Part 8

There have been found in New England, in numbers which seem rather surprising when we consider their age, ale-jugs of gray and blue stone-ware which are universally known as Fulham jugs. They resemble in quality and coloring the German stone-ware or our common crocks, being of the same gray ware with a lead glaze. They are decorated with rich blue like the German wares, and have an incised design of leaves and scrolls, circles or simple flowers. I have seen a number which bore in the front an oval medallion with the incised initials G. R., sometimes also a crown. These are said to refer to Georgius Rex, the first of the English Georges. I know of one G. R. mug which has an additional interest in the form of a bullet of the Revolution imbedded in its tough and uncracked side. Some of these Fulham jugs have apparently had silver or pewter lids attached to them. They are what are known as bottle-shaped, round and protuberant, narrowing to a small neck and base; others are more slender, almost cylindrical. There are no marks to prove them to be Fulham jugs, but as such they are known.

Other Fulham jugs are found of brownish mottled stone-ware with hound handle and raised decoration in the body of figures of the chase, and with mask of Bacchus forming the nose. These have been frequently reproduced in American potteries and when unmarked, it is difficult to determine which are English.

Pieces of salt-glazed ware have been found in country homes by many china hunters, and are among the most pleasing articles to be obtained. The date of their manufacture was from 1680 to 1780. An interesting story is told of the discovery of the process of glazing this ware. A servant maid having, in the year 1680, allowed a pot of brine to boil over, the dull earthen pot containing the brine became red hot, and when cold was covered with a bright glaze. A sharp potter perceiving it, at once utilized the hint. The story is pretty, but it can scarcely be true, for such a glaze could not be formed in an open place. But salt-glaze there is, and in America too, of the very earliest manufacture—Crouch-ware, or, as it is incorrectly and inappropriately called, Elizabethan-ware. Crouch is the name neither of a person nor of a place, but of the white Derbyshire clay. The paste made from this clay is very dense, and is of a greenish tint. The Elers-ware of buff ground with simple raised scrolls and rosettes of white are also of early date.

Some of the salt-glazed pieces were shaped by pressing the moist paste into metal moulds, other pieces were “cast” in moulds of plaster of Paris, the slip or liquid paste being introduced to line the mould, and allowed to set, and this operation being repeated until the piece was of required thickness. As the taste for light delicate wares increased, some were made as light and thin as paper. If the piece were “cast” the handles, nose, and feet (if it possessed any) were moulded and placed on separately. The moulds used were frequently the worn-out moulds that had been used for casting silverware; hence pieces of salt-glazed ware usually resemble in shape the pieces of silver of the same date.

The characteristic feature of salt-glazed ware—the quality from which it derives its name—is its glaze. This is easily recognized. It does not run and spread like other glazes, but seems to form into minute coagulated drops or granulations resembling somewhat the surface of orange-peel. The glaze is often unequal, being higher on some portions of the piece than others, the vapor of soda (through which the glaze was made) not penetrating with equal power to every point. Thus one side of a piece may be dull and the other highly glazed.

The largest and finest example of salt-glazed ware which I have seen in America is the exact duplicate of the best specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology, in Jermyn Street, London, numbered G. 111. It is thus described in the catalogue of that museum: “Large oval soup-tureen, cover, and stand. Height, ten inches; greatest diameter, fourteen and one-half inches. Body decorated with pressed ornaments, including scroll-work and diaper and basket pattern; the tureen mounted on three lion’s claws with masks.” This tureen is dated 1763. The beautiful and delicate specimen found in America is absolutely perfect. It bore the difficult process of making and firing (specially difficult in so large a piece), crossed the water to the new land of Virginia, passed through generations of use and the devastations of the Revolutionary and civil wars, was gathered in by a travelling dealer, brought in safety by rail to New York, and ignominiously sold for a dollar and a half to its present proud possessor. It was doubtless cast in the same mould as the one in the museum. Another similar piece is in the well-known English collection of Lady Charlotte Schreiber.

