Catalogue Raisonné of Bonnin and Morris Porcelain

Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley
Introduction

The Plate section that follows presents each of the nineteen wares conventionally accepted as soft-paste porcelain made at the American China Manufactory, founded in Philadelphia in 1770 by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris (Table 1). The entries explain physical characteristics, iconographic significance, comparative analysis, and, where known, provenance, as well as a historiography of the study of Bonnin and Morris’s production, especially subsequent to the publication in 1893 of E. A. Barber’s epic The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States of America. I physically examined and measured each piece of Bonnin and Morris porcelain during a peripatetic journey in the summer and early fall of 2006 to the relevant collections and institutions. The most striking attribute of this group is the wide range of quality displayed given the limited number of forms. The bodies vary in paste color, from pure white to gray. The glazes range from clear and evenly applied to thick and opaque to greenish and mottled. The underglaze-blue painted decoration on some is crisp and neatly applied, whereas on others the strokes are thick and haphazard. Some have discernible fritting toward the edges. All, however, are light to the touch and feel somewhat brittle. The idiosyncrasies of these wares make manifest the difficulties inherent in producing such a material under less than ideal circumstances. That acknowledged, it is appropriate to consider Bonnin and Morris’s undertaking a success despite its short life; after all, most porcelain manufactories failed, even British and Continental factories that history calls successes.

Since 1972, when Graham Hood’s seminal work on Bonnin and Morris porcelain was published, seven more soft-paste porcelain wares—three openwork baskets and four pickle stands—have been conventionally accepted as credible members of products made, decorated, and fired at the American China Manufactory. These additional wares have expanded the known range and type of decoration but did not introduce new forms. The nineteen surviving pieces represent only six different forms, yet sherds, invoices, and advertisements suggest there were many more (Table 2).

Among the sherds are a few small, red-enameled pieces, confirming that Bonnin and Morris employed this type of decoration as well as underglaze blue. Given all of the similarities between the English factories and the American China Manufactory—structure, organization, production, and products—it is reasonable to assume that Bonnin and Morris made both blue-and-white and enameled wares. We remain hopeful that examples of the latter will find their way to the art market.

Sauceboats

PLATE 1

In the early 1970s this sauceboat was identified as a product of the American China Manufactory, established by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris in 1770. The small size, thinly molded body, and translucent fluted sides of the sauceboat most closely relate to an example in the Bayou Bend collection (see Plate 2). A single bisque sherd of a fluted sauceboat was recovered in the archaeological excavations at the factory site. The profile of the top edge of the form mimics the lobes of the shells on the factory’s pickle stands.

Each side of the sauceboat is decorated in an underglaze blue chinoiserie manner, depicting two houses—one a single story, the other a two-story—within a stylized landscape. The separately molded and applied scroll handle is accented with blue dashes (fig. 1.1). Beneath the spout are two mirror-image single-story houses flanking a central tree-and-rock motif (fig. 1.2). The border decorations recall familiar English and Continental designs, most borrowed from Chinese porcelains. The interior rim is painted with a dotted diamond border embellished with three-leaved floral sprigs at the handle juncture and on the spout (fig. 1.3). Similar floral sprigs are repeated along the raised base of the sauceboat. Underneath the base is a clearly drawn “P” in underglaze blue, denoting its origin in the Philadelphia factory (fig. 1.4).

Philadelphia collector Robert L. McNeil Jr. acquired the sauceboat in 1971 through Graham Hood, who had purchased it from Mrs. Cameron Macleod (née Mary Morris) of Berwyn, Pennsylvania. It came with no other known history and is a promised gift to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

PLATE 2

This diminutive sauceboat was shown to Arthur Clement, curator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (now Brooklyn Museum), in 1951. When he observed that light was able to pass through the sides of the sauceboat, he was the first to proclaim that Bonnin and Morris had succeeded in producing porcelain, albeit a soft-paste variety.1 The sauceboat was owned by Mrs. George K. Stout of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts. During World War II Mrs. Stout lived in Philadelphia, where she attended a rummage sale at Agnes Irwin School given by the alumnae. She was initially drawn to the sauceboat because she thought it was Bow or Worcester, but when she saw the “P” mark on its underside she recognized it from articles she had read in Antiques as the mark of the Bonnin and Morris factory.2 Mrs. Stout hastened to purchase the piece at its marked price—10¢!

The repetition of the delicate vertical fluting that makes up the body of this sauceboat and the molding of its base is a familiar pattern in English porcelain of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, responding to a similar style of English silver of the early eighteenth century. Although the landscapes on each side and on the front underneath the spout (fig. 2.2) are characteristic of the decoration used on related English sauceboats, the interior painting, which emphasizes the lines of the molded flutes, is unique. Each of the flutes is delineated at their low point by a series of six circles, descending in graduated size into the bowl of the sauceboat; the concave element is accentuated by half moons, also descending in graduated sizes (fig. 2.3). The diaper pattern that extends along the inside of the smooth, unfluted spout—borrowed from popular and readily available Chinese models—is a more familiar decoration for the inside border of sauceboats. As with the previous example, a “P” in underglaze blue is present on the base (fig. 2.4).

The sauceboat was acquired in 1983 for Bayou Bend by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, through antique dealers J. Garrison and Diana Stradling of New York. (Also included in the sale was a lottery ticket, numbered 430, from the 1771 lottery conducted to raise funds for the continuance of the American China Manufactory.) The sauceboat was missing its handle. Close examination revealed two junctures for the points of attachment. Using as a guide the similarly designed sauceboat in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see Plate 1), a replacement handle was fabricated, restoring the piece to its original form (fig. 2.1).3

PLATE 3

This sauceboat was the second piece of porcelain recognized as a product of the American China Manufactory. Mrs. Miles White (née Virginia Purviance Bonsal) of Baltimore purchased the sauceboat in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on August 16, 1915. An avid antiques collector and patroness of the arts, Mrs. White was curious about her purchase and sent the sauceboat to Edwin AtLee Barber (1851–1916), then director of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, the predecessor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Barber responded,

In 1936 Dr. Samuel W. Woodhouse Jr. purchased the sauceboat at the auction of Mrs. Miles White’s collection at the American Art Association’s Anderson Galleries in New York.2 Brooklyn Museum of Art curator Arthur W. Clement, who in the early 1940s began installing the museum’s new American ceramics galleries, became interested in Woodhouse’s rare American “earthenware” sauceboat. Woodhouse, who had served the Philadelphia Museum both as interim director (1923–1925) and as associate director (1925–1927), was increasingly drawn to the scholarship of the decorative arts and the artisans who made them. Despite his long affiliation with the Philadelphia Museum, he chose in 1942 to sell his sauceboat to the Brooklyn Museum of Art (now Brooklyn Museum). At the time Woodhouse knew of only two other Bonnin and Morris survivors: the fruit basket at the Philadelphia Museum and “one other fruit dish known to me.”

