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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77000 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                           ❦ CHINA COLLECTING
+                            IN AMERICA ❦ ❦ ❦
+                        ❦ ❦ BY ALICE MORSE EARLE
+
+
+[Illustration: [Tea Pot]]
+
+                             _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+                        CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+                        NEW YORK          MCMVI
+
+
+
+
+                          _Copyright, 1892, by
+                        Charles Scribner’s Sons_
+
+
+                             TROW DIRECTORY
+                    PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
+                                NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                                   TO
+
+                    THE COMPANION OF MY CHINA HUNTS
+
+                               MY SISTER
+
+                          FRANCES CLARY MORSE
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+                                   I.
+                                                           PAGE
+         _China Hunting_,                                   _1_
+
+                                  II.
+         _Trencher Treen and Pewter Bright_,               _38_
+
+                                  III.
+         _Early Use and Importation of China in America_,  _52_
+
+                                  IV.
+         _Early Fictile Art in America_,                   _70_
+
+                                   V.
+         _Earliest Pottery Wares_,                        _102_
+
+                                  VI.
+         _English Porcelains in America_,                 _119_
+
+                                  VII.
+         _Liverpool and other Printed Ware_,              _135_
+
+                                 VIII.
+         _Oriental China_,                                _165_
+
+                                  IX.
+         _The Cosey Teapot_,                              _196_
+
+                                   X.
+         _Punch-bowls and Punches_,                       _210_
+
+                                  XI.
+         _George and Martha Washington’s China_,          _229_
+
+                                  XII.
+         _Presidential China_,                            _249_
+
+                                 XIII.
+         _Designs Relating to Washington_,                _257_
+
+                                  XIV.
+         _Designs Relating to Franklin_,                  _274_
+
+                                  XV.
+         _Designs Relating to Lafayette_,                 _288_
+
+                                  XVI.
+         _Patriotic and Political Designs_,               _299_
+
+                                 XVII.
+         _Staffordshire Wares_,                           _316_
+
+                                 XVIII.
+         _China Memories_,                                _376_
+
+                                  XIX.
+         _China Collections_,                             _409_
+
+         _Index_,                                         _425_
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+ WEDGWOOD PIECES,                                                      1
+ THE PLATE WE HOPED TO FIND AND THE PLATE WE FOUND,                    9
+ MILLENNIUM PLATE,                                                    24
+ “BEACH WARE,”                                                        27
+ OLD WORCESTER IN “JAPAN TASTE,”                                      29
+ “THE PORRINGERS THAT IN A ROW HUNG HIGH AND MADE A GLITTERING
+   SHOW,”                                                             44
+ WINTHROP JUG,                                                        55
+ PROVINCE HOUSE PITCHER,                                              65
+ BENNINGTON WARE,                                                     97
+ HOUND-HANDLED PITCHER,                                              100
+ DELFT TEA-CADDY,                                                    104
+ DELFT VASE,                                                         106
+ FULHAM G. R. JUG,                                                   108
+ SPORTIVE INNOCENCE PITCHER,                                         111
+ FARMER PITCHER,                                                     111
+ CASTLEFORD TEAPOT,                                                  117
+ PLYMOUTH SALT-CELLAR. BOW “GOAT CREAM-JUG,”                         121
+ PLYMOUTH COFFEE-POT,                                                123
+ BRISTOL MEMORIAL FIGURE,                                            125
+ CROWN DERBY COVERED DISH,                                           129
+ AN ENGLISH NOTION OF WASHINGTON,                                    139
+ MASONIC PITCHER,                                                    147
+ LOWESTOFT VASE,                                                     174
+ HELMET CREAMER,                                                     176
+ WASHINGTON COFFEE-POT,                                              178
+ CHINESE EWER,                                                       190
+ PERSIAN VASE,                                                       192
+ LOWESTOFT TEAPOT,                                                   208
+ BRISTOL POTTERY TEAPOT,                                             208
+ BOWL GIVEN TO MRS. ALLEN JONES,                                     221
+ CINCINNATI BOWL,                                                    223
+ CINCINNATI CHINA,                                                   231
+ WASHINGTON’S NIEDERWEILER CHINA,                                    245
+ LINCOLN CHINA,                                                      253
+ GRANT CHINA,                                                        254
+ PITCHER PORTRAIT,                                                   259
+ WASHINGTON MONUMENT PITCHER,                                        262
+ APOTHEOSIS PITCHER,                                                 265
+ “MAP” PITCHER,                                                      268
+ NIEDERWEILER STATUETTE,                                             275
+ TOMB OF FRANKLIN TEAPOT,                                            285
+ LA GRANGE PLATE,                                                    290
+ CADMUS PLATE,                                                       292
+ LAFAYETTE LANDING PLATTER,                                          294
+ PROSCRIBED PATRIOTS PITCHER,                                        302
+ NAVAL PITCHER,                                                      309
+ PICKLE LEAF,                                                        317
+ PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY PLATE,                                         319
+ ANTI-SLAVERY PLATE,                                                 333
+ BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD PLATES,                                   336
+ STATE-HOUSE PLATE,                                                  338
+ JOHN HANCOCK’S HOUSE,                                               341
+ HARVARD COLLEGE PLATE,                                              348
+ STEAMBOAT PLATE,                                                    350
+ MACDONOUGH’S VICTORY PLATE,                                         351
+ NAHANT PLATE,                                                       354
+ CITY HALL PITCHER,                                                  359
+ PARK THEATRE PLATE,                                                 361
+ FAIRMOUNT PARK PLATE,                                               364
+ PILGRIM PLATE,                                                      366
+ CAPITOL PLATE,                                                      374
+ CROWN DERBY PLATE,                                                  379
+ DELFT APOTHECARY JARS,                                              382
+ COPPER-LUSTRE PITCHER,                                              387
+ A BEAUFET,                                                          415
+ CHINA STEPS,                                                        419
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: [Wedgwood Pieces]]
+
+                                   I.
+                             CHINA HUNTING
+
+
+My dearly loved friend, Charles Lamb, wrote, in his “Essays of Elia,” “I
+have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any
+great house, I inquire first for the china-closet, and next for the
+picture-gallery. I have no repugnance for those little lawless
+azure-tinted grotesques that, under the notion of men and women, float
+about uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective—a
+china teacup.” In that partiality for old china I humbly join, and it is
+of the search through New England for such dear old china loves, and of
+the gathered treasures of those happy china hunts, that I write.
+
+China hunting is a true “midsummer madness.” When grass grows green and
+“daffodils begin to peer” my fancy lightly turns to thoughts of china.
+Hot waxes the fever as crawls up the summer sun; fierce and fiercer
+rages the passion and the hunt, till autumn touches with her cold though
+glorious hand the trees and fields. Then doth my madness wane, and chase
+grow dull, and icy winter finds me sane and calm, till charming spring
+returns to witch me to “mine old lunes” once again. Thus is every china
+captive of that mad summer chase aglow to me with summer suns and
+beauty—not a dull lifeless clod of moulded painted clay, but a glorious
+idealized token of long warm halcyon days too quickly passed, of
+“yesterdays that look backward with a smile.”
+
+Were the possession of old or valuable specimens of porcelain and
+pottery, or even of happy memories of “days of joyance,” the only good
+things which came from the long hours of country ranging and farm-house
+searching spent in our china quests, Philistines might perhaps scoff at
+the waste of time and energy; but much else that is good have I found.
+Insight into human nature, love of my native country, knowledge of her
+natural beauties, acquaintance with her old landmarks and historical
+localities, familiarity with her history, admiration of her noble
+military and naval heroes, and study of the ancient manners, customs,
+and traditions of her early inhabitants have all been fostered,
+strengthened, and indeed almost brought into existence by the search
+after and study of old china. How vague and dull were my school-day
+history-lesson memories of Perry, of Lawrence, of Decatur, until I saw
+their likenesses on some hideous Liverpool pitchers! then I read eagerly
+every word of history, every old song and ballad about them. How small
+was my knowledge of old “table manners” and table furnishings until I
+discovered, through my china studies, how our ancestors ate and served
+their daily meals! How little I knew of the shy romance and the
+deep-lying though sombre sentiment in New England country life, until it
+was revealed to me in the tradition of many a piece of old china. How
+entirely powerless was I to discover the story of human nature as told
+in the countenance until my inquiries after old china made me a second
+Lavater in regarding the possibilities of successful purchase in case
+the questioned one chanced to own any old porcelain heirlooms! How few
+of our noble wood and valley roads had I seen until I drove through them
+searching for old farm-houses that might contain some salvage of teacups
+or teapots! And not only do we learn of America through our china hunts,
+but of England as well; for nearly all of our old table-ware was
+English, and the history of the production of English china can be
+traced as easily in New England as in old England. Few of the more
+costly pieces came here, but humbler specimens show equally well the
+general progress of the manufacture.
+
+Let me be just and honest in my tale; though all is ideal happiness in
+the hours of the china chase, the counting of the spoils is sometimes
+vastly disappointing.
+
+                 “As high as we have mounted in delight
+                 In our dejection do we sink as low.”
+
+There is no hobby of so uncertain gait, none other fancy in the pursuit
+of which one meets with so many rebuffs as in china collecting. I mean
+in real china collecting by individual search and pursuit, not in china
+buying at high prices at a fashionable china-shop. For such Crœsus
+buyers, who know not the sweet nor the bitter of true china hunting,
+these pages are not written.
+
+Sad, sad failures does your china hunter often make, but there is a
+blessed delight and pride when a long search is at last successful which
+rewards him and makes him, or rather her, forget the cruel blows of the
+past, and makes hope spring eternal in her breast, undying, and
+undimmed. Disappointments were few in early china-collecting days in
+America; friendly farm-wives then gladly brought out their precious and
+plentiful stores, and eagerly sold them for silver to buy a new cotton
+gown or a shell-comb, and attics and pantries were ransacked and
+depleted with delight. Now can the china hunter drive for days through
+the country, asking for old crockery at every house which is surmounted
+by a gambrel roof, has a great square chimney, or an old well-sweep,
+without even hearing of one old teapot; and yet such is the power of
+china-love, she will start out again the next week, cheerful, hopeful,
+and undaunted, “to fresh woods and pastures new.”
+
+Nor will it always prove clear sailing should she discover the home of
+the sought-for treasure. She may learn from friendly and loquacious
+neighbors that “old Miss Halsey” or “John Slade’s widder” has stores of
+old crockery in barrels in the attic, or on the top shelf of the pantry,
+or even “up over the wood-shed,” but she cannot obtain one glimpse of
+the hidden hoards—far less can she purchase them.
+
+We have visited again and again one gray old farm-house in
+Massachusetts, a farm-house with moss-covered “lean-to,” which we know
+contains enough old English pottery and porcelain to found a museum; but
+cajoleries, flatteries, persuasions, open demands, elaborate
+explanations, and assumptions of indignant and hurt astonishment at
+refusals—one and all are in vain; not even one old plate have we ever
+seen. The farmer’s wife greets us most cordially, gives us doughnuts and
+milk in summer, and apples and cider in the winter, maple-sugar in the
+spring, and hickory-nuts and butter-nuts in the fall, but in
+aggressively modern pitchers and dishes; and when we leave she urges us
+hospitably and warmly to “come again.” We know well where her precious
+china is hidden. High up on either side of the great mantelpieces in
+“living-room” and “best room” are cupboards, so high that one would have
+to climb upon a chair to see into them; and from the good wife’s
+frequent and furtive glances—speaking though silent—at her locked
+cupboard doors, we know well what treasures are stored therein.
+
+At that china-hiding abode we often have concocted for us an old-time
+country drink, composed of water flavored with molasses and ginger,
+which was in Revolutionary times called “beveridge.” Gallons of that
+vile fluid have I drunk with the hostess, hoping that the joys of the
+flowing bowl might loosen her tongue and unlock her cupboard doors, but
+I have risked my digestion in vain. Still I sit “smiling with millions
+of mischief in the heart,” for life is short, and I am waiting, wickedly
+waiting; the farmer and his wife are old, very old, and when they depart
+from this life they cannot take their keys and crockery with them.
+
+More complete and mortifying routs sometimes, though rarely, have
+befallen us. We were driving quietly along one day on the outskirts of
+the town, when we saw at the door of a shabby modern house, a vinegar
+faced woman, who sat energetically mixing chicken-dough in one of the
+most beautiful old blue and white Nankin bowls that ever was seen. As
+each blow of the heavy iron spoon came down on the precious antique, it
+struck an echoing and keener blow to our china-loving hearts, and we
+hastened to ask the owner of the bowl to sell it ere it was broken. Sell
+it? not she. She didn’t know where it came from, nor who had owned
+it—and she didn’t care, but she wouldn’t sell it for any money; and if a
+tin pan was just as good to mix the meal in, she would use this “old
+crockery thing” if she wanted to; and she walked into the shabby house,
+and “slammed” the door before our abashed and sad faces. The thought of
+that bowl at the mercy of that fierce iron spoon has made us very
+unhappy; scores of times have we driven past the house glancing
+furtively in, at the wood-shed, the hen-house, the kitchen door, ready
+almost to steal the poor prisoner if we found it unguarded; but we do
+not dare attempt an honest rescue lest we suffer a still more
+ignominious and mortifying defeat.
+
+Strange answers are sometimes made to our inquiries and requests;
+strange objects presented to our china-searching eyes. In farm-houses,
+presided over by deaf old housewives we have had shown to us crackers
+for crockery, pitchforks for teapots, tubs for cups, and once, by some
+strange and incomprehensible twist of the poor deaf ears, or our own
+dull tongues, were cheerfully offered buckwheat flour when we asked to
+see a Washington pitcher. We also drove several miles at the sea-shore,
+in high spirits and with great expectations, to see some very old
+teapots, “all kinder basket-work,” and were confronted by a strange
+machine of seafaring appearance, which proved to be an eel-pot, and was
+truly an ancient one. Other kindly country souls, knowing well what we
+want, offer us as far more desirable and artistic treasures, faded
+samplers, worsted flowers, crocheted tidies, preserved wreaths, wax
+fruit, hair jewelry, and Parian busts, and look at us with commiseration
+when we cling to our strange idiosyncrasy—our preference for old china.
+Sometimes the kindly intention to guide and help us to our goal is
+evident and powerful enough, the desire to inform us is rampant, but
+power of expression is lacking, or even a modicum of memory; the narrow
+limits of country vocabulary are painful to witness and the expressions
+of its poverty are painful to hear, and suggestions only lead the
+speaker farther astray in his attempted descriptions. He is also
+color-blind, and has vague remembrance of size and nomenclature. He
+can’t describe the china, he can’t date it, he can’t name it,
+sometimes—though he vaguely remembers that he has seen it—he can’t place
+it, he simply knows that somewhere he has seen something that he fancies
+may be somewhat like what we want; and too often when we try to follow
+his vague and jejune clue, we go upon a “thankless arrant.”
+
+We once addressed to an old Yankee farmer, who had brought a load of
+apples into town, the stereotyped inquiry which we have asked, ah! how
+many hundred times, and received this drawling answer, “No-o I donow as
+I know anyone as has got any old furnitoor or chayner she wants ter part
+with. My wife haint got any anyway. My Aunt Rebecca’s got one curous old
+plate and I guess she’d sell it—she’d sell her teeth if any-body’d buy
+’em an’ pay enough ter suit her.” We finally extracted from him (after
+much parrying of our direct questions) that, “she got it in Washington
+more’n fifty year ago,” that “the folks set great store by it, and said
+it came from Mount Vernon and belonged to Marthy Washington,” that it
+had the names of the States around it, “it was blue and perhaps green
+too, and it had stars sure and he guessed they were gilt.” Now we had
+seen pieces of the Martha Washington tea-set, and we knew that it was
+decorated in blue and green with the names of the States in the links of
+a chain, and the initials M. W. in the centre in a great gilt star. We
+knew at once that Aunt Rebecca’s plate must be one of that set. What a
+discovery!
+
+[Illustration: The Plate we Hoped to Find and the Plate we Found.]
+
+To the benighted and narrow-lived souls who have never hunted for old
+china it may seem strange that we knew at once that it was one of those
+rare plates; but I am sure every china hunter, whose path is always
+illumined by the brilliant possibilities which form such an
+encouragement in the pleasures of the china chase, will fully comprehend
+our confidence and anticipation. We figured our plate in all the loan
+collections, marked with our names in large letters as joint owners; we
+planned a velvet silver-bound box to safely hold our “heavenly jewel”
+after we had caught it; we even hesitatingly thought that we might make
+our joint will and leave it to the Mount Vernon Association—and then we
+drove eighteen miles to secure it. I shall never forget the sickening
+disappointment I felt when I saw the Martha Washington plate. There were
+the names of the States; and stars there were, but not a gilt one. And
+where were the touches of verdant color? All was blue—deeply, darkly,
+vilely blue. At any other time we should have hailed the fine “States”
+plate which was shown us with keen delight, but now we could hardly
+speak or bear to look at it. At last, in sullen disparagement, we
+offered a dollar for it, had our offer accepted, carelessly took it,
+threw it on the carriage-seat and drove away. I reviled the farmer and
+his villainous memory and vocabulary, and would not look at the
+deep-dyed “States” impostor for a month, but when I heard that a
+collector had paid twenty dollars for a similar plate in New York, I
+unwrapped it and hung it on my dining-room wall, where it now shines a
+glowing bit of dark color, a joy forever.
+
+Warned by many such dreary mistakes I am very shy of having china sent
+to me through any interest awakened by its description, and am equally
+shy of buying by proxy.
+
+                  “Let every eye negotiate for itself,
+                  And trust no agent.”
+
+I have learned also to listen with attention, not placing the slightest
+confidence in what I hear, and yet always to investigate with
+cheerfulness and alacrity. It is not, however, from elaborately detailed
+and willingly told stories that I have had knowledge of my richest
+“finds.” I have learned to “take a hint”—a maxim which should be
+eternally impressed on every china hunter. Learn to “grasp the skirt of
+happy chance;” let your motto be, “Semper paratus.” Let no suggestion of
+old people or old house-furnishings, no glimpse of blue color or
+sprigged surface, even on a broken sherd of crockery by the wayside, no
+hint of distant and out-of-the-way farms, no prospect of country sales,
+of “New England dinners,” no news of refurnishing old houses, no
+accounts of the death of old inhabitants fall on unheeding eye or ear.
+For myself, I never hear the words “old china” but my heart is moved,
+more than “with sound of a trumpet.” I breathe the battle afar and hurry
+to the fray, to return at times victorious with dainty trophies of war,
+and sometimes, alas, empty-handed, with the hanging head of sore
+disappointment and defeat. Sometimes the scent is poor and broken and
+you must ferret out the way to the lair; even with much trouble and
+diligence you cannot always learn at once and definitely the
+lurking-place of the porcelain treasures; you meet with reserve and a
+disinclination to reveal. Then comes stratagem to the fore. Learn to
+wheedle, to hint, to interrogate slyly, to blandly let the conversation
+drift—“muster all wiles with blandished parleys, feminine assaults,
+tongue batteries”—in short, vulg. dict., to “pump”—and work that pump
+with judgment, with craft, and with thoroughness. Moments of quickly
+repented expansiveness come to all mortals in country and in town, and
+in those rare moments of telling all they know, even reticent and
+secretive country people will give you many a china clue to follow.
+
+I have not found, as did the members of the China Hunters’ Club, that
+country housekeepers would, as a rule, rather have money than china; my
+country people will not sell their china willingly—they prefer china to
+silver. Times have changed since 1876; a fancied knowledge, an
+exaggerated estimate of the value of old “crockery” now fills many a
+country soul, and a high monetary value is also placed on family relics,
+on “storied urns” and on the power of association. I will confess that,
+as a last resort in times of direst stress, when you really cannot go
+without that Pilgrim plate, when you positively need it—if you take your
+money out and lay it on the table in full sight of the plate-owner, you
+wield a powerful lever to work the transfer; nor do I consider such a
+statement at all derogatory to the character of my New England
+neighbors, nor is the trait peculiar to them.
+
+But do not make too aggressively prominent the money part of the
+transaction. Be courteous and careful even to extremes in addressing
+your country people for purposes of china purchase. Never ask them to
+sell their china—_sell_ is a most offensive and brutal word—ask them if
+they are “willing to part with it.” Never hint, by word or deed, that
+you fancy they really need the money. Never disparage the desired
+articles, the shrewd country wives would see through your pretence at
+once—“Why, if it be so commonplace, do you wish it?” A base and
+deceitful, though clever, china hunter of my acquaintance declares that
+she has found it invariably to her advantage to say that the coveted
+article matched exactly, either in shape or decoration, something which
+she had at home. The staid country mind, liking to see things in “sets,”
+always appeared to be most immoderately and unaccountably influenced to
+sell by this disingenuous assertion.
