Description:
English creamware oval wash bowl with a ewer (HD 2006.33.61.1). The basin has a scalloped rim molded with a border of scrollwork; partially fluted sides; plain well; and a partially fluted, raised foot. Enoch Booth (c.1703-1773) of Tunstall, England, developed the fine, light-colored earthenware now known as creamware in the early 1740s using the various improvements in body, glaze, and firing; but it was Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) who perfected and successfully marketed the ceramic body. Wedgwood’s version of creamware resulted from many experiments with white clays and improved glazes; by 1762, he had developed a light, sturdy, refined, and yet inexpensive cream-colored earthenware body. Wedgwood described the new product as "a species of earthenware for the table, quite new in appearance, covered with rich and brilliant glaze, bearing sudden alterations of heat and cold, manufactured with ease and expedition, and consequently cheap." Middle-class consumers rushed to purchase creamware, bringing the popularity of alternative ceramics such as tin-glazed earthenware and salt-glazed stoneware to an end. In an effort to capture a segment of the creamware market, many English potteries also began to produce the ceramic; estimates suggest that more than 150 factories in England manufactured the ware. Unfortunately most early wares were not marked, making attribution to a particular factory difficult. While unmarked, the lower section of the ewer and the basin is similar to a ewer and basin illustrated in James and Charles Whitehead’s 1798 pattern book - No. 115, "Fluted [Water Ewer] without Covers [two sizes]" and No. 117, "Basons to ditto." According to Donald Towner, there are very few distinctive patterns in Whitehead pattern book and that many of the engravings seem to be derived from Wedgwood, Leeds, and Castleford pattern books, which also appear later in the c.1803/4 Don Pottery pattern book. Donald Towner also illustrated (Plate 22a) a very similar basin and ewer which he attributes to the Leeds Pottery and dates circa 1785, but does not give a pattern number. Peter Walton also illustrates a similar ewer and basin which he notes is probably by the Whitehead Pottery because of the terminals on the attached handle of the ewer; however, he also notes that others in this pattern have been identified as Leeds. Personal cleanliness as we know it today was not a high priority. In the summer of 1798, Henry Drinker, a well-to-do Quaker merchant, installed a shower box for his family in the backyard of his Philadelphia town house. A year later on July 1st, his wife Elizabeth, then sixty-five years old, used it for the first time. “I bore it better than I expected,” she wrote in her diary, “not having been wett all over att once, for 28 years past.” For one’s daily cleansing the usual 18th century method involved a basin of water and a towel, with washing rarely extending beyond the hands and face. Lord Chesterfield, who held more scrupulous standards than many of his peers, urged his young son to take care to be clean. He advised “a thorough cleanliness in your person is as necessary for your health, as it is not to be offensive to other people. Washing yourself, and rubbing your body and limbs frequently with a flesh-brush, will conduce as much to health as to cleanliness.” For those who washed less assiduously, the liberal use of perfumes, pomatums, incense, and scented waters masked unpleasant odors.
Subjects:
Pottery; glaze (coating by location) Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2006.33.61.2 |
