” ever could taste quite the same to them unless all
heaped together on a great shining pewter platter.
Another pewter piece often found, and often still used, is the hot-water
jug with its wicker-covered handle. This was brought every night, in
colonial and Revolutionary times, well filled with boiling water, to the
master of the house, for him to mix the hot apple-toddy or sangaree for
the members of his household, who drank their share out of pewter cups
or heavy greenish glasses. I know of two of these pewter jugs which have
been in daily use for certainly forty years (though in the more
temperate vocation of hot-water jugs to carry shaving-water to the
bedrooms), and still retain, sound and firm, the old wicker coverings on
the handles, which may have been woven upon them a hundred years ago.
Truly, our grandfathers made things for use, not for sale.
Strange hiding-places have these old forsaken and forgotten pewter
dishes. They lurk in tall and narrow cupboards by the side of old
chimneys, or in short and deep cupboards over the mantel. They lie in
disused fireplaces, hidden from view by gaudy modern fireboards. They
are at the bottom of deep boxes under wide window-seats, and are shoved
under the dusty eaves of dark attic-lofts. On the highest pantry
shelves, under cellar stairs, in old painted sea-chests, in the
woodhouse, are they found. From the floor of henhouses have they been
rescued, where they have been long ignominiously trodden under foot by
high-stepping and imperious fowl.
Let us take them from these obscure corners, and preserve them with
care, for though they have no intrinsic value like silver, no brilliancy
like glass, no beauty of color or design like china, they are still
worth our interest and attention, for they were the first table-ware
used by our ancestors. We are a young nation of few years and few
relics, let us then reverently preserve the old pewter plates and
platters, remembering that these simple dishes of inexpensive metal
illustrate the frugal home-life of the men and women who were the
founders of the Republic.
III.
EARLY USE AND IMPORTATION OF CHINA IN AMERICA
The knowledge and use of porcelain in England did not long antedate the
departure of the Pilgrims for the New World. As early as 1506, one
exceptional importation of Chinese porcelain bowls is spoken of; but
even in 1567—half a century later—one of Queen Elizabeth’s valued gifts
was a “poringer of white porselyn and a cup of green porselyn,” and the
notice paid such intrinsically valueless and small articles by their
mention proves their rarity. Great ignorance of the processes of
porcelain manufacture existed; even that learned, that marvellously
well-informed man, Lord Bacon, wrote of “mines of porcelain,” and had
the queer idea that china was developed in the earth, out of the common
clay, by some strange and mysterious process of purification. Another
universal belief was, that porcelain was a sovereign detector of poison,
that it instantly showed the presence of poison in any draught that came
in contact with it. Shakespeare speaks once of china, in his “Measure
for Measure,” “a dish of some three-pence, your honors have seen such
dishes, they are not china dishes, but very good dishes.” Ben Jonson
refers more frequently to porcelain.
“_Broker._ ’Tis but earth
Fit to make bricks and tiles of.
_Shunfield._ ’Tis but for pots or pipkins at the best
If it would keep us in good tobacco pipes—
_Titus._ Or in porc’lane dishes.”
Again he says:
“The earth of my bottles which I dig
Turn up and steep, and work, and neal, myself,
To a degree of porc’lane.”
By the time of Pope and Dryden, china had become more widely known in
England, and these writers and their contemporaries frequently refer to
it. It is not probable that much china came to England until 1650, when
the English East India Trading Company was established, though the Dutch
had even then a large trade with China. Doubtless tea and china became
plentiful in Europe together.
Addison wrote in 1713, “China vessels are playthings for women of all
ages.... I myself remember when there were few china vessels to be seen
that held more than a dish of tea; but their size is so greatly enlarged
that there are many capable of holding half a hogshead.”
It is asserted that pieces of Delft ware were brought to America by the
first English and Dutch settlers. It had been manufactured since the
fifteenth century; but when our Pilgrim Fathers made their night-trip
through Delft, no plebeian persons had Delft ware on their tables; hence
the Pilgrims could have brought few pieces to New England on the
Mayflower. Nor is it probable that those frugal souls owned any India
china. The earliest Dutch settlers of New Netherlands were not likely
either to have brought to the new land any pieces of the aristocratic
Delft ware, though I have seen many Delft plates and teapots that bore
the reputation of such ownership.