+
+We have many times during the past five years crossed the trail of a
+collector who appears to have wholly depleted of china the old
+farm-houses of the Connecticut Valley. We have found, through comparing
+the accounts of his visits, that he has a little slyness too. He always
+desires to purchase his particular bit of china simply to form a link in
+a chain. He either has a specimen of the entire succession of production
+of a factory except the very piece the farm-wife has, or he has a
+perfect list of historical plates except the very plate she owns, or he
+has a choice bit of every known color of lustre except her special
+pitcher. The satisfaction of supplying the long missing link, and the
+value that link will give to a history the purchaser is going to write
+of such china, seem to prove a powerful lever to effect the transfer to
+his catenulate collection.
+
+The men are, as a rule, always willing to sell china—when did man ever
+reverence the vessels of his household gods? I always delight to ask a
+Yankee farmer, in field or road, whether he has any old crockery that he
+would be willing to part with. How he will skurry home “cross-lots,”
+over the ploughed fields, or through the rows of growing corn, eager to
+pull out and sell his wife’s pantry treasures! Not that he can sell them
+if “Mother” isn’t willing—in her realm she reigns supreme. Even in the
+midst of my sore disappointment I have thrilled with malicious
+satisfaction and delight to see the calm and authoritative way in which
+“Father” is turned out of the “butt’ry” when he tries to pull down from
+the shelf an old blue bowl or plate to sell. “Mother” has kept her
+cinnamon-sticks and nutmegs for her apple-pies in that “Blue Dragon”
+bowl for forty years, and she isn’t going to sell it now to please
+anyone. To hail the farmer in advance with china questions is not,
+therefore, so underhanded and despicable a proceeding as might be
+thought, nor so dangerous to the family peace; he really is a poor,
+uninfluential, unpowered vassal in kitchen and pantry, his advice is not
+asked, his word is not heeded, nor if he attempt to be at all bumptious
+will his presence be tolerated. I have found it to be an unvarying rule
+that the farmer is always willing and eager to sell his wife’s mother’s
+china, while the wife is always openly disparaging, and cares little for
+his mother’s china; and when once the source of inheritance is
+discovered, the rule of action and plan of attack are plainly defined.
+
+It may be argued that it is neither very courteous nor very kind to walk
+into a stranger’s house and ask him to sell you his household goods and
+chattels. To such argument may be offered the reply that one can hardly
+judge a farm home by the same rule as one does a city home. The visit of
+a stranger is regarded with widely different eyes; it is a pleasure, a
+treat, to most farm-wives to receive such a visit, and the farmer will
+come plodding home from the distant fields, in order not to lose the
+chat with the stranger and the pleasant diversion. Who would attempt to
+enter and to lodge over night in a stranger’s house in the city? A
+police-station or a lunatic asylum would probably quickly shelter your
+intruding head. There is hardly a farm-house where such a suggestion
+would be unwelcome or resented, provided you look not like a bandit or
+horse-thief. Then, too, farmers and even farm-wives do not generally
+regard their old furniture and furnishings with quite the same feeling
+that we do ours. The old blue Staffordshire ware they consider almost
+worthless, and are often glad to sell it for ready cash; but their
+lilac-sprigged china, a wedding gift or a purchase with their few
+hard-earned dollars, they often value and cherish as we do Sèvres. A
+farmer handles very little money—his wife still less, and ofttimes the
+money paid by china hunters is a godsend in country homes. Much good is
+done, much comfort conferred by exchanging money for crockery. Carpers
+say: “But you do not pay city prices.” Sometimes, alas, we do, fired by
+our china mania, “the insane root that takes the reason prisoner,”
+though we never should. The farmer does not pay city rents, he has not
+the risk and expense of transfer to the city, he pays no salesman. If he
+could sell all his farm products as easily, profitably, and safely as he
+sells his china, lucky would he be. Sometimes the discovery that the
+“old blue pie-plates” are of any value is a delight and a surprise to
+him, but he sees at once that when they are worth so much he cannot
+afford to keep them. Hence he is far from being offended at the easy
+means of sale offered to him.
+
+One piece of advice I give to china hunters—advice, the wisdom and
+advantage of which I have learned at the cost of much unpleasant and
+disappointing experience. Do not hurry prospective china sellers:
+bustling city ways annoy them, fluster them, and worry them, and in
+sheer bewilderment they say “No” to get rid of you. Be tentative and
+gentle in your approach. Do not—as we did—rush in upon a deaf and timid
+old lady and frighten her, by the bouncing and bustling inquiries we
+made, into vehement denials of china-possession and simultaneous
+refusals to sell anything. This dear old “Aunt Dolly” lived in the sole
+new house in a village of old colonial dwellings, and we rather
+contemptuously thought to pass by the brand-new French roofed intruder,
+but decided “just to ask”—and “just to ask” and receive a frightened
+negative answer was all we did do, and we left with self-important
+assurance, to hunt elsewhere. A tin-peddler (a “china runner” perhaps in
+disguise), with quieter voice and more truly well-bred manners, carried
+off her rare treasures about a week later—a canopy-topped mirror with
+Washington and Franklin mirror-knobs, a “Boston State-House” pitcher,
+four “Valentine” plates having Wilkie’s design, half a dozen
+Staffordshire plates with the “cottage” pattern, and two Wedgwood
+teapots; and Aunt Dolly took as payment two shining new tin milk-pans
+and a cheap wringing-machine that wouldn’t wring. We knew her well in
+after years when it was too late, and she confessed to us that at our
+first meeting we talked so fast, and talked together, and “hollered so
+she couldn’t hear,” and that she did not understand what we meant or
+what we wanted, and said “No” to obtain peace.
+
+And oh! what an enviable advantage the ubiquitous tin-peddler, that
+“licensed vagrom,” has over every convention-trammelled china hunter!
+What a delight, what a dream it would be to go a-china hunting with a
+tin-peddler’s cart; what lonely out-of-the-way roads and by-lanes I
+would take, careless where I went, since wherever I wandered I should be
+welcome. How I would sit on my lofty seat and view the lovely country
+o’er, in the “sessions of sweet, silent thought,” with my strong and
+willing and safe horse to pull me up hill and down dale; with my stock
+of shining tin-ware, my brooms and notions and gaily painted pails, all
+ready for advantageous exchange; with my big, red, roomy wagon, in whose
+mysterious cavernous interior I could store in safety unwieldy china
+treasures, such as tureens and bowls and pitchers; with my air of ready
+assurance, of intimate familiarity with the family, my jovial raillery,
+my opportunities of kitchen and pantry investigation, my anxious health
+inquiries and profound medical advice, backed up by bottles of patent
+medicines which I should sell at half-price to curry favor and china;
+or, better still, exchange, giving a bottle of liniment for a “Landing
+of Lafayette,” or a box of pills for a Pilgrim plate—oh! next to being a
+gipsy living under the greenwood tree, who would not be a Yankee
+tin-peddler a-china hunting? But perhaps the farm-wife might wish me to
+take in exchange for my wares, eggs, or butter, or rolls of wool—what
+should I do with a pail of butter in summer-time on a tin-peddler’s
+cart? Or, worse still, old rags—just fancy it—instead of old china! I
+should then answer her with an air of deep and sombre mystery: “Madam, I
+would gladly take your readily exchangeable merchandise an’ I could; the
+old rags are particularly desirable and attractive, but I have sworn a
+vow—I have a secret which I cannot now divulge—it must be crockery or
+naught, especially dark blue crockery with American designs, else I and
+my glittering and uncommonly cheap wares must pass wearily on, homeless,
+chinaless, a wanderer on the face of the earth.” Alack-a-day! such happy
+peaceful joys are forbidden to me, not because of lack of inclination or
+capacity, but—thrice bitter thought—because I am a woman. Tin-peddlering
+is not for me, it is not “woman’s sphere.” Perhaps when I am old, too
+old to clamber up and proudly sit on that exalted driver’s seat (though
+never too old to go china hunting), perhaps when women have crowded into
+every other profession, calling, and business in the land, some happy,
+bold feminine soul will taste the pleasures of “advanced life for
+women,” the pleasures forbidden to me, and dare to go tin-peddlering,
+though there will then be no old china left in the country to buy.
+
+Though I have never been china hunting with a tin-peddler I have been on
+the trail with a Yankee china dealer, and his unique method of
+management was delightful. He worked upon the most secretive, the most
+furtive plan. He never would have shared with us his coverts nor taken
+us to his haunts, save for this reason: he had run down a noble prey, an
+entire set of fine old English ware, and to his dismay the owner refused
+to let him enter the house. Again and again had he essayed to come to
+some terms, even to see the china, but without success. He felt sure,
+however, that if any woman asked she would not plead in vain, hence his
+divulgement as a favor to us. We made several stops at farm-houses on
+the road to our goal, and his way of carrying on his business of china
+buying deserves to be told as a matter of interest and instruction to
+amateur china hunters, for he was a professional, a star. He never, by
+any chance, told the truth about himself, and above all never gave his
+correct name and place of residence, nor drove away from the house in
+the way he really intended to go. He represented himself as an adopted
+son, this seeming to be more mysterious than ordinary family conditions;
+never gave twice alike the name of his adopted father, but had a series
+of noble parents, the most prominent and influential men in the country
+around. The reasons he assigned for wishing to buy the china were so
+ingenious and so novel that we listened to him in delight and amazement,
+and with keen anticipation as to what he would next invent; the glamour
+of romance was added to the delightful madness of china hunting. He was
+at one farm-house a tender-hearted, indulgent husband, whose delicate
+invalid of a wife had expressed a wish for a set of old china and he was
+willing to spend days of search in order to satisfy her whim. It is
+needless to add that he was a bachelor. At another time his adopted
+father was losing his mind and would eat off nothing but old-fashioned
+china; hence he was hunting to find a set to carry dutifully home. Again
+he was fitting out a missionary-box for the Western wilds, and wanted to
+buy a little old-fashioned crockery to send out to the minister to
+remind him of his New England home. At the next door he assumed an air
+of solemnity and dignity and announced that he was founding a museum,
+and was forming a collection of old New England house-furnishings as a
+nucleus. At another place he swelled with paternal kindliness, and
+wanted to get a few plates to give to his three little children to show
+them the kind of crockery he used to eat from at his grandfather’s. Once
+he boldly announced that he was a china-manufacturer and was
+dissatisfied with the quality of his ware and wanted some old china to
+grind up and thus learn the correct ingredients. Then he was collecting
+china for the Columbian Exhibition. At another door his wife turned into
+an accomplished china-painter who wanted these plates for patterns. He
+curried warm favor and won much china at one house by stating that his
+mother’s china set had been badly broken by her daughter-in-law and he
+wished to replace the broken pieces. An aged couple who were living with
+their son and his wife were easy victims to this specious invention. He
+bargained for hay, for potatoes, for a whole farm; we seemed at one time
+in imminent danger of being forced to buy a cow and to depart leading
+her behind the wagon. Let me be just to this inventive soul; his
+dishonesty lay in words only. He paid good prices for all the china he
+bought, neither undervalued nor disparaged it; and showed a thoughtful
+kindliness toward the dwellers in every house he visited. After a
+prolonged stay within one shabby kitchen he appeared with two little
+copper-lustre saucers which he rather shamefacedly acknowledged having
+paid two dollars for. We extracted from him that he had found a
+bed-ridden old woman alone, shivering, thirsty; that he had built a fire
+for her, pumped water, and paid for her only pieces of old china double
+their value because he pitied her so.
+
+We suggested at one house that he should say plainly that he was a
+dealer and wanted to buy the china to sell. He scorned our dull,
+commonplace suggestion, and said it wouldn’t be any fun, and that they
+wouldn’t let him within their doors. “Half the places I go to anyway
+they look out the window afore they answer me to see if I aint got a
+sewing-machine in the wagon, and if they don’t see any, then they think
+I must have a cyclopedy.” China hunting was to him the romance of his
+life, his tournament, his battle-field. He told us of several narrow
+escapes he had had from detection, and exposure of his fables. In
+addition to vending old china, he sold old junk and farming tools; and
+thrice farmers of whom he had bought china recognized him within his own
+doors. But with the active imagination of a Dumas, he had an instant
+explanation. He had either just gone into the business, or else they
+were mistaken: he had a twin brother who had been adopted, etc. He
+developed to us a plan of action which we were to pursue at the special
+farm-house that contained the set of china. He would stop at the foot of
+the hill and lurk out of sight while we climbed to the door. Then we
+were to represent ourselves as relatives of the Republican candidate for
+Governor, as it was within a week of election and the farmer was a
+Republican. We were to tell little anecdotes of the candidate’s private
+life, to hint that it was to please the Governor-elect that we wished
+this china, and that it would be used in the gubernatorial mansion in
+Boston. He told us exactly how we were to work up the conversation and
+lead up to the purchase, what to pay and what to offer at first. All was
+well and carefully arranged when a dire suspicion seized him that Farmer
+Rice was a Democrat after all. This depressed him much, and he decided
+to sound a neighbor on this important point ere we committed ourselves
+within doors. His conversation with the guileless neighbor held us
+spellbound, he represented himself as a political census taker and
+hinted darkly that we were to be the candidates for high offices on the
+Woman’s Rights ticket at the next election. He found that farmer Rice
+was a bitter Democrat. This was a sharp blow, for neither he nor we knew
+one thing about the private life of the Democratic candidate—not even
+where he lived, nor indeed on our part one thing about politics anyway.
+Nothing daunted, he searched a newspaper which he chanced to have, and
+invented an imaginary home for the Democratic Governor, which would
+doubtless have answered every purpose, with the strong points on Free
+Trade and Protection which he drilled into us. We very prosaically,
+however, preferred our old honest plan, and whether because of our
+suspicious appearance on foot at such a great distance from any village,
+or because we made an extremely inauspicious entrance, awakening a very
+deaf old lady from a very sound nap, we could not buy the china either,
+but we saw it, a whole chest full, and the sight was well worth the long
+journey.
+
+Thus it maybe seen that china hunting, like many another hobby, is not a
+wholly ennobling pursuit. Strange and petty meannesses develop in you,
+envious longings, you have “an itching palm,” you learn to be secretive
+and dissembling, “to smile and smile and be a villain.” You learn to
+hide your trail, to refuse to give information to other sportsmen, to
+conceal the location of your hunting-grounds, to employ any wile to gain
+attention and entrance. Two worthy young men, without a fault, save an
+overweening and idolatrous love for old china, can attribute their fall
+from the paths of honesty and truthfulness to china hunting. Searching
+one day in a country town, one of these china hunters descended from the
+carriage and pounded the knocker of a fine but somewhat dilapidated
+country mansion. A pompous and repelling old gentleman of extreme
+deafness and reticence opened the door. What was the amazement and
+mortification of the waiting friend in the carriage to hear the bold
+intruder roar in his loudest and most persuasive voice, “I have come to
+see whether you have any old china, or know of anyone who has old china
+to sell,” and as the door was about to be slammed, he added, “My friend,
+the late Judge V——, of Worcester, told me that if anyone in the country
+knew of old china and relics it was you.”
+
+[Illustration: Millennium Plate.]
+
+The way that proud and shy old man rose to that transparent bait was
+wonderful to behold. He ushered in the young deceiver, with
+Chesterfieldian bows of welcome. The “late Judge V——” had been a man
+well known and honored throughout the county, though he knew so little
+and thought so little of china that he might have dined off pewter and
+never known it—but he was dead, and could never be brought up as a
+refuting witness, which was a great point. The lonely watcher in the
+carriage sat shamefacedly waiting, cringing at the thought of his
+companion’s wickedness. He listened to the loud roars into the deaf old
+ears as the twain walked from room to room while “glozed the tempter,”
+and the specious sounds were wafted out on the summer air; he thought of
+possible treasures within, he listened and wondered and yielded—such is
+the contamination of wicked example—walked into the house, and added to
+the lie tenfold. As a result of their duplicity, and since the flattered
+one was a widower with no woman to say nay, they captured and brought
+away four Millennium plates, two Wedgwood pickle leaves, a silver-lustre
+teapot, and a glorious great flip-mug. But “things ill-got had ever bad
+success;” as they lifted the large and knobby newspaper parcel from the
+carriage, it slipped from their contaminating grasp, and all the pieces
+were broken save the flip-mug, which, being specially protected,
+escaped. Though warned by this plain rebuke, they persevere; and so
+hardened are they now become in their base habits of deception, that
+they have worked that “late Judge V——” scheme, with some slight
+variations, in a score of country homes. They always tell that
+abominable falsehood whenever they have a man to deal with, not only
+adding deception to deceit, but showing a most despicable lack of
+originality—a “most damnable iteration.”
+
+They cringingly allege their intention to change the name of the
+imaginary recommender as soon as any one of sufficient note and
+widespread fame in the county dies, and thus through his death becomes
+eligible to the position in the fable. I only wish the wraith of the
+late Judge V——, a man of portentous ugliness in real life, such abnormal
+ugliness that the thought of the sight of his dematerialized ghost is
+really appalling—I only wish his indignant wraith would appear before
+them at the lintel of the door, at the portal of some china-besieged
+house, and demand, in the loud roars which characterized him in his
+lifetime, the meaning of this unwarrantable and presumptuous use of his
+name.
+
+In the meantime, unchecked and undiscovered, this simple and transparent
+scheme invariably works to a charm—how proud the man always is to learn
+that the late Judge V—— recommended him as a connoisseur of anything! he
+hastens to sell his china, if his wife be willing and have any to sell,
+and he manages to think of someone else who will probably sell, should
+he chance to have none himself. The flip-mug has been filled many a time
+to the old-time toast, “Success to Trade”—and yet the base china hunters
+are really honest fellows enough in every-day life. Alas! that greed for
+things so beautiful should so deform the soul!
+
+Such duplicity is, however, rare. I tell of it only to express my
+abhorrence, my condemnation. Dissimulation is seldom necessary. You are
+sometimes falsely accused of it when your motives are as open as the
+light of day. After telling with exact truth precisely what I intended
+to do with some pieces of china, I was answered, with an angry toss of
+the head, “Why didn’t ye tell me first-off ye didn’t want me to know.”
+
+We are sometimes, in our china hunts, brought into close contact with
+baser crimes than falsehood and duplicity. We have a number of
+daintily-shaped pieces of sprigged china, with a graceful ribbon border,
+which are known to us by the name of “Beach ware,” but which would be
+generally and more correctly called “cottage china.” These six-legged
+teapots and creamjugs of “Beach ware” received their descriptive and
+pretty title from the simple folk of whom they were bought, not from the
+name of their maker nor from their place of manufacture. “Beach ware”
+was found in crates or boxes along the beach on the shores of Barnegat
+Bay at the beginning of this century. It was part of the cargo of a
+great English ship laden with china, which was lured to destruction and
+robbed by a notorious family of Barnegat “wreckers,” one of whose
+members died not many years ago at the age of ninety years, having
+served in his youth a well-deserved term of twenty years’ imprisonment
+in State Prison, the sentence received at his trial for cruel robbery
+and murder through “wrecking.”
+
+[Illustration: “Beach Ware.”]
+
+At that time, though vessels and their cargoes were insured, the
+underwriters frequently did not make their appearance down the coast at
+the scene of the wreck for many days and even weeks after the ship broke
+up or came ashore. And when the tardy officials did arrive, Barnegat
+natives, even from far inland—honest men and knavish rogues alike—had
+always managed to capture everything of value that came ashore or could
+be taken from the vessel. In order to conceal their stolen salvage,
+indestructible merchandise or articles that were not affected by the
+action of the soil and water were frequently buried until after the
+baffled insurance company and the ship’s owners had left the scene. The
+arrest and sentence of the leader of this gang of wreckers caused much
+apprehension and excitement in every Barnegat home, and much fine china
+was pounded up or thrown into the water, as well as buried, lest its
+presence seem proof of complicity in the convict’s guilt. Our pieces of
+“Beach ware” remained under ground for years—it is said until the wicked
+old convict served out his term in prison, since he alone could find the
+spot where he had buried it. The green-ribboned and pink-sprigged
+teapots and teacups look too innocent to have known aught of such
+wickedness and violence, but bear no more guileless face than did the
+patriarchal old wrecker in the peaceful prosperous days of his later
+years when he unblushingly and unwincingly sold to us this “Beach ware,”
+of which his gossiping neighbors had told to us the tale.
+
+Shall I have the dire name of “fence” applied to me when it is told that
+I am the receiver of stolen goods?
+
+The best piece of Wedgwood jasper ware that I own was bought from an old
+Englishman of mild appearance and junk proclivities. A second visit to
+his den found it closed. A friendly plumber in the adjacent shop
+explained with effusion that the junk-man was a wretched old thief, and
+no one but thieves sold to him or bought of him (I winced at the
+accusation); that “he broke into a museyum in England and stole a lot of
+china and brought it over here to sell, and had kep’ stealin’ ever
+sense,” and he (the plumber) was “glad the perlice had chased him out,
+for he was a disgrace to the neighborhood.” Was not my pretty
+Flaxman-designed piece of Wedgwood stolen from that English collection?