This asymmetrical sauceboat effectively captures the stylistic elements of the rococo. In form, the lines of the piece resemble those of contemporary silver sauceboats. The simulated chased molding adds dimension to the already curvaceous form with shells and volutes punctuating the rim of the body, the double-scroll handle, and the base (fig. 3.1). The ruffle-edged C-scrolls create reserves for painted decoration. The composition of the painted decoration is also borrowed from English sauceboats, even in the choice of a single reserve with a Chinese landscape on the sides and decorative flowers and abstract diaper patterns on the spout and edge. Although the style of painting differs somewhat, the composition of a single-story and a two-story house flanking a central tree is the same as that on the Philadelphia Museum sauceboat (fig. 3.2).

While they borrowed ubiquitous English decoration, the placement of a landscape with two houses at the front, underneath the spout, is unique to Bonnin and Morris. The decorators seemed determined to fill any empty space on the surface, even that between the ruffle-edged C-scrolls on the body and the handle. Like some English examples, the inside of the sauceboat is embellished with a small landscape detail (fig. 3.3), and, as on the other sauceboats, the base is marked with an underglaze blue “P” (fig. 3.4).

The sauceboat was first compared to Worcester by Edwin AtLee Barber and John Meredith Graham, and then to Bow and to Chaffers’s Liverpool wares by Graham Hood. Then, in a letter sent to Hood in 1981, the sauceboat was noted by Ian O’Riordan, assistant keeper of art at the City Museum & Art Gallery in Plymouth, England, as most closely derived from those made at the Plymouth factory of William Cookworthy, which operated from 1767 to 1770.3 Andrew Duché had sent kaolin clay from Georgia to Cookworthy—among other British potteries—in 1745. In 1816 Plymouth chronicler William Burt interviewed a former Cookworthy porcelain factory employee, who recounted that “While [Cookworthy’s factory] continued at Plymouth there was such a demand at home and abroad, particularly in America, for its articles, which consisted of enamelled and blue and white china, of all descriptions, both ornamental and useful, that they could hardly be made fast enough.”4 Indeed, the mold for the sauceboat under discussion here does seem to derive from a Plymouth sauceboat, although the decorators devised their own scheme for the decoration.5

This sauceboat was chosen for the cover of Clement’s Notes on American Ceramics, 1607–1943, published by the Brooklyn Museum in 1944.

Covered Baskets

PLATE 4

The basket illustrated here, which is missing its cover, is one of two examples of this form to survive from Bonnin and Morris’s production (Plate 4). The fineness of the pure white body and its clear, even glaze could account for its mistaken identity in the early twentieth century by Edwin AtLee Barber, the leading authority and advocate for American pottery and porcelain. The basket was purchased by Francis P. Garvan from Barber’s estate auction, which took place on December 10–11, 1917, at Samuel T. Freeman and Co., auctioneers, in Philadelphia. In the auction’s catalog, which Barber wrote before his death, he described the Bonnin and Morris basket as a cup or bowl:

When the piece was donated to the Yale University Art Gallery in 1931, the accession card perpetuated the notion that it was English, made in the manufactory of Seth Pennington in Liverpool between 1760 and 1790. An unknown person on an unknown date crossed out that attribution and wrote, in pencil, “Bonnin and Morris, Philadelphia.” This might have occurred about 1951, when Arthur Clement declared that Mrs. George K. Stout’s similarly marked sauceboat (see Plate 2) was indeed translucent to light and therefore porcelain, suggesting for the first time that Bonnin and Morris succeeded in their claim of producing soft-paste porcelain.2

In the third edition of his seminal work The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States (1909) Barber wrote:

Because at this time Barber did not believe that Bonnin and Morris wares were porcelain, he would not have attributed the basket to the Southwark factory, although he did associate its design and body with contemporary Bow examples, which undoubtedly served as models for Bonnin and Morris designs. Fortunately, the basket was preserved at Yale while it was reassessed and reclassified; unfortunately, the cover was lost sometime between Barber’s estate sale in 1917 and 1931, when Garvan donated it to Yale without its cover.

The basket’s pure white body and the precise lines of the painted decoration distinguish it from some of the other Bonnin and Morris wares, which have more blurred decoration and gray-green glaze. Like the Colonial Williamsburg basket (see Plate 5), this example was formed in a two-part press mold in which the porcelain body was pressed into the sides of the mold, leaving gentle depressions on the inside walls of the basket. The straight-sided walls flare out only slightly and are punctuated by the familiar interlocking circles and horizontal supports found on the manufactory’s openwork fruit baskets. The delicate molded and underglaze blue decorated floral rosettes that conceal the intersections of the circles and the horizontal struts are considerably more restrained than the larger, five-petal rosettes on the openwork fruit baskets and lend a look of control to the overall design (fig. 4.1). The missing cover was likely similar in design and execution to the cover of the basket at Colonial Williamsburg. The glaze is evenly applied and the details of the underglaze blue decoration, finely executed by the sure hand of the decorator, are clear and distinct. The neatness of the hand-painted cell pattern decoration underneath the pierced work represents a quality almost uncharacteristic of the other Bonnin and Morris pieces, suggesting a different hand was at work here. The base is marked with the characteristic “P” (fig. 4.2).

The intended function of such covered baskets has long been conjectured. While there are no known English prototypes for the form, pattern books of late-eighteenth-century English creamware illustrate similar—though not identical—covered baskets labeled as “pierced chestnut or orange basket.”4 The diminutive size of the basket, however, challenges this function and suggests that it served as a reliquary for another, smaller delicacy.

