Part 9

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On the base:

“THIS TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF AN AMIABLE GIRL WAS INSCRIBED ON HER COFFIN THE 16TH OF OCTOBER, 1779, BY A FATHER WHO LOVED HER.”

Who could read, even after a century’s time, this beautiful and tender tribute to the gentle young girl, who died so many years ago, without feeling deep sympathy with the bereaved father, “who loved her?” The unsuccessful worker and the patriot speak plainly also in the lines:

“He has removed you 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.”

Mrs. Davis also possessed some of the beautiful Bristol figures of Spring, Summer, and Winter, and she patriotically sent them for exhibition at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876. Like many another rare and beautiful article sent confidingly there at that time, they were never returned to their owner. This loss must have been hard to endure with patience, not only from the historical and hereditary value and interest of the pieces, but also because the previous year duplicate pieces of Bristol were sold in London for £54 each.

One of the most beautiful of Richard Champion’s productions in England or America is the medallion plaque of Franklin, described in Chapter XIV.

Mr. Owen’s description of Bristol china is very clear and concise. “The pieces are graceful in form and well moulded, the flowers brilliant in colour and skilfully painted; and the gilding, bright though unburnished, is of that particularly rich and solid character that always distinguished the manufacture. Though it often bears Dresden marks, and is moulded in Dresden shapes, the quality of the paste is so different that it is easily distinguished from the Dresden. The glaze is rich and creamy white, while the Dresden has a cold, glassy surface.”

Crown Derby is seldom picked up by the china hunter—never I believe in country homes in New England. Near New York a few rare pieces have been found. Miss Henrietta D. Lyon, of Staten Island, has part of an exceedingly rich and elegant Crown Derby dinner service painted in delicate colors and gold, one covered dish of which is here shown. The gilding and painting upon these pieces is in the highest style of artistic beauty and dexterity. They bear the mark used at the Derby factory from 1784 to 1796.

The most common piece offered to the china hunter in New England is what is known as the willow-pattern ware. It was made first by Thomas Turner, at Caughley, in 1780. He manufactured both pottery and porcelain. I often have wished that he had never invented that willow-pattern. I have had it thrust in my face for purchase until I could scarcely bear to look at it. I have had visions of dainty Bow, Bristol, and Plymouth china brought before me through vivid but uncertain description, only to come face to face with more printed willow-pattern. I should imagine that a large proportion of all that ever was made was sent to America. And it has been made in vast quantities, too, for it has been certainly the most popular pattern ever printed anywhere on stone-ware or porcelain. Mr. Jewitt says: “Early examples bearing the Caughley mark—the cups without handles and ribbed and finished precisely like the Oriental, are rare.” Of course they are, in England, but not in America; as the prices prove at the Governor Lyon sale. Old willow-pattern plates sold there for one dollar each.

Pieces of willow-pattern ware are often of astounding age and fabulous value. Forty dollars is the favorite price that knowing country owners assert they can get in the city for their willow-pattern platters. I have a favorite formula which I always use in answer to these aspiring traders—my “willow-pattern answer.” I reply, gravely, “Yes, that pattern is priceless.” It does not mean anything and it pleases them, and if you told them that the platter was worth about two or three dollars they would look upon you as a swindler. Modern willow-pattern ware is also offered at fancy valuations. I have never been able to decide whether an old farmer who brought two willow-ware plates about a year old to sell to me, assuring me (though they bore the visible mark and stamp of modern production) that “this old crockery had been in his fam’ly more’n a hundred year”—I have never decided whether that ingenuous bucolic were a deep-dyed swindler or the innocent tool of some crafty sharper. I answered him soberly with my patent “willow-pattern answer”—“That pattern is priceless,” and he went away hugging his antiques with delight. I have seen within a year at a well-known dealer’s in New York, a modern willow-pattern platter upon which was pasted this printed inscription: “This platter belonged to Miles Standish, and was often used by him, and is therefore very rare and of great historical value.” This was an auction label cut from the catalogue of a sale, and the dealer let it remain as a joke for the knowing ones, and possibly as a bait for the unsophisticated.

“The Broseley Blue Dragon” and the “Broseley Blue Canton” pieces and their imitations are frequently found. These patterns were also made at the Caughley or Salopian Works. The “cabbage leaf jugs” came from that manufactory.

I have never been able to understand why the willow-pattern should have been so much more popular than the Blue Dragon. The latter is certainly very handsome and consistent, or rather congruous throughout, while the willow-pattern is neither “fish nor fowl nor good red herring”—it is not English, and it is certainly not wholly Oriental. The color is good, as was all blue at that time.