+
+[Illustration: Old Worcester in “Japan Taste.”]
+
+A beautiful cup and saucer of old Worcester in the “Japan taste,” rich
+without and within in red and gold and blue, has long been regarded by
+me with intense suspicion of my honest and legal right to its
+possession. It was sold to me with the assurance that it had belonged to
+Lucien Bonaparte; I did not doubt that part of the story, for I had seen
+its sister in the possession of a family who I knew inherited it through
+a gift of that Bonaparte. But how should my cup and saucer have been
+offered for sale to anyone? By a curious chain of circumstances, too
+tedious to repeat, I discovered that the pretty cup and saucer had been
+stolen by a servant, and sold long ago to an old merchant in New York,
+who should have and doubtless did know better, but who loved old china.
+Shall I tell his name? Shall I hunt up the lawful heir and owner of my
+Worcester teacup?
+
+Only one possibility mars the pleasure of a day’s china hunt—the
+necessity of obtaining a midday meal “upon the road,” in any chance
+farm-house you may be within at high noon. The old hunter fights shy of
+such repasts by carrying her lunch with her, but when a drive of several
+days is taken this course is not very attractive or possible. She must
+then succumb to fate, accept the hospitality which is invariably and
+cordially offered to her, and eat, or, at least, try to eat. I think
+June is the most trying month for such ventures. Spring vegetables are
+unknown in the land of their supposed birth. Fruits and berries are not
+ripe. You are given a mysterious repast, flavored throughout with sour
+milk and smelling of sour milk, which reaches its highest and sourest
+point in the bread. I always plead dyspepsia and cling to a milk diet,
+thus eliciting much sympathy, and hygienic and medical advice. Doubtless
+in late fall or in winter, country fare might be more endurable, but,
+with keen and most vivid fancy, I cannot imagine going china hunting in
+the country in the winter time. Even glorious sleighing or the promise
+of vast treasure trove could not englamour it with an enticing charm.
+Think of shivering over snow-blocked roads under leaden skies, through
+dreary, wind-wailing, naked woods, struggling up icy, snow-swept, and
+blast-beaten hills to that lonely hill-top home, a New England
+farm-house! Hope would perish on the road. Think of entering that drear
+abode; of sitting, while you unfolded your wishes and went through the
+stereotyped china questions with the stereotyped china smile, with
+bursting veins and flushed face, in a stuffy, torrid, unaired room, in
+front of a red-hot, air-tight stove, for there are no glorious open wood
+fires nowadays in the great chimneys of country houses in New England.
+Think of going from that super-heated, stifling atmosphere to a frigid
+pantry or icy best room to look at china! How the congealed plates would
+clatter in your trembling stiffened fingers; how you would hurry through
+the repelling ordeal; never, as in summer, climbing upon chairs to peer
+on upper shelves, never exploring in old window-seats, never lingering
+to examine separately and lovingly each plate in a great pile. Above
+all, think of ransacking a farm-house garret, “in cobwebbed corners,
+dusty and dim,” with the thermometer below zero—it is beyond my power of
+fancy to fathom such a scene. A fellow china hunter tells me a tale of a
+lonely drive and Arctic exploration, and of riding gayly home therefrom
+in the winter twilight, warming the cockles of her heart with four
+Baltimore & Ohio plates pressed closely to her side, with two Lafayette
+pepper-boxes and half a dozen Lowestoft custard-cups packed snugly in
+her muff, and with a Pennsylvania Hospital platter in the fur robe at
+her feet. I never believed her; it could not be true. China does not
+grow in winter, ’tis a fair summer flower, and must be gathered under
+summer suns.
+
+But to what out-of-the-way, simple, rustic scenes has our china hunting
+led us through the long summer days, scenes to be painted by Miss
+Wilkins or Mrs. Slosson. To country auctions—not the ill-ventilated,
+Hebrew-jostled, bawling arenas of city life, but auctions in country
+villages, on old farms, where the auctioneer, if the day be warm, stands
+outside the house on a door taken from its hinges and laid across two
+barrels on the green, or among the beds of flowering phlox and
+marigolds; where the lots for sale, unnumbered, uncatalogued, and
+unclassified are handed out, a heterogeneous company, to the presiding
+seller through the open windows behind him; where every small parcel of
+value is neatly tied up and labelled with the names of past owners—Aunt
+Hepsy, Mrs. Catey Doten, Old Job Greening; where every queer-gowned and
+queer-coated neighbor for miles around has driven over in every kind of
+vehicle to look at, if not to buy, the scattering house treasures. At
+these country auctions, china and ancient underclothes, or pewter
+porringers with feather pillows, may form a single “lot,” and you must
+buy all or none. If you purchase you pay your money at once to the
+auctioneer, with much friendly change-making by hard-fisted old farmers
+on either hand; the china is delivered to your eager hands, the
+underclothes are thrown to you or at you by the auctioneer over the
+heads of the audience; the hay-rakes, or churns, or quilting-frames, or
+whatever addenda may have been tacked to your porcelain, are brought
+around and piled in a little heap by the side of your chair, or if you
+have “backed up” your country wagon, are placed therein. I once bought
+six large bundles of neatly labelled pieces of woollen cloth, pieces of
+all the old petticoats and breeches and greatcoats that had been worn in
+that house for forty years, just to get one India china plate. A
+rugmaking—or I should say, “mat-braiding”—dame at my left, seeing my
+dismay at my unsought treasures and noting my love of china, offered to
+give me a modern match-box for the tidy bundle of pieces, which kindly
+exchange I gladly accepted as being less cumbersome, if not more
+beautiful.
+
+Surely the summer sunlight never flickered down on a more typical New
+England scene than a country auction. Sad are the faces around, quiet
+reigns; no one smiles, no one jests as the hoarse-voiced auctioneer
+holds up, explains, and extols some very mirth-provoking “lots.” This
+breaking up and disbanding of a home has no droll side to country minds.
+The last country auction I attended was at an old house in Rutland. At
+it were sold the effects of an ancient lady of ninety years, who had
+just died. Her nephew, a lively lad of eighty, carried away by the
+excitement of the sale, or by the sight of so much ready money,
+recklessly handed out to the auctioneer, as he stood under the dusty
+lilac bushes, a large number of articles of furniture and table-ware
+which had been temporarily stored in the house by the old lady’s
+housekeeper, an equally ancient matron. The unconscious theft was
+discovered late in the afternoon, just as we were about to drive off,
+and the old man, overcome with horror at his unwitting crime, or dread
+of the results of its discovery, tearfully forced us to disgorge half a
+dozen McDonough’s Victory plates and several mugs and pitchers which we
+had eagerly purchased and gleefully packed away. He “comforted us with
+apples,” however, pressing upon us a peck of red-streaked, spicy Sapsons
+to console us for our evident disappointment—and our sorrow that we had
+not sensibly and cannily departed at an earlier hour.
+
+But do not fancy that every gathering of country wagons in country
+door-yards, every row of patient horses hitched at barn doors and along
+the fence, denotes an auction within the doors of the farm-house. Draw
+no such rash conclusion, and make no hasty and unheralded entrance
+within, else you may find yourself, with china smiles on your lips and
+china inquiries on your tongue, an impetuous and mortified intruder at
+the saddest of all sad scenes, a country funeral. I cannot resist
+telling that, after one such impertinent intrusion on that solemn
+function, we returned in a few hours, when on our way home, to apologize
+and explain our infelicitous and uninvited entrance at so unfitting a
+time. When we stated that we were hunting for old-fashioned china, a
+gleam of comprehension entered the faces of the two elderly women who
+sat rocking by the fireside in the lonely kitchen, and as a result a
+china-closet was raided, and we bought a number of pieces of unusually
+fine Canton and Lowestoft china. At the time of purchase, we innocently
+fancied that we gained this treasure honestly from the new-made heirs,
+but have since then had harassing suspicions that the china was sold to
+us by temporary care-takers who remained to “redd the house,” while the
+mourning relatives had driven to the country graveyard, and who thus
+snatched from the jaws of death a most dishonest penny.
+
+Nor can you be over-confident that all auctions held in the country are
+true country auctions. The ways of “antique men” are past finding out. A
+sale of the household furnishings of an old farm-house in the heart of
+the White Mountains, attracted a vast number of summer travellers, and
+brought forth purchase sums that bewildered the farm residents for miles
+around. Ere the sun went down on the day of the sale, a thrifty dealer
+who happened to be present had had a conference with the farm-wife, and
+as a result it was announced that she had a reserve stock of furniture
+and china in her garret, which would be sold the following week. Back to
+town sped the dealer, packed up a vast collection of unsalable débris
+which he chanced to have on hand, and an “assorted lot” of modern
+willow-pattern ware, freshly imported Canton china, new copper-lustre
+and painted tea-sets, with a sparse sprinkling of old pieces. He sent
+the entire lot by rail to the New Hampshire town; conveyed it by dead of
+night to the farm-house; placed the crockery in the cupboards, the
+brand-new brass candlesticks on the mantels, and the flimsy new andirons
+in the old fireplaces, arranged all the furniture in judicious shadow,
+and had a successful auction of “rare old colonial furniture and family
+china.”
+
+A famous starting-point, or rather rallying-point, on a china hunt is
+the district school. Driving along the quiet country road, you chance,
+in some barren and unlovely spot, often at some lonely cross-roads, upon
+a small unshaded, single-storied building, whose general ugliness and
+the beaten earth of whose door-yard tell to you its purpose and
+character without the proof of the high-pitched and precise chorus of
+monotonous three-syllabled words that vibrates shrilly out through the
+open window. Hitch your steed to a tree, a fence, by the roadside, and
+enter one of the twin portals of the abode of learning, passing by the
+low-hanging rows of ragged straw hats, gingham sun-bonnets, and chip
+“Shakers,” over the “warping floor,” in front of the “battered seats,
+with jack-knife’s carved initial.” “Teacher” is glad to see you, the
+children are gladder still. She sends a grinning barefooted boy out to
+draw a pail of fresh well-water. You are asked, as a distinguished
+visitor, to address the scholars. If you are a man, and thus of course
+an orator, you do so with fluent tongue. If you are a woman, and thus
+tongue-tied in public, you can ask for “recess” to be given, and make
+your address informally to each little freckled face. You are, of
+course, anxious to refurnish a house like the one in which you lived
+when you attended the village school in the days of your youth. Do the
+children know of any old blue china plates with trees and houses on
+them? Have their mothers or grandmothers any pitchers with pictures of
+soldiers, or sailors, or ships? Of course the children know; they know
+everything—far more than grown people. You soon have an exact ceramic
+report from every house in town whose little sons and daughters are in
+the school, and of the homes of all their neighbors too. You have
+extracted an unbiassed account from a set of little ready-tongued and
+keen-eyed spies, whose penetration is acute, and whose memory is active.
+If you can draw you can quickly show the children with chalk and
+blackboard the kind of china you wish, and can depart with a long list
+of houses which will repay you to visit.
+
+But why do I longer tell the story of the chase, or vainly try to give
+advice and rules for china-finding? I can only “pay you my penny of
+observation,” knowing well that “Gutta fortunæ præ dolio sapientiæ.” Nor
+can I fitly paint the pleasures, nor tell the pains of the search, more
+than I could mould and shape the treasures it has brought to my home.
+Nor can I hope to fire in other veins the fever that burns in mine; I
+must be content to say with Olivia, “’Tis a most _extracting_ frenzy of
+mine own.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  II.
+                    TRENCHER TREEN AND PEWTER BRIGHT
+
+
+The history of the use of china as table-ware in America would be
+incomplete and ill-comprehended, without some reference to the preceding
+forms of table furnishings used by the earliest colonists, the dishes of
+wood and pewter, which so long influenced the form and even the
+decoration of their china successors. As in the “Life of Josiah
+Wedgwood” we are given an account of the pottery and porcelain of all
+times, so in my story of china in America I tell of the humble
+predecessors that graced the frugal boards of our ancestors.
+
+In a curious book, Newbery’s “Dives Pragmaticus,” written in 1563, a
+catalogue of English cooking utensils and table-ware is thus given by a
+chapman:
+
+          “I have basins, ewers of tin, pewter, and glass,
+          Great vessels of copper, fine latten, and brass,
+          Both pots, pans, and kettles such as never was.
+          I have platters, dishes, saucers, and candlesticks,
+          Chafers, lavers, towels, and fine tricks;
+          Posnets, frying pans, and fine pudding pricks;
+          Fine pans for milk, trim tubs for souse.”
+
+These were practically the table and kitchen furnishings brought by the
+Pilgrims to New England, and for similar furnishings they sent to old
+England for many years.
+
+The time when America was settled was the era when pewter ware had begun
+to take the place of wooden ware for table use, just as the time of the
+Revolutionary War marked the victory of porcelain over pewter. Governor
+Bradford found the Indians using “wooden bowls, trays, and dishes,” and
+“hand baskets made of crab shells wrought together.” Both colonists and
+Indians used clam-shells for plates, and smaller shells set in split
+sticks as spoons and ladles.
+
+The Indians made in great quantities for their white neighbors, even in
+the earliest days, bowls from the knots of maple-trees that went by the
+name of “Indian bowls,” and were much sought after and used. One large
+bowl taken from the wigwam of King Philip is now in the collection of
+the Massachusetts Historical Society. The settlers also established
+factories for dish-turning. One thrifty New England parson eked out his
+scanty and ill-paid salary by making wooden bowls and plates for his
+parishioners. Wooden “noggins,” low bowls with handles, are often
+mentioned in early inventories, and Mary Ring, of Plymouth, thought in
+1633 that a “wodden cupp” was quite valuable enough to leave “as a token
+of friendship.”
+
+In Vermont bowls and plates of poplar wood were used until Revolutionary
+times, and fair white dishes did that clean hard wood make. Sometimes
+the wooden plates used by the poor planters were only square blocks
+slightly hollowed out by hand—whittled, without doubt. Wooden trenchers,
+also made by hand, were used on the table by the colonists for more than
+a century. I find them advertised for sale with pewter and china in the
+_Connecticut Courant_ of May, 1775. These trenchers were either square
+or oblong. From an oblong trencher two persons, relatives or intimate
+friends, sometimes ate in common, just as they had done in old England.
+Two children frequently ate from the same trencher, thus economizing
+table furnishings. In earlier times man and wife ate from a single
+trencher or plate. Walpole relates that the aged Duke and Duchess of
+Hamilton, in the middle of the last century, sat upon a dais together at
+the head of their table and ate from the same plate—a tender tribute to
+unreturnable youth, a clinging regard for past customs, and a token of
+present affection and unity in old age.
+
+A story is told of a Connecticut planter, that having settled in a
+quickly-growing town and having proved himself to be a pious God-fearing
+man, his name was offered to his church for election or ordination as a
+deacon. Objection was made to him, on the ground that he had shown undue
+pride and luxury of living in allowing his children each to use and eat
+from a single plate at the table, instead of doing as his neighbors
+did—have two children eat from one trencher. He apologized for his
+seemingly vain manner of living, and gave in excuse the fact that
+previous to his settlement near New Haven he had been a dish-turner, so
+it had not then been extravagant for the members of his family to have a
+dish apiece; and having grown accustomed to that manner of “feeding,” he
+found it more peaceable and comfortable; but he was willing to change
+his ways if they considered it desirable and proper, as he did not wish
+to put on more airs than his neighbors.
+
+But wooden trenchers, even in the first half of the first New England
+century, gave place to pewter, and the great number of pieces of pewter
+table-ware still found in New England country homes would alone prove to
+how recent a date pewter utensils were universally used. The number
+would doubtless be much larger if it were not deemed by metal-workers
+that new pewter is of much better substance if the metals composing it
+are combined with a certain amount of old pewter. Hence old pewter
+always has commanded a good price, and many fine old specimens have been
+melted up to mould over again for the more modern uses for which pewter
+is employed by printers and lapidaries.
+
+The trade of pewterer was for two centuries a very respectable and
+influential one. The Guild of Pewterers in London was a very large and
+powerful body, and English pewterers, men of worth, came with other
+tradesmen at once to the Colonies. Richard Graves was a pewterer of
+Salem in 1639, and Henry Shrimpton, an influential merchant who died in
+Boston in 1666, made large quantities of pewter ware for the
+Massachusetts colonists. The pewterers rapidly increased in numbers in
+America, until the War of Independence, when, of course, the increasing
+importation of Oriental and English china and stone-ware, and the beauty
+and interest of the new table-ware, destroyed forever the pewterer’s
+trade. Advertisements of pewter table furnishings appear frequently,
+however, in American newspapers until well into this century.
+
+Nor was it different in England at the same date. Englishmen and
+Englishwomen clung long to pewter. In a poem written in 1828 by J. Ward,
+of Stoke-upon-Trent, upon the Potter’s Art, he says:
+
+           “The housewife, prim in days we know ourselves,
+           Display’d her polished pewter on her shelves;
+           Reserv’d to honour most the annual feast,
+           Where ev’ry kinsman proved a welcome guest.
+           No earthen plates or dishes then were known,
+           Save at the humble board as coarse as stone,
+           And there the trencher commonly was seen,
+           With its attendant ample platter treen.” (Wooden.)
+
+It is a curious fact that in the inventory of the household possessions
+of Thomas Wedgwood, the potter, made at Burslem in 1775, we find that he
+had forty-four pewter plates worth seven pence half penny each, and
+twenty-four pewter dishes worth two shillings each, though the inventory
+of the goods at his factory at that time included two hundred and
+ninety-five dozen table plates of best white ware.
+
+At a very early date all well-to-do colonists had plenty of “latten
+ware,” which was brass, as well as pewter. All kinds of household
+utensils were made, however, of the latter metal; even “pewter bottles,
+pints, and quarts,” were upon a list of goods to be sent from England to
+the Massachusetts Colony in 1629. I have never seen an old pewter
+bottle, even in a collection or museum, and they must soon have been
+superseded by glass.
+
+In the Boston _Evening Post_ of July 26, 1756, appeared this
+advertisement: “London pewter dishes, plates, basons, porringers,
+breakfast bowls, table spoons, pint and quart pots, cans, tankards,
+butter cups, newest fashion teapots, table salts, sucking bottles,
+plates & dish covers, cullenders, soop kettles, new fashion roased
+plates, communion beakers and flagons, & measures.” A vast number of
+names of other articles might be added from other lists of sales of
+pewter at that time—“quart & pint jacks,” “bottle crains,” “ink pots,”
+“ink chests,” “ink horns,” “ink standishes,” and “ink jugs.”
+
+Pewter “cans for beer, cyder, and metheglin,” were in every household;
+pewter mugs and pewter “dram-cups with funnels,” pewter “basons,”
+cisterns, and ewers graced the “parlour,” which contained also the best
+state bed, with its “harrateen” or “cheney” curtains. Pewter
+candlesticks held the home-made, pale-green candles of tallow and spicy
+bayberry wax. “Savealls,” too, were of pewter and iron. “Savealls” were
+the little round frames with wire points which held up the last short
+ends of dying candles for our frugal ancestors.
+
+Salt-cellars and spoons were of pewter, while extremely elegant people
+had spoons of alchymy, or occonny, alcaney, alcamy, occomy, ackamy, and
+accamy, as I have seen it spelt, a metal composed of pan brass and
+arsenicum. Forks were almost unknown, and fingers played an important
+part in serving and eating at the table. A lady traveller, in 1704,
+spoke with much scorn of Connecticut people, because they allowed their
+negro slaves to sit and eat at the same table with themselves, saying
+that “into the great dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white
+hand.”
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  “The porringers that in a row
+  Hung high and made a glittering show.”
+]
+
+Pewter porringers, or “pottingers,” of every size were much prized. One
+family, in 1660, had seven porringers, while another housewife was proud
+of owning nine, and one silver queen porringer. The smaller porringers
+were called posnets, a word now obsolete. Posnet was derived from a
+Welsh word, _posned_, a little round dish. In these posnets posset was
+served, and they were also used as pap-bowls for infants. Posnets and
+porringers, when not in use, were hung by their handles on the edge of
+the dresser shelf. The porringers with flat pierced handles are of
+English or American make, while the “fish-tail” handles are seldom found
+in New England, being distinctly Dutch.
+
+Plates and platters were much valued. Governor Bradford, of
+Massachusetts, left to his heirs fourteen pewter dishes and thirteen
+platters, three large plates and three small ones, one pewter
+candlestick and one pewter bottle—a most luxurious and elaborate
+household outfit. Governor Benedict Arnold, of Jamestown, R. I., and Mr.
