raised design of vine leaves in vari-colored lustres, is known to us by
the name of the Province House Pitcher, because it was found, with two
tall pewter drinking-cups, hidden behind a panel in the wainscoting of
the historic old Province House in Boston. I fear it is not old enough
to have been held by the fair hands of gentle Agnes Surriage, but I
doubt not some romance attended its imprisonment.
By Revolutionary times a change appeared in the character and quality of
the china that was imported to America. In the _Connecticut Courant_ of
September, 1773, we read in the advertisement of the “Staffordshire and
Liverpool Warehouse,” on King Street, Boston, that they have “for little
more than sterling cost, a fine sortment of Crockery Ware, consisting of
almost every kind of China, Glass & Delph: Cream color, white, blue &
white, black, brown, agot, tortoise, melon, pineapple fruit pattern,
enaml’d, and many other kinds of Stoneware. A few complete table
services of very elegant printed and painted and guilt ware;” and at a
later date “Cream Color Pyramids, Candlesticks, Inkstands, & Chamber
Lamps.” The advertisements of this importing house are found in the
files of New England papers for many years. Every notice of “English
goods” arrived from England for Jolley Allen, for Hopestill Capen, for
Cotton Barrell, three thrifty Boston shopkeepers, contained items of
English and of India china. “Large & Neat Sortment of India China Dishes
of Various forms & sizes, viz: Pudding, Soup, Mackrel, round, oval,
Octagon, ribb’d, scallop’d. Also a variety of table & Butter Plates;
Patty Pans, Bowls & Sauceboats.” Even in war times there still was china
in many shops outside of poor besieged, war-swept Boston, though often
only “a few crates well Sortid considering the Scarsity.” By 1778 china
began to pour into other ports than Boston. In New Haven were sold in
August of that year (and strange to tell, were advertised to be sold at
the very highest price) “Oval Dishes of Several Different Sizes, small
Cream coloured Plates, Punchbowles, cream colour’d Teapots, Red ditto,
Blue ditto, Colliflower ditto, Cream colour’d coffee-cups & sausers,
Tortoise-shell bowles, enamel’d flat bottom cups.” The cream-colored
wares of Wedgwood and of Liverpool make, were evidently just beginning
to be fashionable, though the latter had been named in the _Boston
Gazette_ as early as 1749. In 1780 we first see the advertisement of
Queen’s ware in the _Providence Gazette_, the _Connecticut Courant_, the
Boston newspapers. In October, 1783, “An Assortment of Yellow ware such
as cups, saucers, mugs,” was advertised in the _Providence Gazette_, and
again “Yellow ware both flat and hollow,” meaning plates and pitchers.
Yellow ware was Liverpool ware, and is still so called by country people
on the sea-coast. In 1783 there came into Baltimore, on the ship
Brothers, from Liverpool, “Queen’s ware & Liverpool ware,” and on the
ship Yungfrau Magretha, from Copenhagen, more Queen’s ware; and on the
ship Pacifique, from France, “boxes and barrels of china ware;” and on
the ship Candidus, from Amsterdam, “Delph ware”—and these vessels with
their cargoes were all advertised at the same date, bewildering
Baltimore housewives with the array of “richness.” Then came
announcements of “burnt china”—as if it were not all burnt! In May,
1785, “Beautiful Pencil Chinney Tile,” and then frequent announcements
of “Pencil China,” “Pencil ware,” “Pensil’d Yellow ware,” all of which
were one and the same—Liverpool ware printed with engraved designs.
“Enameled ware” doubtless meant glazed ware, and was so called to
distinguish it from the unglazed wares of Wedgwood. The “Amiled Milk
Pots” in the _Boston Evening Post_ of 1749 were doubtless also
enamelled. In 1784 and 1785, in all American newspapers of note appeared
announcements of sales of Nottingham ware, a favorite importation before
the war. Soon, with the growth of ship-building and Oriental trade, came
the vast influx of Oriental porcelain direct from China, and
advertisements of Canton china crowded the columns of every American
newspaper.