At a later date than the reign of Lowestoft on “company” dinner tables in New England, the fine “best tea china” of well-to-do people was English porcelain of copper-lustre and pink and green decoration. Many of these pretty lustre sets are still preserved and can be bought of country owners. A terrible blow has been dealt, however, to the desire to purchase such wares by the fact that modern reproductions showing equal beauty of color and similar designs have appeared in large numbers within the past two years. Pitchers of pottery, “prankt in faded antique dress” of light brown or pinkish purple lustres are now manufactured. They bear no marks and cannot be distinguished from the old ones—and are just as good, perhaps, for every one but a china hunter. The solid lustre teapots, sugar-boxes, and pitchers—copper-colored, brownish lustre or silver on a pottery ground, have not, so far as I know, been reproduced. On many pieces the lustre is diversified by a pretty design in white, sometimes in relief or by painted flowers. The finest old pitcher of this ware that I have ever seen bore a graceful embossed design which was decorated upon the highest reliefs in pink, green, and gold lustre. This was positively affirmed to be part of the Mayflower cargo. Most of these lustre pieces are unmarked, hence it is impossible to assign them to any factory. A few of them, the clearest and purest in paste, and most delicate in decoration are New Hall, for I have plates so marked. The stamp is a cursive New Hall not enclosed in a ring. This stamp is not given in English books of stamps and marks. Mr. Jewitt says such pieces are rare in England. They certainly have not been rare in New England. Some of the lustre pieces may be assigned to Newcastle. The Woods also manufactured them, while at Shelton were made pieces with lustre borders and black printed designs signed “Bentley, Weare and Bourne, Engravers and Printers, Shelton, Staffordshire.”

I have never seen a dinner set of lustre ware—only tea-sets, comprising usually a teapot, sugar-box, creamer, bowl, a dozen tea-plates (often of different design and paste), two cake-plates, a dozen cups and saucers, and sometimes a dozen little cup-plates. Salt-cellars, pepper-boxes, and mustard-pots of similar lustre are seen, and sometimes wine-glasses, or rather wine-cups—but never any of the pieces of dinner services. Pitchers appear in various sizes. The china is usually clear and fine in quality, but the design is often confused. A few punch-bowls of copper-lustre on coarse pottery have also been found in New England, but are curious rather than beautiful.

I have never been able to add to my collection, through china hunting, but one piece of Worcester porcelain, the one shown on page 29, nor have I ever seen in a country home a piece of Chelsea, Coalport, Pinxton, or Nantgawr porcelain, and but one set of Spode, which was seized from an English vessel by a Yankee privateersman in the war of 1812, and brought triumphantly into Salem Harbor. Nor, may I add, have I ever seen a piece of pottery or porcelain of Continental manufacture, save Delft. For any porcelain save that made in China and England, American collectors must turn to china dealers.

VII. LIVERPOOL AND OTHER PRINTED WARE

At the end of the past and beginning of the present century, great numbers of cream-colored pottery pitchers and mugs were printed in England with various designs and were sent to the United States for sale. These pieces were advertised in early Federal days, and are known as “yellow ware” and Liverpool ware, and are found in seaport towns on the Atlantic coast, especially in New England. Many bore mottoes, inscriptions, likenesses, and views relating to America and the celebrated Americans of the time, and thus form interesting mementos of the wars of the Revolution and of 1812. I have never seen a Liverpool pitcher in an inland country home, nor have I ever had one offered to me for sale in an inland town, either in a private home or an antique shop. The reasons for this are very simple: many of them were brought to America by Yankee sailors and sailing-masters who lived, as a rule, in seaport towns, and importations of these pitchers were not transported inland in ante-railroad days with the facility and safety that we find possible nowadays; and, best reason of all, nine-tenths of them with their ornamentation of ships and brigs and ropes and anchors were made to tickle the fancy of a seafaring man, and did not appeal to the sentiment of a land-lubber of a farmer.

It is always a great delight to the inland-dwelling and novelty-seeking china hunter when she enters a low, single-storied seaside home, and spies on the mantelpiece a creamy Naval or Sailor pitcher flanked by a carved Indian idol and an elaborate model of the “Nimble Nine-pence,” the “Belisarius,” or the “Three Wives” (named by one stanch old widower after he was married to wife number four). Her joy is, as a rule, quickly turned to lamentation, for the housewife who values her Liverpool pitcher enough to place it on her parlor mantel, will never be “willing to part with it.” And here let me render my thanks to the American merchant service. Blessings on those dead and gone old seafaring Yankees who risked their lives on the stormy seas and brought home “behind their wooden walls” the variety and wealth of china and crockery that have descended to us, a pathetic reminder of the weary watch on deck and the homesick hours in cabin or forecastle.

