Description:
Christopher Webber Fenton joined the older Norton Pottery (established in 1793) in Bennington, Vermont, about 1839. In 1847, along with salt-glazed stoneware production, the first parian ware in the United States was made just two years after it was produced by W. T. Copeland in England. The Norton and Fenton firm was dissolved in 1847. About 1848 or 1849, Fenton created a new enterprise called Lyman, Fenton & Co., producing some of the finest American Rockingham ware marked “Fenton’s Enamel, Patented 1849.” The ware had a brilliant glaze with variegated colors of yellow, orange, blue, green, olive, brown, and red. The company’s name later changed to the United States Pottery Company, and primarily concentrated on parian ware and porcelain until 1858, when it closed for economic reasons. Initially its biscuit wares were covered with a transparent glaze. Later, the surface was sprinkled with various metallic oxides in amounts designed to produce diVerent color intensities, yet leaving some openings for the clay to show through. The pottery was then glazed and refired. During the firing, the oxides melted fusing to the glaze in an abstract, flowing, or spotted pattern. Pair of octagonal door knobs with flat surface, eight sides, and narrow pedestal or stem, circular base with iron metal fitting which joins them together, the knobs are not an exact pair in decoration, one knob is coated in a streaked and variegated light brown Rockingham glaze, the other is more typical of the glaze associated with Fenton's enamel, with variegated colors of blue, dark brown, and tan. Condition: one of the knobs has a chip to the base.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2015.36.15 |