It is interesting to note the various shapes of china and the names of
the pieces that were imported in colonial and Revolutionary times, as
well as the variety of wares. In the _Boston News Letter_ of 1742 I find
“china boats for spoons.” In the _Boston Evening Post_ in 1749, “china
mugs, pitchers, and Turk caps,” which latter mysterious articles were, I
am sure, china also. What are “Mint Stands in delph,” or rather what
were they in 1751? In 1753 they had “custard-dishes” for sale; and did
they have “terines” or “terreens” before 1760? I do not find them named
at an earlier date. A year later came “sallade bowls” and the first
“china handle coffee-cups,” though John Jekyll had had handles on his
cups in 1732. Not until 1772 do I find “Enamel’d Tea cups & Saucers,
with handles to the cups.” In 1763 china patch-boxes and china sweetmeat
boxes came to New England. China stoves were advertised, but I think
they were rare. “China tumblers, with covers,” seem strange to us. What
were the “yellow klinckers and Red glaz’d pantils” advertised in the
_South Carolina State Gazette_ in 1787? China “sweetmeat and pickle
saucers” came in 1773, and “half pint blue & white enameled Basons with
Sawsers.” China milk-jugs, milk-pots, milk-cups, milk-ewers, and
creamers, all antedated the milk-pitcher. We had sugar-boxes,
sugar-basons, sugar-pots, and sugar-dishes before we had sugar-bowls.
“Twifflers” were of porcelain also—pudding-dishes we call them now.
“China voiders” also are advertised for sale. These colonial ceramic
articles of nomenclature most unpleasing in sound to modern ears, were
really only an ancient type of what are known to dealers nowadays as
“crumb-trays.” Into a voider fragments of food remaining on the
table—bones and the like—were gathered after a meal by a voiding-knife.
Pewter voiders abounded, and “china baskets and voiders” appear in
newspaper lists in 1740.
Doubtless many of these voiders and Turk caps, twifflers, and mint
stands have descended to us, but are known now by the uniform and
uninteresting name of dishes.
IV.
EARLY FICTILE ART IN AMERICA
In all our wanderings and searchings we have never found any specimens
of old American china, for one author says that, like the snakes in
Iceland, there are none. The history of the early manufacture of
porcelain in this country is so meagre that it is quickly written, and
records of early pottery works are not plentiful, and specimens are
comparatively unobtainable, and frequently far from beautiful or
instructive. Still I believe that America deserves a fuller ceramic
history, and has had a larger manufacture of pottery and porcelain than
is generally known.
One class of pottery relics should not be neglected by collectors—those
of the North American Indians. When our Pilgrim Fathers landed on the
bleak shores of New England they found the red man using rough bowls and
pans of coarse earthen ware as cooking utensils. Gookin wrote of them
thus: “The pots they seethe their food in are made of clay and earth
almost in the form of an egg with the top broken off.” Bradford wrote
that the colonists also found great pottery vessels buried in the earth,
containing stores of maize. Perfect specimens of the work of New England
savages are rare, and are usually in a simple bowl shape. In the
fragments found in the Connecticut Valley mica is mingled with the clay,
as in the old Celtic wares of Ireland. Wherever the white man landed, to
whatever spot he penetrated, he found Indians, and he also found the
Indians using coarse pottery vessels, “akeeks,” of their own
manufacture. The early accounts of the country—Spanish, Portuguese,
French, and English—all tell of the use and manufacture of pottery among
the Indians. In the “Brevis Narratio” of Le Moyne de Morgues, written in
the sixteenth century, we are given illustrations purporting to be of
some forms of pottery used by the Florida Indians at that time. Father
Hennepin, writing about 1680, asserts that before the arrival of
Europeans in North America, “both the Northern and Southern Salvages
made use of, and do to this day use, Earthen Pots, especially such as
have no Commerce with the Europeans from whom they may procure Kettels
and other Moveables.” It is the fashion among antiquaries to place no
confidence in Father Hennepin, but I think we may believe this statement
of his, since we have so much additional evidence, both through past
writers and present discoveries.
