Description:
Jugs, used for the storage of everything from water to wine, whiskey, vinegar, oil, and even tar are among America's earliest redware forms. Redware jugs range in size from a half-pint to one-gallon; larger examples are rare due to both their weight and fragile nature. Early, large redware cylindrical, bulbous jug with neck, small indented spout, inner lip to receive a cover which no longer exists, form tapers to a narrow circular base, also has an applied strap handle, base of handle has small finger print indentation, surface decoration is an orange color with green streaks down the sides and brown specks at the neck, has wavy incised lines between two sets of incised straight lines, the bottom of jug shows evidence of the glaze being attached to redware kiln furniture - very thick semi circle of rough redware clay, vessel is very thickly potted and is very heavy; old paper label attached to handle is inscribed in blue ink: "Attributed/ to Barnstable/ Pottery Coll'd/ 1918, West/ Barnstable,/ Mass." Condition: Large, 4 inch long hairline crack from lip of jug to shoulder of pot, a second shorter hairline crack from lip to shoulder of pot, large quantity of old chips to the rim of the vessel, some glaze chips on sides of handle. Presumed to be part of the Burton N. Gates Collection. A previous paper label conjectures a possible origin to West Barnstable, MA. More research is needed to prove or disprove this possible attribution. Shards from the site of the Parker-Bradford Pottery (1819-1860s) are located at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and after the fall of 1991, at Heritage Plantation, Sandwich, MA. See Slipped and Glazed: Regional American Redware, by Brian Cullity, Sandwich, MA: Heritage Plantation, 1991, p. 28, fig. 44 for images of fragments from the West Barnstable Pottery of Noah Bradford and Daniel Parker, Jr. Many of the fragments had multiple incised wavy bands. See also letter in file from Lura Woodside Watkins to Burton Gates about the Barnstaple Pottery. According to redware pottery scholar Justin Thomas, he attributes this jug to southeastern Massachusetts, 1770-1810. Current attribution provided by American ceramics scholar Justin Thomas, 1/16/2019.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2013.7.43 |
