“Cheap and Cheerful: The Everyday Ceramics of Early New Orleans 1780 – 1840”
Robert Hunter
“Cheap and Cheerful: The Everyday Ceramics of Early New Orleans 1780 – 1840”
Lecture is Saturday August 2, 2014
From 9 to 10 AM
The fashionable, durable, and affordable table, tea, and kitchen wares produced by the British ceramic industry were exported in huge quantities for American consumers. While Chinese, French, or English porcelain was the choice for elite households, the mass-produced British earthenwares served the needs of most levels of society in both urban and rural settings. Ships bringing massive ceramic cargoes to New Orleans supplied consumers along the Mississippi with the simple but elegant blue and green shell-edge and the colorful and exuberant mocha wares.
Archaeologists have recovered thousands of examples of these everyday ceramics from sites throughout New Orleans. The shell-edge pattern, often mistakenly called “feather-edge” could be found on the table in every Southern household. This beautifully illustrated lecture traces the design and production history of these earthenwares including a discussion of their very important aesthetic and symbolic contribution to early Southern domestic interiors.
Bibliography
Robert R. Hunter Jr. and George L. Miller, “English Shell-Edged Earthenware,” The Magazine Antiques 145 (March 1994): 432–43.
Robert Hunter and George L. Miller “Suitable For Framing: Decorated Shell-Edge Earthenware” in Early American Life Volume XL No. 4 August 2009 pp. 8 - 19.
Robert Hunter “Surfaces of Illusion: Mocha and Spatter Ware,” in Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, edited by Jane Katcher, David A. Schorsch, and Ruth Wolfe. 2006 pp. 206-229
George L. Miller and Robert R. Hunter Jr., “English Shell Edged Earthenware: Alias Leeds Ware, Alias Feather Edge,” in The Consumer Revolution in 18th Century English Pottery, Proceedings of the Wedgwood International Seminar, no. 35 (Wedgwood International Seminar, 1990), pp. 107–36;
George L. Miller and Robert Hunter, “How Creamware Got the Blues: The Origins of China Glaze and Pearlware,” in Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001), pp. 135-161.
Donald Carpentier and Jonathan Rickard: "Slip Decoration in the Age of Industrialization" in Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001), pp. 115-134.