In Hariot’s “Virginia,” of the date 1590, we learn that the Virginian
Indians “cooked their meate in earthen pottes. Thier women know how to
make earthen vessels with special Cunninge, and that so large and fine
that our potters with thoye wheles can make no better; and they Remoue
them from place to place as easeleye as we can doe our brassen kettles.”
The Cherokee Indians, having fine clays of various colors to work with,
made a good class of pottery, far better than any made by northern
Indians, some of the vessels being of large size. Lieutenant Timberlake,
who visited them in 1765, says he saw one at a “physic-dance” that would
hold twenty gallons. Adair, writing in 1775, says that they made
“earthen pots of very different sizes, so as to contain from two to ten
gallons, large pitchers to carry water, bowls, platters, dishes, basons,
and a prodigious number of other vessels of such antiquated forms as
would be tedious to describe and impossible to name. Their method of
glazing them is, they place them over a large pit of smoky pitch pine
which makes them smooth, black, and firm. Their lands abound with proper
clay and even with porcelain, as has been proved by experiment.” A
description of the vessels of “antiquated forms” would, of course, have
made his account of far more use and interest to us nowadays. William
Bartram, that intelligent observer, writing in 1773, confirms the
accounts of other travellers among the Indians in South Carolina and
Georgia, and tells of the discovery of a very interesting earthen pot
found in an Indian mound on Colonel’s Island, in Liberty County, Ga. He
says “it was wrought all over the outside representing basket-work, and
was undoubtedly esteemed a very ingenious performance by the people at
the age of its construction.” This burial urn (for such the pot proved
to be) was indeed a very good piece of work for an Indian potter, and is
still preserved. It is about fifteen inches in height and ten in its
greatest diameter, of graceful outline, and is covered with an impressed
design of fine basket-work. It was made with an admixture of gravel and
powdered shell, which rendered it strong enough to resist the
disintegrating influences of the soil by which it was surrounded. It was
enclosed in two outer vessels of ruder workmanship, which crumbled into
fragments upon exposure to the air. Within the inner vessel were the
bones of a young child. Too young to own any earthly possessions to be
buried with him, this little Indian baby was interred in the tumulus of
shell and clay, in his earthen coffin alone.
In the burial mounds of grown persons vast amounts of broken vessels and
ashes of other burnt property are discovered. All peoples have at some
period of their history had the custom of burying articles of use or
value with their dead, or of burning these possessions at the time of
the burial of the dead owner. To this custom, which existed among the
North American Indians, we owe the preservation of nearly all the
specimens of their poorly baked, fragile cooking utensils and burial
urns that we now possess. Many filled with food and drink were whole
when placed in the mound, but were quickly destroyed and crushed by the
sinking earth, or disintegrated by the moisture. Many also remain, and
sherds of Indian pottery are constantly being brought to light by our
civilized ploughshares. It has been erroneously thought by some students
that Indian pottery was only sun-dried; had it been so, no specimens
would have withstood for so many years the action of the soil and
elements, but would have returned ere this to their old clayey
consistency.
In examining this Indian pottery it is easy to see the natural way in
which the earliest forms were developed. The gourd, the shell, the
basket, the square box of bark—all these primitive shapes of vessels
were copied in the pottery. The ornamentation, too, was compassed in a
simple fashion; the vessel was sometimes modelled within a rush basket
or frame of reeds—thus the impressed design remained upon it. Rude dyes
were applied. One indented design is said to have been formed by the
finger-nail of the Indian potter; other designs have been impressed by
twisted thongs. All these methods and forms of ornamentation were also
used by the Celtic potters. Little pieces of mica or shell were inserted
in the wet clay pot, and were fired in as a further ornament.
The earthen vessel was either baked in a rude kiln or inverted over
coals of burning wood. We have several very good descriptions of the
methods of manufacturing and firing of Indian potters at a later date.
