Description:
German salt-glazed stoneware chamber pot with molded designs of walking lions outlined in cobalt blue as well as incised floral designs are on the side of this piece, broken in many pieces and restored, this chamber pot was found in the Dr. Thomas Williams house privy pit site at the rear of the house (Deerfield, lot No. 9) during an archeological dig in 1976, dated to circa 1760, which was filled with American redwares, English slipwares, stonewares, delftwares, German stonewares, and Chinese export porcelains. Dr. Williams (1718-1775) settled in Deerfield in 1739, where he became its second physician and married Anna Childs (1723-1746), daughter of Timothy Childs, in 1744, the year he bought the house from Daniel Belding. The pot, imported from the Westerwald region of Germany into the colonies via England, is decorated around the sides with a sprig-applied lion passant and stamped rosettes highlighted with cobalt blue. These highly decorated chamber pots, which were probably the most common type of Rhenish stoneware chamber pots imported into America, have also been excavated in Charlestown, South Carolina, and Williamsburg, Virginia; and according to Jonathan Horne (January 23, 1995), a similar example was also found in the New York City harbor. This form of chamber pot became popular around 1710 in the colonies, but were probably not imported in any quantity after about 1765. The shape evolved little during this period with only a slight increase in height and decrease in diameter in the 1740s, and the decoration was always the same: blue bands below the rim and above the flat base, and stamped rosettes and crowned lions higlighted in blue. Stoneware chamberpots were more expensive than the more common "earthen pots" made of red and tin-glazed earthenware; one Connecticut 1756 inventory valued a stoneware chamber pot at 1s.1d. and an earthenware pot at 5 pence. Fragments of a similar chamberpot are on view in the Archaeological exhibition at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, Canada. An identical example of this chamber pot has been unearthed at Rumney's Tavern, Historic Londontown, Maryland, in a c. 1735 context.
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