In 1795, four of the most important stoneware potters in American history were all working in lower Manhattan, around a place called “Potter’s Hill.” In 1820, two were still there, two had moved on: one to Baltimore–where he took the American stoneware craft to what could be called its zenith–and one to the west coast of Africa. The story of these potters during that quarter of a century and beyond is amongst the most interesting in the history of the American stoneware craft. This lecture will discuss the life and work of Clarkson Crolius, John Remmey III, Henry Remmey, and Thomas W. Commeraw–the latter a free African American potter who worked on Manhattan’s lower east side.

Brandt and Mark Zipp are principals in Crocker Farm, Inc., the nation’s leading auction house of American stoneware and redware pottery, located in Maryland. Their research and writings are consistent contributions to the study of American utilitarian ceramics. The book Brandt is authoring on Thomas W. Commeraw is one of the most anticipated works to be published on the topic of American stoneware.

Though the work of the early Manhattan potters was some of the first American stoneware to be studied and collected, this lecture will present their work from a fresh perspective, with a lot of “new” material. Afterwards, we will be happy to evaluate / provide verbal appraisals of attendees’ stoneware and redware. If you’re not too far from Washington, CT, we hope you can join us for what we hope will be an interesting day!

Farsunds Avis's article on the recent underwater recovery of a Commeraw jug off the Norwegian coast.

I was more than happy to converse with Aase Astri Bakka of Farsunds Avis about Thomas Commeraw and my thoughts on the recovery; her article on the dive team’s discovery was published last week. Since most of you, like me, probably are not able to read Norwegian, Google Translate can create a roughly translated version on the fly. That English version is available here, and you can find the original Norwegian version here.

I am not, of course, sure what Commeraw’s jug was doing all the way over in Norway. I am essentially certain that it was either some passenger’s personal vessel or part of a larger shipment of liquor. While this would be an interesting topic of study that begs to be investigated, I am unaware of any instances in which the American stoneware potters were shipping their ware as a primary product across the Atlantic. They definitely could and would ship their items great distances within the United States, and their products certainly were used to help transport any number of consumable goods from our country to others. But as a houseware, I simply have never seen–in my own research or someone else’s–an instance in which, say, Clarkson Crolius was shipping stoneware across the ocean for use in another country.

The jug itself seems to be one of the smaller examples I have seen. Further photographs and measurements will give me a better idea, but the size of the maker’s mark on the vessel–and the fact that Commeraw apparently could only fit one of his double swag designs (sometimes called “clamshells”) beneath the rim–both tell me that this was an unusually small vessel for Commeraw’s work.

I am excited to discuss this in the book, and I think a lot of you will be as interested as I was to see an example of early New York City stoneware not only end up in the waters off of Norway–but find its way back to the land of the living, two centuries later.

Previously unknown potter Aaron Radley's Liberty Bell mug.

Seithers' name on Radley's mug.

Seithers' 1880 census listing juxtaposed with an 1877 city directory entry.

Lager was not really available in the United States until around 1840; some speculate that its relatively late introduction into American homes and pubs was due to the difficulty of transporting its yeast across the Atlantic. The first known American lager brewery was located in Philadelphia, where a Bavarian immigrant (like Seithers) named Johann Wagner successfully managed to get his yeast over from Germany. Initially popular in German communities, lager spread nationally and by the late 1850′s, it was a bigger seller than either ale or porter in Philadelphia. Charles Seithers’ business came as a direct result of this booming new beer industry, and he shows up around the middle of the 1870′s–about the time Radley made his mug–as a lager dealer, perhaps even a brewer.

Radley's signature on the only known piece attributable to him.

Aaron Oliver Radley's obituary.

This is yet another case in which two men who may not even be remembered by their own families today, are memorialized by just one object that happened to survive. Aaron Radley probably made thousands of pots in his lifetime; Seithers likewise would have owned countless objects over the course of his life. But this mug, probably produced in the spirit of giving, now gives us another opportunity to peer dimly into the past.

A Note About Sources: As can probably be gleaned from the text, I used applicable Philadelphia city directories, newspapers, and death records, as well as federal census listings for the bulk of my research. For secondary, modern sources, (as noted in the text) I used Broderick & Bouck’s Pottery Works …; for the section on lager, I used Mark A. Noon’s Yuengling: A History of America’s Oldest Brewery heavily.