PLATE 5

Doubly regarded for its charm and firm provenance in a prominent Philadelphia family, the covered basket illustrated here (Plate 5) captures all of the visual attributes that the Bonnin and Morris manufactory could have hoped to achieve, particularly for a form unique to their manufactory. On both its base and its cover the small basket combines familiar interlocking circles with a contemporary hand-painted diamond design borrowed from the popular decorative vocabulary of Chinese porcelain (fig. 5.1). The proportions of the cover to the base and of the pierced areas to the painted bands, especially in the absence of any direct English or Continental prototypes, show a highly competent eye in its design and manufacture. Clearly, the level of effort required to produce this diminutive basket represents a categorical achievement for the incipient American manufactory.

Like the covered basket in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery (see Plate 4), this example was formed in a two-part press mold. The seams where the two parts were joined are easily readable and distinguished by several firing cracks that occurred at those seams. At the inside of the molded base, the walls of the basket are depressed (fig. 5.2). The pierced interlocking circles were scored with a compass—the sharp lines are still visible—and the interstices were then removed (fig. 5.3).

Kiln scars on the footrim suggest that the basket was biscuit fired standing upright, as its design intends. However, after the underglaze blue decoration was added and the clear lead glaze applied, the basket was turned upside down. Consequently, the still viscous glaze moved when the basket was turned over, forming a V-shaped pool on the inside of the basket. The basket was fired upside down as suggested by kiln scars on the top edge, scars that occur when leather-hard ceramics are placed on triangular-shaped kiln furniture inside a sagger. The upside-down direction in which the underglaze-blue decoration “moved” during firing is further evidence of this unusual glaze-firing position.

The cover of the basket was fired at both stages standing on its bottom edge, where there are three kiln scars. The small, stylized floral rosettes on the cover and the base were molded, as was the large rose that forms the finial. The use of these finer, small rosettes is a departure from those used on the openwork baskets. While evidence of the latter is present in the archaeological material from the factory site, the finer rosettes that occur on both covered baskets are not present in the excavated sample.

The well-modeled finial includes both the flower element and its stem, with the rose itself askew and not at the exact center of the cover (fig. 5.4). In contrast to this carefully modeled finial, only one archaeological example provides evidence of a simple, thrown example made for a teapot lid (see p. 38, fig. 45, in this volume). Both the base of the basket (fig. 5.5) and the underside of the cover (fig. 5.6) are marked with a “P” (fig. 5.7).

The tiny basket’s function is unclear, although it likely was used as some part of food service. It descended in the family of Catherine Deshler Roberts (1752–1837), who was the daughter of Philadelphia merchant David Deshler (1712–1792) and Mary LeFevre Deshler (1715–1774). In 1775 Catherine married Robert Roberts (1740–1791) of Maryland, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth Roberts Canby (1781–1868) and Esther Morton Roberts (1785–1868). Elizabeth married James Canby (1781–1858) of Wilmington, Delaware. Esther, who never married, inherited the Bonnin and Morris covered basket and gave it to her nephew Samuel Canby II (1811–1875) and his wife, Elizabeth Clifford Morris Canby (1813–1892). The basket then passed to their daughter Elizabeth Morris Canby (1848–1933), who in 1875 married Charles Grubb Rumford (1841–1901). In Elizabeth’s Rumford’s 1880s inventory of her valuable wares, the basket appears among various porcelain and glass as number 173: “Box open worked, blue & white—1775 Catherine Roberts—Esther M. Roberts—Elizabeth C. Canby.” Their son Samuel Canby Rumford (1876–1950) and his wife, Mary Beatrix Tyson Rumford (1865–1962), gave it to their son Lewis Rumford II (1905–1997) and his wife, May Rose Clymer Rumford (1912–1998). Their daughter Beatrix Tyson Rumford was an assistant curator at Colonial Williamsburg when, in 1968, Graham Hood addressed the topic of the Bonnin and Morris factory and the 1967 excavation of its site at the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum. Mary was in the audience and excitedly returned home to Baltimore to reexamine the basket she and her husband had inherited. Beatrix took it to Williamsburg, where curators John Graham II and John C. Austin established that its physical attributes were consistent with others conventionally accepted as from the Philadelphia factory. Hood confirmed that the covered basket was closely related to the one in Yale’s collection (which is missing its cover) and declared the Rumford piece to be from Bonnin and Morris’s factory. In 1969 the Rumfords donated the covered basket to Colonial Williamsburg: “This is a decidedly ‘no-strings-attached’ gift, but until you have evidence that Bonnin and Morris porcelain was in Williamsburg, I hope you won’t feel that you must put it in one of the exhibition buildings—I know it will be in good company in your study collection.”1


Openwork Baskets

PLATE 6

On February 22, 1841, Dr. James Mease (1771–1846) wrote to the Franklin Institute about the gift (Plate 6) he was presenting to them.1

On May 28, 1892, curator Dalton Dorr, director of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art), located at Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, offered an honorary curatorship to his acquaintance and avid pottery collector and scholar Edwin AtLee Barber:

At the time, Barber was chief of the Department of Archaeology for the permanent exhibit installations at Fairmount Park, as well as an officer in the United States Civil Service and in the process of writing his seminal Pottery and Porcelain of the United States (1893). He accepted the position on May 31 and received the title Honorary Curator of the Department of American Pottery and Porcelain. Borrowing from his knowledge of the numerous collections—archaeological, specimen, and otherwise—throughout the region, Barber immediately determined what the museum needed. He recommended that Dorr “procure for your collection the pieces of [American ceramic] ware that are now in the Franklin Institute” in order to provide a framework for the Pennsylvania Museum’s collection.3 On June 29 William H. Wahl of the Franklin Institute wrote to Dorr that “the curators of the Institute have authorized me to permit the removal of the specimens of china and porcelain in our possession to be deposited with your institution under suitable guarantee that they will be properly cared for, labeled, and displayed. . . .”4 The broken Bonnin and Morris fruit basket, accompanied by the letter from Dr. Mease, was first on the list of wares that Barber wished to have at the Pennsylvania Museum, along with such treasures as the 1816 Meade vase, molds for Tucker porcelain, and other examples of early Pennsylvania pottery. In 1943 museum director Fiske Kimball orchestrated the exchange with the Franklin Institute that made the thirteen various and highly prized pottery specimens part of the museum’s permanent collection.5

