: How a distinctly English pottery became a uniquely American one
is the subject of the new exhibit "'Fancy Rockingham' Pottery:
The Modeller and Ceramics in Nineteenth Century America," on view
at the University of Richmond. Some 70 pieces of Rockingham
pottery - all from private New York area collections - tell the
story of relief molded earthenware in America.
Rockingham pottery takes its name from the estate of the Marquis
of Rockingham in Yorkshire, England, where potters in the mid- to
late Eighteenth Century created household objects with a
characteristic lustrous mottled brown glaze. When Rockingham
appeared in America around the 1820s, it acquired a whole new
array of colors and patterns. Ceramics scholar and exhibit
curator Diana Stradling says the term "Rockingham," strictly
speaking, describes only brown glazed ceramic objects.
"Fancy Rockingham," Stradling adds, "refers to ornamented or
relief molded ceramic pieces." While the term "fancy" suggests
the elaborate or expensive, it was used in the late Eighteenth
and first half of the Nineteenth Century to describe decorative
art objects with lively decorative, narrative or ornamental
patterns, regardless of the color. "Fancy" goods were all the
rage from about 1790 through 1840, and some said they were
designed to stimulate the imagination and spike creativity.