R. BUTT / W. City, D.C. Stoneware Jar, to be sold as part of our March 3, 2012 auction.

Richard Butt’s stoneware is the most famous of all that made in our nation’s capital, his fairly scarce maker’s mark being the most commonly seen on stoneware produced there. Butt was born into a prominent Montgomery County, Maryland, family and there have been, previously, no real indications that he was a potter. Around 1826, he purchased the earthenware pottery of a virtually unknown local potter named Whitson Canby. Referred to at least in a loose sense as the “Fair-Hill Manufactory” after a nearby home of the same name, apocryphal stories circulating in newspaper articles dating back to the 1940′s tell of eight families of Irish pottery workers who Canby housed in Fair Hill; the ghost of a potter who supposedly hanged himself in the basement was said to haunt the premises prior to it burning to the ground in 1977. (This fact, along with some other interesting tidbits, had to be cut from my article due to necessary space constraints. I hope at some point to put more of my information “out there” in one form or another.)

Earlier in the decade, Butt had run for sheriff in the county, and had also served as deputy sheriff. By around 1830, he moved down into Washington, D.C., and was not only operating a pottery there, but was soon also superintending the Washington Asylum (the local poorhouse)–a job he continued to undertake until 1847, when he was removed for malfeasance. (That saga could constitute a fairly lengthy article in itself.) He also seems to have continued his association with local law enforcement for most of his life; in 1850 he was a participant in the virtually forgotten but nationally scandalized Chaplin affair, in which he and others prevented a local abolitionist from ferrying two runaway slaves into Maryland; Butt was wounded in that altercation. In 1863, President Lincoln appointed him Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Butt turned his pottery over to prolific potter Enoch Burnett around the mid-1840′s, and there is no evidence that he continued any association with the pottery business after that time. In the 1860 census, he shows up as a “Gardener + Toll-Gatherer,” indicating that he was primarily a farmer at this point. But perhaps more importantly, that listing, combined with the rest of his history, shows what was a tendency on Butt’s part to gravitate toward bureaucracy and local government affairs. To make what could be a long story short, quite simply, I have believed for a long time that Butt was basically a merchant-type figure who owned his pottery shops as either a primary income source or perhaps a way to supplement his income. Hugh C. Smith (in nearby Alexandria) and Henry Myers (up the road in Baltimore) are two very good examples of comparable merchant figures who paid potters to make their ware.

We know that one of Butt’s potters was John Walker–until the publication of my aforementioned article, a potter of completely unknown origin, who seemed to have potted briefly in Washington and then fallen off the face of the earth. In actuality, Walker was an English-born salt-glazed stoneware potter who ended up moving down to Kentucky after working in D.C. The work, though, at Butt’s shop is inconsistent in the way that would be expected for a merchant enterprise, where various master potters were superintending the shop.

All of this being said, I have recently come across some interesting information that suggests that Butt may have been, after all, a potter. If he was, I believe he was not a particularly skilled one, probably, and based on his other duties, was probably quick to let other potters perform the bulk of the work for him.

Ink signatures of Richard Butt juxtaposed with the R. Butt inscriptions on the jar we sold in July 2008. Do they match? Was Richard Butt a potter?

1829 real estate ad placed by Richard Butt in a local Washington paper, which refers to Butt as a 'Stone Potter.'

The inscribed R. Butt jar. If Richard Butt was, in fact, a potter, this jar would be the first we could attribute specifically to his hand.

Thank you for your positive feedback about this latest addition to our website!

Mark talks about the unheard-of Bell family (Shenandoah Valley of Virginia) stoneware face pitcher.

Mark discusses “People” crocks of West Virginia and Southwestern PA in general, but specifically the two examples we will be selling on March 3, 2012.

Mark discusses the small-sized, four-handled stoneware jug (New York State origin) we are selling on March 3.

Still on the topic of New York State stoneware, Mark talks about the profusely decorated presentation flower pot / urn made by William Warner in West Troy, NY.

Luke discusses David Parr, one of the most influential American stoneware potters, and one Luke has spent a ton of time researching. Not ten years ago, Parr’s work was routinely attributed to some anonymous Pennsylvania potter, and anyone walking through an antiques show, shop, etc. would see tags hanging from his pots with no attribution to the man who made them. Today, these same pieces are, with frequency, accurately attributed as Baltimore pottery, and it was solely Luke’s careful work that has enabled that to happen. Here he discusses two significant Parr examples we will be selling on March 3, including the only known signed example of Parr’s work.