Mease’s letter and a now missing (but photographed) label on the bottom of the basket that confirmed its provenance make the museum’s openwork fruit basket—cited for years as the only documented survivor from the experimental Philadelphia factory—the Rosetta stone for Bonnin and Morris’s wares. Because the body was not translucent and the glaze was so thick, many scholars, including Arthur Clement and Barber, believed that Bonnin and Morris were not successful at producing the “china” (i.e., the porcelain) that they advertised but rather that they were successful only at producing earthenware that imitated English porcelain in design and decoration.6 It was not until Arthur Clement’s declaration in 1951 that the small sauceboat currently in the Bayou Bend collection (see Plate 2) was translucent that Bonnin and Morris’s advertised claims were substantiated. It took several more years of examination and testing, largely encouraged by Graham Hood’s mounting interest in the Bonnin and Morris factory and the archaeology of the factory site, before all of the known wares were declared, indeed, soft-paste porcelain.7

The design of this basket form is strongly derived from those made by the Worcester porcelain factory. The painted decoration at the center of the bowl on the Bonnin and Morris basket (fig. 6.1) is similar to many English examples decorated with a floral bouquet with a butterfly or moth sipping nectar. This painted design is repeated on five of the seven known Bonnin and Morris openwork fruit baskets.

The basket’s openwork consists of interlocking circles that were scored with a compass to delineate where the clay walls were to be cut away. The score lines remain visible on baskets from the factory—a characteristic also seen on Worcester and other English soft-paste porcelain examples. Molded five-petal rosettes are placed at the interstices of these overlapping circles and the horizontal struts that link them (fig. 6.2). This five-petal rosette occurs on all of the Bonnin and Morris openwork baskets and appears to have been taken from a single master mold.

Several observations can be made about the quality of the Philadelphia Museum’s basket. The widths of the interlocking circles vary greatly, suggesting an unpracticed hand in scoring and cutting the interstices. Moreover, the quality of the underglaze-blue decoration fluctuates; the border is blurred, and the border and molded flowers have a darker blue hue than the painted central motif. The prolific output of blue-and-white wares from the Worcester factory has permitted the various designs to be carefully classified and named—for example, the transfer-printed Pinecone pattern, which was commonly used as the central motif on Worcester openwork fruit baskets (see fig. 6.3). The printed design at the center of the Worcester baskets fits perfectly within the reserve, the blue pigment is distributed evenly between the center and the border, and the decoration bears sharp, crisp details.

As Dr. Mease noted in his 1841 missive, the Philadelphia Museum’s fruit basket was donated to the Franklin Institute with about one-third of its openwork missing. Careful conservation has filled and glazed the missing elements, although, in order to not mistake the restored area, it has not replicated the underglaze blue decoration. One other element of note is the so-called in-process repair at the top of one of the cut circles (fig. 6.4). Especially conspicuous because it is undecorated, the segment represents a break that must have occurred in the second firing of the fruit basket. An undecorated piece was added to cover the break, and glaze was used as an adhesive. The basket was then low-fired to melt the glaze and secure the broken element in place. That such a repaired piece was sold from the factory and thus represented an example of Bonnin and Morris’s production speaks clearly to the sometimes haphazard nature of the factory.

PLATE 7

This pierced basket serving dish expresses the mid-eighteenth-century rococo style, with its ornamentation of applied flowers, abstract designs, and floral bouquets in underglaze blue. This basket is the most diminutive surviving from the American China Manufactory (Plate 7, fig. 7.1) and follows the same decorative program as the larger sizes.

The challenges inherent in producing porcelain that plagued Bonnin and Morris are evident on this example. The sides swell unevenly and the underglaze blue decoration, which undoubtedly was painted with careful precision, has blurred on the interior and the rim. On the applied rosettes, the glaze carried the decorative line outside the intended area (fig. 7.2). While an imperfect lead glaze accounts for part of this, the impurities of both the clay body and the difficulties of maintaining a stable temperature in the kiln also contributed to such defects. This example is marked on the base with the capital “P” (fig. 7.3).

New York City dealers J. Garrison and Diana Stradling acquired the basket from a private owner who had purchased it from a local source in Schoharie, New York, with a history of having been owned by Sir William Johnson (1715–1774) of Johnson Hall in Johnstown, New York.1 Because the Johnson family had been ardent Loyalists during the American Revolution (supporting King George III, whose father, King George II, had made Johnson a baronet and gave him five thousand acres for his role in negotiating peace with the Iroquois), their valuables were confiscated and sold at large sales in 1788. The proceeds from the sales benefited the new American government, which was saddled by debt incurred during the War of Independence. This Bonnin and Morris basket was apparently among those sales, having been acquired by Sir William Johnson, who purchased such luxury goods through a Philadelphia agent. The Stradlings sold the basket to a private collector in 1992, and it was promptly put on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

PLATE 8

PLATE 9

Baring identical marks on their base, a similar gray-toned porcelain body, the same opaque glaze with rust-colored fritting on the edges, and having the same provenance, these openwork fruits baskets, of which seven survive, are companion pieces of the same commission.