“Blew & white ware” is however not an infrequent item on early
inventories of the last half of the century. John Betts, of Cambridge,
Mass., had before his death, in 1662, “Som duth earthen platters & Som
other Earthen ware,” valued at 6s. 8d. A citizen of Salem had in 1664
“17 pieces of blew & white earthen ware” worth 8s. 6d. John Cross, of
Ipswich, left behind him in 1650 his “Holland jugs.” All these were
doubtless Delft or the early imitations of Delft.
The oldest and most authentic piece of stone-ware in the country is the
fine jug preserved in the collection of the American Antiquarian
Society, at Worcester. It was the property of Governor Winthrop, who
died in 1649, and was given to the Society by a descendant, Adam
Winthrop. It stands eight inches in height and is apparently of German
Gres-ware, and is richly mounted in silver. The lid is engraved with a
quaint design of Adam and Eve with the tempting serpent in the
apple-tree. Estienne Perlin, writing in Paris in 1558, says, “The
English drink beer not out of glass but from earthen pots, the cover and
handles being made of silver for the rich. The middle classes mount them
with tin.” Another writer, in 1579, spoke of the English custom of
drinking from “pots of earth of sundry colors and moulds, whereof many
are garnished with silver or at leastwise with pewter.” Such is this
“beer mug” or tankard of Governor Winthrop’s, which is certainly three
hundred years old. Other Massachusetts colonists had similar beer-mugs.
Jacob Leager, of Boston, left in 1662 a “stone judg tipt with silver;”
Henry Dunster had a “tipt jugg” in 1655; and Thomas Rix had in 1678 “3
fflanders jugs.”
[Illustration: Winthrop Jug.]
Lisbon ware, which was earthen ware, was left by will in Massachusetts
in 1650; and Spanish platters and painted platters are mentioned in an
inventory in 1656. Peter Bulkeley, of Concord, Mass., had in 1659 “ten
paynted earthen dishes” valued at ten shillings. In the lists and
inventories of the town of Stamford, from 1650 to 1676, only two
shillings worth of earthen ware is entered, and Stamford planters were
far from poor. In the _Boston News Letter_ of February 9, 1712, six
hogsheads of earthen ware, including teapots, were advertised for sale.
These early teapots are said to have been of black earthen ware.
One of the earliest mentions of china in America is in the inventory
made in 1641, of the property of Thomas Knocker, of Boston, “1 Chaynie
Dish.” In 1648, in the estate of President Davenport, of Harvard
College, was, “Cheyney, £4.” This was doubtless India china. Governor
Theophilus Eaton had a “cheny basen.” In the list made in 1647, of the
possessions of Martha Coteymore, a rich widow (who afterward married
Governor Winthrop), is seen this item, “One parcel cheyney plates and
saucers, £1.” Katherine Coteymore had “3 boxes East India dishes,”
valued at £3. As early as October, 1699, John Higginson wrote to his
brother with regard to importations from India, that “china and
lacker-ware will sell if in small quantity,” and without doubt some
small importations from India were made.
After the first decade of the century many rich Bostonians, such as
Elizur Holyoke, had china. Isaac Caillowell’s estate in 1718 contained
“Five China Dishes, One Doz. China Plates, Two China Muggs, a China
Teapott, Two China Slopp Basons, Six China Saucers, Four China Cupps,
and One China Spoon Dish.”
