Description:
English or possibly American creamware circular plate with tortoiseshell decoration in green and light purple around the press-molded rim with its scalloped edge framing three five-dot and three asterisk-in-trellis panels separated by pairs of small plumes. The plate's steep curvature, well, and back with its distinct foot rim are covered with cream-colored glaze, some of which has cracked off. This style of decoration, which seeks to imitate the natural hues and tones of tortoiseshell, is often associated with Thomas Whieldon (1719-1795) of Fenton Vivian, Staffordshire, but was made in many of the approximately 130 North Staffordshire contemporary potteries. Tortoiseshell wares (creamware sponged with metallic oxide colors suspended in slip) were very popular imports into colonial America; they were fashionable in colonial coastal regions during the third quarter of the 18th century, but their naturalistic colors and patterns remained popular in the Connecticut Valley through the 1780s. In the Connecticut River Valley these ceramics were refered to as "clouded" wares, given their blurry designs. Valley merchants bought tortoiseshell and other ceramics from from New York and Boston merchants; between 1772-1775, Samuel Boardman of Wethersfield, Conn., bought "Tortoiseshell" pots and bowls from James and Arthur Jarvis of New York. Although plates were the most popular form of this ware, in 1762 the New York merchants Keeling and Morris advertised "Tortois Table Plate and Dishes of the Neatest Patterns, Tea-Pots, Milk-Pots, Bowls, Cups and Saucers," forms that may have been available in the Connecticut Valley. By the late 1780s, the Valley inhabitants developed a preference for plain creamware over tortoiseshell wares. Little has been solved about this mystery plate. Because of its crude manufacture and evidence of pocking from improper clay preparation, some experts have claimed it to be a rare American copy of English tortoiseshell ware since there were attempts to reproduce the mottled effects of this popular British-made creamware in Boston, Massachusetts, and North Carolina in the 18th century. There is a similar plate in the Brooklyn Museum, which they believe may have been made in Boston based on the family ownership history; and advertisements that appeared in the "Boston Evening Post" on May 15, 1769 for a new factory that was expected to make "Tortoise-shell, cream and green color plates/ Dishes Coffee and Tea pots ...equal to any imported from England, and one from Oct. 16, 1769, advertising for "the new Factory in New-Boston, four boys for Apprentices to learn the Art of making Tortoise-shell..." In 1763, John Bartlam (d.1781) immigrated from Staffordshire to the Charleston area of South Carolina, where he produced both creamware and soft-paste porcelain from about 1765-1770 in the settlement of Cain Hoy. Archaeological excavation in the early 1990s unearthed ceramic fragments similar to this plate. In 1772, William Ellis, one of Bartlam's skilled workers, moved to the Moravian settlement of Salem in North Carolina, where he produced similar creamware. However, others believe this plate to be English, but perhaps a poorly made example from one of the small potteries in and around Stoke-on-Trent in the 1750s to 1780s, which produced in large quantities of these wares.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+58.284 |
