Exceedingly Rare and Important Large-Sized Stoneware "Point Pleasant Farm" Presentation Pitcher with Cobalt Floral Decoration and Elaborate Inscriptions, Signed and Dated "J.B. Remmey & Co. / July 20 1880," North East, MD origin, ovoid pitcher with footed base and slightly-flared collar with semi-squared rim, featuring the incised and cobalt-highlighted inscription, "C S Perkins / Point Pleasant Farm / Cecil Co / MD." Underside incised with the inscription, "Handle With Care / This Pitcher is made of / 1/2 Charlestown Clay 1/2 C S Perkins / Clay / July 20 1880 / By J B Remmey & Co." Body of pitcher brush-decorated with double-blossomed floral motifs extending around the midsection. Collar features brushed foliate motifs on proper left side and dashes to the spout area. Cobalt highlights to handle terminals. This recently surfaced pitcher was made by Joseph B. Remmey, grandson of Henry Remmey, Sr. and nephew of Henry Harrison Remmey, these two latter Remmeys both well-known as transformative figures in the history of Mid-Atlantic stoneware production for their key roles in the Baltimore and Philadelphia stoneware crafts. While Joseph B. Remmey has received some attention in modern scholarship--perhaps most notably as the producer of a famous bank made in Chester County, PA and pictured in Arthur E. James' The Potters and Potteries of Chester County, Pennsylvania (p. 75)--his story as a Maryland stoneware manufacturer has previously been obscured by the lack of a single signed example from his time in Cecil County. This important object documents a time when Remmey, then about 51 years old, was striking out on his own after a life of itinerancy. Previously a potter in Philadelphia (his city of birth), Baltimore and Richmond, Remmey came to North East in 1869 to work as a firebrick manufacturer, a topic taken up in James Koterski's Potters and Firebrick Makers of Cecil County, Maryland, and Nearby ... (see pp. 43-51, 76). As Koterski notes, in 1879, Remmey went into partnership with a local brickmason named Hiram Shallcross to begin making stoneware in the southern part of the town of North East, at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. In 1882, Remmey dissolved this partnership and operated the pottery on his own, a surviving envelope from the enterprise pictured on page 48 of Koterski displaying the trade name "Remmey's North East Pottery." While Remmey soon began having financial difficulties he continued to pot in North East into the 1890's, when he essentially returned to a life of itinerancy. He died in 1908 in Red Lion, Delaware.
Exceedingly Rare and Important Large-Sized Stoneware "Point Pleasant Farm" Presentation Pitcher with Cobalt Floral Decoration and Elaborate Inscriptions, Signed and Dated "J.B. Remmey & Co. / July 20 1880," North East, MD origin, ovoid pitcher with footed base and slightly-flared collar with semi-squared rim, featuring the incised and cobalt-highlighted inscription, "C S Perkins / Point Pleasant Farm / Cecil Co / MD." Underside incised with the inscription, "Handle With Care / This Pitcher is made of / 1/2 Charlestown Clay 1/2 C S Perkins / Clay / July 20 1880 / By J B Remmey & Co." Body of pitcher brush-decorated with double-blossomed floral motifs extending around the midsection. Collar features brushed foliate motifs on proper left side and dashes to the spout area. Cobalt highlights to handle terminals. This recently surfaced pitcher was made by Joseph B. Remmey, grandson of Henry Remmey, Sr. and nephew of Henry Harrison Remmey, these two latter Remmeys both well-known as transformative figures in the history of Mid-Atlantic stoneware production for their key roles in the Baltimore and Philadelphia stoneware crafts. While Joseph B. Remmey has received some attention in modern scholarship--perhaps most notably as the producer of a famous bank made in Chester County, PA and pictured in Arthur E. James' The Potters and Potteries of Chester County, Pennsylvania (p. 75)--his story as a Maryland stoneware manufacturer has previously been obscured by the lack of a single signed example from his time in Cecil County. This important object documents a time when Remmey, then about 51 years old, was striking out on his own after a life of itinerancy. Previously a potter in Philadelphia (his city of birth), Baltimore and Richmond, Remmey came to North East in 1869 to work as a firebrick manufacturer, a topic taken up in James Koterski's Potters and Firebrick Makers of Cecil County, Maryland, and Nearby ... (see pp. 43-51, 76). As Koterski notes, in 1879, Remmey went into partnership with a local brickmason named Hiram Shallcross to begin making stoneware in the southern part of the town of North East, at the head of the Chesapeake Bay. In 1882, Remmey dissolved this partnership and operated the pottery on his own, a surviving envelope from the enterprise pictured on page 48 of Koterski displaying the trade name "Remmey's North East Pottery." While Remmey soon began having financial difficulties he continued to pot in North East into the 1890's, when he essentially returned to a life of itinerancy. He died in 1908 in Red Lion, Delaware. Interestingly, Remmey appears to have been keenly interested in experimenting with different clay mixtures and was probably valued for his skill in this area by the various potteries for which he worked over the years. This pitcher notes on its bottom a specific mixture of clay acquired in nearby Charlestown, Maryland, and at C. S. Perkins' local Point Pleasant Farm. Charles S. Perkins is listed in the 1880 federal census as a 60-year-old farmer living in North East with his wife, Susan. Remmey went out of his way to fashion this pitcher specifically for the farmer, as a household vessel wrought from the clay dug from his own farmland. The resultant product from this experimental clay composition is a piece with a tannish color, light salt glaze to the lower body, minimal to no salt glaze elsewhere, and matte cobalt slip decoration. Interestingly, Koterski notes a clay mining project undertaken by Remmey just a few months prior, in March 1880, to excavate on the property of another local farmer named William Hunt (p. 48); a newly discovered 1890 item in a Cecil County newspaper references a kaolin mine "under the management of J. B. Remmy of North East, a very energetic and competent foreman" (The [Rising Sun, MD] Midland Journal, January 24, 1890).
A remarkable aspect of this work is its striking similarity in form and decoration to pieces produced at the Philadelphia potteries of relatives, Henry Harrison Remmey (his uncle) and Richard Clinton Remmey (his cousin), offering the possibility that some so-called Philadelphia stoneware may have actually been produced in Cecil County, Maryland. The wonderful inscriptions including the name of the pitcher's owner and property, the clay involved, its maker, date of manufacture, and the appealing maxim, "Handle with Care," define this work as the finest known example of Maryland stoneware made outside of Baltimore City. In-the-firing matte surface. Surface exfoliation to midsection. A small rim chip. A 1" U-shaped surface line to exterior of rim. Significant flakes to interior base area. A small chip to underside along bottom edge. H 14".