A large number of smaller pieces of salt-glazed ware have been found, including salt-boxes, creamers, and one beautiful teapot which is so graceful and unique in design that it has been honored by being borrowed by a prominent china-manufacturer in England to reproduce in his modern ware. Thus this frail waif from the middle of the last century has thrice crossed the ocean in safety.

The pitchers shown are of salt-glazed ware and may be Crouch-ware, though they are apparently of rather later date. The first bears in a heart-shaped medallion a design of high-colored children at awkward play, and is labelled “Sportive Innocence.” Similar ones are frequently found in America. I know of at least a dozen. Some bear on the reverse side a different design with the same children entitled “Mischievous Sport.” In this the boy is frightening the little girl with an ugly mask. Other pitchers of precisely the same shape and borderdecorations in orange, green, and blue have different designs in the medallion, a peacock being frequently seen. The farmer’s pitcher has the motto “Success to Trade,” and is surely older as well as gayer in color than the “Sportive Innocence” pitcher.

There were imported to America in great quantities, as is shown by many eighteenth-century advertisements, “tortoise-shell” and “combed pattern” wares, also the pretty cauliflower, melon, and pineapple wares that have been reproduced in our own day. These were manufactured chiefly at Little Fenton by Thomas Whieldon, a man who influenced much the potters’ art in England from the year 1740 to 1780, during five of which years he was a partner with Wedgwood. There are only two specimens of these wares in the Museum of Practical Geology, and Mr. Jewitt wrote in 1873: “These wares are now very scarce and are highly and deservedly prized by collectors.” At the time he wrote he could have gathered in America scores, even hundreds, of pieces of the Whieldon wares for English collections. Dr. Irving Lyon, of Hartford, has a fine collection of them which he picked up in the cottages of the Connecticut Valley—a collection which any English china-lover would envy.

Whieldon was a man of great energy, with a practical knowledge of his art, and he spent much time in his works perfecting his patterns and processes. He compounded the bright green glaze so admirable in his ware, shown so beautifully in the cauliflower and melon patterns, through the contrast with the cream color. He also was a modeller, and from the imitation of leaves, and fruits, and vegetables derived his best-known and most successful patterns, and the novelty and ingenuity of many of them charm us even in the present day. The bird and animal shapes being grotesque rather than useful, seldom came to America. I have seen here, however, several tortoise-shell cows and one combed bird. The tail of the cow forms the handle of the pitcher, the liquid being poured from the nose. Reproductions of these are now made at Jeffords Pottery in Philadelphia. Little cradles and posy-holders, too, are found, sometimes with dates. Whieldon’s two-handled “parting-cups,” ornamented with raised grapes, leaves, and tendrils and a head of Bacchus, are much more scarce than the melon and cauliflower teapots, mugs, and dishes; and his perforated ware I have never seen in America. Some of the pieces of his manufacture are stamped and afterward shaped somewhat by hand, others are cast, others pressed in moulds. The “cast” pieces are considered to be of earlier date, and may be known by their being thinner and more delicate than the moulded ones. The mottled browns, greens, and yellows of the tortoise-shell and combed wares, like all of Whieldon’s decorations, are under the glaze, and are very rich in tone, forming a delightful bit of color in cupboard or cabinet. Occasionally a purple mottle is seen. The colors were sponged, floured, or blown on, painting and printing on pottery being then unknown. These pieces of Whieldon’s are all unmarked, and doubtless many specimens in America came from the Wedgwood factory, for similar wares were made there.