+Pyncheon, of Springfield, Mass., bequeathed their pewter plates and
+dishes in the same list, and with as much minuteness of description, as
+the silver tankards and bowls, and the humble pewter was as elaborately
+lettered and marked with armorial devices as was the silver. Miles
+Standish left to his heirs sixteen pewter dishes and twelve wooden
+trenchers.
+
+Pewter was not thought to be too base a metal to use for communion
+services. In 1729, the First Church of Hanover, Mass., bought and used
+for years a full communion service and christening basin of pewter; and
+the bill of purchase and the old pieces are still preserved by the
+church as relics. The pewter communion service of the Marblehead Church
+is now in the rooms of the Essex Institute, and until this century
+advertisements of “Pewter Communion Flagons” appeared in New England
+newspapers.
+
+These pewter dishes and plates were a source of great pride to every
+colonial housekeeper, and much time and labor was devoted to polishing
+them with “horsetails” (_equisetum_), or “scouring rush,” till they
+shone like fine silver; and dingy pewter was fairly counted a disgrace.
+The most accomplished gentleman in Virginia, of his time, gave it as a
+positive rule, in 1728, that “pewter bright” was the sign of a good
+housewife.
+
+In some old country homes, either lack of money, the power of habit, or
+the strong love of ancient articles and associations, caused the
+preservation of the old pewter utensils, and they now form the cherished
+ornaments of the kitchen and dining-room. In the lovely old town of
+Shrewsbury, which stands so high on Massachusetts hills that the
+railroad has never approached its lonely beauty, there stands on the
+edge of the “Common” a house, in which everything that is good and old
+has been preserved, and appears as when the house was built, in the year
+1779.
+
+The old fireplaces have cranes and iron “dogs,” are festooned with ears
+of yellow seed-corn, and are surmounted by the old fire-arms, while by
+the chimney sides are hung old-fashioned brooms of peeled birch. These
+brooms are made of birch splints, carefully split and peeled, and tied
+in place with hempen twine on the strong handle; and many a farmer’s
+boy, years ago, earned his first spending-money by making them, for six
+cents apiece, for the country stores. Old settles, chairs, and tables
+stand on the white-scoured floors; and in the “living-room” is a piece
+of furniture seldom seen in New England, though common enough in
+Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey in olden times—a “slaw bank.” The
+word is a corruption of _sloap bancke_, or sleeping bench, and the slaw
+bank was the great-grandfather of our modern cabinet folding-bed. At one
+end of the room are doors apparently belonging to cupboards, which, upon
+being swung wide open, disclose the oblong frame of a bed with a network
+of ropes to serve as springs. This bed-frame is fastened at one end to
+the wall with heavy hinges, and was hooked up against the wall in the
+day-time, and at night was lowered to a horizontal position and
+supported on heavy wooden turned legs, which fitted into sockets in the
+frame; and it was thus ready for use. This bed is still kept made up as
+of old, with hand-spun linen sheets, hand-woven “flannel sheets,” a
+“rising-sun” patchwork quilt, and blue and white woollen bedspread.
+
+But in the dining-room and kitchen of this old Shrewsbury homestead are
+the greatest treasures—corner cupboards and shallow dressers full of
+pewter dishes, which greet their owner with “shining morning faces” at
+breakfast, and reflect in a hundred silvery disks the goodly cheer on
+his table at midday and night. Round plates and platters are there of
+every size, up to the great round shield on which was placed of old the
+enormous Thanksgiving turkey. All are round, for oval platters seem to
+have been then unknown.
+
+The deep bowls, in which vegetables were served, stand there in “nests”
+of various sizes. Teapots, too, and cream-pitchers and sugar-bowls, or
+sugar-boxes, but no pewter teacups. I believe the little handleless
+teacups were among the earliest pieces of porcelain imported from China,
+and were often used when the rest of the “tea equipage” was of pewter.
+Pewter salt-cellars, mustard-pots, flip-mugs, and syrup-cups are
+interspersed among the larger pieces on the dresser.
+
+Some of these articles are marked with initials and dates, not engraved,
+but stamped, as with a die, J. S. and B. K., 1769. Doubtless these were
+wedding gifts, and I doubt not that a set of shining pewter plates and
+platters was as graceful and welcome a gift to Betsey Sumner in 1769, as
+is a set of Royal Worcester porcelain to her great-granddaughter Bessie,
+in 1892.
+
+Some of the teapots are really beautiful in shape, and are decorated
+with a quaint engraved design of leaves and round flowers. These were
+undoubtedly of Dutch manufacture, and are identical in shape and
+ornamentation with teapots authentically known to have been imported
+from Holland. These teapots were probably used for company “tea
+drinkings” and such state occasions, and thus the engraving on the soft
+metal was not worn by daily use.
+
+Pewter spoons, too, are there in every size, though Betsey Sumner surely
+had silver teaspoons, for were they not inherited from her by her son,
+the old parson? As these pewter spoons were liable to be quickly bent,
+worn, or broken, every thrifty household had its various sized spoon
+moulds of heavy metal, into which the melted pewter was poured and came
+out as good as new, or, according to the apparent law of pewter, better
+than new. Button moulds, too, were common enough, containing deep holes
+to form half a dozen buttons at once. And perhaps Betsey Sumner turned
+her old spoons into buttons to adorn John’s coat, and polished them till
+they shone like the silver and cut-steel buttons of the French Court.
+
+Many of the pewter articles in this homestead have had recently engraved
+upon the underside various commemorative dates, and the names of past
+owners, and the outlines of any eventful story connected with the dish,
+if story there fortunately be remembered to tell. And every owner of
+pewter plate or porringer, who knows by tradition the story of his old
+relic, should have the statement engraved now upon the back of the
+piece, for even in one generation these facts are forgotten, and the
+article is rendered valueless as an historic record.
+
+In the kitchen of the great colonial house at Morristown, N. J., now
+owned and occupied by the Washington Association of New Jersey, may be
+seen a fine collection of old pewter table and cooking utensils; while
+at Indian Hill, at Newburyport, still is shining in cupboard and dresser
+the rare pewter collected by Ben Perley Poore.
+
+To a day well within the remembrance of many now living, round pewter
+meat platters were used in farm-houses, long after the other pewter
+dishes had vanished; for it does not dull a carving-knife to cut upon
+pewter as it does upon porcelain or crockery, and old farmers cling
+stubbornly to usages and articles that they are acquainted with; and no
+“boiled dinner” ever could taste quite the same to them unless all
+heaped together on a great shining pewter platter.
+
+Another pewter piece often found, and often still used, is the hot-water
+jug with its wicker-covered handle. This was brought every night, in
+colonial and Revolutionary times, well filled with boiling water, to the
+master of the house, for him to mix the hot apple-toddy or sangaree for
+the members of his household, who drank their share out of pewter cups
+or heavy greenish glasses. I know of two of these pewter jugs which have
+been in daily use for certainly forty years (though in the more
+temperate vocation of hot-water jugs to carry shaving-water to the
+bedrooms), and still retain, sound and firm, the old wicker coverings on
+the handles, which may have been woven upon them a hundred years ago.
+Truly, our grandfathers made things for use, not for sale.
+
+Strange hiding-places have these old forsaken and forgotten pewter
+dishes. They lurk in tall and narrow cupboards by the side of old
+chimneys, or in short and deep cupboards over the mantel. They lie in
+disused fireplaces, hidden from view by gaudy modern fireboards. They
+are at the bottom of deep boxes under wide window-seats, and are shoved
+under the dusty eaves of dark attic-lofts. On the highest pantry
+shelves, under cellar stairs, in old painted sea-chests, in the
+woodhouse, are they found. From the floor of henhouses have they been
+rescued, where they have been long ignominiously trodden under foot by
+high-stepping and imperious fowl.
+
+Let us take them from these obscure corners, and preserve them with
+care, for though they have no intrinsic value like silver, no brilliancy
+like glass, no beauty of color or design like china, they are still
+worth our interest and attention, for they were the first table-ware
+used by our ancestors. We are a young nation of few years and few
+relics, let us then reverently preserve the old pewter plates and
+platters, remembering that these simple dishes of inexpensive metal
+illustrate the frugal home-life of the men and women who were the
+founders of the Republic.
+
+
+
+
+                                  III.
+             EARLY USE AND IMPORTATION OF CHINA IN AMERICA
+
+
+The knowledge and use of porcelain in England did not long antedate the
+departure of the Pilgrims for the New World. As early as 1506, one
+exceptional importation of Chinese porcelain bowls is spoken of; but
+even in 1567—half a century later—one of Queen Elizabeth’s valued gifts
+was a “poringer of white porselyn and a cup of green porselyn,” and the
+notice paid such intrinsically valueless and small articles by their
+mention proves their rarity. Great ignorance of the processes of
+porcelain manufacture existed; even that learned, that marvellously
+well-informed man, Lord Bacon, wrote of “mines of porcelain,” and had
+the queer idea that china was developed in the earth, out of the common
+clay, by some strange and mysterious process of purification. Another
+universal belief was, that porcelain was a sovereign detector of poison,
+that it instantly showed the presence of poison in any draught that came
+in contact with it. Shakespeare speaks once of china, in his “Measure
+for Measure,” “a dish of some three-pence, your honors have seen such
+dishes, they are not china dishes, but very good dishes.” Ben Jonson
+refers more frequently to porcelain.
+
+         “_Broker._                     ’Tis but earth
+                       Fit to make bricks and tiles of.
+
+         _Shunfield._  ’Tis but for pots or pipkins at the best
+                   If it would keep us in good tobacco pipes—
+
+         _Titus._      Or in porc’lane dishes.”
+
+Again he says:
+
+             “The earth of my bottles which I dig
+             Turn up and steep, and work, and neal, myself,
+             To a degree of porc’lane.”
+
+By the time of Pope and Dryden, china had become more widely known in
+England, and these writers and their contemporaries frequently refer to
+it. It is not probable that much china came to England until 1650, when
+the English East India Trading Company was established, though the Dutch
+had even then a large trade with China. Doubtless tea and china became
+plentiful in Europe together.
+
+Addison wrote in 1713, “China vessels are playthings for women of all
+ages.... I myself remember when there were few china vessels to be seen
+that held more than a dish of tea; but their size is so greatly enlarged
+that there are many capable of holding half a hogshead.”
+
+It is asserted that pieces of Delft ware were brought to America by the
+first English and Dutch settlers. It had been manufactured since the
+fifteenth century; but when our Pilgrim Fathers made their night-trip
+through Delft, no plebeian persons had Delft ware on their tables; hence
+the Pilgrims could have brought few pieces to New England on the
+Mayflower. Nor is it probable that those frugal souls owned any India
+china. The earliest Dutch settlers of New Netherlands were not likely
+either to have brought to the new land any pieces of the aristocratic
+Delft ware, though I have seen many Delft plates and teapots that bore
+the reputation of such ownership.
+
+“Blew & white ware” is however not an infrequent item on early
+inventories of the last half of the century. John Betts, of Cambridge,
+Mass., had before his death, in 1662, “Som duth earthen platters & Som
+other Earthen ware,” valued at 6s. 8d. A citizen of Salem had in 1664
+“17 pieces of blew & white earthen ware” worth 8s. 6d. John Cross, of
+Ipswich, left behind him in 1650 his “Holland jugs.” All these were
+doubtless Delft or the early imitations of Delft.
+
+The oldest and most authentic piece of stone-ware in the country is the
+fine jug preserved in the collection of the American Antiquarian
+Society, at Worcester. It was the property of Governor Winthrop, who
+died in 1649, and was given to the Society by a descendant, Adam
+Winthrop. It stands eight inches in height and is apparently of German
+Gres-ware, and is richly mounted in silver. The lid is engraved with a
+quaint design of Adam and Eve with the tempting serpent in the
+apple-tree. Estienne Perlin, writing in Paris in 1558, says, “The
+English drink beer not out of glass but from earthen pots, the cover and
+handles being made of silver for the rich. The middle classes mount them
+with tin.” Another writer, in 1579, spoke of the English custom of
+drinking from “pots of earth of sundry colors and moulds, whereof many
+are garnished with silver or at leastwise with pewter.” Such is this
+“beer mug” or tankard of Governor Winthrop’s, which is certainly three
+hundred years old. Other Massachusetts colonists had similar beer-mugs.
+Jacob Leager, of Boston, left in 1662 a “stone judg tipt with silver;”
+Henry Dunster had a “tipt jugg” in 1655; and Thomas Rix had in 1678 “3
+fflanders jugs.”
+
+[Illustration: Winthrop Jug.]
+
+Lisbon ware, which was earthen ware, was left by will in Massachusetts
+in 1650; and Spanish platters and painted platters are mentioned in an
+inventory in 1656. Peter Bulkeley, of Concord, Mass., had in 1659 “ten
+paynted earthen dishes” valued at ten shillings. In the lists and
+inventories of the town of Stamford, from 1650 to 1676, only two
+shillings worth of earthen ware is entered, and Stamford planters were
+far from poor. In the _Boston News Letter_ of February 9, 1712, six
+hogsheads of earthen ware, including teapots, were advertised for sale.
+These early teapots are said to have been of black earthen ware.
+
+One of the earliest mentions of china in America is in the inventory
+made in 1641, of the property of Thomas Knocker, of Boston, “1 Chaynie
+Dish.” In 1648, in the estate of President Davenport, of Harvard
+College, was, “Cheyney, £4.” This was doubtless India china. Governor
+Theophilus Eaton had a “cheny basen.” In the list made in 1647, of the
+possessions of Martha Coteymore, a rich widow (who afterward married
+Governor Winthrop), is seen this item, “One parcel cheyney plates and
+saucers, £1.” Katherine Coteymore had “3 boxes East India dishes,”
+valued at £3. As early as October, 1699, John Higginson wrote to his
+brother with regard to importations from India, that “china and
+lacker-ware will sell if in small quantity,” and without doubt some
+small importations from India were made.
+
+After the first decade of the century many rich Bostonians, such as
+Elizur Holyoke, had china. Isaac Caillowell’s estate in 1718 contained
+“Five China Dishes, One Doz. China Plates, Two China Muggs, a China
+Teapott, Two China Slopp Basons, Six China Saucers, Four China Cupps,
+and One China Spoon Dish.”
+
+The earliest mention of the sale of china table-ware which I have seen
+is not in 1732, as given by Mr. Felt in his “New England Customs.” There
+are several notices of sales of china of earlier dates. In the _New
+England Weekly Journal_ of April 15th of the year 1728, were advertised
+for sale, at the Sun Tavern in Boston, “Chainey Bowles Dishes Cups
+Saucers and Teapots;” and “china cups & saucers” on June 17th. This
+“chainey” was probably all India china. In 1729, William Welsteed, a
+Boston merchant, had a large number of plates and “pickle caucers” for
+sale. In 1731, Andrew Faneuil announced that he had for sale at his
+warehouse “All sorts of Dutch Stone and Delf ware just imported from
+Holland.” In 1730 John Buining and Mrs. Hannah Wilson both advertised in
+the _Boston News Letter_, that they had “several sorts of china for
+sale;” and another Boston shopkeeper announced at the same time that he
+was going to sell out everything he owned, including china ware, and
+that his fellow-townsmen had better flock to his shop, for “buyers have
+reason to Expect good Bargains for this will be the Packing Penny,”
+which I suppose was the colonial slang expression for “bottom price.” At
+a later date the “Packing Penny” became “to buy the pennyworth.” It was
+not till 1737 that china ware was sold by “Publick Vandoo or Outcry,” or
+by “Inch of Candle,” in Boston, thus showing that it was being imported
+in larger quantities. In September of that year there was sold on
+Scarlett’s Wharf, with spices and silks and negro slaves,
+
+  “A Rich Sortment of China Ware. A Parcel of fine large Enamel’d
+  Dishes. Ditto of divers Sizes of Bowles burnt & Enamel’d. Ditto of all
+  Sorts of Plates. Sundry Complete Setts of Furniture for the Tea-Table.
+  Blue & White Bowles; Blue & White Cups & Sawcers. Several sorts of
+  small Baskets, &c.”
+
+By this time Boston milliners and mantua makers, and fan mounters, and
+lace menders, had all begun to announce the sale of “chayney” in their
+show-rooms and shops. Fair Boston dames picked their way along the
+narrow streets, or were carried in stately sedan chairs, to “Mistress
+Alise Quick’s, over against the Old Brick Meeting House on Cornhill, at
+the sign of the Three Kings,” or to “Widow Mehetable Kneeland’s,” to see
+her “London baby drest in the latest fashioned Hooped Coat and lac’d
+Petty Coat with ppetuna hood;” or to “Mrs. Hannah Teatts, Mantua Maker,
+at the head of Summer Street, Boston,” who charged five shillings for
+showing her “Baby drest after the Newest Fashion of Mantues and Night
+Gowns and everything belonging to a Dress, latilly brought over on
+Captain White’s ship from London”—these bedizened doll-babies being the
+quaint colonial substitutes for fashion plates. These modish New-English
+dames first pulled over and tried on the “rayls and roquilos and
+cardinals,” and admired the ivory and cocoa paddle stick-fans; and
+peeped at their own patched faces and powdered hair in the lacquered
+looking-glasses; and then, perhaps, selected some flower seeds for their
+prim little gardens—their pleasaunces, “blew and yellow lewpin, double
+larkin-spur, sweet feabus, Love lies bleeding, Queen Margrets, Brompton
+flock, and sweet-scented pease;” and then they turned, unwearied and
+unsated, to the “Choise Sortment of Delph, Stone, Glassware, and China,
+viz., Bowles of Divers Sizes, Plates of all Sorts, and Dishes, Teapots,
+Cups & Saucers, Strayners, Mugs of Divers Sorts and Colors, Creampots
+pearl’d & plain, Bird Fountains, Tankards,” and they held up the tiny
+china teacups to the light and examined the painting, and perhaps sipped
+a little of the mantua maker’s Orange Pekoe or Bohea. And I doubt not
+many a china teapot or teacup stood cheek by jowl with quoyfs and
+ciffers on colonial milliners’ bills, and many a feathered “Kitty Fisher
+Bonnet,” or silver shape, or peaked Ranelagh cap was sent home to the
+daughters of the Puritans, packed with “catgut,” and “robins,” and
+“none-so-prettys,” in an India china punch-bowl.
+
+Of the prices paid for these colonial ceramic luxuries we know but
+little. The enterprising outcrier, who cried out and vandooed at the
+“Blew Boar, at the South End of Boston,” announced in February, 1749, in
+the _Boston Independent Advertiser_, that he had “Fine blue & white and
+Quilted China Plates at Eleven Pounds the Dozen, or Six Pounds the Half
+Dozen.” So the shades of our ancestors can hardly cry out to us for
+extravagance. These quilted china plates were, I think, from subsequent
+references to them, plates impressed in the paste with a basket design,
+as we often see now on Chinese porcelain; or possibly with a larger, a
+truly quilted design, such as I have seen on rare old Oriental
+porcelain. In the inventory of the estate of John Jekyll, of Boston
+(made in 1732), we learn that “2 Burnt China Bowls were worth £2, 6
+Chocolate Bowls £2, 1 Pr China Candlesticks Tipt with Silver £4, 12
+Coffe cups with handles £1 7s.” In many inventories such a number of
+pieces are “crackt” or “mendid,” and so little hint of quality or
+decoration is given, that it is impossible to compare justly the values
+assigned with those of the present day. John Jekyll also had a “sett of
+burnt china.” The first mentioned sale of a “set” of china is in the
+_New England Weekly Journal_ of April 19, 1737—“A Fine Double Sett of
+Burnt China for sale, Enquire of the Printer.” Until then the precious
+porcelain had been sold only in single pieces, or in small numbers. The
+wills and inventories of the times speak of no sets of china, though the
+lists of the possessions of all persons of wealth, the advertisements of
+sales of estates, contain many items of china ware. Governor Burnet, who
+died in 1729, owned much china—three hundred pieces—as became a man who
+had £1,100 spent on his funeral; and his friend and neighbor, Peter
+Faneuil, had a bountiful supply of china and glass, as he had of other
+luxuries.
+
+There are far more frequent mentions and advertisements of china in old
+New England newspapers than in other American papers of the same years.
+The southern publications of colonial times that I have seen contained
+no announcements of the sale of china. None appeared bearing date until
+after the Revolutionary War. And it is plain, from the evidence of
+inventories, “enroulments,” wills, and newspapers of the eighteenth
+century, that porcelain was far more plentiful in New England than
+elsewhere in America at the same date. Mr. Prime says, “Few of the
+people of Revolutionary times had seen porcelain;” but when it had been
+advertised in every New England newspaper; had been sold in grocers’,
+milliners’, chemists’, dry-goods, saddlers’, and hardware shops; had
+been displayed at the printers’ and book-shops and writing-schools in
+every town of any size throughout New England; and sold in considerable
+quantities by all the little Boston shopkeepers—the Amorys, Waldos,
+Brimmers, Adamses, Sheaffes, and Boylstons, I fancy all New England good
+wives must have owned a few pretty pieces.