The painted compositions found on these baskets take their design cues from Worcester prototypes (figs. 8.1, 9.1). The painted elements, which include a moth or butterfly sipping nectar from the blossoming rose at the center, copy Worcester’s so-called Rose-Centered Spray Group, either directly or from popular books of decorative images.1 The borders of the fruit baskets were hand painted with a floral and scroll pattern. The design, painted in a resist technique, is reminiscent of those on contemporary Lowestoft porcelain.2

After the baskets were thrown and wheel turned, the interlocking circles were scored with a compass and segments pushed out to form the pierced sides. As on their Worcester counterparts, scoring lines remain visible on these fruit baskets despite having the relief-molded, five-petal flowers at the intersections of the interlocking circles and horizontal struts (figs. 8.2, 9.2). The base of each basket contains an enigmatic “Z” in underglaze blue (figs. 8.3, 9.3), which Graham Hood suggests is an “S” in reverse, referring to the Southwark location of the factory. The “Z” mark might have chronological significance, although the “P” and “S” marks themselves could have been used throughout the life of the factory.3

The individuals who sold these baskets to their respective institutions were cousins and acknowledged the baskets as having been together as a pair and belonging to their grandmother, Anna Gardiner. On the base of the basket in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, collection (Plate 9) is an old label that states: “Handed down from Grandmother Gardiner’s family. Presumably from the Whitehead family” (fig. 9.4). In 1771 Daniel Whitehead (1751–1792) married his second cousin Catherine Willett (1755–1800) in Flushing, Queens, New York, their hometown. Their son, Thomas Willett Whitehead (1790–1871), was born in Flushing and used Willett as his given name. He moved to Philadelphia and in 1815 married Philadelphian Maria Elaway (1794–1871); the baskets probably came from her family, or were acquired in the course of her marriage. Willett made his living as a ship’s carpenter and resided with his family in the Southwark section of Philadelphia; he and his wife both died there in 1871.4 Their daughter, Anna Manlove Whitehead (1839–1918), married David Evans Gardiner (1834–1890). In 1977 curator Jonathan Fairbanks convinced the Gardiners’ grandchildren—Horace Gardiner Richards (1906–1982) and Marie Ann Richards (1907–1984), who had no heirs of their own—to sell the basket they had inherited from their mother and grandmother (Plate 9) to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The other basket (Plate 8) descended to Elizabeth P. Burnett, a first cousin of the Gardiners, who lived in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. She sold her basket to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1970 at the urging of curator Graham Hood, who successfully convinced her of the benefit of such a historically important object going to a public institution rather than sitting in a private cupboard.

PLATE 10

Similar in design and decoration to the other openwork baskets made by the American China Manufactory, the use of transfer printing and the sheer size of this example distinguish it. Measuring more than 8 inches in diameter, it consists of seventeen interlocking circles and seems to be the largest openwork basket the factory made. Next in size are baskets with fifteen interlocking circles and a diameter of 6 7/8 inches, of which three are known to survive (Plates 8, 9, and 11). The two smallest surviving baskets (Plates 6 and 7) have only fourteen interlocking circles and a total diameter of 5 7/8–6 inches. The variety of sizes offered by Bonnin and Morris is further indication of their imitation of blue-and-white wares made by the Worcester factory in England, which offered not only different-sized round baskets but also oblong baskets and baskets with and without handles.

As late as August 1774, when the American China Manufactory was advertised for sale, the list of equipment included “a rolling press, for copper-plate printing; and other articles made use of in the China Factory.”1 The designs were probably engraved onto a copperplate by one of the several engravers working in Philadelphia in the early 1770s. By investing in a library of engraved plates that could be used to embellish a variety of wares, manufactories were able to reproduce particularly popular designs when creating sets of china. The transfer-printed design at the center of this example consists of four separately delineated elements (fig. 10.1). The largest of these decorations resembles a chrysanthemum-centered group from Worcester’s extensive repertoire of printed designs. As on their other baskets, Bonnin and Morris included a moth or a butterfly, although here the insect is not sipping nectar from a flower. Two other small sprays of flowers and leaves make up the other two decorative elements. This exact print occurs on an excavated dish illustrated in Graham Hood’s article (see fig. 23 on p. 29 of this volume.) The intersections of the interlocking circles are embellished with the familiar applied five-petal rosettes highlighted with blue (fig. 10.2). On the base is the underglaze blue capital “P” trailed by four periods, an unusual variation of their mark (fig. 10.3).

The bowl has a history in George Anthony Morris’s family, purportedly owned by John Morris (1709–1782), brother of George’s father, Joseph (1714–1785). When John’s son William (1735–1766) died, the basket descended to William’s daughter Deborah Morris Smith (1760–1822), then to her son, Daniel B. Smith (1792–1833), then to Daniel’s son Benjamin R. Smith (b. 1825). Benjamin’s daughter, Esther Morton Smith (d. 1942), left it to the five children of her sibling, who eventually consigned the basket to Spring Mill Antiques Shop. The bowl was sold to Pennsylvania dealers Matthew and Elizabeth Sharpe. Winterthur Museum acquired it from the Sharpes in 1959.

PLATE 11

Among the seven reticulated fruit baskets that survive from the factory of Bonnin and Morris (Plates 6–12), the profoundly successful design of the landscape decoration on this example is unique (fig. 11.1). The distinctive subject matter is enhanced by the painting’s quality and clarity, also observed on the rim’s floral, leaf, and scroll decoration. The form derives from contemporary Worcester prototypes, and the basket’s size places it within the medium range of the known baskets with fifteen interlocking circles connected by horizontal struts (fig. 11.2).

For the decoration on the rim of the bowl, flowers resembling the relief-molded flowers on the outside face of the basket alternate with the silhouette of a leaf or peony, interspersed with decorative scrolls. Painted using a wax resist technique, this decoration is uniform on all of the surviving openwork fruit baskets.

The composition and execution of the painted landscape distinguish this basket among other examples. Despite the inclusion of a Chinese fishing boat at the center, the remainder of the composition depicts an English or Dutch landscape, complete with smoke rising from the chimney of a tile-roofed house situated next to willowy trees leaning over worn riverbanks. At the upper left is a larger, walled complex of buildings with a turret, and birds fly over the entire scene.

A label, formerly adhered to the bottom of the base, reads, “Pennington ware. England / This dish was found under / the outside flight of steps / leading up to the slave’s / quarters of our house, the / Hdqrts of the 7th Reg. C.[onnecticut] V.[olunteers] / By one Jopesh [sic] R. Hawley / (Harriet Forte) in 1863 / Fernandina) / Florida) Kate Forte.” For many years the “P” mark on the bottom (fig. 11.3) was thought to identify the factory of Seth Pennington in Liverpool, England. The note credits Joseph R. Hawley (1826–1905), a captain in the 7th regiment of the Connecticut Volunteers during the Civil War, with finding the basket in Florida.1 Fernandina is located in the northernmost corner of Florida’s east coast and would have been a logical port for the disembarkation of the regiment, which made its way eighty miles due west to Olustee, Florida, where Hawley served with distinction at the Battle of Olustee on February 20, 1864.

