Shards2013september

Volume 16

SEPTEMBER 2013

Issue 2

GREETINGS FROM OUR NEW PRESIDENT Our 2013­2014 season is about to begin. I look forward to it and to taking on the job of president for the next two years. It will be hard to succeed Karina Corrigan in that job. She has combined her experience in museum work with consistent attention to the needs of our Club. Karina also provided extensive resources that helped make our 75th Anniversary Exhibition a success.

We welcome a new Vice­President this fall: Carolyn Parsons Roy, a member of our “Portsmouth contingent” and our Club President in 2005­2006. I have already benefited from her experience.

I am an amateur in the field of ceramics, and some would say a bit of a dilettante! At my rural progressive school in England, pottery was well taught, and we were often brought into contact with studio potters’ work. At university in London, I started to research and buy (from street markets) 19th century Art Pottery, particularly stonewares. From there I moved on to collecting luster wares within the art pottery tradition and ­ after moving to America ­ to utilitarian brown stonewares. I also like much older studio pottery: e.g. the work of George Ohr and Michael Cardew. More recently, my wife and I have enjoyed Moroccan painted pottery, and I have extended my interest to other makers around the Mediterranean.

The CSC has tended to focus from its earliest days on “china” ­ namely porcelain from East Asia ­ and on the many types of white­bodied wares produced in Europe in emulation of Chinese production. This emphasis complements the interest many members have in the social history of New England and in related historical archaeology.

We intend to continue in such familiar directions, while I hope we can broaden our appreciation of other ceramic types and regions. But don’t we also need continually to find new members, and to be aware of the new and emerging interests they could bring us? Why ­ apart from our inconvenient meeting time ­ do we have so few new members?

Page 2 In this spirit, please inform Board members of new potential members, speakers and topics for the program. I am also pleased to announce a Presidential Prize (ceramic) to a member’s offering at Bits‘n’ Pieces this year. It will be awarded to the member showing a ceramic outside of our mainstream interests with equal credit given for these features: attractive, informative and of high quality. So start thinking soon of pots to bring in the spring!

Finally, I want again to say how saddened I am, as I’m sure we all are, by the death of Cheryl Robertson. She and I had much looked forward to sharing the duties of President, and it is sobering to lose someone so young. Cheryl was a person of great enthusiasm and wide­ranging scholarship. Let’s all take from her example.

Nic Johnson, President

STONEWARE TALK AT MARCH MEETING Reported by Jeffrey Brown The CSC convened after its successful February “Bits ‘N’ Pieces Meeting for a March program on “Early Utilitarian Stoneware of Boston and Charlestown: 1793­1827” presented by stoneware specialists and collectors Peter Schriber and Lorraine German. Peter has avidly collected since the early 70s and Lorraine, along with her husband Steve, are proprietors of Mad River Antiques.

Peter started the program with a little background history; he started collecting stoneware pots in 1973, the obsession quickly grew and by 1979 he had a fair collection of Boston and Charlestown wares (in one year alone he had purchased about 165 pots!). The stonewares were utilitarian in nature and form, comprising pots, jugs, pitchers, churns, inkwells and flasks. The pots were hand thrown on a wheel and, prior to 1845, ovoid in form. Note, too, that Peter calls them “pots”, and that the term “crock” was only used at the end of the 19th century, a generic term, short for “crockery”.

Peter first made the distinction between redware and stoneware. Redware fires at 1600 degrees and can be readily made by anyone with access to red clay deposits; there were an estimated 500 potteries during the 1800s producing redware. Stoneware, on the other hand, requires a 2300 degree firing and uses clay found almost exclusively around Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Sometimes a potter would adulterate his clay, mixing stone and redware clays, in which case the pieces would have a yellow rather than a gray cast.

Page 3 Given its close proximity to New Jersey clay sources, New York City had several major stoneware potteries in the 18th century. There were also stoneware potteries in Connecticut, and even one in Cambridge, Massachusetts as early as 1742, but the focus of this talk was on one entrepreneur, William Little, who moved to Boston from Lebanon, Connecticut in 1786. He opened a general store in downtown Boston on State Street, joined the same Masonic Lodge as Paul Revere, and, in general, was very involved politically and socially with Boston’s merchant class. In 1793 William financed a “stone pottery” in Boston’s North End on Lynn Street, employing Jonathan Fenton, an experienced potter from New Haven, Connecticut. Clay was most likely brought up from Perth Amboy on coastal sloops owned by William Little, pots were thrown and fired in Lynn Street, and sold either onsite or through the store in State Street.

