Description:
Rectangular, draped molded, small loaf dish with lightly coggled rim, dish is decorated with white slip from a single quill slip cup, the design is a wavy line, curlicues, and then M's below, on a dark brown clay body, the reverse of the dish is unglazed, pencil inscription on back reads: "Clark Pottery/ Kilns? Albany/ on Hudson." Condition: excellent condition. Origin: Connecticut, c. 1840-1860. Originally part of the Burton N. Gates Collection. A notecard for this object in the Gates papers reads: "66/ Col. Albany, NY. 1911. Said to have been produced at Clark Pottery/on Hudson below Albany. Red clay: crude yellow slip./ Peculiarly fine quality to its body. Oblong: 9.5 x 13 in." and then attached in typescript, "Pottery/ Purchased fr. the widow of Capt. Remmington of Athens, N.Y. (opp. Hudson) & asserted to have been made at the old Clarke Pottery at Athens. This was started at Athens & later established elsewhere as branches." The attribution to the Clark Pottery near Albany, New York, has not been confirmed at this time. The physical characteristics of the dish currently point to a Connecticut origin. An 1837 price list (in the collection of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, NY) of the well-known stoneware firm Clark and Fox in Athens, NY, reveals the production of a wide variety of earthenware including pots, pitchers, jugs, jars, washbowls, cups, cake molds, milk pans, mugs, baking dishes, teapots, bed pans, chamber pots, and flower pots. Until archaeology evidence of their redware production is located, a firmer attribution can not be made at this time. For the Clark and Fox price list, see Daniel Webster, Decorated Stoneware Pottery of North America, Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1971, reproduced on p. 209. For more information on Nathan Clark, see Janet Macfarlane, "Nathan Clark, Potter" The Magazine Antiques, July 1951, pp. 42-44.
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