I hardly know how to account for the fact that I have found so few, comparatively few, pieces of undoubted Wedgwood ware in old houses in New England. That vast quantities came to America we cannot doubt. Wedgwood says so himself in his letter quoted on page 88. In other letters he refers again and again to consignments made to the American market, “the green and white wares,” “the Queen’s wares,” “the cream wares,” etc. That these consignments were sent largely to the various points supplied from the Charleston and Philadelphia markets is known, and in those regions the black basalts-ware, at least, is more plentiful than in New England. Much Wedgwood ware must have come also to the ports of Boston, Newport, and New Haven. These wares may have been plentiful in the Connecticut Valley, but I have seen little in other parts of New England. A good opportunity of studying the various productions of the Wedgwood factory is given through the specimens in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. There are at least one hundred “lots” of Wedgwood there shown, and the cameos and intaglios, the jasper-wares, the basalts, the queensware, the painted wares are all illustrated by choice and varied pieces.

The story of Wedgwood’s life I will not even give briefly, though the beauty and lesson of it make one long to tell it till every American china-manufacturer learns to read between the lines the story of personal supervision, patient trial, unwearied labor, honest ambition, and liberal broadness that made his life a success and his productions a delight. Miss Meteyard and Mr. Jewitt have given it in careful detail, and every word is of keenest interest and importance to the china collector. From these books, and from the beautiful volumes of engravings and photographs of Wedgwood ware preserved in English collections, the American china hunter can learn, if not from the specimens themselves.

A few of the Wedgwood cameo medallions are found in America. Wedgwood sent as a gift to Thomas Jefferson three exquisite medallions; two were oval and one oblong in shape. They were in blue and white jasper, with mythological designs. The largest was twelve inches long and six inches wide, and bore the lovely design of Cupid and Psyche with troops of attending loves. Jefferson had them set in the front of a mantel in a room at Monticello, and one of them dropped out and was destroyed before the family sold the house. The others were picked or cut out and stolen. Mrs. Ellen Harrison, the oldest living descendant of Jefferson, tells me that during a visit to Monticello, some years before the present owner took possession, she found on the floor a tiny bit of blue jasper showing the foot and leg of one of the loves. Thus did this English cherub cast from his feet the dust of an inartistic and relic-hunting nation of vandals. Oh, the pity that things so beautiful could be so wantonly destroyed! Would that everything that Wedgwood made had been endowed with qualities of immortality and indestructibility to live forever as lessons and examples for future generations of potters.

Occasionally a jasper medallion is found here with Wedgwood’s famous anti-slavery design, a kneeling slave with fetters falling from his hands, and the motto, “Am I not a Man and a Brother?” Dr. Darwin says that “Wedgwood distributed many hundreds of these to excite the humane to attend to and assist in the abolition of the detestable traffic in human creatures.”

“Whether, O friend of art, the gem you mould Rich with new taste, with ancient virtue bold, Or the poor tortur’d slave on bended knee, From Britain’s sons imploring to be free.”

Many found their way to America and a few are still preserved.

Occasionally also a rich dessert-service of old Wedgwood ware is seen. Two superb ones were brought across the water by a sea-captain at the beginning of this century and landed at Hudson, N. Y. A fair young bride saw and coveted one of these china treasures, but stern and frugal parents were horrified at the thought of spending seventy dollars for such an unnecessary luxury. The bridegroom, Silas E. Burraws, at a later date the starter of the monument to the mother of Washington, more extravagant and more indulgent, bought it as a wedding gift. It is “queen’s ware” of the rich blue, red, and gold design which is known among American dealers as “Queen Charlotte’s pattern.” The fruit dishes and comports are of the unique and perfect shapes often found in Wedgwood ware. I have seen a single plate of this pattern in a shop labelled with the price “thirty dollars.” The price given for a similar one in the South Kensington Museum was four pounds. I know also of one or two dinner services of yellow Wedgwood ware, with the vine and grape border in white, early works of Wedgwood, clear and firm in outline and beautiful in quality.

The frail fluted bowl, the graceful pitcher with twisted handle, and the fragile creamer of queen’s ware shown on page 1 are all Wedgwood of lovely shape and so thin and delicate a paste, that it is wonderful that they have been safely preserved for a hundred years outside a collector’s cabinet, and stranger still, have been used upon the tea-table of a country home.