Brandt talks about the Philadelphia stoneware Liberty Bell mug, and the basically unknown potter who made it. Brandt’s in-depth article on the subject will be posted soon.

Luke talks about the ornate Remmey bird bank (includes an interesting, detailed period drawing of the Philadelphia Remmey shop in 1877.)

Brandt talks about North Carolina redware potter Henry Watkins and his signed and dated jar. For more on Watkins, see Turners and Burners by Charles Zug.

The Arkansas Traveler (Currier & Ives version), upon which Lot 23 (stoneware log cabin scene) in our October 29, 2011 was based.

“The Arkansas Traveler” was painted by Arkansas artist Edward Payson Washbourne, who completed it circa 1856. It was rendered from a popular fiddle song written by Colonel Sandford C. Faulkner, probably based on an actual conversation he had with a country settler in 1840–and it plays off of an encounter between the sophisticated “Traveler” and the country “Squatter.” Popular prints were created from Washbourne’s original, including a version by Currier & Ives in 1870. The man on horseback, whom we had speculated may be a Union soldier, is Colonel Faulkner, who served in the Confederate army, including in command of the Little Rock Arsenal.

The stoneware version of The Arkansas Traveler, probably by the Kirkpatrick Brothers of Anna Pottery in Anna, Illinois.

A version of Washbourne’s painting appeared at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, and the kind person who emailed us speculates that the stoneware version may have been made around that time, and based on Currier & Ives’ print.

To read more about “The Arkansas Traveler,” you can visit http://www.arkansas-traveler.org/.

The listing for the stoneware version our 10/29 auction is available here: http://www.crockerfarm.com/stoneware-auction/2011-10-29/lot-23/Extremely-Rare-and-Important-Stoneware-Log-Cabin-Group-probably-Anna-Pottery/

It is remarkable to view what is probably the Kirkpatrick Brothers’ stoneware take on this folk story, and we thought you might be interested to know where this image came from.

(In Mark’s cabin video, you will hear him reference the famous Eberly log cabin groups. If you’ve never seen one, you can view the one that the Smithsonian owns at the following address: http://historywired.si.edu/object.cfm?ID=375.)

We hope you enjoy them!

One of the finest pieces Thomas Commeraw left behind.

Those who have kept up with my various updates have seen me comment on the remarkable life that Thomas Commeraw led; but Eve Kahn’s article in today’s paper is the first time I have spoken in any real detail about this man’s story. Sometime in 2003, a chance encounter with a census record embarked me on a quest that has more or less consumed the last eight years of my life. Since that time, I have gone a long way toward fleshing out the life of a man whose identity somehow slipped through the fingers of history. Someone who once burned a kiln with regularity near the beach of the East River, whose name was well-known throughout Manhattan and beyond–not only for the mark he left on thousands of pots, but for the mark he sought to leave on American (and world) history–essentially vanished for almost two centuries.

An oyster jar Thomas Commeraw made for free African American oysterman, Daniel Johnson.

Thanks to everyone for taking interest in this remarkable story, and I look forward to sharing more of it with you soon, as I get closer to completing my long-labored-over book on the life and times of Thomas Commeraw.

Finely-made redware spittoon--possibly the only surviving example by York County, Pennsylvania, potter Philip Sipe.

There were far fewer stoneware manufactories than redware potteries in the United States. While now and then a farmer would build a kiln in his backyard and start making stoneware to supplement his income, the all-around investment in founding a stoneware operation was clearly more substantial than that required to start producing redware. This investment included a kiln capable of achieving and withstanding the higher temperatures needed to fire stoneware; a knowledge of the more complicated stoneware production process (including how to properly salt glaze); and procurement of proper stoneware clay, not as easily found as earthenware clay. In viewing their surviving works, it is often quite easy to tell which potters used clean stoneware clay obtained from a “reputable” source, and those that pulled it out of the backyard or otherwise dug it themselves. Redware, on the other hand, was comparatively easy to make. Good clay could, in fact, be frequently found in a potter’s backyard, or in a farmer’s field. The temperature the potter needed to reach in the kiln was several hundred degrees Fahrenheit below stoneware temperatures.

