Description:
English creamware baluster-shaped pitcher or ewer with a wavy rim edged with a simple ribbed molding and a high projecting lip; ribbed double intertwined loop handle with flower and leaf terminals attached under the rim on top and to the mid-point of the fluted half of the body; and a domed, partially fluted 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 ewer is similar to a ewer illustrated in James and Charles Whitehead’s 1798 pattern book - No. 115, "Fluted [Water Ewer] without Covers [two sizes]." 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. Peter Walton illustrates two similar ewers: one (#491) has the 'classic' Leeds-type terminals and handle that appear on this ewer but the design does not appear in the Leeds Pattern or drawing books, and the other (#490) that is closer to the Whitehead example. 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+2006.33.62 |
