Description:
English white salt-glazed stoneware, pear-shaped cream jug with a slip-cast body and pinched spout, two molded bands just under the rim, ribbed strap handle with a strap handle, and three mask and paw feet. The body is decorated overall with pectin shells, flowers, and scrollwork in low relief. A block for a similar type jug (3097-1852) in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is inscribed "R. W. 1749." Montford has shown that this block can be linked with salt-glaze made by Thomas and John Wedgwood of Burslem. 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 potter.
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+66.133 |
