SHARDS2019fall

_________________________________________________ FALL 2019

LETTER FROM OUR PRESIDENT Dear Members, I hope that 2020 is off to a good start for everyone. We began the 2019-2020 program year with a field trip to the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on a beautiful fall Saturday. The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful and the exhibition of stonewares at the Warner House was exceptional. Our second program was totally different but still enticing. Gerry Ward spoke about the refrigerator wares produced by the Hall China Company, weaving a great deal of personal information and 20th century design trends into a fascinating lecture about everyday objects. If these wares are not in your kitchen or pantry now, it isn’t too late as many of the examples that Gerry showed can still be found by anyone with a sharp eye.

Unfortunately, CSC member Lan Morgan, was unable to present her lecture scheduled for November due to illness. We could not find a replacement speaker in time and therefore cancelled the program. That almost never happens and I apologize for any inconvenience to members. I hope that Lan will be able to speak to our club in the future. Just a reminder: in the event of bad weather, please check our Facebook page or feel free to call or email me to make sure that the program is still on before heading into Boston.

Jeffrey Brown, the editor of Shards, has produced another stellar issue. He has summarized the programs described above in his usual elegant fashion, but I wish to emphasize the diversity of our programs. There is truly something for everyone and the opportunity to learn something new with every program.

The winter/spring portion of our year also promises to be very interesting. As of this writing, the field trip to the Busch-Reisinger and Fogg Museums on 30 January is full. In February, we have our usual Bits and Pieces program. This program is only as good as the objects that members bring in to show. If you have something that you want to share because you love it or want to have club members help to identify it, please consider bringing it to the meeting on 27 February.

Before the Bits and Pieces meeting, we will have a Board meeting, beginning at noon. Board meetings are open to all members; please feel free to bring your lunch.

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Thank you all for your interest in and dedication to the Ceramics Study Club of Boston. I wish you the best for 2020 and a year full of wonderful ceramic discoveries!

Carolyn Parsons Roy President, Ceramics Study Club of Boston

FIELD TRIP TO PORTSMOUTH OPENS OUR FALL SEASON Article by Robert Barth The CSC 2019-2020 program year got off to a brilliant start when members convened on a picture -- perfect September Saturday to be given a guided tour of the beautiful and historic Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Welcoming us was Warner House Exhibition Curator and CSC member Robert Barth who led us through a special exhibit entitled Mundane to Sublime: 1600-1775. Members of the Warner House Board acted as guides, refreshments were served in the garden, and recent reinterpretations of the second-floor rooms carried out by Director Jeff Hopper and the Curatorial Committee were on display.

The aforementioned exhibition was dedicated to the memory of longtime CSC member Harriet Carlton Goldweitz and contains exceptional objects formerly in her collection. The exhibition is comprised of some 275 objects, mostly German and English salt-glazed stonewares, but also a cabinet containing German, Dutch and English earthenwares, as well as Chinese, German and English porcelain to illustrate the three major ceramic types. Most are of ceramic types found archaeologically throughout the Colonies, Portsmouth, and at the Warner House in particular. A collection of 17th and 18th century unglazed red stoneware teawares, Yxing, Dutch (de Milde), and English (Elers and later Staffordshire) are included.

Left: Bob Barth, Exhibition Curator, Warner House, enthusiastically introducing us to the collection.

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Previous page images. Right: Upper left two shelves: 16th-17th century Frechen-type German brown salt-glazed stoneware. Right middle shelf: London hunt mugs dated 1719-1750. Bottom shelf: London brown salt-glazed stoneware in imitation of German wares.

Most of the pots were located in the Colonial Revival kitchen. Others were on table settings throughout the house including salt-glazed tea and coffee wares on two Robert Harrold tables, dinnerwares, a beer and ale setting with German brown and grey stonewares, and a punch setting with Nottingham bowls. In the downstairs hall is a case with miscellaneous English white salt-glaze including four pieces decorated with King of Prussia motifs and a model for a small fluted bowl signed “RW” for Ralph Wood and dated 1755. Also, in the hall is a case with jugs in the form of three bears and an owl at tea, joined by a dove and two swimming fish in a rippling stream trying to escape the fishing prowess of the baby bear. The heads of the jugs are removable covers and the surfaces are covered with “grog” which is tiny bits and shreds of clay sprinkled onto the surface and when fired resemble the fur of the bears. Next to the case is the image of an unusual recent find from a cellar two blocks away - -a paw in white salt-glaze with brown slip claws matching that in an image of a bear jug pictured in Mountford’s work on English salt-glaze.