+
+Doubtless the wealthiest Virginians of colonial times also had some
+china. It is not, however, named in Baltimore inventories until after
+the year 1700. Nor was it plentiful in New York; one of the earliest
+mentions of china in New York is in the list of the possessions of
+wealthy Cornelius Stienwerck, “Ten pieces of china dishes or porcelain
+£4.” In August, 1748, the _New York Weekly Journal_ contained its first
+announcement of the sale of china—“A choice parcel of China Ware just
+imported to be sold at Wholesale. Enquire of the Printer.” Now, the
+“Printer” at that date was a woman, the Widow Zenger, wife of the former
+owner of the newspaper, and with her assumption of the printing and
+editing business came various feminine advertisements such as this of
+china ware, others of mantuas and hair-powder, and of “bonnet-papers,”
+which she cut and made and sold in large numbers; but this china sale
+was certainly exceptional in New York at that date.
+
+China did not abound in New York, either in Dutch or English families,
+until after the Revolutionary War. Nor did advertisements of it
+frequently appear in ante-Revolutionary New York newspapers. In an
+inventory made at that time of the contents of a house on the Neutral
+Ground in Westchester County, there were such wealth-evincing items as
+twenty-six horses, thirty-six table-cloths, rich and abundant furniture,
+bed-linen, and clothing, large quantities of fine silver; and of pewter,
+“1 Coffee Kettle, 1 Teapot, 27 Dishes, 12 Plates, 12 Soup-Plates, 6
+Butter Plates, 3 Mugs, 2 salons, 5 basons, 6 Spoons, 3 Measures;” and
+not one piece of china. This list of household belongings is not
+exceptional. China is seldom mentioned. But few pieces of porcelain or
+pottery are named in the inventories of the possessions of the New
+Jersey farmers whose houses were burned, and whose household goods were
+either destroyed or stolen by the soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and
+who expected to receive indemnity from the Government for their losses.
+We discover therein that each family seldom owned more than three or
+four china cups and saucers. These records are extremely valuable for
+reference, as they are true and faithful lists of the entire household
+belongings of well-to-do people at that time; they indicate that china
+was far from plentiful in New Jersey at that date. Watson says in his
+“Annals,” “When china was first introduced into America, it was in the
+form of tea-sets; it was quite a business to take in broken china to
+mend. It was done by cement in most cases, but generally large pieces,
+like punch-bowls, were done with silver rivets or wire.” An
+advertisement in the _Boston Evening Post_ in 1755 reads: “This is to
+give Notice to all Them that have any Broken China, at the Lion and Bell
+on Marlboro Street, Boston, they may have it mended by Riveting it
+together with a Silver & Brass Rivets it is first put together with a
+Cement that will stand boiling Water and then Riveted.”
+
+China appears to have been more plentiful in Philadelphia than in New
+York. Benjamin Lay, the “Singular Pythagorean Cynical Christian
+Philosopher,” to show his hatred of the use of tea, brought in 1742 all
+his wife’s china into the market-place at Philadelphia, and began to
+break it piece by piece with a hammer; “but the populace, unwilling to
+lose what might profit them, overset him, scrambled for the china, and
+bore it off whole.” As the “Singular Pythagorean Philosopher’s” wife was
+dead, this wanton destruction of her dear china was not so cruel as at
+first appears. An old lady wrote in 1830, about things as they were
+before the War of Independence—“Pewter plates and dishes were in general
+use. China on dinner tables was a great rarity. Glass tumblers were
+scarcely seen. Punch, the most common beverage, was drunk from a silver
+tankard. China teacups and saucers were half their present size, and
+china teapots and coffee-pots with silver nozzles were a mark of
+superior finery. Where we now use earthen ware they then used Delft ware
+imported from England, and instead of queen’s ware (then unknown) pewter
+platters and porringers made to shine along a dresser were universal.
+Some, especially country people, ate their meals from wooden trenchers.”
+
+That frugal and plain-living man, Benjamin Franklin, though he
+constantly impressed upon his wife, as well as upon the public, the
+wisdom and necessity of great economy, and the propriety and good taste
+of simplicity in all modes of living, still could find time and money to
+pick out for her, when he was in England, and to send to her many a
+piece of china for her beaufet in Philadelphia. He writes thus from
+London, in February, 1758, to his Deborah: “I send you by Captain Budden
+a large case and a small box containing some English china, viz: melons
+and leaves for a dessert of fruit and cream or the like; a bowl
+remarkable for the neatness of the figures, made at Bow, near this city;
+some coffee-cups of the same; and a Worcester bowl, ordinary. To show
+the difference of workmanship, there is something from all the china
+workers in England; and one old true china basin mended; of an odd
+color.... I also forgot among the china to mention a large, fine jug for
+beer, to stand in the cooler. I fell in love with it at first sight, for
+I thought it looked like a fat, jolly dame, clean and tidy, with a neat
+blue and white gown on, good-natured and lovely, and put me in mind
+of—somebody. Look at the figures on the china bowl and coffee-cups with
+your spectacles on, they will bear examining.” This was certainly a very
+tender attention on the part of Franklin, and one particularly grateful,
+doubtless, to his good dame, if she loved china as do others of her sex.
+In 1765 she wrote to her “dear child” (of over three score years) while
+he was in France, and thus describes a room that she had been
+furnishing: “The blue room has a set of tea china I bought since you
+went from home, a very handsome mahogany stand for the teakettle to
+stand on, and the ornamental china.” This latter clause refers doubtless
+to the fine English pieces which he had sent her eight years previously.
+In spite of all this fine array, Mrs. Bache wrote thus to her father, on
+October 30, 1773: “We have no plates or dishes fit to set before your
+friends, and the queen’s ware is thought very elegant here, particularly
+the spriged. I just mention this, as it would be much cheaper for you to
+bring them than to get them here.” Let us hope her father took this
+broad hint and brought the “spriged” dishes to his daughter; and as
+there still exist among her descendants, pieces of a set of china
+bearing little sprigs, I choose to think that they are parts of this
+very set.
+
+[Illustration: Province House Pitcher.]
+
+A very interesting pitcher of English ware of yellowish paste, with a
+raised design of vine leaves in vari-colored lustres, is known to us by
+the name of the Province House Pitcher, because it was found, with two
+tall pewter drinking-cups, hidden behind a panel in the wainscoting of
+the historic old Province House in Boston. I fear it is not old enough
+to have been held by the fair hands of gentle Agnes Surriage, but I
+doubt not some romance attended its imprisonment.
+
+By Revolutionary times a change appeared in the character and quality of
+the china that was imported to America. In the _Connecticut Courant_ of
+September, 1773, we read in the advertisement of the “Staffordshire and
+Liverpool Warehouse,” on King Street, Boston, that they have “for little
+more than sterling cost, a fine sortment of Crockery Ware, consisting of
+almost every kind of China, Glass & Delph: Cream color, white, blue &
+white, black, brown, agot, tortoise, melon, pineapple fruit pattern,
+enaml’d, and many other kinds of Stoneware. A few complete table
+services of very elegant printed and painted and guilt ware;” and at a
+later date “Cream Color Pyramids, Candlesticks, Inkstands, & Chamber
+Lamps.” The advertisements of this importing house are found in the
+files of New England papers for many years. Every notice of “English
+goods” arrived from England for Jolley Allen, for Hopestill Capen, for
+Cotton Barrell, three thrifty Boston shopkeepers, contained items of
+English and of India china. “Large & Neat Sortment of India China Dishes
+of Various forms & sizes, viz: Pudding, Soup, Mackrel, round, oval,
+Octagon, ribb’d, scallop’d. Also a variety of table & Butter Plates;
+Patty Pans, Bowls & Sauceboats.” Even in war times there still was china
+in many shops outside of poor besieged, war-swept Boston, though often
+only “a few crates well Sortid considering the Scarsity.” By 1778 china
+began to pour into other ports than Boston. In New Haven were sold in
+August of that year (and strange to tell, were advertised to be sold at
+the very highest price) “Oval Dishes of Several Different Sizes, small
+Cream coloured Plates, Punchbowles, cream colour’d Teapots, Red ditto,
+Blue ditto, Colliflower ditto, Cream colour’d coffee-cups & sausers,
+Tortoise-shell bowles, enamel’d flat bottom cups.” The cream-colored
+wares of Wedgwood and of Liverpool make, were evidently just beginning
+to be fashionable, though the latter had been named in the _Boston
+Gazette_ as early as 1749. In 1780 we first see the advertisement of
+Queen’s ware in the _Providence Gazette_, the _Connecticut Courant_, the
+Boston newspapers. In October, 1783, “An Assortment of Yellow ware such
+as cups, saucers, mugs,” was advertised in the _Providence Gazette_, and
+again “Yellow ware both flat and hollow,” meaning plates and pitchers.
+Yellow ware was Liverpool ware, and is still so called by country people
+on the sea-coast. In 1783 there came into Baltimore, on the ship
+Brothers, from Liverpool, “Queen’s ware & Liverpool ware,” and on the
+ship Yungfrau Magretha, from Copenhagen, more Queen’s ware; and on the
+ship Pacifique, from France, “boxes and barrels of china ware;” and on
+the ship Candidus, from Amsterdam, “Delph ware”—and these vessels with
+their cargoes were all advertised at the same date, bewildering
+Baltimore housewives with the array of “richness.” Then came
+announcements of “burnt china”—as if it were not all burnt! In May,
+1785, “Beautiful Pencil Chinney Tile,” and then frequent announcements
+of “Pencil China,” “Pencil ware,” “Pensil’d Yellow ware,” all of which
+were one and the same—Liverpool ware printed with engraved designs.
+“Enameled ware” doubtless meant glazed ware, and was so called to
+distinguish it from the unglazed wares of Wedgwood. The “Amiled Milk
+Pots” in the _Boston Evening Post_ of 1749 were doubtless also
+enamelled. In 1784 and 1785, in all American newspapers of note appeared
+announcements of sales of Nottingham ware, a favorite importation before
+the war. Soon, with the growth of ship-building and Oriental trade, came
+the vast influx of Oriental porcelain direct from China, and
+advertisements of Canton china crowded the columns of every American
+newspaper.
+
+It is interesting to note the various shapes of china and the names of
+the pieces that were imported in colonial and Revolutionary times, as
+well as the variety of wares. In the _Boston News Letter_ of 1742 I find
+“china boats for spoons.” In the _Boston Evening Post_ in 1749, “china
+mugs, pitchers, and Turk caps,” which latter mysterious articles were, I
+am sure, china also. What are “Mint Stands in delph,” or rather what
+were they in 1751? In 1753 they had “custard-dishes” for sale; and did
+they have “terines” or “terreens” before 1760? I do not find them named
+at an earlier date. A year later came “sallade bowls” and the first
+“china handle coffee-cups,” though John Jekyll had had handles on his
+cups in 1732. Not until 1772 do I find “Enamel’d Tea cups & Saucers,
+with handles to the cups.” In 1763 china patch-boxes and china sweetmeat
+boxes came to New England. China stoves were advertised, but I think
+they were rare. “China tumblers, with covers,” seem strange to us. What
+were the “yellow klinckers and Red glaz’d pantils” advertised in the
+_South Carolina State Gazette_ in 1787? China “sweetmeat and pickle
+saucers” came in 1773, and “half pint blue & white enameled Basons with
+Sawsers.” China milk-jugs, milk-pots, milk-cups, milk-ewers, and
+creamers, all antedated the milk-pitcher. We had sugar-boxes,
+sugar-basons, sugar-pots, and sugar-dishes before we had sugar-bowls.
+“Twifflers” were of porcelain also—pudding-dishes we call them now.
+
+“China voiders” also are advertised for sale. These colonial ceramic
+articles of nomenclature most unpleasing in sound to modern ears, were
+really only an ancient type of what are known to dealers nowadays as
+“crumb-trays.” Into a voider fragments of food remaining on the
+table—bones and the like—were gathered after a meal by a voiding-knife.
+Pewter voiders abounded, and “china baskets and voiders” appear in
+newspaper lists in 1740.
+
+Doubtless many of these voiders and Turk caps, twifflers, and mint
+stands have descended to us, but are known now by the uniform and
+uninteresting name of dishes.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IV.
+                      EARLY FICTILE ART IN AMERICA
+
+
+In all our wanderings and searchings we have never found any specimens
+of old American china, for one author says that, like the snakes in
+Iceland, there are none. The history of the early manufacture of
+porcelain in this country is so meagre that it is quickly written, and
+records of early pottery works are not plentiful, and specimens are
+comparatively unobtainable, and frequently far from beautiful or
+instructive. Still I believe that America deserves a fuller ceramic
+history, and has had a larger manufacture of pottery and porcelain than
+is generally known.
+
+One class of pottery relics should not be neglected by collectors—those
+of the North American Indians. When our Pilgrim Fathers landed on the
+bleak shores of New England they found the red man using rough bowls and
+pans of coarse earthen ware as cooking utensils. Gookin wrote of them
+thus: “The pots they seethe their food in are made of clay and earth
+almost in the form of an egg with the top broken off.” Bradford wrote
+that the colonists also found great pottery vessels buried in the earth,
+containing stores of maize. Perfect specimens of the work of New England
+savages are rare, and are usually in a simple bowl shape. In the
+fragments found in the Connecticut Valley mica is mingled with the clay,
+as in the old Celtic wares of Ireland. Wherever the white man landed, to
+whatever spot he penetrated, he found Indians, and he also found the
+Indians using coarse pottery vessels, “akeeks,” of their own
+manufacture. The early accounts of the country—Spanish, Portuguese,
+French, and English—all tell of the use and manufacture of pottery among
+the Indians. In the “Brevis Narratio” of Le Moyne de Morgues, written in
+the sixteenth century, we are given illustrations purporting to be of
+some forms of pottery used by the Florida Indians at that time. Father
+Hennepin, writing about 1680, asserts that before the arrival of
+Europeans in North America, “both the Northern and Southern Salvages
+made use of, and do to this day use, Earthen Pots, especially such as
+have no Commerce with the Europeans from whom they may procure Kettels
+and other Moveables.” It is the fashion among antiquaries to place no
+confidence in Father Hennepin, but I think we may believe this statement
+of his, since we have so much additional evidence, both through past
+writers and present discoveries.
+
+In Hariot’s “Virginia,” of the date 1590, we learn that the Virginian
+Indians “cooked their meate in earthen pottes. Thier women know how to
+make earthen vessels with special Cunninge, and that so large and fine
+that our potters with thoye wheles can make no better; and they Remoue
+them from place to place as easeleye as we can doe our brassen kettles.”
+
+The Cherokee Indians, having fine clays of various colors to work with,
+made a good class of pottery, far better than any made by northern
+Indians, some of the vessels being of large size. Lieutenant Timberlake,
+who visited them in 1765, says he saw one at a “physic-dance” that would
+hold twenty gallons. Adair, writing in 1775, says that they made
+“earthen pots of very different sizes, so as to contain from two to ten
+gallons, large pitchers to carry water, bowls, platters, dishes, basons,
+and a prodigious number of other vessels of such antiquated forms as
+would be tedious to describe and impossible to name. Their method of
+glazing them is, they place them over a large pit of smoky pitch pine
+which makes them smooth, black, and firm. Their lands abound with proper
+clay and even with porcelain, as has been proved by experiment.” A
+description of the vessels of “antiquated forms” would, of course, have
+made his account of far more use and interest to us nowadays. William
+Bartram, that intelligent observer, writing in 1773, confirms the
+accounts of other travellers among the Indians in South Carolina and
+Georgia, and tells of the discovery of a very interesting earthen pot
+found in an Indian mound on Colonel’s Island, in Liberty County, Ga. He
+says “it was wrought all over the outside representing basket-work, and
+was undoubtedly esteemed a very ingenious performance by the people at
+the age of its construction.” This burial urn (for such the pot proved
+to be) was indeed a very good piece of work for an Indian potter, and is
+still preserved. It is about fifteen inches in height and ten in its
+greatest diameter, of graceful outline, and is covered with an impressed
+design of fine basket-work. It was made with an admixture of gravel and
+powdered shell, which rendered it strong enough to resist the
+disintegrating influences of the soil by which it was surrounded. It was
+enclosed in two outer vessels of ruder workmanship, which crumbled into
+fragments upon exposure to the air. Within the inner vessel were the
+bones of a young child. Too young to own any earthly possessions to be
+buried with him, this little Indian baby was interred in the tumulus of
+shell and clay, in his earthen coffin alone.
+
+In the burial mounds of grown persons vast amounts of broken vessels and
+ashes of other burnt property are discovered. All peoples have at some
+period of their history had the custom of burying articles of use or
+value with their dead, or of burning these possessions at the time of
+the burial of the dead owner. To this custom, which existed among the
+North American Indians, we owe the preservation of nearly all the
+specimens of their poorly baked, fragile cooking utensils and burial
+urns that we now possess. Many filled with food and drink were whole
+when placed in the mound, but were quickly destroyed and crushed by the
+sinking earth, or disintegrated by the moisture. Many also remain, and
+sherds of Indian pottery are constantly being brought to light by our
+civilized ploughshares. It has been erroneously thought by some students
+that Indian pottery was only sun-dried; had it been so, no specimens
+would have withstood for so many years the action of the soil and
+elements, but would have returned ere this to their old clayey
+consistency.
+
+In examining this Indian pottery it is easy to see the natural way in
+which the earliest forms were developed. The gourd, the shell, the
+basket, the square box of bark—all these primitive shapes of vessels
+were copied in the pottery. The ornamentation, too, was compassed in a
+simple fashion; the vessel was sometimes modelled within a rush basket
+or frame of reeds—thus the impressed design remained upon it. Rude dyes
+were applied. One indented design is said to have been formed by the
+finger-nail of the Indian potter; other designs have been impressed by
+twisted thongs. All these methods and forms of ornamentation were also
+used by the Celtic potters. Little pieces of mica or shell were inserted
+in the wet clay pot, and were fired in as a further ornament.
+
+The earthen vessel was either baked in a rude kiln or inverted over
+coals of burning wood. We have several very good descriptions of the
+methods of manufacturing and firing of Indian potters at a later date.
+Dumont writes in 1848, of the Louisiana Indians: “After having amassed
+the proper kind of clay and carefully cleaned it, the Indian women take
+shells which they pound and reduce to a fine powder; they mix this
+powder with the clay, and having poured some water on the mass, they
+knead it with their hands and feet and make it into a paste of which
+they form rolls six or seven feet long, and of a thickness suitable to
+their purpose. If they intend to fashion a plate or a vase, they take
+hold of one of these rolls by the end, and fixing here with the thumb of
+the left hand the centre of the vessel they are about to make, they turn
+the roll with astonishing quickness around this centre, describing a
+spiral line; now and then they dip their fingers into water and smooth
+with the right hand the inner and outer surface of the vase they intend
+to fashion, which would become ruffled or undulated without that
+manipulation. In this manner they make all sorts of earthen vessels,
+plates, dishes, bowls, pots, and jars, some of which hold from forty to
+fifty pints.”
+
+This is a prettier and more domestic picture of the Indian wife than
+many we have of the draggled, overworked squaw digging in the fields, or
+carrying the tent-poles on her back like a pack-horse. The whirling coil
+of clay, the growing earthen jar, the deftly-shaping hand, are certainly
+picturesque and homely. The Indian women were potters in all the tribes,
+it being deemed unmanly work for a lordly brave.
+
+The Indians of the Mohawk Valley, the Iroquois, made much and varied
+pottery. In the fine collection of Indian relics owned by A. G.
+Richmond, Esq., of Canajoharie, N. Y., are some very interesting pieces
+of pottery which have been taken from Indian mounds—among them two jars
+of so delicate and friable a character that one wonders how they have
+ever escaped disintegration and destruction; also a rare fragment
+wrought with a representation of the human figure.
+
+Another form of Indian pottery must not be forgotten, for the
+significance of the pipe in the early history of our country cannot be
+over-rated. The calumet was a moral, religious, and political influence;
+on its manufacture and ornamentation the Indian expended all his skill
+and his best labor; and to its suited and significant use he gave his
+deepest thought. The use of the pipe was a devotional service—the Great
+Spirit smoked His pipe, and his followers did likewise in His honor; it
+was a political signal—no war was declared, no treaty of peace was
+signed without the accompaniment and symbolical use of the pipe.
+Lieutenant Timberlake says that the Cherokees made pipes “of the same
+earth they made their pots with, but beautifully diversified,” and he
+pathetically records that he was forced to smoke so many pipes of peace
+with them that he was made very unpleasantly sick thereby. This special
+tribe of Indians had such fine blue clay, and knew so well how to mix
+and prepare it, that they made better pipes than their neighbors, and
+thus pipes became a medium of exchange—Indian money. The strong clay
+pipes of the English settlers were, as soon as imported, eagerly sought
+for and quickly purchased by the Indians.