A pottery was founded at Castleford in 1770, and black basalt ware, much like Wedgwood’s, was made, and white stone-ware which must have been imported to this country in vast quantity, for specimens are not rare. A teapot commonly seen is here shown. It is found both in black basalt, a curious brown ware, and salt-glazed cream ware. Special raised work designs of the figure of Liberty and the American eagle were used, and the sugar-bowls, creamers, and teapots bearing such designs were doubtless made entirely for this market. The white surface of Castleford ware was frequently divided into compartments by raised lines which were colored blue or green. Teapots were made with lids hinged on metal pins, or with sliding lids, and were exceedingly pretty and convenient. They are often called Wedgwood, as are also pieces of Castleford black ware.

VI. ENGLISH PORCELAINS IN AMERICA

As soon as porcelain was manufactured to any extent in England it was exported to America. The _Boston Evening Post_ of November, 1754, advertised “a variety of Bow China Cups and Saucers and Bowls,” and other sales of Bow china were made, and special pieces also brought across the ocean to wealthy Americans. Specimens of Plymouth and Bow china may still be occasionally found in America, but any such that have been preserved and gathered into private collections can be positively identified only by comparison with authenticated and marked pieces in public collections. It would be impossible to give any definite Bow marks. The stamp or design of the anchor and dagger is popularly considered proof that the piece thus marked is Bow. The triangle, formerly regarded as a positive Bow mark, now appears to have a rather shaky reputation, and is as frequently assigned to Chelsea. The character and shape of the ware, and the style of the decoration are better grounds to base identification upon than any marks. Excavations made upon the site of the old Bow china-works revealed much débris of broken pieces of china, and these specimens afford the most positive means of identifying the paste and ornamentation. An account of these discoveries was given in the _Art Journal_ of 1869. All the fragments found were of porcelain, milky-white in color, and relatively heavy for the thickness; some were ornamented in relief, with the May flower or hawthorn; with a little sprig of two roses and a leaf on a stalk; with the basket pattern; or with vertical bands overlaid with scrolls. Some were painted in blue under the glaze with Chinese landscapes, flowers, and figures. All were hand-painted, none were printed. These hints may serve as guides in the detection and identification of Bow china.

I have seen in America cups and saucers painted with the partridge pattern, which I believe are Bow, though the same pattern is found on Worcester and Plymouth china. The well-known and exceedingly valuable goat milk-jugs that, after forming for years the immovable standard from which streamed defiantly the flag of Bow, are now calmly turned over to Chelsea. These creamjugs are ornamented with two white goats in relief at the base, and a bee is modelled on the front under the nose. The handle is rustic with raised flowers. These jugs often have the triangle mark. Some are painted with flowers, others are plain white porcelain. Mr. Jewitt says they were sometimes made without the raised bee, but I have never seen such an one. Two of these Bow jugs were in the Strawberry Hill collection.

A very excitable young woman came rushing home one cold winter day, in New York, with a demand for the “china books.” She had seen in an antique shop, such a funny and pretty little pitcher, with a raised bee on it, and she was sure that there was a picture of it somewhere in the books—and she found it in Mr. Prime’s book on pottery and porcelain—a Bow goat cream-jug. Well, it snowed, and was cold, and was late in the afternoon, and the confident young collector deferred a purchasing visit till the following morning. Alas! such a sickening disappointment—some miserable despoiler had chanced to “drop in” on his way up-town and had carried off the treasure. Worse still, the small boy who had sold it did not know the purchaser’s name.