If the information on the label is correct, it is a mystery how the basket traveled from its place of manufacture in Philadelphia to a home in Florida, where it was discarded under a set of stairs, and subsequently retrieved by a Civil War hero. Information about the Forte family has not come to light. The piece eventually entered the antiques market, where it was purchased in the late 1960s or early 1970s by Mrs. Richard Stiner, an appraiser from Hamden, Connecticut.

When the basket resurfaced in the 1970s, its place of manufacture was cited as Liverpool. Curators and ceramics connoisseurs carefully examined it, observing the basket’s many anomalies but acknowledging just as many similarities to the known oeuvre of Bonnin and Morris’s wares, especially to the fruit basket in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Plate 6), whose provenance is unquestioned. As with the covered basket in the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery (Plate 4), the sophistication of the composition, the surety of the hand that painted it, and the evenness and clarity of the glaze were considered too fine to be from the factory of Bonnin and Morris. Using a sample removed by Graham Hood, the clay body was tested at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The test showed the basket to be “bone-ash porcelain containing a rather coarse alpha-quartz factor—identical to the other pieces tested, including [sherds] from the site.”2

In addition to the caliber of its design and execution, this basket’s striking composition stands out against the other baskets, whose hand-painted and transfer-printed designs recur predictably. Indeed, rather than regarding the composition as incongruous or a design anomaly, one cannot help but ponder the range of the factory’s work and the extent to which Bonnin and Morris dared to make forms unique to their factory.

PLATE 12

In an announcement published in the Pennsylvania Chronicle in December 1772, Gousse Bonnin declared that, as “Acting Proprietor” of the American China Manufactory (his partner, George Anthony Morris, had relocated to North Carolina), he intended to auction, in two lots, the factory’s site, buildings, and equipment. The auction would take place at the London Coffee House in Philadelphia on Monday, December 21, and Wednesday, December 23, 1772. Although some, such as Josiah Wedgwood’s nephew Thomas Byerley, knew of the declining conditions at the factory and had predicted this outcome, Bonnin gave no reason for the sale other than he was “under a necessity of embarking with his family for England, on board one of the first Spring ships, without the least prospect of ever returning to this continent.”1 Successive advertisements refer to the demise of the factory’s production, its impending sale, and Bonnin’s imminent departure. By the spring of 1773, however, apparently no auction had occurred. Similar announcements show the same lots and equipment were scheduled to be auctioned on May 31, 1773, then rescheduled several times. The sale of the manufactory finally took place in October 1774, one year after Bonnin had departed for England and a year after Morris had died in North Carolina.

In light of this history, it is not surprising that this small openwork basket provoked a stir in 1990 when it was offered for sale at Skinner’s Auction House in Boston. The date given in the inscription—April 23, 1773—was presumed to be the date of manufacture and therefore challenged the long-held understanding that when the American China Manufactory was offered for sale in late 1772, it had ceased producing porcelain. Close scrutiny of the successive advertisements of the sale of the factory in 1773 and 1774 does suggest, however, that it had not sold or ceased production. The factory’s May 3, 1773, auction notice in the Pennsylvania Chronicle claims that the works were operational:

 Woven through the familiar interlocking circles is a leafy grapevine with molded clusters of grapes and the leaves of a rose bush (fig. 12.1) derived from a Chelsea example.2 On the outside of the bowl, applied at the junctures of the interlocking circles, are stylized, four-petal molded rosettes (fig. 12.2) picked out in blue, the only applied color on the primary surface. The twisted-rope handles (fig. 12.3) at the long ends of the bowl further distinguish this basket from the others. Large molded roses are applied along the vine work (fig. 12.4) and smaller molded roses are placed at opposite ends near the handles. Overall, the appearance of this example is less stiff and severe than that of the others.

The body of the basket is whiter than the gray body of most of the Bonnin and Morris wares, and the glaze, which lacks the greenish tint of the others, is not evenly distributed. Its texture is rough, with a foamlike profile. The underglaze blue on the rosettes ran down the sides of the basket during the firing, revealing not only that the basket was fired while standing upright, but that there was a flaw in the glaze and the heat was unevenly distributed during the firing. The sides of the basket fell outward from their intended angle and settled at an inconsistent height, suggesting the structure was flawed during firing, not when it was formed. The quality of the surface and the appearance that the porcelain body is slumped or melted support a presumption that the basket was overfired. Despite the basket’s inferior overall quality—even when compared to other wares made at the factory, and especially to European prototypes—it descended in one family before it was consigned for sale.

The tradition of inscribing a commemorative date and place is common to many types of ceramics. Yet the detail of this inscription (fig. 12.5) is intriguing. What happened on April 23, 1773? Research has not revealed any seemingly relevant significance to the day, which was a Friday. The notation “4.7” possibly indicates information pertinent to the factory—the last day of firing production before the impending sale, perhaps, or a demarcation between batches of porcelain.

The emergence of this extraordinary basket caused scholars, dealers, and curators to reexamine the advertisements for the sale of the Bonnin and Morris factory vis-à-vis the factory’s production activity. Given the challenging economic context of colonial America, the potters and decorators of the American China Manufactory could not easily be transplanted, so it seems logical to assume that such skilled labor would continue to produce and sell what they could, while they could.

Pickle Dish

PLATE 13

This pickle dish, a cast scallop shell resting on three conical feet, is the only known Bonnin and Morris example of this form to survive. Unlike its more complex relative, the tripartite dish pickle stand (Plates 14–19), the single shell retains its naturally occurring “ears” or “wings” at its hinge. It was used to hold pickled fruits and vegetables, served during the dessert course in upper-class households in colonial Philadelphia. Sets of such single-shell dishes, one of the most common forms in English soft-paste porcelain, were often arranged around a larger dish as part of a centerpiece yet, because they were freestanding, could be moved about the table when needed.

