English Pearlware Slip-Decorated Jug Made for the American Market

Object Details

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Staffordshire Pearlware Figure of Benjamin Franklin

Wood (the Younger), Ralph
ca. 1790

ceramic; earthenware with polychrome enamels

Object Essay

Following the Revolution, the United States began to develop as a wholly separate market. Beginning in 1784, the Chinese produced trade porcelains with decorations meant for American buyers. Similarly, English pottery manufacturers soon realized that wares decorated to commemorate American events or to appeal to American sentiments would have a ready market.

Large, cream-colored earthenware jugs (also called pitchers in America and today called Liverpool or Liverpool-type jugs) with black, transfer-printed decoration, such as ships, Revolutionary heroes, or the Great Seal, were among the earliest wares made in England specifically for the American market.^{1_{Liverpool, England, was the point of exportation and, possibly, decoration. See McCauley; see also Nelson.}} Appearing in the United States by 1790, they were popular through the first two decades of the nineteenth century, first in a tall baluster form with a sharp, beaklike spout and strap handle, and later as a globular collared jug identified with the Empire style. 

Although creamware was considered rather elegant when decorated in black, the combination of a cobalt-blue glaze on a yellowish body could not satisfy consumers’ desires for the blue-and-white “Nanking” patterns available on porcelain from China. In 1779, Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) introduced “pearl white” wares (today called pearlware) to answer this need.^{2_{Josiah Wedgwood considered pearlware a change rather than an improvement to the industry. See Noel-Hume, 235.}} With a body made white by the addition of kaolin from Cornwall, pearlware was given a bright glaze with a bluish tinge that coordinated well with decorations painted or printed in blue. The fashions for such wares in America closely followed the date of their English introduction.

This pearlware jug is hand-painted with a ship that flies an American flag and is inscribed “WT / 1795” within a wreath below the spout. On the reverse, a female figure (perhaps Hope) with a large anchor commemorates the American shipping industry and the role of “WT” in it. The jug also reflects the coexistence of creamware and pearlware objects in the American market. Its shape typifies early creamware Liverpool jugs; it was rendered in pearlware to accommodate the blue-dipped background of the decorations.^{3_{The “Drawing Books of the Leeds Pottery” refers to the type of coloring on the present jug as a “dip” because the white clay body was dipped into liquid colored clays (slips) to receive a solid color. See Towner, 53–54.}} Compared to the common, shell-edge pearlware used in American homes, this handsomely decorated jug would have been perceived as rare in its day.^{4_{Pearlware printed with the Blue Willow pattern or painted with Chinese house patterns was not nearly as common as shell-edge decoration, but it certainly survives in America in lighter proportion than wares with the hand-painted, gilded decoration shown here. Noel-Hume, 240 and 242, notes that while gilded, printed, and hand-painted decorations on creamware and pearlware are common enough in our museums today, no more than one percent of the ceramics archaeologically recovered at Williamsburg, for example, included such decorations.}}

Ellen Paul Denker and Bert R. Denker

Excerpted from Jonathan L. Fairbanks. Becoming a Nation: Americana from the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, U.S. Department of State. New York: Rizzoli, 2003.