Description:
English white salt-glazed stoneware, press-molded leaf-shaped dish with an irregularly fluted edge with ribbing and solid loop handle. The center of the dish has a press molded image of a bird on a branch eating a berry, the background behind the bird is stippled with a fish roe design; A hand-written label on the back (now in the data file) states: "Imported from England 1772/ as part of wedding outfit of Mary Gelstone wife of Israel/ Ashley of Westfield Mass." Dr. Israel Ashley (1747-1814) was the son of Dr. Israel Ashley (1710-1758) who died at Saratoga and Margaret Moseley, and grandson of David Ashley (1666-1744) and Mary Dewey (1668-1757), all of Westfield. One of David Ashley's other sons, Jonathan (1678-1749), was the father of Jonathan Ashley (1712-1780) of Deerfield, who was also born in Westfield and moved to Deerfield in 1732; Israel and Jonathan were first cousins. Israel graduated from Yale in 1767 following his father as a surgeon, and served as a member of the Committee of Correspondence and Safety in 1776, and as a selectman, town clerk, and Justice of the Peace. He married Mary Gelston (1746-1814) on Feb. 10, 1774; they had six children: Israel Gelston (1776-1800), Mary (b.1778) who married Elijah Bates, Margaret (b.1780) who married Lyman Lewis, Harriett (1783-1855) who married Jesse Farnham, Hannah (1785-1791), and Thomas (1788-1870) who married Celestia Dolly Ives. The well has a relief decoration of a bird perched on a leafy branch with berries, eating one of the berries, on a background of dotted circles; the smooth-edged handle is decorated with a leaf. The plant is Diospyros (Indian Date Plum), brought from Padua, Italy in 1756 to the Chelsea Physics Garden, London, and illustrated in Philip Miller, "Figures of the Most Beautiful, Useful and Uncommon Plants". The bird, probably a Yellow Red Pole, is from the "Gleanings of Natural History" by George Edwards, drawn and painted in 1751. Both Whieldon and Wedgwood are known to have manufactured dishes with this design, both in plain white and enameled salt-glaze stoneware. 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.
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+60.205 |
