SPARKS, MD. — An Ohio 20-gallon salt-glazed stoneware face cooler was the belle of the ball at Crocker Farm’s July 20 Fifteenth Anniversary Sale when it sold for $177,000 above a $125,000 high estimate. The 25-inch-high cooler features lizard handles, a turtle-form spout, and is decorated to the front with a large, hand modeled and applied clay face of a bearded African American. The work was executed by William Wilbur of Ironton, Ohio, and circa 1870.

The cooler sold to Pennsylvania dealers Frank Swala and Kelly Kinzle, the former bidding in the gallery. It was bought for inventory.

Crocker Farm called the work “among the most expressive and striking examples of American stoneware known,” noting the two-toned slip treatment brushed in cobalt oxide and Albany slips. The cooler was made famous for its appearance in 1998 on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow.

The cooler broke two auction records: the highest price achieved for any American face vessel as well as the highest price for any piece of Ohio stoneware.

According to Crocker Farm, “William M. Wilbur (1841-1917) was the grandson of Zanesville, Ohio potter, Thomas Wilbur and the son of Clark Wilbur, yet another stoneware potter. After being brought up in the craft at the family’s pottery near Zanesville, Wilbur served in the Civil War in the 16th Ohio Infantry, and by 1870, had begun potting in Ironton, Lawrence County, Ohio — a town located directly across the Ohio River from Russell, Kentucky, and 15 miles southeast of Huntingdon, West Virginia. Wilbur would eventually move west to California, leaving Ironton by the late 1870s.”

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