Extremely Rare Stoneware Ewer with Impressed Floral Decoration, probably Manhattan, NY, circa 1750, ovoid form with footed base, narrow collar with raised molding, and pinched pouring spout, decorated around the body with impressed and cobalt-highlighted four-petaled floral motifs. Cobalt dash decoration above. The impressed design on this ewer matches those found on a sherd recovered during the 2012 excavation of South Ferry Terminal at the southern tip of Manhattan (available for viewing here. While fragments of stoneware of various European origins were also found there, many local stoneware fragments of an early context were recovered in this dig, and the quality of the clay found on this example seems to point to a local origin. Further, distinctive incised decoration seen on the South Ferry Terminal sherd is a close match to that seen in figure 61 of Goldberg, Warwick and Warwick, "The Eighteenth-Century New Jersey Stoneware Potteries of Captain James Morgan and the Kemple Family" in Ceramics in America 2008--a photo showing a sherd recovered at the Ringoes, NJ stoneware pottery site of Johann Pieter Kemple, who had previously worked in Manhattan in the first half of the eighteenth century. Very nice condition with wear to spout and rim and typical in-the-firing flaws to surface. H 5 1/2".