Dumont writes in 1848, of the Louisiana Indians: “After having amassed
the proper kind of clay and carefully cleaned it, the Indian women take
shells which they pound and reduce to a fine powder; they mix this
powder with the clay, and having poured some water on the mass, they
knead it with their hands and feet and make it into a paste of which
they form rolls six or seven feet long, and of a thickness suitable to
their purpose. If they intend to fashion a plate or a vase, they take
hold of one of these rolls by the end, and fixing here with the thumb of
the left hand the centre of the vessel they are about to make, they turn
the roll with astonishing quickness around this centre, describing a
spiral line; now and then they dip their fingers into water and smooth
with the right hand the inner and outer surface of the vase they intend
to fashion, which would become ruffled or undulated without that
manipulation. In this manner they make all sorts of earthen vessels,
plates, dishes, bowls, pots, and jars, some of which hold from forty to
fifty pints.”
This is a prettier and more domestic picture of the Indian wife than
many we have of the draggled, overworked squaw digging in the fields, or
carrying the tent-poles on her back like a pack-horse. The whirling coil
of clay, the growing earthen jar, the deftly-shaping hand, are certainly
picturesque and homely. The Indian women were potters in all the tribes,
it being deemed unmanly work for a lordly brave.
The Indians of the Mohawk Valley, the Iroquois, made much and varied
pottery. In the fine collection of Indian relics owned by A. G.
Richmond, Esq., of Canajoharie, N. Y., are some very interesting pieces
of pottery which have been taken from Indian mounds—among them two jars
of so delicate and friable a character that one wonders how they have
ever escaped disintegration and destruction; also a rare fragment
wrought with a representation of the human figure.
Another form of Indian pottery must not be forgotten, for the
significance of the pipe in the early history of our country cannot be
over-rated. The calumet was a moral, religious, and political influence;
on its manufacture and ornamentation the Indian expended all his skill
and his best labor; and to its suited and significant use he gave his
deepest thought. The use of the pipe was a devotional service—the Great
Spirit smoked His pipe, and his followers did likewise in His honor; it
was a political signal—no war was declared, no treaty of peace was
signed without the accompaniment and symbolical use of the pipe.
Lieutenant Timberlake says that the Cherokees made pipes “of the same
earth they made their pots with, but beautifully diversified,” and he
pathetically records that he was forced to smoke so many pipes of peace
with them that he was made very unpleasantly sick thereby. This special
tribe of Indians had such fine blue clay, and knew so well how to mix
and prepare it, that they made better pipes than their neighbors, and
thus pipes became a medium of exchange—Indian money. The strong clay
pipes of the English settlers were, as soon as imported, eagerly sought
for and quickly purchased by the Indians.
Fine and varied specimens of the pottery vessels and pipes of the
various Indian nations may be found in the cabinets of the Smithsonian
Institution, in the rooms of the various State historical societies, in
the buildings of our colleges and natural history associations, and may
be studied to advantage by the student of ceramics. A full or worthy
history of the fictile art of the North American Indians has yet to be
written.
I doubt if the colonists ever used the Indian pottery, for at an early
date they began to manufacture bricks and earthen ware, and having
wheels to help them in shaping their pots, could far outdo the Indians.
They made laws to protect such manufacture. The General Court of
Massachusetts ordered, as early as 1646, that “tyle earth to make sale
ware shall be digged before the first of 9 mo and turned over in the
last or first before it be wrought.” John Pride, of Salem, was
registered as a potter in 1641. He may have helped to establish a
pottery in Danvers, then a suburb of Salem, for the manufacture of
earthen ware in that town was coeval with the existence of the
settlement; and the Danvers pot-works were, I believe, the first to be
established in America by any of the colonies. Higginson, writing from
Salem in 1629, said, “It is thought here is good clay to make bricks &
tyles and earthen pot as may be. At this instant we are setting a bricke
kill to worke to make brickes and tyles for the building of our houses.”
William Osborne was the first Danvers potter, and his descendants
carried on the business in that immediate vicinity for about two
centuries. Mr. Joseph Reed then took charge as the successor of the
house of Osborne. At the end of the eighteenth century the production of
“Danvers ware” was extensive. Morse’s _Gazetteer_ of 1797 says, “Large
quantities of brick and coarse earthen ware are manufactured here.” A
resident of the town wrote thus in 1848, “Table-ware of Danvers China
brought a high price during the late war.” To call the common red
pottery “china” is certainly flattering, but may be pardoned on account
of the local pride of the writer.