A few Liverpool plates with Masonic designs are found, and some teapots, but the majority of Liverpool ware that was imported to this country was in the form of mugs and what are known as “watermelon” pitchers. I know of one great yellow ware cheese-dish in Newport—a curious stand or frame in which a whole cheese two feet in diameter could be placed upright on its edge and thus served and cut on the table; but such pieces are exceptional.

I am impressed when looking over the lists of sales and the catalogues of existing collections in England, that china collectors find in America more, cheaper, and more varied specimens of Liverpool wares, especially those bearing transfer prints, than can be found in England. They abound in American antique shops. Even the rarest and most interesting of all—prints on tiles, pitchers, and teapots bearing the mark of Sadler—are often discovered here. A whole set of Sadler’s tiles was taken from an old colonial house in Newport.

Previous to the Revolutionary War no porcelain or pottery was made specially for America, or, at any rate, none with special designs; but after we became a separate nation the English potters made much china and crockery for the American market, and made patterns for individual purchasers as well. Washington and Franklin were the American names best known in England previous to the year 1800; and I have never seen Liverpool pieces that could be assigned to an earlier date of manufacture than 1800 that bore the names even of any other Revolutionary heroes or statesmen, except, possibly, two pitchers decorated with battle-scenes, which are entitled respectively, “Death of Warren” and “Death of Montgomery;” a pitcher with a portrait of Adams, and one mug printed with the name and portrait of John Hancock. Englishmen had vague ideas of the names of our States as well, for Boston and “Tenasee” often appear on these wares in the list of the thirteen States.

The number of stars depicted upon the American flag or shield on these and Staffordshire pieces is often held up as ample testimony to the date of the piece. Such reasoning is, of course, absurd. English engravers and potters were as ignorant about the number of States as they were about the names of the States, and might easily have given fifteen stars when there were only thirteen States, or clung to the number thirteen long after we had twenty States. I have seen several designs with the United States flag bearing twelve and even nine stars.

Many of these pitchers are decorated with designs relating to the character, life, and death of Washington, and such are known as Washington pitchers. A list of the prints upon these pitchers is given in Chapter XIII., devoted to the china commemorative of Washington. These pitchers bear portraits and sentiments, verses or inscriptions eulogizing the virtues and bravery of the “glorious American,” or indicative of our national loss, and grief at his death. The lines, “Deafness to the ear that will patiently hear, and dumbness to the tongue that will utter a calumny against the immortal Washington,” were much favored and printed by English potters, and were placed on pitchers and mugs of many sizes and shapes. The legend fails to tell, however, the awful fate which should fall on the hand which limned the senile, feeble, forlorn caricatures of the face of Washington which usually appear in company with the lines, and make us suspect intentional malice in the British artist. These absurd likenesses vary as much as did the canvas portraits of the Father of His Country at the recent Centennial Loan Collection at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and in some cases bear no resemblance whatever to the well-known benign countenance, and are evidently a portrait of some English general falsely labelled Washington.

There is a print found on cream-colored teapots and plates and jugs that look like Liverpool ware, which is sometimes called “Washington and Martha Drinking Tea,” by American dealers who assert that the two figures in the out-of-doors tea-party are intended for the General and his “lady,” as he called her. The man in this print certainly bears a marked though somewhat mincing likeness to our first President, while the fact that the servant who approaches with a teakettle is a negro, is offered as conclusive proof that the scene is laid in America; and indeed, I have seen one teapot upon which was pasted a paper label with the words, “Scene at Mount Vernon, George and Martha Washington Drinking Tea.” Of course every china student, and indeed every person of art education, knows that the figures of negro servants appear in many English tea-party prints of that date, in such, for instance, as the watch-back of Battersea enamel engraved by Richard Hancock, of the Worcester China Works, and in the transfer prints by the same artist, shown on page 235, Vol. I., of Jewitt’s “Ceramic Art in Great Britain.” The pieces bearing this “George Washington” print that I have seen, bore no stamp to show the place of manufacture; but there is a tea-canister numbered G 252 in the Museum of Practical Geology, printed with this scene, which has the impressed mark “Wedgwood.” It also has on the other side of the canister the same group of shepherds and sheep that I have seen on many pieces in America. I am afraid we cannot claim this as a Washington print. It was engraved when Washington was a struggling surveyor, when no Englishmen, and few Americans, even knew his name. Miss Meteyard says that this group is from one of Jenssen’s printed enamels, and she gives an illustration of it on page 64, Vol. II., of her “Life of Wedgwood.” I only mention this among the Liverpool prints, and as possibly eligible to the Washington list, in order to prove (to make an Irish bull) that it is certainly not the one and probably not the other. It is quite as interesting, however, to the china collector (if not to the historical student or the relic hunter) as an example of Hancock’s designs for transfer-printing; and when one of these teapots is offered for $1.50 (as I have had one in a New York shop within a year), it is well for any collector to buy it.