Because of this, rural redware potteries abounded in nineteenth century America. People who were primarily farmers but had been trained to throw on a wheel would, in fact, build a kiln on their property and sell their wares to their community and beyond. One such artisan was Philip Sipe, a York County, Pennsylvania, farmer born around the turn of the nineteenth century. The only contemporary document of Sipe’s career as a potter that I have ever seen is his impressed maker’s mark, found on one finely-made redware spittoon. In letters belonging to a bygone time, the potter stamped the bottom of the spittoon with a larger, more elaborate mark than that usually seen on American redware: “P. SiPE & SONS / LEWiSBERY / YORK Co PA.” But aside from the fact that a man named William Sipe was later a notable stoneware potter working in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, in the mid to late nineteenth century, I had never heard of Philip Sipe. Perhaps owing to what seems to have been Sipe’s insistence on calling himself a “Farmer,” people who have spent a lot of time researching central Pennsylvania redware potters have never heard of him, either.

P. SiPE & SONS maker's mark on Philip Sipe's spittoon.

Jeannette Lasansky, who wrote two great, concise books on both central Pennsylvania stoneware and redware (Made of Mud … and Central Pennsylvania Redware Pottery …) performed exhaustive work in her research of these redware potters. According to Lasansky, there were many potters working in the vicinity of Sipe’s pottery from at least the late 1810′s, but Philip Sipe was not one of them. In the 1850 census, again, many potters are listed in Lewisberry Borough (quite small at the time) and adjacent Newberry Township–the latter being the apparent actual, proper site of Sipe’s works. In that same census, Philip “Seip” is listed as a farmer, born in Pennsylvania around 1802; apparently a widower, his oldest family member was his son, William, also called a farmer.

But these men were just as adept at turning pots as they were at turning up fields. In the 1860 census, Sipe was still telling the census man that he was primarily a farmer, as was his close neighbor, John Knisely–an otherwise-documented redware potter whose son, Henry, was the only person on Sipe’s census page that year willing to call himself a potter. John Knisely’s potting career is noted in Lasansky’s Central Pennsylvania Redware …; it wasn’t until the 1870 census rolled around that he finally gave his occupation as “Potterer.” That the Kniselys were somehow involved with the Sipes and their heretofore forgotten pottery seems fairly evident.

One of these Sipes, the aforementioned William, was, in fact, the potter who made his way up the now-Route 11 and 15 corridor and was making stoneware by sometime in the 1860′s. Salt-glazed stoneware jars made in the predominant central Pennsylvania style bearing the marks “SIPE & SONS” and “SIPE, NICHOLS & CO.” are the products of William Sipe’s shop. An 1892 book, History of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania (by John F. Meginness), confirms William’s potting lineage: ”WILLIAM SIPE, deceased, was born in York county, Pennsylvania, in 1826, and was a son of Philip Sipe. He settled in Williamsport in 1863, where he soon after engaged in the pottery business, which he had learned from his father … .” Lasansky’s book on stoneware, Made of Mud, is also one of the best sources on William Sipe’s Williamsport shop. In it, she repeats the History of Lycoming County account, but–again owing to the paucity of proper references in the historical record–did not know where Philip worked, or what he made.

Philip Sipe’s spittoon is an example of a piece of pottery that transcends its status as a decorative arts object and plays the role of a paper document, imparting information where the historical record is less than forthcoming. Sipe’s potting career reminds me of another deft Pennsylvania potter whose primary career of farming sandbagged all modern attempts to connect an artist with his work. Absalom Bixler, whose redware stands today as some of the finest ever produced in the United States, was, as Lasansky wrote in another work on Lancaster County redware, never called a potter in contemporary documents. No trace of his career as a potter could be found on any period piece of paper. As late as 2003 a great, comprehensive article on Bixler’s work appeared in The Magazine Antiques, and even the author of that article was unable to take a definitive stance on the authorship of the “BIXLER” pieces. It was not until early last year that the surfacing of a small pot stamped “A. Bixler” (in a manner only performed by potters themselves, and in a typeface consistent with Absalom Bixler’s known career as a printer) enabled me to once and for all conclusively establish Bixler as the maker of his own work. (You can read my article on Bixler here.)

It is somewhat bizarre, or ironic, that people who lived lives spent, mostly, away from the potter’s wheel, are now remembered only for what they did while at it. An activity undertaken only in the winter months, or otherwise when farming was inconvenient or impossible, has come to define so many of these sorts of redware potters. But where so many others came into this world and then slipped from history, these men who made objects to fill the needs of their community have somehow managed a different fate. Even when paper documents fail us, and family members have forgotten they existed, their work remains to do the talking for them.