This first phase of production (pre­1800) exhibited a marked Germanic design influence based upon imported wares with bellarmine jug forms, with long necks, pots with heavy handles, impressed decorations and cartouches. Other characteristics of these early wares are pots with tooled lines at the top and the base; the pots having rings for gallon designation (3 rings on the neck=3 gallon capacity).

Most importantly, though, they were impressed with a few simple designs, picked out in cobalt blue, that seemed to be familiar to the local buying audience: a flower with a lattice center, a flower with a smaller flower at its center, a codfish (mascot of Boston), a 3” fish, a bird holding a bunch of grapes in its beak (Grape Island in Boston Harbor), a standing Indian adapted from a Massachusetts coin from 1787, as well as a stenciled or stamped fish. Despite these charming designs and their appeal, the wares proved very heavy, based upon European forms, and their handles were too breakable; the pottery closed in 1799 and Fenton relocated to Vermont.

In the second phase of this story, John Little (William’s brother) purchases seven acres on the Mystic River in Charlestown in 1800 and establishes another pottery on that site. Another Connecticut potter, Frederick Carpenter, who relocated to Boston around 1796, comes to work for Little, purchasing a building lot on the pottery site for his home. This period (1801­1804) produces wares with thinner bodies, impressed designs with less cobalt, and the introduction of pots with an ocher dip.

The third phase, (1804­1827) was really a golden age for the Charlestown Pottery. Consistently good potting shows itself throughout this period with great forms and nice color. Charlestown motifs added at this time include an image of an elm tree (Liberty Tree) and an Eagle on a Cannon, adapted from buttons worn by the local artillery regiment. In 1804, the year the U.S. Navy triumphed over the Barbary pirates, the date “1804” is stamped on the pots, and in an appeal to local pride, pots were stamped either “Charlestown” or “Boston”. Oddly, the earlier Boston­based design motifs are no

Page 4 longer continued. Other characteristics of this period include the continuation of the ocher dip and top and bottom incised lines.

The business met with great success; Carpenter continues to work at the pottery until his death in 1827.

An owner of a local brass works, Barnabas Edmands buys a part share in the business and the Edmands family continued to run the operation until 1905. All wares after 1827 are just stamped “Charlestown”.

Lorraine German then stepped up to the lectern to deliver her observations and thoughts about this early American success story. Lorraine, besides liking the pots, is a sociologist and likes to understand why things like this happen. She attributes the success, albeit short­lived, of the Lynn Street pottery, to the astute social observations and marketing acumen of William Little. Keep in mind, Little was a successful Boston businessman by the time he establishes Lynn Street; he was a Mason, socialized with fellow merchants, was involved with local politics and he knew the deep­seated resentment Bostonians held for the British, their economic policies and their cheap wares overtaking American markets.

Besides the depredations heaped upon Boston during the Revolution, after the war there were the British attempts to flood America’s markets with their manufactured goods without allowing for any real trade reciprocity. There was strong local support for any attempts to break this stranglehold and manufacture domestic goods to grow our economy and foster our new nation. The timing was right for Little to present to the buying public something “Made in the USA”. It was unusual for early American stoneware to be marked, let alone decorated, and so here was a product that was proudly advertised as made in Boston (and later Charlestown) and was decorated with motifs that were recognizable and appealed to a local, patriotic, buying public. Add to that the quality of workmanship, an affordable price and the fact that you were “sticking it to the British” and you have a very successful business plan.

Little’s simple, yet successful marketing concepts were really a very early American form of sales appeal and product branding.

Two pieces of Lynn Street (Boston) stoneware flank a Charlestown “ocher dip” pot (center).

Page 5

“BIG DIG” ARCHEOLOGY Reported by Jeff Brown The CSC enjoyed another double treat for the April 25th meeting as the Club hosted two speakers; Jennifer Poulsen, Archaeological Collections manager at the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and Joe Bagley, City Archaeologist at the Boston City Archaeology Lab. The digging duo took turns at the lectern talking about “Ceramics Near and Far, Archeological Examples from Boston’s Big Dig”.

Jennifer started with a brief description of the archaeologist's role, unearthing evidence of previous inhabitants at a site and interpreting what is found to tell a story of those earlier inhabitants. Ceramics, being for the most part, such a durable substance, is always a welcomed find at any site because, unlike organic matter, it doesn’t degrade or break down as easily. Also, ceramic wares change stylistically over time and are a useful mechanism for dating specific sites and, as they are often imported items, can be helpful in illuminating patterns and networks of trade that existed at the time.