It is always great to learn by comparison; here on one shelf is displayed a single form-a bellied mug or gorgeproduced in a range of wares. From left to right: English white salt-glaze gorge by John Fulham, England, c.1685; a Charles II silver gorge, London, 1680; a Chinese export porcelain gorge, Dehua, China, c. 1700; a very rare carved double-pyramid handle terminal, attributed to John Dwight, Fulham, c. 1700; a brown saltglazed stoneware gorge, London, c. 1680.

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Left: Frechen-type German brown salt-glazed stoneware bellied mug with the Arms of England and Elizabeth I; the “Scammon” jug from the Saco Museum, Westerwald type, German grey salt-glazed stoneware with incised floral decoration and applied medallion of King William III, c.1692; a London brown salt-glazed stoneware jug in imitation of German Frechen-type wares, c. 1680. Right: A case of English salt-glazed wares from the mid-18th century.

Many exceptional pieces were included, and they are interspersed with numerous archaeological finds from the Warner House and Strawbery Banke Museum: The Scammon family William III Westerwald jug is borrowed from the Saco Museum with its amazing history. There are eight carved Nottingham jugs showing the differences in design suggesting that more than one potter made these attractive pots. An extremely rare piece is the carved mug with carved double pyramid terminal attributed to John Dwight of Fulham. An example of the earliest English white salt-glaze -a bellied mug of gorge, also by Dwight, circa 1685, together with an apparent c. 1700 copy in Chinese Dehua white porcelain. A large gallon Nottingham tankard covered in grog, perhaps unique but for a matching shard from Warner House. Early German brown stonewares including a gorge with the Arms of England and Queen Elizabeth I, a bottle with its original pewter lid and the Arms of James I, and a tankard with molded Mannerist decoration after an engraving by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598) and with a plaque bearing the name “Jan Allers 1594”, a wealthy merchant from Antwerp. An exceptional Westerwald bottle, 1703 with the Arms of the Duke of Lorraine and an image of William III memorializes their (unsuccessful) attempt to ward off the War of the Spanish Succession.

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Left: An 18th century salt-glazed coffee setting on display in one of the rooms. Right: A remarkable collection of bear and owl jugs forming a tea party in the front hall.

With the exception of a few pieces in the Warner House collection, the objects were loaned from Strawbery Banke Museum, Saco Museum and some seven private collections, all within an hour’s proximity of Portsmouth, and for their generosity the Warner House Association is most grateful.

It has been a joy to have them all together for the season.

A WARM WELCOME FOR REFRIGERATOR WARES IN SEPTEMBER After our field trip to Portsmouth the previous month the Club returned in October to the King’s Chapel Parish House to continue our program talks welcoming Gerald W.R. Ward, the Katherine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture Emeritus, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gerry has spoken to our group before and had returned to talk on a subject that has interested him for years, namely modern industrial design, his lecture entitled Modernism on Ice: Refrigerator Ware by the Hall China Company.

Though Gerry and his wife Barbara both have has careers studying silver, high style furniture and other grandiose decorative arts, as children of the 1950s, and with a keen interest in American Studies, they have long had a weakness for mid-century modern vernacular material. This interest began early on for Gerry as a college student with a summer job working for the now defunct Syracuse China Company. One of his duties was cleaning the company archives which included one example of everything the company had ever produced - talk about hands on experience!

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He came to enjoy the material manifestations of the mid-20th century, especially at middle class levels, where traditional design was paramount, but where modernism would creep in from time to time.

Later, at a time when Gerry’s salary as an assistant curator was quite modest, examples of midcentury modern wares could easily be attained at prices in the “low two figures” as he put it. He and his wife initially began collecting with a focus on mid-century modern design for plastic wares something easily collectible and not breakable in a house with young children. Designers of the period created designs for all materials - ceramics, wood, glass and plastic. You could have good design in a less than precious material by relatively well-known industrial designers. The best pieces, for example, of his plastic collection were gifted to the MFA Boston and are now on display.

