Description:
English Castleford-type felspathic stoneware teapot with a D-shaped handle (part of a teaset with the cream jug and sugar bowl) with molded and applied relief decoration and blue trim, which descended in the Abercrombie family of Deerfield. The set, which was bought from Mrs. James Douglas Abercrombie, came with a hand-written note: "Grandmothers Ambercrombie's / China / Old Wedgwood Tea Set 3 pieces / Green edge Sauce boat. [see HD 86.021] / Martha McCullough / wife of Isaac Abercrombie." In 1742, Robert Abercrombie (1712-1786) emigrated from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Pelham, Massachusetts; he and his wife, Margaret Stevenson Abercrombie (d.1765), had 10 children; their son, Isaac Abercrombie (1759-1847) married Martha McCullough (1768-1837) in 1790, and they moved from Pelham to the Cheapside section of Deerfield (now in Greenfield) about 1830. Their son, Asiel Abercrombie (1807-1874), married Elizabeth Brooks Fuller (1817-1906), the daughter of Aaron Fuller (1786-1859) and his first wife, Elizabeth Hill Fuller (d.1818) of Deerfield, in 1845. Asiel and Elizabeth Abercrombie had three children who lived: Robert (b.1846), William Hyslop (1851-1940), and Hattie Fuller (1860-1955); only Robert married - Ellen Margaret Crawford in 1873. Robert and Ellen's son, James Douglas Abercrombie (b.1878) was the father of James Douglas Abercrombie (1913-1978), husband of the donor. The Castleford Pottery was run by David Dunderdale & Co., operating from 1790 to 1821 in Castleford, about 15 miles from Leeds in Yorkshire; the pottery produced a range of wares in creamware, black basalt, and white feldspathic stoneware. Although many factories, such as the Sowter and Company pottery (1800-late 1820s) of Mexborough, Yorkshire, and the Chetham and Woolley site (c.1795-c.1820), Wedgwood, and the Davenport Pottery (1794-1887) in Staffordshire, made similar feldspathic stoneware wares, the term 'Castleford' is now used generically to described a wide range of feldspathic stoneware, silver-shaped tea wares, jugs, and similar objects that are slip-cast with relief-molded decoration. The slightly domed cover has a flattened flower finial topped in blue over a interlaced ovals and swirled scrolls. The pot has an extended shaped rim with a band of flowers; over a sloped shoulder decorated with interlaced ovals; over neoclassical figures; and swirled scrolls around the tapered flat base.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+86.005.1 |