Redware mug As for this specific project, the “Big Dig” was a multi­year and multi­billion dollar project road construction project that cut through the heart of Boston, demolishing an elevated highway and depressing its route underground, creating a beautiful open space, the present day Rose Kennedy Greenway. Jennifer and Joe pointed out that any project, no matter how big or how small, that receives state or federal permits or monies is required, first, to have some sort of archeological study done of the site. By any standards this was a massive project and, although there were dozens of archeologists involved, time and funds were limited. For the purposes of this talk four sites of special interest were discussed: The Katharine Nanny Naylor site, the Paddy’s Alley site, and two locations in Charlestown’s City Square, the Parker­Harris Pottery and the Three Tavern site.

Page 6 The Naylor site and Paddy’s Alley site were both very close to each other, although from different centuries, and are located in the area which now lies between present day Haymarket/Faneuil Hall and the North End. Katharine Nanny Naylor was English and came to Boston in 1636 and led a remarkably unusual life, especially by 17th century Puritan standards. She was married twice, sued her second husband for divorce on the grounds of abuse and won and was allowed to keep her house and personal property, living comfortably well into her eighties. As both her husbands were merchants, the archeological evidence is a little more “exotic” than most sites, with objects from around the world suggesting an expansive trade network and a cosmopolitan lifestyle for some in early Puritan Boston.

Evidence suggests redware pots, some locally made, some imported, tin­glazed tiles and ointment pots and Westerwald stonewares, and even a piece of silk lace was discovered. The source of this evidence and the focus of most of these digs is the household privy, a deep, enclosed space where objects disposed of can rest undisturbed for centuries, even organic materials, as they are preserved in the “nightsoil”, a bog­like mud that acts almost as a preservative.

The second site was at Paddy’s Alley, where a very successful metalsmith in pewter and brass, John Carnes lived and worked from 1729­1730 with his fourteen children and (most likely) quite exhausted wife. Examples of Westerwald and Staffordshire wares appear at this site as well as many pieces of clay pipes. These very common objects appear at many colonial sites, but even these simple objects changed stylistically over time and are useful in dating a site.

Remains of a Bellarmine “Face Jug” and Redware Stilts (kiln furniture) The two other locations for discussion were in City Square in Charlestown, a virtually undisturbed site since colonial times. Once the thriving cultural center of Charlestown, it had an early pottery nearby as well as Governor Winthrop’s 17th century house, later expanded into a tavern. After the Battle of

Page 7 Bunker Hill, when Charlestown was burned by the British in 1775, the town rebuilt itself, but oddly, never again on the City Square site; it was an archaeologist's dream, a Pompei­esque site, undisturbed. One of 5­6 potteries operating in Charlestown in the 18th century, the Parker Pottery produced redwares and was owned by a woman, Grace Parker from about 1740­1770. This pottery was, until the Arts and Crafts movement in the later 19th century, the only pottery run by a woman in this country. Grace trained her son and her two slaves to produce the redwares, and pieces excavated could easily be examples produced by these African­American slave potters.

Also operating in City Square at about the same time was the Three Cranes Tavern, a large structure which expanded upon the 1629 house of Governor John Winthrop. Another example of the colonial independent woman, it was owned by Mary Long, who was widowed at an early age and left the tavern by her husband. Instead of re­marrying and losing the title to another husband, Mary remained a widow and retained her property. The tavern contained five privies (a veritable toilet treasure trove!) which yielded up examples of many wares one would find in an 18th century public house: lots of bowls and platters and serving pieces; mocha redwares, Staffordshire blue and white, redware storage jars, salt­glazed stoneware plates, a Nottingham tankard, and lots of chamber pots in salt­glaze, tin­glaze, as well as black Jackfield glaze.

Our talk ended, as so many do, with the phrases “research on­going” and “to be continued” as there are literally a million shards and objects that await further study, chemical analysis, interpretation and cataloging. And, of course, there’ll always be another privy.

……………..

A Note from the Editor I just wanted to wish a fond farewell and a heartfelt “thank you” to CSC member Sean Blanchet. While working with me at Polly Latham Asian Art managing our website, we became fast friends and his help was crucial to me, a “technology idiot”, in maintaining this newsletter. He has relocated with his wife to Minneapolis in order for her to pursue her professorial career in history; we wish them well and shall miss his enthusiasm and passion for ceramics, and all antiques, at our meetings.

Cheers!

JPB

Page 8

Japanese Arita Charger with the Dutch East India “VOC” insignia, Circa 1680­1700.

