Description:
Tan-bodied, salt-glazed stoneware pot stamp-impressed "S.D. KELLOGG / WHATELY / 2" over a large blue floral slip-trailed decoration on the side. Two ear-shaped handles on the sides, flat bottom, interior coated with Albany slip. In 1851, Silas Dwight Kellogg (b.1825), a farmer from Hadley, Massachusetts, married Maria Lousia Crafts (b.1825), the daugher of potter Caleb Crafts (1800-1854). Maria Louisa had returned to Whately after the death of her first husband, Thomas Bowers of Nashua, NH, in 1848, and was probably making pottery with her father. Since Caleb Crafts was in poor health in his final years, it appears that his pottery was operated by Silas Kellogg, with his wife's help. Henry Baldwin, a local, prominent stoneware collector and author, believed that Maria continued as the Kellogg potter because of the very unusual, artistic designs - often large floral designs or doves eating cherries. These distinctive decorations have been found on other wares marked "KELLOGG" and on stoneware made for Thomas Crafts's son, Martin Crafts (1807-1880), while he was a stoneware merchant in Boston (c.1852-1857). Baldwin also notes that much of the Kellogg pottery was made of a very white clay, which might have come from New Jersey via New Haven to the Northampton Canal. In 1853 and apparently in financial difficulties, Kellogg sold "premises being used for a stoneware manufactury" to Caleb's brother, Thomas Crafts (1781-1761), and Silas and Maria Louisa probably returned to the Kellogg family farm in Hadley. See also HD 79.001.
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