I will say here that these cream-ware pitchers are not from Liverpool factories alone, they are from various Staffordshire potteries, but all cream-colored printed pitchers are generally known in America by the name of Liverpool ware. Some, of course, are unmistakably so, for they bear the various marks of the Herculaneum Pottery, or the figure of the bird which was the crest of the arms of Liverpool—the liver or lever. A special design or mark of the American eagle with the words “Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool,” seems to have been made for pieces intended for the American market, and often appears upon them.

The heroes and victories of the American navy form frequent decorations of the specimens of this printed pottery that are found in America. The first Naval pitchers bore the design of a ship or a frigate under full sail, with the American flag and the words, “Success to the Infant Navy of America.” These were printed to commemorate Truxton’s capture of the French frigates Insurgente and La Vengeance while he was commander of the Constellation during our little marine war with France in 1799. This capture was honored in a popular song called “Truxton’s Victory,” and was as great a source of delight to Englishmen as to Americans. Truxton received from England many tokens of esteem, including a service of silver plate worth over $3,000. Long and bitterly during the constant naval defeats of the English in the War of 1812 must those British merchants have regretted that silver token of encouragement to the American Navy. A gold medal was ordered by Congress to be struck in honor of this victory, as was also done in honor of each of the naval heroes of the war of 1812. And many pitchers and mugs were decorated with their portraits and names in order to commemorate their victories.

It seems odd that English potters should have made so many pitchers bearing testimony to the victories of their late enemies, unless they were ordered by American dealers specially for the American market; but I have never seen anything to prove that such orders were given.

Many pieces bear the portrait of Perry and the words of his famous dispatch, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” I never look at a Perry pitcher without thinking with interest and pleasure of this brave young captain, who was only twenty-seven years old when he achieved his famous victory. He fought the fierce naval battle clad in his sailor’s suit, but changed at the last to his full-dress uniform in order to receive the surrendering English officer with full dignity. Nor do I ever see the jolly round face of Hull on pitcher or mug without thinking of his comical appearance during the naval battle between the Constitution and the Guerrière, in which he won such deserved honors. Hull was very fat, and being somewhat dandified wore very tight breeches. When, in that fierce contest, he gave his first roar of command to the gunners, “Now, boys, pour into them—Free Trade and Seamen’s Rights!” he bent over twice in his intense excitement and split his tight breeches from waistband to knee. He was more of a soldier than a dandy, however, for he finished the battle and captured the English ship in that “undress uniform.”

Of course the pitchers decorated with American subjects are most interesting to Americans, but there are many other Liverpool pitchers found in New England, which bear, instead of American heroes and battles, such lines as these:

“Dear Tom this brown jug Which now foams with new ale, Out of which I will drink To sweet Nan of the Vale.”

Another has the jovial inscription, “One Pot more—and then—why then—Another Pot of course.”

And this sharp warning is given to those who would wish to drink and not to pay:

“Customers came and I did trust ’em, So I lost my money and my custom, And to lose both it grieves me sore, So I am resolved to trust no more.”

A few pieces bear less decorous and elegant verses, such as the mug deriding the Established Church, labelled, “Tythe in Kind or the Sow’s Revenge.” A clergyman bent on collecting tithes is being attacked by a sow in a pigsty. The farmer’s family are laughing while the parson is crying out:

“The fattest pig it is my due; Oh! save me from the wicked sow.”

Another pitcher has a fling at the Romish Church, for it bears a likeness of his Satanic Majesty and of a priest, with the words,

“When Pope absolves The Devil smiles.”

I have seen in America a number of drinking-mugs of cream-colored ware, which may properly be spoken of here, though it is doubtful whether many of them were made in Liverpool. They have the raised figure of a toad or frog placed inside, with the pleasingly jocose intention of surprising and scaring the drinker, who would fancy as the ugly head rose out of the decreasing liquor that it was a real batrachian climbing up the side to jump down his throat. One of these mugs had the frog tinted a dull green and brown, entirely too natural and life-like in color to prove pleasant or appetizing. Another two-handled Frog mug was of coarse white ware, unpainted, and had an exceedingly modern look. This was probably Newcastle ware. The price asked for these in “antique shops” is usually three or four dollars apiece. I have seen none with mottoes as has the one numbered S 17, in the Museum of Practical Geology.

“Though malt and venom Seem united, Don’t break my pot Nor be affrighted.”

These Frog mugs are usually large in diameter, and are sometimes decorated externally with designs of ships or naval heroes. The frog’s appearance in sight would then prove more effectually terrifying than if the drinker were warned by an instructive motto of the figured reptile within.