Very Rare Three-Gallon Alkaline-Glazed Stoneware Jug with Two-Color Slip Decoration and Columbia, SC Advertising, attributed to the Collin Rhodes Pottery, Shaw's Creek, Edgefield District, SC, circa 1850, ovoid jug with tooled, semi-rounded spout, featuring the slip-trailed kaolin slip advertising, "H.C. Franck / Columbia / S.C.," with eight underscore lines below. Shoulder decorated with a slip-trailed flower blossom surrounding the number, "3." Handle terminals highlighted in reddish-brown iron slip. Appealing light-olive, alkaline-glazed ground with reddish-brown accents and heavy, gray-green runs on reverse. German-born Herman C. Franck (1822-1865) established his grocery / merchant shop in Columbia by 1850, in which year's census he appears as a merchant living with his wife, Catherine. The 1859 Columbia city directory (the earliest existing Columbia directory of which we are aware) lists him as a grocer whose establishment was located at 232 Richardson Street. The 1860 federal census shows Franck to have been prosperous, his personal estate valued at $12,000. Upon his death in 1865, Franck was honored by the City Fire Department as "one of [Columbia's] most esteemed and honorable citizens." Relatively few examples of Rhodes advertising stoneware are known, this being the first example that we have offered among the hundreds of Edgefield pieces sold through our auction house. Provenance: A fresh-to-the-market example, purchased by the consignor's mother in the 1960s. A faint, approximately 5" in-the-firing hairline from spout, which is glazed-over and occurred in the firing. A 3" glazed-over, in-the-firing line to shoulder on reverse. A 1" glazed-over, in-the-firing line to proper left side of spout. A minor spout nick on reverse. H 15 1/2".