The earliest mention of the sale of china table-ware which I have seen
is not in 1732, as given by Mr. Felt in his “New England Customs.” There
are several notices of sales of china of earlier dates. In the _New
England Weekly Journal_ of April 15th of the year 1728, were advertised
for sale, at the Sun Tavern in Boston, “Chainey Bowles Dishes Cups
Saucers and Teapots;” and “china cups & saucers” on June 17th. This
“chainey” was probably all India china. In 1729, William Welsteed, a
Boston merchant, had a large number of plates and “pickle caucers” for
sale. In 1731, Andrew Faneuil announced that he had for sale at his
warehouse “All sorts of Dutch Stone and Delf ware just imported from
Holland.” In 1730 John Buining and Mrs. Hannah Wilson both advertised in
the _Boston News Letter_, that they had “several sorts of china for
sale;” and another Boston shopkeeper announced at the same time that he
was going to sell out everything he owned, including china ware, and
that his fellow-townsmen had better flock to his shop, for “buyers have
reason to Expect good Bargains for this will be the Packing Penny,”
which I suppose was the colonial slang expression for “bottom price.” At
a later date the “Packing Penny” became “to buy the pennyworth.” It was
not till 1737 that china ware was sold by “Publick Vandoo or Outcry,” or
by “Inch of Candle,” in Boston, thus showing that it was being imported
in larger quantities. In September of that year there was sold on
Scarlett’s Wharf, with spices and silks and negro slaves,
“A Rich Sortment of China Ware. A Parcel of fine large Enamel’d
Dishes. Ditto of divers Sizes of Bowles burnt & Enamel’d. Ditto of all
Sorts of Plates. Sundry Complete Setts of Furniture for the Tea-Table.
Blue & White Bowles; Blue & White Cups & Sawcers. Several sorts of
small Baskets, &c.”
By this time Boston milliners and mantua makers, and fan mounters, and
lace menders, had all begun to announce the sale of “chayney” in their
show-rooms and shops. Fair Boston dames picked their way along the
narrow streets, or were carried in stately sedan chairs, to “Mistress
Alise Quick’s, over against the Old Brick Meeting House on Cornhill, at
the sign of the Three Kings,” or to “Widow Mehetable Kneeland’s,” to see
her “London baby drest in the latest fashioned Hooped Coat and lac’d
Petty Coat with ppetuna hood;” or to “Mrs. Hannah Teatts, Mantua Maker,
at the head of Summer Street, Boston,” who charged five shillings for
showing her “Baby drest after the Newest Fashion of Mantues and Night
Gowns and everything belonging to a Dress, latilly brought over on
Captain White’s ship from London”—these bedizened doll-babies being the
quaint colonial substitutes for fashion plates. These modish New-English
dames first pulled over and tried on the “rayls and roquilos and
cardinals,” and admired the ivory and cocoa paddle stick-fans; and
peeped at their own patched faces and powdered hair in the lacquered
looking-glasses; and then, perhaps, selected some flower seeds for their
prim little gardens—their pleasaunces, “blew and yellow lewpin, double
larkin-spur, sweet feabus, Love lies bleeding, Queen Margrets, Brompton
flock, and sweet-scented pease;” and then they turned, unwearied and
unsated, to the “Choise Sortment of Delph, Stone, Glassware, and China,
viz., Bowles of Divers Sizes, Plates of all Sorts, and Dishes, Teapots,
Cups & Saucers, Strayners, Mugs of Divers Sorts and Colors, Creampots
pearl’d & plain, Bird Fountains, Tankards,” and they held up the tiny
china teacups to the light and examined the painting, and perhaps sipped
a little of the mantua maker’s Orange Pekoe or Bohea. And I doubt not
many a china teapot or teacup stood cheek by jowl with quoyfs and
ciffers on colonial milliners’ bills, and many a feathered “Kitty Fisher
Bonnet,” or silver shape, or peaked Ranelagh cap was sent home to the
daughters of the Puritans, packed with “catgut,” and “robins,” and
“none-so-prettys,” in an India china punch-bowl.
