Description:
This pot or planter would have been filled with dirt and onion bulbs or sets. As the onions grew, the green shoots would push out of the holes and cooks could trim them adding the shoots to dishes. Unusual redware onion planter or bulb pot, bulbous cylindrical form with narrow rounded rim, rounded sides, narrow base, and a spreading flat foot with rounded, upcurving lip; the whole is decorated with applied white slip bands in alternating stripes and squiggles; there are 1/2 inch round holes in the side of the pot and a set of smaller holes in the base of the pot, the base is flat and devoid of any glaze; there is a pencil inscription on the base that reads: "Telford Pa/ indecipherable words - perhaps German after" and red collection number "196" in a circle. Paper note inside object probably from William Brandon reads: "Labeling squ...(losses)..998/ mold on paper label/ red # not pristine; believe it/ #196/ paper label reads" Bot. Osborne Phila. Dec. 1917/ said Barber has 2/ claim was made Telford, Pa." Pennsylvania origin, early 19th century, one possibility for use is for onions; as spout of an onion pushed out of holes, they could be clipped for cooking. Ht. 9" Condition: extremely dirty, yellow powdery eflourescence inside, chip to bottom base, some losses to the slip decoration. Originally part of the Burton N. Gates collection. A note card from the Gates collection for object #196 reads: "Perforated vase, (possibly flowers) Red clay, white slip decoration. unglazed saucer attached. 8 3/4" high. saucer 7". Col. by Osborne, Phil. Dec. 1914. Said Dr. Barber has 2. Claimed to have been prod. Telford, Pa. (See Barber illus.)" a similar onion planter is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, see Beatrice B. Garvan, The Pennsylvania German Collection: Philadelphia Museum of Art, p. 210, no. 18. A manganese glazed bulb pot is in the collection of the Winterthur Museum, see 1959.1660
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