+
+Fine and varied specimens of the pottery vessels and pipes of the
+various Indian nations may be found in the cabinets of the Smithsonian
+Institution, in the rooms of the various State historical societies, in
+the buildings of our colleges and natural history associations, and may
+be studied to advantage by the student of ceramics. A full or worthy
+history of the fictile art of the North American Indians has yet to be
+written.
+
+I doubt if the colonists ever used the Indian pottery, for at an early
+date they began to manufacture bricks and earthen ware, and having
+wheels to help them in shaping their pots, could far outdo the Indians.
+They made laws to protect such manufacture. The General Court of
+Massachusetts ordered, as early as 1646, that “tyle earth to make sale
+ware shall be digged before the first of 9 mo and turned over in the
+last or first before it be wrought.” John Pride, of Salem, was
+registered as a potter in 1641. He may have helped to establish a
+pottery in Danvers, then a suburb of Salem, for the manufacture of
+earthen ware in that town was coeval with the existence of the
+settlement; and the Danvers pot-works were, I believe, the first to be
+established in America by any of the colonies. Higginson, writing from
+Salem in 1629, said, “It is thought here is good clay to make bricks &
+tyles and earthen pot as may be. At this instant we are setting a bricke
+kill to worke to make brickes and tyles for the building of our houses.”
+
+William Osborne was the first Danvers potter, and his descendants
+carried on the business in that immediate vicinity for about two
+centuries. Mr. Joseph Reed then took charge as the successor of the
+house of Osborne. At the end of the eighteenth century the production of
+“Danvers ware” was extensive. Morse’s _Gazetteer_ of 1797 says, “Large
+quantities of brick and coarse earthen ware are manufactured here.” A
+resident of the town wrote thus in 1848, “Table-ware of Danvers China
+brought a high price during the late war.” To call the common red
+pottery “china” is certainly flattering, but may be pardoned on account
+of the local pride of the writer.
+
+At the “time of the late war”—the war of 1812—there were no less than
+twenty-six of these pottery works where now there is only one. The
+situation of the residence and pot-works of William Osborne is still
+known, and the manufacture of earthen ware has gone on in the same place
+without interruption ever since. Simple forms only have been made—often
+lead-glazed—bean-pots, jugs, pitchers, milk-pans, jars, etc. We must
+except, of course, the table-ware of war times. This Osborne kiln is
+situated in what is called Peabody, but in the town of North Danvers
+there was discovered a few years ago the foundation of an old forgotten
+kiln, which had been owned by a potter named Porter. There is no finer
+quality of clay than is still found in large quantities within a quarter
+of a mile of this old Porter kiln. This clay is, however, carried to
+Boston and elsewhere instead of being manufactured where it is dug.
+Potters make good citizens. Staffordshire men say, “working in earth
+makes men easy-minded,” and a community of potters is always orderly,
+law-abiding, thrifty, and industrious. A larger and constantly
+increasing manufacture of Danvers ware should have been encouraged.
+
+An enthusiastic local minstrel sings thus of Danvers pottery and
+patriots:
+
+                 “Here plastic clay the potter turned
+                   To pitcher, dish, jug, pot, or pan,
+                 As in his kiln the ware was burned,
+                   So burned the patriot in the man,
+                 Into persistent shape, which no
+                 Turning could change back to dough.
+                 It might be broken, ground to dust,
+                 But ne’er made ductile as at first.”
+
+The Quakers kept up with the Puritans in the attempt to establish home
+manufactures and home industries. Father Pastorius wrote in 1684, “Of
+brick kilns and tile ovens, we have the necessary number.” Gabriel
+Thomas found in Pennsylvania, in 1696, both brick kilns and pot-works.
+He writes thus to encourage emigration from England, and to show the
+high wages in the new land. “Brick-makers have twenty shillings per
+thousand for their bricks at the kilns, and potters have sixteenpence
+for an earthenware pot that may be bought in England for fourpence.”
+
+In New Jersey, at Burlington, Governor Coxe, of “West Jersey,”
+established in 1690 a pottery of considerable size and pretension. The
+Virginians kept pace with the Quakers and Puritans. As early as 1649
+there were several pot-works in Virginia.
+
+Potteries were also established on Long Island in the eighteenth
+century. On March 31, 1735, “The widow of Thomas Parmynter offers for
+sale her farm at Whitestone, opposite Frogs Point. It has twenty acres
+of clay ground fit for making tobacco pipes. For sale also two negroes,
+with utensils and other conveniences for carrying on that business.” On
+July 3, 1738, the same farm, with its “beds of pipe-making clay,” was
+again sold. On May 13, 1751, this advertisement appeared: “Any persons
+desirous may be supplied with vases, urns, flower-pots to adorn gardens
+and tops of houses, or any other ornament made of clay, by Edward Annely
+at Whitestone, he having set up the potter’s business by means of a
+German family that he bought (?), who are supposed by their work to be
+the most ingenious that arrived in America. He has clay capable of
+making eight different kinds of ware.” This was evidently quite a
+pretentious start in the pottery manufacture, and with the assistance of
+the ingenious family of German potters, and the advantages of convenient
+beds of clay, Edward Annely should have succeeded; but no record remains
+to indicate either his success or failure.
+
+Upon the old farm of John Lefferts, in Flatbush, Long Island, there
+exists a large pond called by the apparently incongruous name of
+Steenbakkery. This pond was formed by the removal of clay for use in a
+steenbakkery or pottery upon the place, and from the size of the
+excavation vast numbers of bricks and coarse stone-ware must have been
+made. The ruins of the racks for the bricks remained standing within the
+memory of persons now living. This pond having, of course, no outlet
+through its clay bottom, has in our present age of sanitary drainage
+been ordered to be filled in. In New York City, near “Fresh Water Pond,”
+back of the City Hall, a German potter named Remmey established works,
+but his descendants were crowded out by the growing city, and removed to
+South Amboy.
+
+In 1748 the State of Massachusetts offered bounties to encourage the
+manufacture of earthen ware, and many new pot-works were established.
+“Mangness” for the use of potters was offered for sale in the
+newspapers, and the would-be purchaser was to inquire of the printer,
+who in colonial days seemed literally to have a finger in every pie. One
+of the oldest of these colonial potteries was started previous to the
+year 1765, by a man whose descendants of the same name still conduct the
+pottery works known as the factory of A. H. Hews & Co., in North
+Cambridge, Mass. The record of this family firm is so remarkable for
+America that it should be told at some length. Not only has the company
+continued in the same business in an uninterrupted line of the same firm
+name, but it possesses a record of a century and a third of unspotted
+integrity in business dealings. It has passed through times of foreign
+and civil wars, through business crises and depressions, in an even
+career of honor and fair-dealing, and now has earned a deserved and
+independent position, having the largest manufactory of flower-pots in
+the world—making many millions yearly—as well as a large and varied line
+of art pottery. When Abraham Hews was pottering around in his little
+pottery in Weston, in 1765, making milk-pans and bean-pots, and jugs and
+teapots, and exchanging them for general merchandise, in which New
+England rum and molasses took no inferior part, he little foresaw the
+vast business enterprise that would be carried out by his great-grandson
+in 1891. The clay used by him in Weston was brought from Watertown, and
+later from Cambridge, and the firm did not move their works to Cambridge
+until 1870. Abraham Hews, second, lived to be eighty-eight years old
+(being postmaster for fifty-one years), and his son lived to be
+eighty-one years old, dying in 1891—the good old Puritan stock showing
+in long life as well as in honest life. Thus does a chain of only three
+lives reach to ante-Revolutionary times, and an ante-Revolutionary
+pottery.
+
+In the _Norwich Gazette_ of September 15, 1796, we find this
+advertisement of a pottery: “C. Potts & Son inform the Public that they
+have lately established a Manufactory of Earthen ware at the shop
+formerly improved by Mr. Charles Lathrop, where all kinds of said Ware
+is made and sold either in large or small quantities, and warranted
+good.” This pottery was on Bean Hill. It is referred to in Miss
+Caulkin’s “History of Norwich,” Dr. Peters’s “History of Connecticut,”
+and in Morse’s _Gazetteer_.
+
+At the commencement of the Revolutionary war a man named Upton came from
+Nantucket to East Greenwich, R. I., and there manufactured earthen ware.
+The pottery when made was baked in a kiln which stood at the corner of
+King and Marlboro Streets. He made pans, bowls, plates, cups, and
+saucers of common red clay, a little finer than that now used in the
+manufacture of flower-pots. As little porcelain was imported from Europe
+during the War, people used willingly, and even eagerly, the coarse
+plates, and drank their “Liberty Tea” from the coarse cups and saucers.
+The clay came from Goold’s Mount, now owned by Mr. Henry Waterman, of
+Quidneset. After the war was ended Potter Upton went back to his
+safety-assured home on Nantucket, and the Greenwich pottery was closed.
+
+In 1793 there was a flourishing pottery in Quasset, Windham County,
+Conn., and the pottery carts of Thomas Bugbee, the proprietor, were well
+known throughout the county. He made inkstands, bean-pots, jugs, jars,
+and many other common shapes, and the demand for milk-pans alone always
+kept his kiln running all summer. There was at this time another similar
+pottery in Stonington, owned by Adam States, who made gray jugs and pots
+and jars with salt-glaze. Another firm at Norwalk manufactured red ware
+with a lead glaze. There is a specimen in the Trumbull-Prime collection.
+Mr. Prime says they manufactured mugs, teapots, jars, and milk-pans at
+this Norwalk pottery. In 1794 a Mr. Fenton, of New Haven, set up in Lynn
+Street, Boston, a pottery where “all manner of stone vessels were made
+after the manner of imported Liverpool ware and sold at a lower rate.”
+The clay for this manufacture was brought from Perth Amboy, N. J.
+
+An article in the _American Museum_ in 1791, on the existing state of
+American manufactures, said, “Coarse tiles and bricks of an excellent
+quality, potters’ wares, all in quantities beyond the home consumption,
+a few ordinary vessels of stone mixed with clay, some mustard and snuff
+bottles, a few flasks or flagons, a small quantity of sheet glass, and
+of vessels for family use, generally of inferior kinds, are now made.”
+Dr. Dwight, in 1822, gave among his list of Connecticut factories and
+manufactures, “potteries twelve,” “value of earthen and stone-ware
+$30,940;” and for Massachusetts, “earthen ware, $18,700.”
+
+Though nothing but coarse earthen ware was made in America in these
+colonial days, the new land played no unimportant part in the first
+steps toward porcelain manufacture in England in the middle of the
+eighteenth century. It was the custom, when English vessels had
+discharged their freights in southern American ports, for them to take
+samples of the alluvial deposits of North and South Carolina, of Georgia
+and Florida, to carry back to England for English potters and chemists
+to experiment upon. The Bow china-works began to manufacture porcelain
+about the year 1744. In that year a sample of china-clay being brought
+from America, a patent was taken out by Thomas Frye, of West Ham, Essex,
+and Edward Heylyn, of Bow, for the production of porcelain, of which one
+of the ingredients was “an earth, the product of the Cherokee nation in
+America, called by the natives ‘_unaker_.’” When this patent was renewed
+in 1794, no mention was made of “unaker.”
+
+In Plymouth a shrewd old Quaker, William Cookworthy, also had his eye
+upon the American china-clay. He wrote to Mr. Hingston on May 30, 1745,
+saying that kaolin and petuntse had been discovered in America, and that
+he had seen specimens said to have been manufactured from the American
+materials. One letter of his on the subject runs thus: “I had lately
+with me the person who hath discovered the china-earth. He had with him
+several samples of the china ware of their making which I think were
+equal to the Asiatic. ’Twas found on the back of Virginia, where he was
+in quest of mines, and having read Du Halde, he discovered both the
+petuntse and the kaolin. ’Twas this latter earth which he says is
+essential to the success of the manufacture. He is going for a cargo of
+it, having bought from the Indians the whole country where it rises.
+They can import it for £13 per ton, and by that means afford their china
+as cheap as common stone-ware. The man is a Quaker by profession, but
+seems to be as thorough a Deist as I ever met with.” In 1768 Cookworthy
+established the Plymouth china-works, but no further mention is made of
+the deistical Quaker and his promised cargo of china-earth.
+
+In 1655 a box of “porcelain-earth from the internal parts of the
+Cherokee nation, four hundred miles from hence (Charleston) on mountains
+scarcely accessible,” was consigned to another English potter, Richard
+Champion, who founded the Bristol china-works. This box of clay was sent
+by Champion’s brother-in-law, Mr. Caleb Lloyd, of Charleston, to be
+forwarded to the Worcester china-works to be used there in experiments.
+At the same time another box was sent to Champion for a relative of his,
+the Earl of Hyndford, who desired Champion to open it and make
+experiments with it, or to give it to Mr. Goldney, “who is a very
+curious gentleman.” The curious Mr. Goldney declined using the clay, and
+Champion experimented unsuccessfully “on the principle of Chinese
+porcelain,” and then decided to use clay from Cornwall, which was “not
+so fine as the Cherokee; however, there can be no chance of introducing
+the latter as a manufacture when it can be so easily procured from
+Cornwall.”
+
+In 1766 the English Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures,
+and Commerce gave a gold medal to Mr. Samuel Bowen, with the inscription
+that it was given to him “for his useful observations in china and
+industrious application of them in Georgia.” It was doubtless the
+industrious Mr. Bowen’s china that was referred to in Felix Farley’s
+_Bristol Journal_, in the issue of November 24, 1764. “This week some
+pieces of porcelain manufactured in Georgia was imported; the materials
+appear to be good, but the workmanship is far from being admired.”
+Though this china venture was of enough importance to be-medal its
+projector, all traces of its location, progress, and fate have been
+lost.
+
+Other and more pretentious pot-works were brought into life by the
+Massachusetts bounties. In the _Boston Evening Post_ of October 30,
+1769, we read, “Wanted immediately at the new Factory in New Boston,
+four Boys for Apprentices to learn the Art of making Tortoise-shell
+Cream and Green Colour Plates, Dishes, Coffee and Tea Pots, Cups and
+Saucers and other Articles in the Potter’s Business, equal to any
+imported from England. Any Persons inclined to Bind out such Lads to the
+aforesaid Business is desired to apply immediately at the said Factory
+or at Leigh’s Intelligence Office.”
+
+It is very evident, from many advertisements at about this date, that a
+strenuous and well-directed effort was made to establish and maintain
+pot-works in Boston. Thus on May 12, 1769, there appeared in the _Boston
+Evening Post_ this notice: “Wanted Samples of different clays and fine
+White Sand. Any Person or Persons that will send about 5 lbs. of Clay
+and a Pint of fine white Sand to Leigh’s Intelligence Office, in
+Merchants’ Row, Boston, if it is the sort wanted the Proprietors will
+have advantage of Proposals made to them to supply a quantity.” Good
+wages, too, for the times, were offered to workmen, practised potters.
+“Twenty Dollars per Month with Victuals Drink Washing and Lodging given
+to any persons Skill’d in Making Glazing and Burning common Earthen ware
+who can be well recommended. Enquire of the Printer.”
+
+All this applying and experimenting and establishing, and the fact that
+a Quaker named Bartlam, an unsuccessful English master-potter, had
+started a pottery in Camden, S. C., in the very heart of the clay
+supply—all this seriously alarmed that far-seeing and shrewd business
+man, Josiah Wedgwood. He had once before lost his foreman, Mr. Podmore,
+who left him with the intention of establishing pot-works in America.
+Mr. Chaffers, a Liverpool manufacturer, had caught the intending
+emigrant during his pre-embarking stay in Liverpool, and finding that
+Podmore showed so much intelligence and practical knowledge of the
+business, had made him sufficiently liberal offers to induce him to
+remain in England. English potters had also emigrated in large numbers.
+
+Wedgwood wrote thus at that time to his patron, Sir W. Meredith: “Permit
+me, Sir, to mention a circumstance of a more public nature, which
+greatly alarms us in this neighborhood. The bulk of our particular
+manufactures are, you know, exported to foreign markets, for our home
+consumption is very trifling in comparison to what is sent abroad; and
+the principal of these markets are the Continent and Islands of North
+America. To the continent we send an amazing quantity of white
+stone-ware and some of the finer kinds, but for the islands we cannot
+make anything too rich and costly. This trade to our colonies we are
+apprehensive of losing in a few years, as they set on foot some
+pot-works there already, and are at this time amongst us hiring a number
+of our hands for establishing new pot-works in South Carolina, having
+got one of our insolvent master-potters there to conduct them. They have
+every material there, equal if not superior to our own, for carrying on
+that manufacture; and as the necessaries of life and consequently the
+prices of labour amongst us are daily advancing, it is highly probable
+that more will follow them and join their brother artists and
+manufacturers of all classes who are from all quarters taking a rapid
+flight indeed the same way.”
+
+Wedgwood did not intend to be left out or left behind in the “flight”
+into the benefits and resources of the New World; Pensacola clay was
+brought to him in 1766; and in 1767, from Ayoree (or Hyoree as he spelt
+it), other clays were fetched, and the canny potter at once attempted to
+secure a patent right to the exclusive use of them. A man named
+Griffiths, who had owned in South Carolina a one-third share in three
+thousand acres of land, where he had “attempted the manufacture of
+maple-sugar after the manner of the Indians,” now became Wedgwood’s
+agent in America, under heavy bonds. Griffiths, the owner of the
+ill-situated maple grove and sugar factory, went to the Cherokee country
+and sent home clay to Wedgwood to experiment upon. The growing and free
+use of the Cornish clays, however, rendered the importation of American
+clays as superfluous as it was expensive and inconvenient; and the
+interference of the Revolutionary war destroyed all fear of American
+competition in the manufacture of pottery. The vicinity near Camden, S.
+C. (where the Bartlam pottery had been established), was particularly
+devastated, many fierce battles being fought around it.
+
+In 1784, Richard Champion, who was always an enthusiastic lover of
+America, and who had unsuccessfully experimented in England with the
+Cherokee clays, left Bristol and came to live on a plantation named
+Rockybranch, near Camden. Wedgwood must have felt many apprehensions and
+fears when Champion took this step, for he knew well the energy and
+determination of the emigrant to America, who had in previous years
+completely routed him in a long-contested and bitter lawsuit over the
+use of certain English clays in the manufacture of china. Wedgwood knew,
+too, Champion’s ability and capacity as a potter, and without doubt
+dreaded lest the man who had done such good work at Bristol should do
+more and better still when in the land of the Cherokee clay, at Camden.
+His fears (if they existed) were destined never to be realized, for
+Champion became a planter, filled several public offices in the State,
+died in 1793, on the seventh anniversary of the day he left England, and
+was buried near Camden.
+
+In the year 1770 china-works were in operation in Philadelphia. They
+were established by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris. On December
+20, 1769, an advertisement was printed in a Philadelphia newspaper,
+which read thus: “New China Works. Notwithstanding the various
+difficulties and disadvantages which usually attend the introduction of
+any important manufacture into a new country, the proprietors of the
+China Works now erecting in Southwark have the pleasure to acquaint the
+public that they have proved to a certainty that the clays of America
+are as productive of good Porcelain as any heretofore manufactured at
+the famous factory in Bow, near London.” Later Messrs. Bonnin and Morris
+advertised for “broken flint-glass and whole flint-stone,” and also for
+“shank-bones” to be delivered at the china factory in Southwark. In
+April, 1772, they advertised for “several apprentices to the painting
+branch,” and encouragement was offered to “china painters either in blue
+or enamel,” which latter notice shows that their china products were
+decorated. They also offered a reward for the production of _zaffre_, a
+compound of cobalt.
+
+This china venture failed, the real estate of the company was sold, and
+the proprietors returned to England asking public attention and charity
+for their poor workmen. Thus forlornly ended the first porcelain factory
+in America; and thus tamely subsided the rivalry between English and
+American china materials. When we consider the vast natural resources in
+America for the china-maker to draw from—the inexhaustible supply of raw
+materials—the unlimited beds of rich kaolin, the vast stores of pipe,
+potter’s, ball, and fire clay—the endless mines of quartz and felspar,
+the tinted earths of Alabama, the colored kaolin of Illinois, the mines
+of lithomarge in Tennessee—to say nothing of the boundless wealth of
+supplies in the far West—it seems to us that America was very
+slow—indeed is still very slow in taking advantage of the hints given by
+Cookworthy, by Champion, and by Wedgwood in the eighteenth century.