Of the prices paid for these colonial ceramic luxuries we know but
little. The enterprising outcrier, who cried out and vandooed at the
“Blew Boar, at the South End of Boston,” announced in February, 1749, in
the _Boston Independent Advertiser_, that he had “Fine blue & white and
Quilted China Plates at Eleven Pounds the Dozen, or Six Pounds the Half
Dozen.” So the shades of our ancestors can hardly cry out to us for
extravagance. These quilted china plates were, I think, from subsequent
references to them, plates impressed in the paste with a basket design,
as we often see now on Chinese porcelain; or possibly with a larger, a
truly quilted design, such as I have seen on rare old Oriental
porcelain. In the inventory of the estate of John Jekyll, of Boston
(made in 1732), we learn that “2 Burnt China Bowls were worth £2, 6
Chocolate Bowls £2, 1 Pr China Candlesticks Tipt with Silver £4, 12
Coffe cups with handles £1 7s.” In many inventories such a number of
pieces are “crackt” or “mendid,” and so little hint of quality or
decoration is given, that it is impossible to compare justly the values
assigned with those of the present day. John Jekyll also had a “sett of
burnt china.” The first mentioned sale of a “set” of china is in the
_New England Weekly Journal_ of April 19, 1737—“A Fine Double Sett of
Burnt China for sale, Enquire of the Printer.” Until then the precious
porcelain had been sold only in single pieces, or in small numbers. The
wills and inventories of the times speak of no sets of china, though the
lists of the possessions of all persons of wealth, the advertisements of
sales of estates, contain many items of china ware. Governor Burnet, who
died in 1729, owned much china—three hundred pieces—as became a man who
had £1,100 spent on his funeral; and his friend and neighbor, Peter
Faneuil, had a bountiful supply of china and glass, as he had of other
luxuries.
There are far more frequent mentions and advertisements of china in old
New England newspapers than in other American papers of the same years.
The southern publications of colonial times that I have seen contained
no announcements of the sale of china. None appeared bearing date until
after the Revolutionary War. And it is plain, from the evidence of
inventories, “enroulments,” wills, and newspapers of the eighteenth
century, that porcelain was far more plentiful in New England than
elsewhere in America at the same date. Mr. Prime says, “Few of the
people of Revolutionary times had seen porcelain;” but when it had been
advertised in every New England newspaper; had been sold in grocers’,
milliners’, chemists’, dry-goods, saddlers’, and hardware shops; had
been displayed at the printers’ and book-shops and writing-schools in
every town of any size throughout New England; and sold in considerable
quantities by all the little Boston shopkeepers—the Amorys, Waldos,
Brimmers, Adamses, Sheaffes, and Boylstons, I fancy all New England good
wives must have owned a few pretty pieces.
Doubtless the wealthiest Virginians of colonial times also had some
china. It is not, however, named in Baltimore inventories until after
the year 1700. Nor was it plentiful in New York; one of the earliest
mentions of china in New York is in the list of the possessions of
wealthy Cornelius Stienwerck, “Ten pieces of china dishes or porcelain
£4.” In August, 1748, the _New York Weekly Journal_ contained its first
announcement of the sale of china—“A choice parcel of China Ware just
imported to be sold at Wholesale. Enquire of the Printer.” Now, the
“Printer” at that date was a woman, the Widow Zenger, wife of the former
owner of the newspaper, and with her assumption of the printing and
editing business came various feminine advertisements such as this of
china ware, others of mantuas and hair-powder, and of “bonnet-papers,”
which she cut and made and sold in large numbers; but this china sale
was certainly exceptional in New York at that date.
China did not abound in New York, either in Dutch or English families,
until after the Revolutionary War. Nor did advertisements of it
frequently appear in ante-Revolutionary New York newspapers. In an
inventory made at that time of the contents of a house on the Neutral
Ground in Westchester County, there were such wealth-evincing items as
twenty-six horses, thirty-six table-cloths, rich and abundant furniture,
bed-linen, and clothing, large quantities of fine silver; and of pewter,
“1 Coffee Kettle, 1 Teapot, 27 Dishes, 12 Plates, 12 Soup-Plates, 6
Butter Plates, 3 Mugs, 2 salons, 5 basons, 6 Spoons, 3 Measures;” and
not one piece of china. This list of household belongings is not
exceptional. China is seldom mentioned. But few pieces of porcelain or
pottery are named in the inventories of the possessions of the New
Jersey farmers whose houses were burned, and whose household goods were
either destroyed or stolen by the soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and
who expected to receive indemnity from the Government for their losses.