As for the Hall China Company, the focus of our lecture, that has also remained of interest to him over the years. The Hall China Company of East Liverpool, Ohio was founded by Robert Hall in 1903 when he took over the remains of the defunct East Liverpool Potteries. In 1904 his son, Robert Taggert Hall took over the business and by 1923 it was declared the largest manufacturer of fireproof cooking china in the world having developed a strong, non-porous and craze-proof ceramic body. Most of their products were in a rather Victorian style, or, were essentially functional and plain. Their colors were strong with either hand-painted or decal designs-it was very serviceable but didn’t really catch your eye on its design merits.

Once in a while the firm did create objects that explored a different and more modern vocabulary as can be seen in their Sundial pattern of 1938 and their Airflow teapot, circa 1940. In the 1950s Hall had a fruitful partnership with Hungarian designer Eva Zeisel whose Tomorrow’s Classic pattern series had simple forms with that atomic age aesthetic to them. The Hall Company’s refrigerator wares which were more the focus of the talk began to be manufactured in the 1930s and were produced through the 1950s for such leading brands as General Electric, Montgomery Ward, Sears and Westinghouse. Though production continued through the 1950s, Gerry cautioned that some revival pieces were produced in the 1970s onwards that bear a different maker’s mark. These wares were designed in a limited repertoire of forms and made specifically to be housed in refrigerators, with a few oven pieces made en suite. The list of basic refrigerator forms is short: water servers and pitchers; leftovers or refrigerator containers, covered butter dishes and some matching ovenwares. There were seven different styles of these wares, repeating the same forms under different names and they were almost all made in one of seven bold colors such as Chinese Red, Delphinium, Dresden Blue and Daffodil. One of the first lines introduced in 1938 was called Phoenix, and another, Hercules, was made for Westinghouse in 1940-41.

A word here should be mentioned as well for the appliance that brought these wares about…the refrigerator. With the invention of Freon, a non-toxic, non-inflammable refrigerant at Frigidaire in 1930, consumers’ fears were eased about a chemical driven cooling agent. The old ice box was a thing of the past as well as the clunky fridges of the 1920s with their top-mounted motors. And Page 6

despite great economic hardship during the Depression, refrigerator ownership steadily grew. In 1930, only 8% of households in America had one, but by 1940 it was 44%.

Needless to say, Hall China Company had a growing market as evidenced by the remains of their product lines in flea markets and yard sales today. The plethora of leftover dishes is interesting in itself as it speaks to two cultural themes: “abundance” as there was now food enough for leftovers and “thrift” in that there was less waste as in “waste not want not”.

Examples of the Hall China Company’s Refrigerator Wares. Top: “Hercules” pitcher in Delphinium Blue, along with an example of their mark - note how they designed for specific manufacturers such as Hotpoint.

Middle: An example of one of Hall’s covered leftover dishes. And, an example of their “Airflow” teapot; though the design is rather streamlined note the use of a floral decal decoration for those more traditional in taste.

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Two of Hall’s more iconic pitcher designs.

Gerry concluded his talk with a mention of one last designer whose name we might know and that is J. Palin Thorley (1892-1987). He was from a well-known ceramics-producing family in Staffordshire and he worked at Wedgwood before emigrating to America in 1927. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh before moving on to work at Colonial Williamsburg in 1937 where he operated a studio and did reproductions for the Colonial Williamsburg Craft Shop. He was a prodigious designer and maker of ceramics, also becoming the Art Director at Hall China in 1942, and later an independent contractor where he designed many successful lines for the company many of which remain unidentified to this day…but that’s another lecture. Suffice it to say, some really talented people had a hand in creating some of the rather mundane, but beautiful forms that were part of the mid-century modern vernacular.

NOVEMBER LECTURE CANCELLED Sadly, November’s talk Asian Export Porcelain at the New PEM by Assistant Curator Lan Morgan was abruptly cancelled due to the speaker falling ill. We shall most likely try to re-schedule this talk on one of our favorite subjects for a later time next year.

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