With this volume we are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Ceramics in America. In my introduction to the inaugural issue, in 2001, I wrote of my desire that the journal “provide ceramic scholars with an interdisciplinary forum from the fields of decorative arts, art history, historical archaeology, social history, economic history, and contemporary studio pottery,” and that it seeks “synthesis by crossing many of the traditional boundaries that demarcate disciplines of the ceramics world.” Over these twenty years and the hundreds of articles, new discoveries, reviews, and research notes, we indeed have had significant contributions from those in the field and in related disciplines. The journal’s many seminal essays and reports about new ceramics discoveries have added substantially to our cumulative knowledge of ceramics history. Moreover, much of that knowledge now exists online through the portal of the Chipstone Foundation’s website, http://www.chipstone.org/publications.php/2/Ceramics-in-America.
I am grateful to our authors, readers, editors, designers, photographers, and, most of all, to the continued support of the Chipstone Foundation. I have always felt that the published research might be most appreciated by ceramics historians of the next century, thankful to have these pages at their disposal. But present-day scholars will continue to benefit from the timely publication of research, and it is safe to say that the goals outlined in 2001 will continue to guide our mission into future decades.
It is my particular pleasure to welcome ceramics scholar Ron Fuchs as coeditor of Ceramics in America, beginning with this volume. Not only will his presence help shepherd the journal into its third decade, Ron’s diverse background of knowledge and experience will broaden its offerings. Both his tenure as assistant curator of Winterthur’s encyclopedic collections of American, British, and Chinese ceramics and his current position as Senior Curator of Ceramics at the Reeves Museum of Ceramics, Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, reflect his considerable credentials.
In the first article of the 2020 volume we begin with perhaps the oldest, most enduring use of fired clay, that of building bricks both for structural and ornamental use. Usually overlooked by ceramic historians, bricks are the most elemental but essential ceramic products made and are used throughout the world. Brick making has not changed drastically since the process was illustrated on the walls of the Theban tomb of Rakhmire some 3,500 years ago. Ceramics in America veteran authors Mark Nonestied and Richard Veit share their investigation of virtually the same process in late-nineteenth-century New Jersey. Weaving a story of archaeology, geography, economics, and architectural history, the authors present “‘Many New and Beautiful Designs’: Salvage Archaeology at the Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Company,” preserving a dimension of central New Jersey’s important ceramics past that otherwise might be easily overlooked.
The movement of ceramics has always had global ramifications, from the early Persian caravans that carried the precious Asian porcelains to the Middle East to the vast networks of world trade propagated by the Staffordshire ceramics industry in the eighteenth century. Even ceramics collecting has a substantial record of long-distance appreciation and acquisition. One little-known story is about an assemblage of Native American pueblo pottery that found its way to the museum vaults of a ceramics manufactory in Germany in the late nineteenth century. Ceramics historian and writer Charlotte Jacob-Hanson unfolds the somewhat mysterious events surrounding the acquisition of these American ceramic icons in her article “From Santa Fe to Mettlach: Pueblo Pottery and ‘Curiosities’ in the Villeroy & Boch Keramikmuseum.” Her undertaking documents what might be compared with the history of collecting moon rocks or the treasures of ancient Egypt by affluent museums and prosperous collectors. Ultimately it is an homage to the ancient ceramic traditions of the New World which were indeed sought and curated by what was considered the most successful ceramics company in the world at the time.
Despite more than 150 years of research and scholarship related to American ceramics history, one might think that we have nearly exhausted all topics. When coupled with the attention paid to documenting the material world of our First Family—George and Martha Washington—surely new research efforts would have diminishing returns. However, authors Hannah Boettcher and Ronald W. Fuchs II score big on both accounts with a recent discovery about the Washington family’s ceramics in “Martha Washington’s ‘United States China’: A New Link Found in a Family Notebook.” The so-called States service, well known to collectors and ceramics historians since the early nineteenth century, currently has only about twenty surviving objects. Until now. An inventory made in 1806, found in a commonplace book kept by Mary Fitzhugh Custis—who was married to George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington—provides previously undocumented evidence about the size and composition of Martha’s important and apparently extensive Chinese porcelain coffee and tea service.