We discover therein that each family seldom owned more than three or
four china cups and saucers. These records are extremely valuable for
reference, as they are true and faithful lists of the entire household
belongings of well-to-do people at that time; they indicate that china
was far from plentiful in New Jersey at that date. Watson says in his
“Annals,” “When china was first introduced into America, it was in the
form of tea-sets; it was quite a business to take in broken china to
mend. It was done by cement in most cases, but generally large pieces,
like punch-bowls, were done with silver rivets or wire.” An
advertisement in the _Boston Evening Post_ in 1755 reads: “This is to
give Notice to all Them that have any Broken China, at the Lion and Bell
on Marlboro Street, Boston, they may have it mended by Riveting it
together with a Silver & Brass Rivets it is first put together with a
Cement that will stand boiling Water and then Riveted.”
China appears to have been more plentiful in Philadelphia than in New
York. Benjamin Lay, the “Singular Pythagorean Cynical Christian
Philosopher,” to show his hatred of the use of tea, brought in 1742 all
his wife’s china into the market-place at Philadelphia, and began to
break it piece by piece with a hammer; “but the populace, unwilling to
lose what might profit them, overset him, scrambled for the china, and
bore it off whole.” As the “Singular Pythagorean Philosopher’s” wife was
dead, this wanton destruction of her dear china was not so cruel as at
first appears. An old lady wrote in 1830, about things as they were
before the War of Independence—“Pewter plates and dishes were in general
use. China on dinner tables was a great rarity. Glass tumblers were
scarcely seen. Punch, the most common beverage, was drunk from a silver
tankard. China teacups and saucers were half their present size, and
china teapots and coffee-pots with silver nozzles were a mark of
superior finery. Where we now use earthen ware they then used Delft ware
imported from England, and instead of queen’s ware (then unknown) pewter
platters and porringers made to shine along a dresser were universal.
Some, especially country people, ate their meals from wooden trenchers.”
That frugal and plain-living man, Benjamin Franklin, though he
constantly impressed upon his wife, as well as upon the public, the
wisdom and necessity of great economy, and the propriety and good taste
of simplicity in all modes of living, still could find time and money to
pick out for her, when he was in England, and to send to her many a
piece of china for her beaufet in Philadelphia. He writes thus from
London, in February, 1758, to his Deborah: “I send you by Captain Budden
a large case and a small box containing some English china, viz: melons
and leaves for a dessert of fruit and cream or the like; a bowl
remarkable for the neatness of the figures, made at Bow, near this city;
some coffee-cups of the same; and a Worcester bowl, ordinary. To show
the difference of workmanship, there is something from all the china
workers in England; and one old true china basin mended; of an odd
color.... I also forgot among the china to mention a large, fine jug for
beer, to stand in the cooler. I fell in love with it at first sight, for
I thought it looked like a fat, jolly dame, clean and tidy, with a neat
blue and white gown on, good-natured and lovely, and put me in mind
of—somebody. Look at the figures on the china bowl and coffee-cups with
your spectacles on, they will bear examining.” This was certainly a very
tender attention on the part of Franklin, and one particularly grateful,
doubtless, to his good dame, if she loved china as do others of her sex.
In 1765 she wrote to her “dear child” (of over three score years) while
he was in France, and thus describes a room that she had been
furnishing: “The blue room has a set of tea china I bought since you
went from home, a very handsome mahogany stand for the teakettle to
stand on, and the ornamental china.” This latter clause refers doubtless
to the fine English pieces which he had sent her eight years previously.
In spite of all this fine array, Mrs. Bache wrote thus to her father, on
October 30, 1773: “We have no plates or dishes fit to set before your
friends, and the queen’s ware is thought very elegant here, particularly
the spriged. I just mention this, as it would be much cheaper for you to
bring them than to get them here.” Let us hope her father took this
broad hint and brought the “spriged” dishes to his daughter; and as
there still exist among her descendants, pieces of a set of china
bearing little sprigs, I choose to think that they are parts of this
very set.
[Illustration: Province House Pitcher.]