The hand-painted chinoiserie scene on the scalloped surface differs from the decoration on the shells of the surviving pickle stands, which have rococo floral and, in two instances, armorial designs. The composition of the scene is most similar to that on the sauceboat in the Bayou Bend collection (Plate 2) but shares elements seen on the printed Fisherman pattern used by Worcester. Unlike most of its English prototypes, the painted decoration is oriented outward—that is, to be viewed facing the scalloped edge rather than the straight edge where the top and bottom shells of live mollusks meet (fig. 13.1).

The painting is somewhat coarse, lacking some of the acute detail that thinner brushes working in the same style achieved. The blue pigment of the painted edge (see fig. 13.1) is similar to but much deeper and darker than that used on Bonnin and Morris’s pickle stands. Both the dish and the stands were formed from large, naturally occurring scallop shells, and all are supported by conical feet (fig. 13.2). The “P” mark of the Bonnin and Morris factory was painted in underglaze blue on the back of the shell (fig. 13.3).

This particular survivor of the American China Manufactory descended in the family of Philadelphia Quaker merchant Richard Waln (1737–1799) and his wife, Elizabeth. In 1772 Waln purchased property in Upper Freehold, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. By 1774 he had completed building Walnford, which remained the family home for at least two hundred years. The dish was known to Edwin AtLee Barber, and in the early 1940s it was loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art by Mrs. Richard Waln Meirs, who was residing at Walnford. She later married Benjamin Rush and by 1950 had donated the piece to the museum.1


PLATE 14

Bonnin and Morris’s American China Manufactory manufactured a two-tiered pickle stand similar to a type produced by the Bow porcelain factory in London (Plate 14). The bottom level consists of three shallow dishes, molded from scallop shells, that stand on conical feet. The shells are attached to a central stalk, which is capped by a small, stylized fluted bowl or top cup. The stalk is adorned with molded marine-life elements, gathered at the base and climbing upward.

The six surviving pickle stands made at the American China Manufactory are remarkably consistent in structure, dimensions, and design, though each has nuances and variations typical of hand-produced ceramic objects. The increasingly ceremonial dining rituals of the mid-eighteenth century required specially conceived and designed ceramic and silver wares with their own distinct purpose. The preparation and presentation of dessert courses was just such a ritual, and the pickle stand is one of its specialized forms.1

The overall form and decorative agenda of the pickle stands are derived from those made at English factories such as Bow, Plymouth, and Worcester. The lower shell-shaped dishes on the majority of the English pickle stands were very deep and cuplike. The dishes of the Bonnin and Morris pickle stands were molded from actual shells, which yielded a significantly shallower but lighter and more elegant form than the related English ones. As a result, the pickle stand, without doubt Bonnin and Morris’s most ambitious form, is a distinct form and an aesthetic success.

Of the six extant Bonnin and Morris pickle stands, this is the only one that is devoid of any painted decoration except for the blue shell-edging on the outer edges of the shells and bowl. (The other five are painted with floral bouquets or armorials.) Unlike the other pickle stands, the marine elements on the stalk of this plain example are not highlighted in blue (fig. 14.1). Nevertheless, the delicate forms and acute details of the bowl, the three large scallop shells, and the various shells and coral shoots of the encrusted stalk constitute an exceptional sculptural composition and permit the subtle color of the porcelain to be appreciated. The base (fig. 14.2) is marked with a very distinctive capital “P” in underglaze blue (fig. 14.3). In use the bowl and shells of a pickle stand would have been overflowing with candied nuts and sweetmeats, and the lack of decoration on this example perhaps informs us that its owner may have regarded the stand as a solely functional ware.

The original owner of the plain pickle stand illustrated here is not known. The stand was discovered in the spring of 1981 at a yard sale in Long Island, New York, then sold at Sotheby’s in January 1982.

PLATE 15

When it was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1945, this blue-and-white underglaze painted pickle stand was the first example of this form to be firmly recognized as a product of the American China Manufactory of Bonnin and Morris. Although the single-shell pickle dish in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum (see Plate 13) had been identified earlier, the more sophisticated two-tiered pickle stand was known to exist only through sales receipts of patrons John Cadwalader and Thomas Wharton.1

Undoubtedly the most celebrated of the factory’s forms, the pickle stand, encrusted with molded marine life (fig. 15.1), was also the most expensive—15 shillings each, according to surviving documents. Each shell and bowl is hand-painted in the characteristic Bonnin and Morris blue and white, with familiar bouquets of flowers above which insects hover, giving the illusion that they are contemplating the succulent nectar within the lush flowers (figs. 15.2, 15.3). The glaze of the pickle stand is somewhat pitted, likely the result of being slightly overfired. The stand bears the conventionally accepted “P” mark of the factory (fig. 15.4).

The Brooklyn Museum of Art acquired the pickle stand in 1945, when the Manhattan antiques firm of Ginsburg and Levy took it there to have curator John Graham examine it. On the chance that it could have hailed from the fabled Philadelphia factory, Ginsburg and Levy had purchased the pickle stand at the Winter Antiques Show in 1945 from a picker who had found the curiously ornate and dainty piece at a sale in New Jersey. Nothing more is known about its origin.

PLATE 16

PLATE 17

These two unmarked Bonnin and Morris pickle stands—one owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the other by the Smithsonian Institution—are believed to have been made as a pair. Although their provenances are not well documented, they are best understood as companion pieces. Both share nearly identical compositions of the molded and applied marine encrustations (fig. 16.1, 17.1). The finely painted underglaze blue floral decoration found on the shells and bowls of the two stands closely relates to the Sweetmeat Stand Rose pattern found on Worcester porcelain (figs. 16.2, 16.3, 17.2, 17.3). Yet Worcester’s blossoming roses, bursting buds, stems, and leaves are prosaic, formulaic, and pencil-like when compared to the realism produced by the various gathers of flowers and the shading of the specific details painted on the Bonnin and Morris examples. As did all decorators, those at Bonnin and Morris relied on printed sources, in this case London publisher Robert Sayer’s The Ladies Amusement; or, Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy (1762) and The Artist’s Vade Mecum (1762), which include the familiar plush flowers, sprigs, and petals and also the butterfly in the top bowl. The floral gathers are set within the three shells and one bowl, with their edges delicately picked out in a manner that highlights the natural curves of the molded edges. This so-called shell edge was a framing device used on rococo French porcelains and other contemporary English porcelain factories. The bases of both pickle stands are unmarked (fig. 17.4).