KARINA CORRIGAN CLOSES SEASON WITH TALK ON JAPANESE EXPORT Reported by Jeff Brown It is always amazing how quickly the year flies by and so CSC members found themselves convening at the College Club in May for their annual meeting and tea. After the business of electing a new Board of Directors, and before the delights of the tea table were enjoyed, attendees were treated to a talk on “Japanese Export Porcelain” by Karina Corrigan, our departing President and the H.A. Crosby Forbes Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Karina opened the talk with an image of a piece of Japanese porcelain that bore the “VOC” logo for the Dutch East India Company. Founded in 1602, the VOC was the world’s first multinational corporation

Page 9 and the wealth that it generated and the dividends it paid out to shareholders contributed in a large part to the success and the stability of the Dutch Republic throughout its “Golden Age” during the 17th century. The capital of this Dutch superpower in Indonesia was Batavia (present day Jakarta), center for a network that spread from Capetown, to India, China and Japan.

Kyushu was the area in southern Japan, and in particular the port of Nagasaki, from which this global exchange took place; Arita, conveniently located nearby, was the center of ceramics production for export. For about 250 years the only people allowed to trade with Japan were the Dutch and the Chinese and even their access was highly regulated; the two nations were each allowed an island in Nagasaki harbor from which to trade, the Dutch were situated on Deshima.

The VOC commissioned special orders for their own use in the East as well as for export back to the Netherlands. These objects were based on wares from Europe with which they were familiar such as drug jars, mustard pots, guglets (many bearing the VOC logo), as well as teapots and some early examples of armorial porcelain. There was a very active exchange between the West and Japan and there were objects created as well based upon European stoneware and glassware. During the mid 17th century there was great civil unrest in China, the kilns were destroyed, and the VOC’s supply of precious porcelain was greatly curtailed. Japan stepped in and, for about thirty years, tried to fulfill Europe’s insatiable need for porcelain. By the time China’s kilns got back online, they actually had to catch up to regain their old market share and actually began producing Chinese Imari wares, an imitation of Japanese Imari, as the Dutch had grown so accustomed to porcelain in that taste and palette. So popular were late 17th century Japanese wares, that Meissen in the early 18th century, once they had discovered the formula for hard paste porcelain, created wares in the style of Japanese porcelains.

The reverse side of a piece of Japanese Arita ware revealing the telltale “stilt marks”.

Page 10 With all these versions of Japanese, Chinese and even European wares out there, how does one tell the original Japanese piece from its imitators? One must make a study of all three and contrast them for although the decorative motifs may be the same, the style of the painting is quite different, as well as the quality of the blue used and also there are differences in the whiteness of the bodies. The most prominent feature indicating a Japanese piece is the stilt marks. The Japanese potter, instead of firing pieces in saggars, created wares with stilts for support that would be snapped off after the firing, leaving pontil or pock marks, a footprint of their attachment, on the bottom or reverse of a piece.

Interesting to note that besides meticulous VOC company records, the best records we have as to the effect and extent of the Asian luxury goods trade on the Netherlands, and the prevalence of porcelain in the home are the few remaining Dutch doll houses still extant. At this time the dollhouse was not a child’s plaything, but an extremely expensive object of display, filled with miniature treasures. They are snapshots into this period and reveal the use of imported Eastern luxury goods ­ porcelain, silks, lacquer ­ throughout the wealthy Dutch interior of the time, right down to the Japanese export porcelain spittoons and chamber pots!

An interior view of a meticulously detailed Dutch dollhouse reveals the importance of porcelain in interior design of the period. On the right, an example of the Imari palette in a charming chocolate cup and saucer.

Page 11

IN MEMORY: CHERYL ROBERTSON

It was with great sadness that the China Students’ Club learned of the passing of fellow member Cheryl Robertson on the weekend of July 6th at her Cambridge home; she was 60 years old.

Cheryl Ann Robertson was an independent scholar and museum consultant with a vast knowledge of the Colonial Revival and the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts Movements. She served as Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford, CT, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs at the national Heritage Museum in Lexington, MA and Curator of Decorative Arts at the Milwaukee Arts Museum in Milwaukee, WI. She served as Assistant Director and Lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute for American Art in New York, Assistant Professor in the Winterthur Program in American Culture in Delaware and, most recently, as a teacher of American and new England Studies at Boston University.

Cheryl’s extensive knowledge of Asian and Anglo­American decorative arts, especially 19th and 20th century ceramics and Prairie School design, led to many seminal museum exhibitions. She wrote, lectured and consulted extensively, was a longtime board member of the Victorian Society of America and had recently been elected co­president of our own China Students’ Club. She was abundantly generous, intellectually curious and an invaluable colleague and friend. She will be deeply missed.