+
+This quickly-ended china factory of Bonnin and Morris is the one
+referred to in the _Edinburgh Weekly Magazine_ of January, 1771, which
+says: “By a letter from Philadelphia we are informed that a large china
+manufactory is established there, and that better china cups and saucers
+are made there than at Bow or Stratford.” Benjamin Franklin, writing to
+his wife from London in January, 1772, after thanking her for the
+cranberries and apples and various American home reminders that she had
+sent to him, adds, “I thank you for the sauce-boats, and am pleased to
+see so good a progress made in the china manufactory. I wish it success
+most heartily.” But writing to an English potter in November, 1773, he
+says, “I understand the china-works in Philadelphia is declined by the
+first owners; whether any others will take it up and continue it, I know
+not.”
+
+Mr. Prime, in his book, gives the information that there were “some
+undoubted specimens of the work deposited in the Franklin Institute on
+exhibition.” I do not know where those specimens now are. A pair of
+vases at the H. L. D. Lewis sale in Philadelphia, in December, 1890,
+were catalogued as having been made at this first porcelain manufactory.
+There is no existing record of the fact that they were produced there,
+and no stamp or mark to prove it, and I do not know why they were thus
+assigned. They were purchased by the Mount Vernon Association for
+eighteen dollars each, and can now be seen in Washington’s old home.
+They stand ten inches in height, are flat in shape, about six inches in
+diameter, have gilded griffin handles and polished gilt faces, and are
+decorated with highly colored views of naval battles. They have an
+interest to all collectors as being specimens of the first china factory
+in America, as well as from the fact that they were early ornaments of
+Mount Vernon.
+
+Philadelphia seems to have taken and kept the lead in the manufacture of
+porcelain in America, or else we are more fortunate in having the
+records of Philadelphia pot-works preserved for us. The Pennsylvania
+Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures offered in 1787, a “plate
+of gold to the value of twenty dollars,” as a prize for the “best
+specimen of Pennsylvania-made earthen ware approaching the nearest in
+quality to the delft white stone or queen’s ware,” and an equal prize
+for the best salt-glazed ware; and in 1792 a prize of $50 for similar
+ware. In 1808 Alexander Trotter exhibited at Peale’s Museum, in
+Philadelphia, some of the articles manufactured at his Columbian
+Pottery, which was situated on South Street, between Twelfth and
+Thirteenth Streets, in that city, while the warehouse was at No. 66
+North Second Street. This business continued until 1813. The proprietor
+advertised “tea and coffee-pots, pitchers, jugs, wine-coolers, basins,
+ewers, and baking dishes;” and it was also stated that an “elegant jug
+and goblets from the queen’s ware manufactory” were used at the
+Republican dinner on July 4, 1808, at Philadelphia. This ware was
+similar to the Staffordshire stone wares. In the same year a firm named
+Binney & Ronaldson made in South Street, in Philadelphia, red and yellow
+teapots, coffee-pots, and sugar-boxes. At the beginning of the century
+D. Freytag advertised that, at 192 South 5th Street, Philadelphia, he
+would decorate piece china with gold and silver; hence he must have had
+a kiln for firing. In the year 1800 a pottery, called the “Washington
+Pottery,” was established by John Mullawney on the north side of Market
+Street, near Schuylkill South, in the same city. The productions were
+called “Washington ware,” and consisted of pitchers, coffee-pots,
+teapots, cream-pots, sugar-boxes, wash-basins, bowls, etc. It was
+carried on by the same proprietor until 1816, and was in operation for
+many years after. In 1813 the Northern Liberty Pottery was founded by
+Thomas Haig on the corner of Front and Market Streets, and the
+manufacture of earthen ware is still continued by one of his
+descendants. David G. Seixas had a similar manufactory at about the same
+time, from 1817 to 1822, at Market Street near Schuylkill 6th. In 1817
+George Bruorton announced through the Philadelphia press, that he would
+enamel and gild arms, crests, ciphers, borders, or any device on china,
+or queen’s ware as good as any imported. Also “china mended by burning
+in and warranted as sound for use as ever.” In 1826 Joseph Keen also
+decorated china in Market Street, near Eleventh Street. So we can
+plainly see how much the question of china decoration and china-works
+was thought of in that town.
+
+In the year 1828, William Ellis Tucker had a china store at 86 Arcade,
+in Philadelphia. He thus advertised: “American china of a quality equal
+in strength and beauty to any that can be imported, and upon the most
+reasonable terms. Initials or fancy work to suit the taste of
+individuals will be executed agreeably to order in the neatest style.”
+
+In the year 1868 Miss Peters presented to the Historical Society of
+Pennsylvania a porcelain pitcher which had been made at the
+establishment of Messrs. Tucker & Hemphill. At the request of the
+Society, Mr. Thomas Tucker prepared the following paper on the
+manufacture of porcelain in the United States.
+
+                                             PHILADELPHIA, May 13, 1868.
+
+  TO THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA:
+
+  GENTLEMEN: Herewith please find a small account of the manufacture of
+  porcelain in the United States.
+
+  William Ellis Tucker, my brother, was the first to make porcelain in
+  the United States. My father, Benjamin Tucker, had a china store in
+  Market Street, in the city of Philadelphia, in the year 1816. He built
+  a kiln for William in the back-yard of the store, where he painted in
+  the white china and burned it on in the kiln, which gave him a taste
+  for that kind of work. After that he commenced experimenting with the
+  different kinds of clays, to see if he could not make the ware. He
+  succeeded in making a very good kind of ware called queen’s ware. He
+  then commenced experimenting with felspar and kaolin to make
+  porcelain, and, after much labor he succeeded in making a few small
+  articles of very good porcelain. He then obtained the old water-works
+  at the northwest corner of Schuylkill, Front, and Chestnut, where he
+  erected a large glazing kiln, enamelling kiln, mills, etc. He burned
+  kiln after kiln with very poor success. The glazing would crack and
+  the body would blister; and, besides, we discovered that we had a man
+  who placed the ware in the kiln who was employed by some interested
+  parties in England to impede our success.
+
+  Most of the handles were found in the seggars after the kiln was
+  burned. We could not account for it until a deaf and dumb man in our
+  employment detected him running his knife around each handle as he
+  placed them in the kiln.
+
+  At another time every piece of china had to be broken before it could
+  be taken out of the seggar. We always washed the round Os, the article
+  in which the china was placed in the kiln, with silex; but this man
+  had washed them with felspar, which of course melted, and fastened
+  with every article to the bottom. But William discharged him, and we
+  soon got over that difficulty.
+
+  In the year 1827 my brother received a silver medal from the Franklin
+  Institute of Pennsylvania, and in 1831 received one from the Institute
+  in New York. In 1828 I commenced to learn the different branches of
+  the business. On August 22, 1832, my brother William died. Some time
+  before he connected himself with the late Judge Hemphill. They
+  purchased the property at the southwest corner of Schuylkill, Sixth,
+  and Chestnut Streets, where they built a large store-house or factory,
+  which they filled with porcelain. After the death of my brother, Judge
+  Hemphill and myself continued the making of porcelain for some years,
+  until he sold out his interest to a company of Eastern gentlemen; but
+  being unfortunate in their other operations, they were not able to
+  give the porcelain attention. In the year 1837 I undertook to carry it
+  alone, and did so for about one year, making a large quantity of very
+  fine porcelain, many pieces of which I still have. The gilding and
+  painting is now as perfect as when first done.
+
+  I herewith present you with a pitcher which I made thirty-one years
+  ago. You will notice the glazing and transparency of this specimen is
+  equal to the best imported china; but the gilding, having been in use
+  so many years, is somewhat injured. I would like to give you a larger
+  article, but I have but few pieces left.
+
+                                      Very respectfully yours, etc.,
+                                                          THOMAS TUCKER.
+
+I cannot understand why Thomas Tucker should have fancied that his
+brother was the first to make porcelain in the United States. Could he
+not have known of the ante-Revolutionary china-works of Bonnin & Morris?
+
+There are in the Trumbull-Prime Collection several specimens of Tucker’s
+“natural porcelain.” The paste and glaze are excellent, but the forms
+are commonplace, and the decorations indicate want of experience and
+taste, gold being profusely used.
+
+At an early date, certainly in the eighteenth century, pot-works were
+established in Allentown, Pa., and in Pittsburg, where decorated pottery
+was made which resembled German manufactures, and which was often
+ornamented with mottoes and legends in slip decoration.
+
+From 1793 to 1800 John and William Norton made red ware in Bennington,
+Vt.; since then stone-ware has been made in the same works. In 1847
+Messrs. Lyman & Fenton started a pottery in Bennington, in which they
+made both pottery and soft-paste porcelain. These works continued for
+about twelve years. Specimens of their tortoise-shell wares are in the
+Trumbull-Prime Collection. One in the shape of a lion is here shown.
+They also made figures of men and animals in Parian wares, the first,
+doubtless, produced in America. The impressed circular mark on some of
+the enamelled pottery was “Lyman Fenton & Co. Fenton’s Enamel, patented
+1849, Bennington, Vt.”
+
+[Illustration: Bennington Ware.]
+
+In the year 1837 by far the most important enterprise in the manufacture
+of pottery and porcelain that had ever been organized in America was
+started under the supervision of Mr. James Clews, who had been a potter
+in Cobridge, England, from the years 1819 to 1829, and who was the
+largest manufacturer of dark blue Staffordshire wares at that date. An
+account of many pieces of his production in his English pottery, and of
+the stamps and marks used by him, is given in Chapter XVII.
+
+He emigrated to America, and went to what was then the Far West—to
+Indiana; and with capitalists from Louisville, Ky.—Reuben Bates, Samuel
+Cassiday, William Bell, James Anderson, Jr., Edward Bainbridge, Perly
+Chamberlin, William Gerwin, John B. Bland, Willis Ranney, and James
+Lewis—incorporated a company, under the name of The Indiana Pottery
+Company, with a capital of $100,000 and power to increase to $200,000. A
+special act of January 7, 1837 (see Indiana Local Laws, Twenty-first
+Session, p. 7), states that these parties had “heretofore associated
+themselves together for the purpose of manufacturing earthenware and
+china in the State of Indiana, under the name and style of The Lewis
+Pottery Company.”
+
+The Indiana Pottery Company built its works in Troy, Perry County, thus
+having means of easy transportation by the Ohio River to New Orleans and
+other important points.
+
+Mr. Clews had amassed much wealth in his Cobridge works, but he quickly
+lost it in this new enterprise in the new land, which proved far from
+successful. The chief difficulty lay in the hiring of proper workmen.
+The English potters proved wholly unreliable in this country, and the
+expense of importing fresh relays of workmen was too great to be
+endured. Nearly three hundred potters were brought over from England.
+The founders also found it impossible to make white ware with the clay
+in the vicinity of Troy, and of the vast beds of fine kaolin which exist
+in Indiana they were doubtless ignorant. The dark blue ware which they
+manufactured proved far from satisfactory, and though so brilliantly
+started by practical and wealthy men, this pottery was quickly closed,
+after making a considerable quantity of yellow and Rockingham ware. In
+1851 a firm named Sanders & Wilson leased the buildings, which were
+burned in 1854, but were rebuilt. There are now two potteries in Troy.
+
+In the early part of this century, probably in 1827, a china factory was
+established in Jersey City, N. J., which made hard-paste porcelain.
+Specimens of pure white with gilded vines are in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection. In 1829 the works became known as the American Pottery
+Company, and pieces of their manufacture at that date bear that mark.
+This pottery is still in existence, though known by another name. They
+made from the year 1830 the embossed brown pottery pitcher with “hound
+handle,” which was also such a favorite with English potters from the
+time it was manufactured at Fulham. The design for these American
+hound-handled pitchers was made by Daniel Greatbach, a prominent English
+modeller, who came to this country many years ago. A specimen which I
+possess is of mottled tortoise-shell, green, brown, and yellow, and
+bears the design of a hunt around the body and grape-leaves on the top,
+but more frequently the pitchers are simply colored brown. Some have a
+mask of Bacchus on and under the nose, and one I own has the nose formed
+by an American “spread eagle.” They were a favorite hot-water jug in the
+early years of their manufacture, their size, strength, and shape making
+them particularly suitable for such a purpose. They were sometimes
+fitted with metal covers fastened to holes drilled through the pottery.
+I have seen them twenty inches in height, and at least three feet in
+circumference. In some parts of the country they are known as “tavern
+pitchers,” perhaps from power of association. Such is the one herewith
+shown, now owned by Robert T. Van Deusen, esq., of Albany. Some were
+doubtless from English potteries, but many are American. Glazed brown
+“tobys” with the circular impressed mark “D. & J. Henderson, Jersey
+City,” were also made, but the exact age of such pieces is unknown.
+
+[Illustration: Hound-handled Pitcher.]
+
+Of the later porcelain factories which have been established in America
+I will not speak—the factories of Trenton, Baltimore, East Liverpool,
+Long Island City—which now number over five hundred. Their story will
+doubtless be written ere long by some historian of the ceramic art in
+America, but hardly comes within the bounds of this work. Specimens of
+their manufacture, especially of the truly artistic productions of the
+Baltimore China Works, should, however, be secured by every china
+collector, though they do not appeal so strongly to the china hunter, to
+whom the pleasures of the chase often exceed the delight in the spoils,
+and to whom old china, like old wine, is better than new.
+
+
+
+
+                                   V.
+                         EARLIEST POTTERY WARES
+
+
+The first rare pieces of porcelain owned by the American colonists were
+India china; but Delft ware, salt-glazed ware, and the tortoise-shell or
+“combed” wares were the earliest forms of pottery that were imported to
+any great extent.
+
+Many pieces of heavy blue and white Delft have been found in New
+England, some being Dutch, some English. The shapes, decorations, and
+pastes are so similar that it is impossible for even the most careful
+observer definitely to judge of the place of manufacture, and there are
+seldom guiding and aiding marks. In Connecticut much Delft is found,
+sometimes with Dutch words and inscriptions. Doubtless the Connecticut
+planters bargained and traded with the New York Dutch, who perhaps took
+onions and notions from the canny Connecticut men in exchange for Delft.
+In New York, along the Hudson River to Albany, much fine Delft is still
+preserved in old Dutch families, especially in the old Dutch farm-houses
+and manor-houses. At the Albany Bi-centennial Loan Collection, in 1886,
+a fine showing was made of old Delft by representatives of the families
+of the old patroons—of the Ten Eycks, Ten Broecks, Bleeckers, and Van
+Rensselaers.
+
+A few stray Delft wanderers may be found in Massachusetts and New
+Hampshire—meat dishes and plates, pale and ugly, as if the journey
+inland had faded them out. On Long Island, Delft is still kept and used
+in Dutch families—it is not the oldest Delft, however, nor is it much
+prized. The typical Delft vases, decorated in blue, yellow, and white,
+once graced the high mantel or beaufet of many a low, comfortable Dutch
+farm-house in Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Gravesend, and occasionally one
+can still be found. A fine set is in the old “pirates’ house” at
+Flatlands. The Dutch made many teapots, we are told, but I have never
+found an old Delft one in America. I have seen a few dull blue and white
+Delft flower-pots—possibly one hundred years old—clumsy, ugly things,
+whether old or new. I wish I could drive through the old Dutch
+settlements on Long Island—New Utrecht, and Flatlands, and New Lots, and
+Gravesend—and ransack the great, spacious garret of every concave-roofed
+story and a half farm-house I passed. I know I could bring many a piece
+of Delft to light—forgotten and unheeded by its stolid owners.
+
+That Delft was not very highly prized by the Dutch settlers, nor by
+their descendants, may be proved by many inventories and lists, such as
+this, of the estate of John Lefferts, of Flatbush, made in 1792:
+
+                                                 £ s.
+                  25 Pewter plates (1s. each)    1  5
+                  37 Earthen plates                10
+                   9 Pewter dishes               1 15
+                   8 Earthen dishes              1
+                   6 Sets china cups and saucers 3
+                  27 Delft plates                  13
+
+Pewter was plainly much more valued than Delft, and India china was
+still more highly prized.
+
+[Illustration: Delft Tea-caddy.]
+
+Old Delft tea-caddies are both curious and pretty. Here is one shown,
+marked with the names “Aalta Evert and Gerrit Egben” and the date, 1793.
+It was doubtless a wedding or betrothal gift. In this piece the dark
+blue decoration is under the glaze, and the red and black quaint
+Dutch-dressed figures and the inscription are over the glaze, and were
+doubtless painted to order and fired when the piece was purchased for a
+gift or token. This labor-saving device was brought to perfection by a
+Dutch potter named Zachary Dextra, though the cunning Chinese and
+Japanese had employed it when they held supremacy over the Dutch market.
+If a skilled painter painted under the glaze, an inferior workman could
+easily do the finishing touches over the glaze.
+
+The Delft apothecary jars are the rarest and most curious pieces seen,
+and form a charming posy-holder. They are eight or ten inches in height,
+and are lettered with the abbreviated names of drugs. “Succ: E. Spin:
+C.,” “U. Althae,” and “C: Rosar: E.” are on three of my jars. They
+frequently have a spout on one side, and are then usually globose in
+shape, with a spreading base. Some have handles. When the Dutch used
+these jars, a century or more ago, they covered the open top with
+tightly-tied oil-skin and poured the medicinal or chemical contents from
+the spout, which, at other times, was kept carefully corked. These jars
+are identical in shape with the old “sirroop-pots” of Dutch museums; for
+instance, the one made by Haarles, the eminent _plateelbakker_, in 1795,
+as a “proof of his skill,” and now preserved in the archives at Delft.
+
+The most familiar and universal decoration on Delft plates and meat
+dishes is the conventionalized “peacock” design. It sometimes takes
+rather a ludicrous appearance, often forming a comical caricature of a
+ballet-dancer. A coarsely-drawn basket of flowers is also common. I have
+also seen in America specimens of the “musical plates” of Delft. These
+bear designs of musical instruments, scores of song or dance music, or
+simply a staff with a few notes, a motif, accompanied usually by
+inscriptions, mottoes, or couplets, sometimes in Dutch, sometimes in
+French, the latter showing usually so decided a touch of extreme
+opera-bouffe _équivoque_ that such “musical plates” would scarcely be in
+demand for family use, and make us turn to the Dutch-lettered pieces as
+being more desirable simply because the language of their decoration is
+less widely known and comprehended. Even these cannot be positively
+classed as Dutch, for the early English potters copied servilely the
+Dutch designs. The vases often have figures of men and animals and Dutch
+landscapes. A fine collection of Delft plates and placques and vases may
+be seen in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+
+[Illustration: Delft Vase.]
+
+“Fine Holland Tile” was advertised in the _Boston News Letter_ of June
+11, 1716—the first announcement of the sale of Delft in America, though
+not in the form of table-ware—and in the same paper, under date of
+August 10, 1719, we find a notice of “Dutch Tile for Chimney.” From that
+date, all through the century, in the various newspapers, we find
+constantly recurring advertisements of Delft chimney tiles on the
+arrival of every foreign ship. They must have been imported in vast
+numbers, and were not expensive; “9 dozen Dutch tiles, £1 10s., 10 dozen
+Dutch tiles, £2 10s.,” were the values assigned. In spite of these facts
+I have found them very rare in New England—they have wholly disappeared.
+In historical rooms, in museums, they may be seen, but seldom in old
+houses. The Robinson House in old Narraganset has a fine set; in a few
+old houses in the Connecticut valley I have seen sets of the coarsely
+painted “scripture tiles” so disparaged by Benjamin Franklin, but they
+are rare. Even on Long Island and on the banks of the Hudson they are
+now seldom found. Storytellers of New England life usually place blue
+and white tiles around their Yankee fireplaces, but they are more
+plentiful in the imagination of such narrators than in reality. With the
+various changes in the manner of heating New England dwellings, the
+chimney tiles have all vanished, even when the houses still stand, and
+nearly all the old city houses have been entirely removed to make way
+for more modern business structures. English potters made tiles in such
+close imitation of the Dutch that it is impossible to distinguish
+between them. Doubtless many of the “blue and white chimney tile” so
+largely advertised were English manufactures imported under the name of
+Dutch tiles, while still others were not chimney, but roof tiles.
+
+There have been found in New England, in numbers which seem rather
+surprising when we consider their age, ale-jugs of gray and blue
+stone-ware which are universally known as Fulham jugs. They resemble in
+quality and coloring the German stone-ware or our common crocks, being
+of the same gray ware with a lead glaze. They are decorated with rich
+blue like the German wares, and have an incised design of leaves and
+scrolls, circles or simple flowers. I have seen a number which bore in
+the front an oval medallion with the incised initials G. R., sometimes
+also a crown. These are said to refer to Georgius Rex, the first of the
+English Georges. I know of one G. R. mug which has an additional
+interest in the form of a bullet of the Revolution imbedded in its tough
+and uncracked side. Some of these Fulham jugs have apparently had silver
+or pewter lids attached to them. They are what are known as
+bottle-shaped, round and protuberant, narrowing to a small neck and
+base; others are more slender, almost cylindrical. There are no marks to
+prove them to be Fulham jugs, but as such they are known.
