Description:
This form was perhaps used to strain sediment from fortified wines, such as port and Madeira. English white salt-glazed stoneware rounded strainer or colander with a flared rim and two matched, rolled ram's horn handles attached on two sides. The well has a diamond-shaped pattern of round holes, and an applied footrim on the underside. According to Jonathan Horne (1/23/95), this is a very rare and early strainer; the rolled handles are similar to delftware examples and seem an early-18th century feature. Paper label attached to base reads: "D.M. & P. Manheim/ GUARANTEED/ GENUINE" and written on label, "Staffordshire/ Salt-Glaze/ Circa 1760." Although Staffordshire white stoneware had been perfected by about 1720, its possibilities for mass-production were not fully exploited until the 1740s. Then the techniques of press-moulding, slip-casting and enamelling were developed, and the drabness of the greyish stoneware surface was successfully relieved by the addition of all-over decoration. The glaze on the stoneware was the result of throwing salt into a high temperature oven (1000-1100 degrees), where the heat caused the salt to volatilise and the soda in the salt to combine with the alumina and silica in the clay to form a thin vitreous glass-coating over the surface. That outer layer has characteristic minute pitting. Since there are no factory markings, it is very difficult to link pot with a specific potter. A similar example of a white salt-glazed stoneware strainer (dated c. 1765-1775) is in the collection of Strawbery Banke Museum, Portsmouth, NH. A drabware example was found at the Chew House site in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, c. 1745-1750. In the Wedgwood Queensware factory shape book (a work dating to c. 1810) there is a similarly shaped creamware object called a lemon strainer with a flared cup shape, two small handles at either end, and a foot rim to sit upon.
Subjects:
Pottery; glaze (coating by location); Stoneware Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+57.115 |