Deeply did she mourn her ignorance, her indecision, her indolence, her carelessness. The opportunity of a lifetime had thus been lost, to have a goat cream-jug such as was sold at the Cother sale in London, in 1876, for twenty-five pounds, to have such a jug offered for the paltry sum of one dollar, and to refuse it—not to know enough to grasp such a treasure. The bitterness of regret and of self-reproach nerved her to action, and with the friendly and actively interested aid of the antique-shop-boy, the jug-buyer was waylaid within a month’s time and cajoled into reselling his purchase, which he did willingly enough. He had bought it to keep his shaving brush in, because his father used to keep his shaving brush in a similar one in England. With flecks of dried shaving soap clinging to the goat’s horns, and mottling the bee’s wings, she triumphantly brought her treasure home. It varies slightly in height and by the turn of a leaf and twig from my Bow goat cream-jug, which came from the Cavendish-Bentinck sale in London. The porcelain of the New York captive of the chase is not so pure and clear and it may be of Chelsea manufacture.

Another dainty piece of Bow found by a friend is a creamer or sauce-boat of the overlapping leaf pattern. The handle is formed by a leaf stem; raised flowers are at the base of the handle, and on the leaves flowers are delicately painted. This is like Number “H. 12” in the Museum of Practical Geology.

The beautiful tall coffee-pot here shown is Plymouth with embossed surface and Chinese style of decoration in blue. Its cover was destroyed, alas! by some careless Newburyport housewife. The salt-cellar of pure unpainted porcelain on page 121 is undoubtedly Plymouth also, being clearly marked. The design of vine leaves and grapes is very delicate and perfect. The piece came from an old home in Baltimore.

Though Bristol china was manufactured only from the year 1768 to 1781, and though pieces are rare and high-priced in England, it is possible to obtain specimens in America. Perhaps some invoices of the ware of the short-lived factory were sent to the new land by Richard Champion, the founder of the Bristol Works, for he was an enthusiastic lover and admirer of America. In the Trumbull-Prime Collection are a large number of pieces classed as Bristol because they have the Bristol cross, but not assigned definitely to that factory.

The few Bristol pieces I have seen in American homes are portions of tea-services, teapots being more plentiful than other forms. Some have an imperfect or blistered glaze, but occasionally fine specimens are found. It is impossible to state the value of Bristol china. In the Governor Lyon sale there were two lovely Bristol cups and saucers decorated with a heavy gold rim and oriental landscape in dark blue, that sold for four dollars each. A plate with the same decoration brought only a dollar and a half.

The most beautiful and interesting piece of Bristol porcelain in existence is in America. It is owned by Mrs. James M. Davis, of Camden, South Carolina. She is a great-granddaughter of Richard Champion and inherited it from him. This lovely piece is a funerary design—a mourning female figure leaning against a pedestal bearing a funeral urn. In one hand she holds a wreath. The beauty of the figure, the grace of the attitude, and the elegance of the drapery combine to make this statue exceedingly exquisite. It was made by the English potter as a memorial for his daughter, Eliza Champion, who died in early youth—a memorial such as was tenderly though crudely suggested by the carefully made burial urn of the Indian mother. The inscription is so simple and so touching, and is couched in such quaint old-time diction that I copy it in full.

ELIZA CHAMPION Ob. XIII Octob. MDCCLXIX AEtat XIV Nat. XXI Mart. MDCCLXVI

On the cornice of the pedestal are the words:

“OSTENDENT TERRIS HANC TANTVM FATA NEC VLTRA ESSE SINENT.”

On the dado this inscription:

“We loved you, my dear Eliza, whilst you were with us. We lament you now you are departed. The Almighty God is just and merciful, and we must submit to His will with the Resignation and Reverence becoming human frailty. He has removed you, Eliza, from the trouble which has been our Lot, and does not suffer you to behold the Scenes of horror and distress in which these devoted Kingdoms must be involved. It is difficult to part with our beloved Child, though but for a season. Yet our Interest shall not be put into competition with her felicity, and we will even bear her Loss with Chearfulness. Happy in each other, we were happy in you, Eliza, and will with contented minds cherish your memory till the period arrives, when we shall all again meet and Pain and Sorrow shall be thought of no more. R.C.—I.C.”

On the plinth lines altered from Book I., Ode XXIV., of Horace are printed thus: