Description:
English black basalt unmarked stoneware teapot attributed to the Spode Factory with a molded spout and handle that has an impressed "5" on its base, and an engine-turned body and cover decorated with herringbone and basketweave patterns made by using an engine-turning lathe on the sides and lid. John Adney's research on engine turned incised line decoration, attributes this engine turned pattern to the Spode Factory. Adney calls this an angled pattern. Recorded makers of angled patterns on flat bands (not convex in profile) appear to be only Spode. A hard black earthenware made of black-stained clay that was stained throughout with manganese and iron (known then as "Egyptian black") was being made in Staffordshire by about the mid 18th century, but was perfected by Josiah Wedgwood about 1768 and marketed to great success as ornamental and tablewares into the first decades of the 19th century. In a letter to his partner, Thomas Bentley, Wedgwood hoped that the fashion for white hands and black teapots would continue. Although many English potters made black basalt, there was less interest in America: George Washington owned a black basalt coffeepot; some basalt was found in the wreck of the DeBraak in the Delaware River; and a few other fragments have been found at archaeological sites.
Subjects:
Pottery; Stoneware Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+82.045 |
