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Ca. 1820 jug with an impressed maker’s Ca. 1902 Jacques Sicard (1865-1923) jardiniere
mark “S. Purdy,” 12” high. Soloman Purdy with iridescent glaze and floral decoration symbolic 19th century stoneware butter churn with
operated in Putnam, OH around 1820 of the burgeoning Art Nouveau style. Earthenware, blue design selling online for $150 at
and lived in Zoar between 1820-1850. cast, glazed and hand-decorated in Zanesville, OH.
ardesh.com
photo: Cowan’s Auctions

Boston. In the next century, a middle grade of “figured stone pitchers” and nowadays the American ware [so seldom marked, until after 1800]
and Toby jugs of superior stone in buff and brown earned praise and languishes unrecognized, mistaken for English.
awards in 1829-30 for David Henderson of Jersey City.
A favorite decoration was freehand painting in cobalt blue, or rarely Majolica
brown. Initials and dates, birds or flowers and During this same period, a new pottery
scrolls, might be emphasized with scratched called majolica won wide favor; a coarse earthen
lines or die-stamped flowerets, though after body with colored lead glazes, it appeared in
about 1850 stenciled designs were widely used. useful wares, leaf-shaped dishes, and ornamental
The popular class of stonewares was chiefly
utility articles: common crocks, jugs, or churns, work of every description. In 1851 Minton had
exhibited majolica at the Crystal Palace, and
along with other things made for amusement, Wedgwood was producing it by 1860.
such as whistles and money banks, and bird or Meanwhile, American potters adopted it;
animal figures. Most of it was greyware, and Edwin Bennett by 1853 at Baltimore, and Carr
after about 1800 the vessels were usually coated & Morrison of New York in 1853-5. In the
inside with brown Albany slip. 1880s it was a staple of potters everywhere,

from the Hampshire Pottery [James Taft’s] at
Advances in Stoneware Keene, New Hampshire, to the Bennett and
In Ohio, the earliest recorded stoneware Morley firms in East Liverpool. Best known
potter was Joseph Rosier, working by 1814 near is Etruscan majolica, made in 1879-90 by
Zanesville; but by 1840 [says John Ramsay] Griffen, Smith & Hill at Phoenixville, Chester
there were more than fifty such potters through County, Pennsylvania.
the area. Excellent clays were here in plenty,
and potters of all sorts were attracted to the Late Wares
Midwest. East Liverpool with its fine Ohio It might be felt that Rogers Groups have no
River clays was to overtake northern New place here, being not of fired clay but plaster
Jersey, which itself has been called “the casts taken from clay models. But in their day
Staffordshire of America.” these enormously popular figure groups were
By the 1850s, stonewares were a factory- Ca. 1869 Rogers Group Challenging the Union fondly accepted as ceramic sculpture, an “art”
made product that devoted less attention to Vote cast plaster “pottery” (made to look like pottery). expression that filled bare space in the Victorian
form, and more to decoration, including This statue depicts the Reconstruction Period parlor. And indeed they exerted a large
free-drawn images painted in blue. Later, the with voting day bringing an older Unionist and influence upon potters who then produced
decorations might be stenciled, to save labor. granddaughter to register his vote. Parian or other figure work.
After the mid-19th century, a cylindrical shape The ex-confederate now the registrar is John Rogers [1829-1904] created his patented
was much used for crocks. opposed to his views on politics and pushes story-telling groups in New York, from 1859 to
Government reports in 1900 showed an his hand away while he reviews his 1893. Cast in reddish plaster and painted a sad
American output of stoneware valued at register. Selling for $4,500 on eBay. putty color, these low-priced groups were issued
$1,800,000, but of redware only $400,000, and in vast editions, in 1886 The Elder’s Daughter
the latter mostly from Ohio and Pennsylvania. The old order of work [weight 100 lbs packed, price $12]. If sentimental, obvious, and
was indeed disappearing. sometimes silly, the subjects were well modeled; and their themes were
And where are their products, of which enormous amounts once from the Civil War, from the domestic life of the time, or from popular
existed? An answer might be that because American work of the better legends. Collections may be studied at the New York Historical Society
grades must compete with the imported, it attempted close imitation, and at the Essex Institute, Salem.

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