Every collector wants to own a piece of the true cross. This is particularly so for American collectors of presidentially owned porcelain from services like the aforementioned States service, which are among the rarest and most sought-after ceramics. Author James Boswell, a professor of business law at the College of William and Mary, investigates another Chinese export porcelain service, one associated with Thomas Jefferson, in his article “A Chinese Export Service Ordered for Thomas Jefferson: In Rei Memoriam Decorated with a shield framing the initial J, vessels and plates associated with this service have been publicly and privately traded for years with the assertion that Thomas Jefferson owned and used them at both Monticello and the White House during his presidential tenure. With the adroitness of a law clerk, Boswell assembles and cross-examines more than one hundred and fifty years of both factual and apocryphal evidence, thereby constructing a convincing argument as to the true history of the “J” service.
The year 2020 was an explosive time in America, when issues of social inequality, racial discrimination, and economic injustices were routinely a part of daily conversations. Throughout history, ceramics have been a vehicle for social, political, and religious commentary. One of the most potent examples in recent history is the use of ceramics to encourage the abolition of slavery in the Anglo-American world. Using a transfer-printed dish made by a British firm for the American market in the early nineteenth century, ceramics author Jo Dahn explores period as well as contemporary meanings in her article “The Cape Coast Castle Platter.” The printed scene shows one example of the approximately forty “slave castles” that served as prisons and embarkation points for cargoes of African slaves destined for the Caribbean, South America, and the United States. Dahn discovers new information about the source images, and brings new insights to the subject in her thoughtful and socially relevant essay.
The history of American ceramics styles and manufacturing continues to center on Philadelphia and has been the subject of a number of publications, although one aspect has been overlooked. In his in-depth article “Ceramics Displayed at the Annual Exhibitions of American Manufacturing at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 1824–1858,” ceramics scholar Tom Folk reviews the institute’s exhibitions and includes, for the first time, an analysis of the ceramics that were submitted from other areas of the country. As his extensive investigation demonstrates, the Franklin Institute exhibitions did much to celebrate American ceramics for four decades, and by awarding “premiums” it encouraged ceramics companies to produce finer wares and promote them to the American public.
From the onset of Ceramics in America’s publication, the collector’s voice has been stressed as an integral part of the ceramics scholarship record. Collectors not only offer a personal perspective on ceramics history, but they also usually have singular vision and considerable financial and intellectual resources that go beyond the bureaucratically bound means of institutional curators and scholars. Joseph P. Gromacki is one such passionate collector, who contributes his erudition in “My Quest for a Rare Dutch Black Delftware Teapot.” The multilayered story includes assistance from a coalition of archaeologists, antique dealers, and a ceramic artist enlisted by Gromacki in his pursuit of a rare teapot, paralleled by an example recovered in an American archaeological context at Drayton Hall, Charleston, South Carolina. A detail of this spectacular object is featured on this issue’s cover, enabling readers to appreciate fully its sophisticated aesthetic and underscoring its importance as one of the rarest and most costly ceramic objects ever recorded in the American colonies.
The discovery of Drayton Hall’s black delft teapot fragments and the pursuit of an analogous specimen is a fitting and prescient way to conclude our twentieth anniversary volume, as it makes clear that there is still much to discover and learn about the history of ceramics in the American context. For future editions, we are reviving our “New Discoveries” format and will be soliciting short research notes (500–1,000 words) about significant objects that don’t necessitate article-length treatment. Please feel free to contact either Ron Fuchs or myself with suggestions or questions. We both are looking forward to 2021 and another twenty years of scholarship on the history of ceramics in America.