Chipstone Volume Is Bonanza For Stoneware Enthusiasts

Ceramics in America 2005. Edited by Robert Hunter with contributions from George H. Lukacs, Robert Hunter, S. Robert Teitelman, Ivor Noel Hume, Marshall Goodman, Kurt C. Russ, W. Sterling Schermerhorn, John E. Kille, Richard Veit, Judson M. Kratzer, Barbara J. Gundy, Deborah Casselberry, John C. Austin, Merry Abbitt Outlaw, Mark Nonestied, Sarah Neale Fayen, Donna Corbin, Beverly A. Straube, Silas D. Hurry, Barbara H. Magid, William Hoffman, Scott Hamilton Suter, Chris Espenshade, Roger Pomfret, Amy C. Earls, George L. Miller, Sara A. Hahn, Regina Lee Blaszcyk, Suzanne R. Findlen, William C. Gates, Jr, Garth Clark, Kurt C. Russ, Tanya Harrod, Anton Gabszewicz and Stephen C. Compton. Published by Chipstone Foundation, 2005; 340 pages, 429 color illustrations, 41 black and white illustrations, $60 softcover. Distributed by University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon, N.H., 03766, 800-421-1533 or www.upne.com.

When Ceramics in America debuted in 2001, editor Robert Hunter, a specialist in American and English ceramics with 20 years experience in historical archaeology, wrote of his desire to make the annual journal published by Chipstone Foundation interdisciplinary in approach and of interest to a varied audience of amateurs and professionals.

Hunter has succeeded. Ceramics in America, now in its fifth year, is a lively forum, as evidenced by the variety of voices who contributed to this year's edition, which includes essays on English and American pottery and porcelain, both high style and vernacular.

Above all, the 2005 volume is a bonanza for stoneware aficionados. Six of the nine primary entries are on regional American stoneware production.

Hunter chose George H. Lukacs' "A Pot of Butter for The Victims" for the annual's opening essay. The piece is a short, vivid account of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.,'s relief effort on behalf of New York City, whose residents suffered a yellow fever outbreak in 1798. James Egbert and Durrell Williams were among the many Poughkeepsie citizens to respond. They created dozens of cobalt-decorated stoneware vessels, filled with butter and other commodities, and shipped them down the Hudson River to Manhattan. The discovery of one vessel, inscribed "October 6, 1798" and "Poughkeepsie," ultimately helped unravel a little known chapter in New York history.

Closer to New York, Richard Veit and Judson M. Kratzer explore recent archaeological excavation of the New Brunswick Stoneware Pottery, a site obscured by the building of housing towers in the 1950s and now, miraculously, partially revealed by the dismantling of same towers.

Three articles look at stoneware production in the Mid-Atlantic. Robert Hunter and Marshall Goodman consider one of the South's earliest salt glaze stoneware operations, the circa 1811 Virginia Stoneware Manufactory in Richmond. The archaeological site was recently destroyed to build a supermarket. Another site threatened by development is John P. Schermerhorn's pottery in Richmond, which is studied by Kurt C. Russ and W. Sterling Schermerhorn.

Hunter calls "Distinguishing Marks and Flowering Designs: Baltimore's Utilitarian Stoneware Industry" by John Kille, an archaeologist and collector, a "seminal contribution for American stoneware collectors and ceramic historians for years to come."

Four other articles span the gamut. S. Robert Teitelman looks at a pair of elaborately decorated English pearlware jugs that descended in Maine's Nathaniel Barrell family. Ivor Noel Hume, a regular contributor to Ceramics in America, investigates English brown stoneware jugs with applied-sprig decoration made by a previously unrecognized potter, John Bacon.

Rockingham and yellowware made in East Liverpool, Ohio, during the 1840s and 1850s is the subject of an essay by Barbara Gundy and Deborah Casselberry. Bringing the volume up to date is the first of John C. Austin's two-part article on J. Palin Thorley (1892-1987), an English potter and designer who in later years worked for Colonial Williamsburg, where Austin met him.

Edited by Merry Abbitt Outlaw, the "New Discoveries" section conveys the spirit of community and sense of adventure that is so striking among pottery collectors. Silas Hurry's discovery of a delftware sherd in St Mary's City in Maryland and the discovery in Jamestown, Va., of pieces of an English barrel-shaped vessel known as a "pig pot" or Schweinetopf were North American firsts, as the investigators excitedly report.

Of ten book reviews, one of the most interesting is Garth Clark's appraisal of Bernard Leach: Life and Work, Emmanuel Cooper's in-depth account of the Twentieth Century English studio ceramist who studied in Japan before returning with Shoji Hamada to set up his pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. A leading dealer in modern and contemporary ceramics, Clark concludes that, although an ambitious work, Bernard Leach is a failed one, "burdened with endless names, facts, quotation marks, and endnotes...".

Gifts from The Celestial Kingdom: A Shipwrecked Cargo for Gold Rush California by Thomas N. Layton, is the only writing to address a category very understudied by Ceramics in America: Asian Export. -Laura Beach