At the “time of the late war”—the war of 1812—there were no less than
twenty-six of these pottery works where now there is only one. The
situation of the residence and pot-works of William Osborne is still
known, and the manufacture of earthen ware has gone on in the same place
without interruption ever since. Simple forms only have been made—often
lead-glazed—bean-pots, jugs, pitchers, milk-pans, jars, etc. We must
except, of course, the table-ware of war times. This Osborne kiln is
situated in what is called Peabody, but in the town of North Danvers
there was discovered a few years ago the foundation of an old forgotten
kiln, which had been owned by a potter named Porter. There is no finer
quality of clay than is still found in large quantities within a quarter
of a mile of this old Porter kiln. This clay is, however, carried to
Boston and elsewhere instead of being manufactured where it is dug.
Potters make good citizens. Staffordshire men say, “working in earth
makes men easy-minded,” and a community of potters is always orderly,
law-abiding, thrifty, and industrious. A larger and constantly
increasing manufacture of Danvers ware should have been encouraged.
An enthusiastic local minstrel sings thus of Danvers pottery and
patriots:
“Here plastic clay the potter turned
To pitcher, dish, jug, pot, or pan,
As in his kiln the ware was burned,
So burned the patriot in the man,
Into persistent shape, which no
Turning could change back to dough.
It might be broken, ground to dust,
But ne’er made ductile as at first.”
The Quakers kept up with the Puritans in the attempt to establish home
manufactures and home industries. Father Pastorius wrote in 1684, “Of
brick kilns and tile ovens, we have the necessary number.” Gabriel
Thomas found in Pennsylvania, in 1696, both brick kilns and pot-works.
He writes thus to encourage emigration from England, and to show the
high wages in the new land. “Brick-makers have twenty shillings per
thousand for their bricks at the kilns, and potters have sixteenpence
for an earthenware pot that may be bought in England for fourpence.”
In New Jersey, at Burlington, Governor Coxe, of “West Jersey,”
established in 1690 a pottery of considerable size and pretension. The
Virginians kept pace with the Quakers and Puritans. As early as 1649
there were several pot-works in Virginia.
Potteries were also established on Long Island in the eighteenth
century. On March 31, 1735, “The widow of Thomas Parmynter offers for
sale her farm at Whitestone, opposite Frogs Point. It has twenty acres
of clay ground fit for making tobacco pipes. For sale also two negroes,
with utensils and other conveniences for carrying on that business.” On
July 3, 1738, the same farm, with its “beds of pipe-making clay,” was
again sold. On May 13, 1751, this advertisement appeared: “Any persons
desirous may be supplied with vases, urns, flower-pots to adorn gardens
and tops of houses, or any other ornament made of clay, by Edward Annely
at Whitestone, he having set up the potter’s business by means of a
German family that he bought (?), who are supposed by their work to be
the most ingenious that arrived in America. He has clay capable of
making eight different kinds of ware.” This was evidently quite a
pretentious start in the pottery manufacture, and with the assistance of
the ingenious family of German potters, and the advantages of convenient
beds of clay, Edward Annely should have succeeded; but no record remains
to indicate either his success or failure.
Upon the old farm of John Lefferts, in Flatbush, Long Island, there
exists a large pond called by the apparently incongruous name of
Steenbakkery. This pond was formed by the removal of clay for use in a
steenbakkery or pottery upon the place, and from the size of the
excavation vast numbers of bricks and coarse stone-ware must have been
made. The ruins of the racks for the bricks remained standing within the
memory of persons now living. This pond having, of course, no outlet
through its clay bottom, has in our present age of sanitary drainage
been ordered to be filled in. In New York City, near “Fresh Water Pond,”
back of the City Hall, a German potter named Remmey established works,
but his descendants were crowded out by the growing city, and removed to
South Amboy.