Description:
This dish probably made by Hervey Brooks who operated a redware pottery in Goshen, Connecticut, for over 36 years. Old Sturbridge Village conducted an archaeological excavation of the Brooks potting site in Goshen and eventually reconstructed the Brooks pottery, outbuildings, and kiln at Sturbridge. Shards from the Hervery Brooks pottery are located at the Archaeological Laboratory of Old Sturbridge Village. Unusually Hervey Brooks marked many examples of his redware pottery; Sturbridge has the best collection of his pottery in New England. From 1828 on, Brooks made and fired one kiln load each year, primarily producing milk pans, cooking pots, and jugs, which he stamped with his name. Brooks sold some of his redware to country stores on contract, and he exchanged smaller lots with his neighbors for goods and services. However, increasing competition from tinware and stoneware producers and local population decline gradually eroded demand for his goods. Brooks hung on long after virtually all of New England’s redware potters had given up the craft, burning his last kiln in 1864 at 85 years old. Thrown redware circular dish with rounded rim, deep, sloping sides, and flat bottom; dish is decorated with white slip from a single chamber slip cup; the decoration on the outer rim is a band of zig-zags or squiggles, and the decoration on the inner rim is a repeating semicircle; the decoration on the bottom of the dish appears similar to a calligraphic line of interconnected l's; the plate is very dark brown; Origin: probably Hervey Brooks (1779-1873), Goshen, Connecticut, c. 1830-50. Several glaze chips on bottom and a hairline crack from the rim to the interior, published and illustrated in Jonathan Fairbanks, Robert Trent, et al. New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century, vol. 2, pp. 229-30, no. 199.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2013.7.9 |
