Part 5

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.

A very interesting pitcher of English ware of yellowish paste, with a 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.