In the course of performing a routine appraisal for a Philadelphia couple, the appraiser’s curiosity was piqued when he saw the pickle stand now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Plate 16). The stand was inherited from the former owner’s grandmother, Anna Garwood Hooper, of Trenton, New Jersey, who died in 1935.

The stand in Plate 17 was identified by Graham Hood in the home of an individual who had purchased it at a charity auction in California. No previous history was given. On Hood’s recommendation, the Smithsonian Institution purchased the pickle stand with funds provided by the Barra Foundation of Philadelphia.

PLATE 18

PLATE 19

Commissioned and purchased by John and Elizabeth Lloyd Cadwalader of Philadelphia, these pickle stands were among the first items made by the newly established porcelain factory of Bonnin and Morris. The successful form, execution, and decoration of the stands confirm the high skill level of the factory’s craftsmen and the potential of its kilns. A receipt for porcelain made at the American China Manufactory and purchased by John Cadwalader in late December 1770 through the factory’s retail agent, Archibald McElroy, shows the two pickle stands to be the most expensive wares (at 15 shillings apiece), followed by four fruit baskets (10 shillings apiece) and two pairs of sauceboats (about 7 shillings apiece).1 The price charged for these pickle stands reflects the intricacy of their tiered structure, the various elements of the applied decoration requiring separate molds (figs. 18.1, 19.1), and the made-to-order painted decoration. The interior rim of the scalloped top cup is decorated with the English-style floral bouquets and a butterfly similar to that used on the other decorated stands (fig. 18.2). However, the three shells on the bottom tier are personalized with pseudo armorials of the Cadwalader family (figs. 18.3a–c, 19.2a–c). Both stands bear three “P” marks under the base (figs. 19.3, 19.4).

Of the three different insignia, the most readily identifiable decoration is the cipher “JEC” (for John and Elizabeth Cadwalader). Another shell is painted with amorial conventions that include a contrived coat of arms of a shield surrounded by rococo scrolls and foliage with a cross formée pattée fitchée on the left and a lion rampant on the right. The third shell on each stand contains a cross formée pattée fitchée raised on a scrolled rococo bracket. The cross formée pattée fitchée was the crest of the arms bearing Welsh Cadwaladers, adopted by John and his brother Lambert as their coat of arms. As a crest, the cross formée pattée fitchée was properly mounted on a skein, or twisted rope, above a coat of arms. The lion rampant was the coat of arms of the Lloyd family of Maryland, Elizabeth’s family, and she was properly granted permission to use it in this way. Joined—or impaled—as the cross and lion are on the one shell, it represents the marriage of John Cadwalader (à dexter, to the proper right in heraldic language) to Elizabeth Lloyd (à sinister, to the left). While the two shells symbolize the Cadwaladers joined, the achievement of the Cadwalader family is represented in the shell with the single cross formée pattée fitchée.

Wealthy, young, fashionable, and educated, especially in the arts, the Cadwaladers ranked high within the social hierarchy of Philadelphia, and their interest in the porcelain manufactory was multifaceted. John understood how his support for an American luxury goods manufactory encouraged American economic—and thus political—sovereignty. Moreover, as a member of the American Philosophical Society, he possessed both an interest in the alchemical science behind the production of porcelain and an appreciation for the transformation of natural material through skill and inventiveness.

As a rule, the Cadwaladers accepted only the finest in art and material opulence. Elizabeth Lloyd Cadwalader was born in 1742 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the first child and only daughter of Anne Rousby (1721–1769) and Edward Lloyd (1711–1770) of Wye House, Talbot County.2 Her father, Edward—the third of that name and the fourth generation to reign over the Lloyds’ vast amounts of fertile, wheat-producing lands on Maryland’s Eastern Shore—was considered to be one of the wealthiest men in America. A healthy inheritance in 1749 from his uncle Richard Bennett propelled his cash and landholdings even further into the stratosphere.

When John Cadwalader and Elizabeth Lloyd were married on September 25, 1768, Elizabeth’s personal wealth was substantial—her plantations in Maryland totaled more than 3,500 acres, and other assets (slaves, horses, cattle, and silver plate) exceeded £10,000—and wedding gifts of plate and cash boosted her assets. After her mother’s death in May 1769, her father urged John and Elizabeth to acquire a home in Philadelphia. The ensuing refurbishment of the house on Second Street between Spruce and Pine streets in Philadelphia is the most lavish known, requiring the talents of foreign-trained carvers, plasterers, gilders, painters, and upholsterers. Philadelphia chairmaker Benjamin Randolph made ribbon-back, saddleseat side chairs to suit those inherited by Elizabeth and John from her father. Scottish-trained Philadelphia cabinetmaker Thomas AZeck was commissioned to make furniture including a pair of commode card tables, fire screens, a pair of commode sofas, a tea table, an easy chair, and window cornices. The surviving furniture from this commission helps illustrate the Cadwaladers’ taste for English-style rococo decorative arts, such as those Elizabeth received from her parents as wedding gifts and bequests.3 The Cadwaladers’ windows were draped and the furniture upholstered in fringe-edged yellow and blue silk, representing the colors of the Lloyd coat of arms inherited from her father. In 1774 Continental Congress member Silas Deane of Connecticut wrote: “I dined yesterday with Mr. Cadwallader, whose furniture and house exceeds anything I have seen in this city or elsewhere.”4

Their position as the arbiters of style in colonial America’s most populous and fashionable city makes the Cadwaladers’ documented support of the American China Manufactory, not just in their purchases but in the display of locally made wares in their Philadelphia house, an important endorsement of the enterprise. The personalized painted decoration incorporating the joining of his crest and her coat of arms, their cipher, and the ascendancy of his crest more than personalizes the pickle stands—it illustrates the baroque concept that the more marvelous the work of art, the more it expressed the owner’s magnificence. In a culture dominated by such symbols, the importance of these particular Bonnin and Morris pickle stands cannot be overstated.