+
+Other Fulham jugs are found of brownish mottled stone-ware with hound
+handle and raised decoration in the body of figures of the chase, and
+with mask of Bacchus forming the nose. These have been frequently
+reproduced in American potteries and when unmarked, it is difficult to
+determine which are English.
+
+[Illustration: Fulham G. R. Jug.]
+
+Pieces of salt-glazed ware have been found in country homes by many
+china hunters, and are among the most pleasing articles to be obtained.
+The date of their manufacture was from 1680 to 1780. An interesting
+story is told of the discovery of the process of glazing this ware. A
+servant maid having, in the year 1680, allowed a pot of brine to boil
+over, the dull earthen pot containing the brine became red hot, and when
+cold was covered with a bright glaze. A sharp potter perceiving it, at
+once utilized the hint. The story is pretty, but it can scarcely be
+true, for such a glaze could not be formed in an open place. But
+salt-glaze there is, and in America too, of the very earliest
+manufacture—Crouch-ware, or, as it is incorrectly and inappropriately
+called, Elizabethan-ware. Crouch is the name neither of a person nor of
+a place, but of the white Derbyshire clay. The paste made from this clay
+is very dense, and is of a greenish tint. The Elers-ware of buff ground
+with simple raised scrolls and rosettes of white are also of early date.
+
+Some of the salt-glazed pieces were shaped by pressing the moist paste
+into metal moulds, other pieces were “cast” in moulds of plaster of
+Paris, the slip or liquid paste being introduced to line the mould, and
+allowed to set, and this operation being repeated until the piece was of
+required thickness. As the taste for light delicate wares increased,
+some were made as light and thin as paper. If the piece were “cast” the
+handles, nose, and feet (if it possessed any) were moulded and placed on
+separately. The moulds used were frequently the worn-out moulds that had
+been used for casting silverware; hence pieces of salt-glazed ware
+usually resemble in shape the pieces of silver of the same date.
+
+The characteristic feature of salt-glazed ware—the quality from which it
+derives its name—is its glaze. This is easily recognized. It does not
+run and spread like other glazes, but seems to form into minute
+coagulated drops or granulations resembling somewhat the surface of
+orange-peel. The glaze is often unequal, being higher on some portions
+of the piece than others, the vapor of soda (through which the glaze was
+made) not penetrating with equal power to every point. Thus one side of
+a piece may be dull and the other highly glazed.
+
+The largest and finest example of salt-glazed ware which I have seen in
+America is the exact duplicate of the best specimen in the Museum of
+Practical Geology, in Jermyn Street, London, numbered G. 111. It is thus
+described in the catalogue of that museum: “Large oval soup-tureen,
+cover, and stand. Height, ten inches; greatest diameter, fourteen and
+one-half inches. Body decorated with pressed ornaments, including
+scroll-work and diaper and basket pattern; the tureen mounted on three
+lion’s claws with masks.” This tureen is dated 1763. The beautiful and
+delicate specimen found in America is absolutely perfect. It bore the
+difficult process of making and firing (specially difficult in so large
+a piece), crossed the water to the new land of Virginia, passed through
+generations of use and the devastations of the Revolutionary and civil
+wars, was gathered in by a travelling dealer, brought in safety by rail
+to New York, and ignominiously sold for a dollar and a half to its
+present proud possessor. It was doubtless cast in the same mould as the
+one in the museum. Another similar piece is in the well-known English
+collection of Lady Charlotte Schreiber.
+
+A large number of smaller pieces of salt-glazed ware have been found,
+including salt-boxes, creamers, and one beautiful teapot which is so
+graceful and unique in design that it has been honored by being borrowed
+by a prominent china-manufacturer in England to reproduce in his modern
+ware. Thus this frail waif from the middle of the last century has
+thrice crossed the ocean in safety.
+
+[Illustration: Sportive Innocence Pitcher.]
+
+[Illustration: Farmer Pitcher.]
+
+The pitchers shown are of salt-glazed ware and may be Crouch-ware,
+though they are apparently of rather later date. The first bears in a
+heart-shaped medallion a design of high-colored children at awkward
+play, and is labelled “Sportive Innocence.” Similar ones are frequently
+found in America. I know of at least a dozen. Some bear on the reverse
+side a different design with the same children entitled “Mischievous
+Sport.” In this the boy is frightening the little girl with an ugly
+mask. Other pitchers of precisely the same shape and borderdecorations
+in orange, green, and blue have different designs in the medallion, a
+peacock being frequently seen. The farmer’s pitcher has the motto
+“Success to Trade,” and is surely older as well as gayer in color than
+the “Sportive Innocence” pitcher.
+
+There were imported to America in great quantities, as is shown by many
+eighteenth-century advertisements, “tortoise-shell” and “combed pattern”
+wares, also the pretty cauliflower, melon, and pineapple wares that have
+been reproduced in our own day. These were manufactured chiefly at
+Little Fenton by Thomas Whieldon, a man who influenced much the potters’
+art in England from the year 1740 to 1780, during five of which years he
+was a partner with Wedgwood. There are only two specimens of these wares
+in the Museum of Practical Geology, and Mr. Jewitt wrote in 1873: “These
+wares are now very scarce and are highly and deservedly prized by
+collectors.” At the time he wrote he could have gathered in America
+scores, even hundreds, of pieces of the Whieldon wares for English
+collections. Dr. Irving Lyon, of Hartford, has a fine collection of them
+which he picked up in the cottages of the Connecticut Valley—a
+collection which any English china-lover would envy.
+
+Whieldon was a man of great energy, with a practical knowledge of his
+art, and he spent much time in his works perfecting his patterns and
+processes. He compounded the bright green glaze so admirable in his
+ware, shown so beautifully in the cauliflower and melon patterns,
+through the contrast with the cream color. He also was a modeller, and
+from the imitation of leaves, and fruits, and vegetables derived his
+best-known and most successful patterns, and the novelty and ingenuity
+of many of them charm us even in the present day. The bird and animal
+shapes being grotesque rather than useful, seldom came to America. I
+have seen here, however, several tortoise-shell cows and one combed
+bird. The tail of the cow forms the handle of the pitcher, the liquid
+being poured from the nose. Reproductions of these are now made at
+Jeffords Pottery in Philadelphia. Little cradles and posy-holders, too,
+are found, sometimes with dates. Whieldon’s two-handled “parting-cups,”
+ornamented with raised grapes, leaves, and tendrils and a head of
+Bacchus, are much more scarce than the melon and cauliflower teapots,
+mugs, and dishes; and his perforated ware I have never seen in America.
+Some of the pieces of his manufacture are stamped and afterward shaped
+somewhat by hand, others are cast, others pressed in moulds. The “cast”
+pieces are considered to be of earlier date, and may be known by their
+being thinner and more delicate than the moulded ones. The mottled
+browns, greens, and yellows of the tortoise-shell and combed wares, like
+all of Whieldon’s decorations, are under the glaze, and are very rich in
+tone, forming a delightful bit of color in cupboard or cabinet.
+Occasionally a purple mottle is seen. The colors were sponged, floured,
+or blown on, painting and printing on pottery being then unknown. These
+pieces of Whieldon’s are all unmarked, and doubtless many specimens in
+America came from the Wedgwood factory, for similar wares were made
+there.
+
+I hardly know how to account for the fact that I have found so few,
+comparatively few, pieces of undoubted Wedgwood ware in old houses in
+New England. That vast quantities came to America we cannot doubt.
+Wedgwood says so himself in his letter quoted on page 88. In other
+letters he refers again and again to consignments made to the American
+market, “the green and white wares,” “the Queen’s wares,” “the cream
+wares,” etc. That these consignments were sent largely to the various
+points supplied from the Charleston and Philadelphia markets is known,
+and in those regions the black basalts-ware, at least, is more plentiful
+than in New England. Much Wedgwood ware must have come also to the ports
+of Boston, Newport, and New Haven. These wares may have been plentiful
+in the Connecticut Valley, but I have seen little in other parts of New
+England. A good opportunity of studying the various productions of the
+Wedgwood factory is given through the specimens in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection. There are at least one hundred “lots” of Wedgwood there
+shown, and the cameos and intaglios, the jasper-wares, the basalts, the
+queensware, the painted wares are all illustrated by choice and varied
+pieces.
+
+The story of Wedgwood’s life I will not even give briefly, though the
+beauty and lesson of it make one long to tell it till every American
+china-manufacturer learns to read between the lines the story of
+personal supervision, patient trial, unwearied labor, honest ambition,
+and liberal broadness that made his life a success and his productions a
+delight. Miss Meteyard and Mr. Jewitt have given it in careful detail,
+and every word is of keenest interest and importance to the china
+collector. From these books, and from the beautiful volumes of
+engravings and photographs of Wedgwood ware preserved in English
+collections, the American china hunter can learn, if not from the
+specimens themselves.
+
+A few of the Wedgwood cameo medallions are found in America. Wedgwood
+sent as a gift to Thomas Jefferson three exquisite medallions; two were
+oval and one oblong in shape. They were in blue and white jasper, with
+mythological designs. The largest was twelve inches long and six inches
+wide, and bore the lovely design of Cupid and Psyche with troops of
+attending loves. Jefferson had them set in the front of a mantel in a
+room at Monticello, and one of them dropped out and was destroyed before
+the family sold the house. The others were picked or cut out and stolen.
+Mrs. Ellen Harrison, the oldest living descendant of Jefferson, tells me
+that during a visit to Monticello, some years before the present owner
+took possession, she found on the floor a tiny bit of blue jasper
+showing the foot and leg of one of the loves. Thus did this English
+cherub cast from his feet the dust of an inartistic and relic-hunting
+nation of vandals. Oh, the pity that things so beautiful could be so
+wantonly destroyed! Would that everything that Wedgwood made had been
+endowed with qualities of immortality and indestructibility to live
+forever as lessons and examples for future generations of potters.
+
+Occasionally a jasper medallion is found here with Wedgwood’s famous
+anti-slavery design, a kneeling slave with fetters falling from his
+hands, and the motto, “Am I not a Man and a Brother?” Dr. Darwin says
+that “Wedgwood distributed many hundreds of these to excite the humane
+to attend to and assist in the abolition of the detestable traffic in
+human creatures.”
+
+             “Whether, O friend of art, the gem you mould
+             Rich with new taste, with ancient virtue bold,
+             Or the poor tortur’d slave on bended knee,
+             From Britain’s sons imploring to be free.”
+
+Many found their way to America and a few are still preserved.
+
+Occasionally also a rich dessert-service of old Wedgwood ware is seen.
+Two superb ones were brought across the water by a sea-captain at the
+beginning of this century and landed at Hudson, N. Y. A fair young bride
+saw and coveted one of these china treasures, but stern and frugal
+parents were horrified at the thought of spending seventy dollars for
+such an unnecessary luxury. The bridegroom, Silas E. Burraws, at a later
+date the starter of the monument to the mother of Washington, more
+extravagant and more indulgent, bought it as a wedding gift. It is
+“queen’s ware” of the rich blue, red, and gold design which is known
+among American dealers as “Queen Charlotte’s pattern.” The fruit dishes
+and comports are of the unique and perfect shapes often found in
+Wedgwood ware. I have seen a single plate of this pattern in a shop
+labelled with the price “thirty dollars.” The price given for a similar
+one in the South Kensington Museum was four pounds. I know also of one
+or two dinner services of yellow Wedgwood ware, with the vine and grape
+border in white, early works of Wedgwood, clear and firm in outline and
+beautiful in quality.
+
+The frail fluted bowl, the graceful pitcher with twisted handle, and the
+fragile creamer of queen’s ware shown on page 1 are all Wedgwood of
+lovely shape and so thin and delicate a paste, that it is wonderful that
+they have been safely preserved for a hundred years outside a
+collector’s cabinet, and stranger still, have been used upon the
+tea-table of a country home.
+
+[Illustration: Castleford Teapot.]
+
+A pottery was founded at Castleford in 1770, and black basalt ware, much
+like Wedgwood’s, was made, and white stone-ware which must have been
+imported to this country in vast quantity, for specimens are not rare. A
+teapot commonly seen is here shown. It is found both in black basalt, a
+curious brown ware, and salt-glazed cream ware. Special raised work
+designs of the figure of Liberty and the American eagle were used, and
+the sugar-bowls, creamers, and teapots bearing such designs were
+doubtless made entirely for this market. The white surface of Castleford
+ware was frequently divided into compartments by raised lines which were
+colored blue or green. Teapots were made with lids hinged on metal pins,
+or with sliding lids, and were exceedingly pretty and convenient. They
+are often called Wedgwood, as are also pieces of Castleford black ware.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VI.
+                     ENGLISH PORCELAINS IN AMERICA
+
+
+As soon as porcelain was manufactured to any extent in England it was
+exported to America. The _Boston Evening Post_ of November, 1754,
+advertised “a variety of Bow China Cups and Saucers and Bowls,” and
+other sales of Bow china were made, and special pieces also brought
+across the ocean to wealthy Americans. Specimens of Plymouth and Bow
+china may still be occasionally found in America, but any such that have
+been preserved and gathered into private collections can be positively
+identified only by comparison with authenticated and marked pieces in
+public collections. It would be impossible to give any definite Bow
+marks. The stamp or design of the anchor and dagger is popularly
+considered proof that the piece thus marked is Bow. The triangle,
+formerly regarded as a positive Bow mark, now appears to have a rather
+shaky reputation, and is as frequently assigned to Chelsea. The
+character and shape of the ware, and the style of the decoration are
+better grounds to base identification upon than any marks. Excavations
+made upon the site of the old Bow china-works revealed much débris of
+broken pieces of china, and these specimens afford the most positive
+means of identifying the paste and ornamentation. An account of these
+discoveries was given in the _Art Journal_ of 1869. All the fragments
+found were of porcelain, milky-white in color, and relatively heavy for
+the thickness; some were ornamented in relief, with the May flower or
+hawthorn; with a little sprig of two roses and a leaf on a stalk; with
+the basket pattern; or with vertical bands overlaid with scrolls. Some
+were painted in blue under the glaze with Chinese landscapes, flowers,
+and figures. All were hand-painted, none were printed. These hints may
+serve as guides in the detection and identification of Bow china.
+
+I have seen in America cups and saucers painted with the partridge
+pattern, which I believe are Bow, though the same pattern is found on
+Worcester and Plymouth china. The well-known and exceedingly valuable
+goat milk-jugs that, after forming for years the immovable standard from
+which streamed defiantly the flag of Bow, are now calmly turned over to
+Chelsea. These creamjugs are ornamented with two white goats in relief
+at the base, and a bee is modelled on the front under the nose. The
+handle is rustic with raised flowers. These jugs often have the triangle
+mark. Some are painted with flowers, others are plain white porcelain.
+Mr. Jewitt says they were sometimes made without the raised bee, but I
+have never seen such an one. Two of these Bow jugs were in the
+Strawberry Hill collection.
+
+A very excitable young woman came rushing home one cold winter day, in
+New York, with a demand for the “china books.” She had seen in an
+antique shop, such a funny and pretty little pitcher, with a raised bee
+on it, and she was sure that there was a picture of it somewhere in the
+books—and she found it in Mr. Prime’s book on pottery and porcelain—a
+Bow goat cream-jug. Well, it snowed, and was cold, and was late in the
+afternoon, and the confident young collector deferred a purchasing visit
+till the following morning. Alas! such a sickening disappointment—some
+miserable despoiler had chanced to “drop in” on his way up-town and had
+carried off the treasure. Worse still, the small boy who had sold it did
+not know the purchaser’s name.
+
+[Illustration: Plymouth Salt-cellar. Bow “Goat Cream-Jug.”]
+
+Deeply did she mourn her ignorance, her indecision, her indolence, her
+carelessness. The opportunity of a lifetime had thus been lost, to have
+a goat cream-jug such as was sold at the Cother sale in London, in 1876,
+for twenty-five pounds, to have such a jug offered for the paltry sum of
+one dollar, and to refuse it—not to know enough to grasp such a
+treasure. The bitterness of regret and of self-reproach nerved her to
+action, and with the friendly and actively interested aid of the
+antique-shop-boy, the jug-buyer was waylaid within a month’s time and
+cajoled into reselling his purchase, which he did willingly enough. He
+had bought it to keep his shaving brush in, because his father used to
+keep his shaving brush in a similar one in England. With flecks of dried
+shaving soap clinging to the goat’s horns, and mottling the bee’s wings,
+she triumphantly brought her treasure home. It varies slightly in height
+and by the turn of a leaf and twig from my Bow goat cream-jug, which
+came from the Cavendish-Bentinck sale in London. The porcelain of the
+New York captive of the chase is not so pure and clear and it may be of
+Chelsea manufacture.
+
+Another dainty piece of Bow found by a friend is a creamer or sauce-boat
+of the overlapping leaf pattern. The handle is formed by a leaf stem;
+raised flowers are at the base of the handle, and on the leaves flowers
+are delicately painted. This is like Number “H. 12” in the Museum of
+Practical Geology.
+
+The beautiful tall coffee-pot here shown is Plymouth with embossed
+surface and Chinese style of decoration in blue. Its cover was
+destroyed, alas! by some careless Newburyport housewife. The salt-cellar
+of pure unpainted porcelain on page 121 is undoubtedly Plymouth also,
+being clearly marked. The design of vine leaves and grapes is very
+delicate and perfect. The piece came from an old home in Baltimore.
+
+Though Bristol china was manufactured only from the year 1768 to 1781,
+and though pieces are rare and high-priced in England, it is possible to
+obtain specimens in America. Perhaps some invoices of the ware of the
+short-lived factory were sent to the new land by Richard Champion, the
+founder of the Bristol Works, for he was an enthusiastic lover and
+admirer of America. In the Trumbull-Prime Collection are a large number
+of pieces classed as Bristol because they have the Bristol cross, but
+not assigned definitely to that factory.
+
+[Illustration: Plymouth Coffee-pot.]
+
+The few Bristol pieces I have seen in American homes are portions of
+tea-services, teapots being more plentiful than other forms. Some have
+an imperfect or blistered glaze, but occasionally fine specimens are
+found. It is impossible to state the value of Bristol china. In the
+Governor Lyon sale there were two lovely Bristol cups and saucers
+decorated with a heavy gold rim and oriental landscape in dark blue,
+that sold for four dollars each. A plate with the same decoration
+brought only a dollar and a half.
+
+The most beautiful and interesting piece of Bristol porcelain in
+existence is in America. It is owned by Mrs. James M. Davis, of Camden,
+South Carolina. She is a great-granddaughter of Richard Champion and
+inherited it from him. This lovely piece is a funerary design—a mourning
+female figure leaning against a pedestal bearing a funeral urn. In one
+hand she holds a wreath. The beauty of the figure, the grace of the
+attitude, and the elegance of the drapery combine to make this statue
+exceedingly exquisite. It was made by the English potter as a memorial
+for his daughter, Eliza Champion, who died in early youth—a memorial
+such as was tenderly though crudely suggested by the carefully made
+burial urn of the Indian mother. The inscription is so simple and so
+touching, and is couched in such quaint old-time diction that I copy it
+in full.
+
+                             ELIZA CHAMPION
+                        Ob. XIII Octob. MDCCLXIX
+                               AEtat XIV
+                        Nat. XXI Mart. MDCCLXVI
+
+On the cornice of the pedestal are the words:
+
+       “OSTENDENT TERRIS HANC TANTVM FATA NEC VLTRA ESSE SINENT.”
+
+[Illustration: Bristol Memorial Figure.]
+
+On the dado this inscription:
+
+“We loved you, my dear Eliza, whilst you were with us. We lament you now
+you are departed. The Almighty God is just and merciful, and we must
+submit to His will with the Resignation and Reverence becoming human
+frailty. He has removed you, Eliza, from the trouble which has been our
+Lot, and does not suffer you to behold the Scenes of horror and distress
+in which these devoted Kingdoms must be involved. It is difficult to
+part with our beloved Child, though but for a season. Yet our Interest
+shall not be put into competition with her felicity, and we will even
+bear her Loss with Chearfulness. Happy in each other, we were happy in
+you, Eliza, and will with contented minds cherish your memory till the
+period arrives, when we shall all again meet and Pain and Sorrow shall
+be thought of no more. R.C.—I.C.”
+
+On the plinth lines altered from Book I., Ode XXIV., of Horace are
+printed thus:
+
+                  (QVIS DESIDERIO SIT PVDOR AVT MODVS
+                      TAM CHARI CAPITIS?—
+                  —CVI PVDOR, ET JVSTITIAE SOROR
+                  INCORRVPTA FIDES, NVDAQVE VERITAS
+                    QVANDO VLLAM INVENIENT PAREM?
+                  DVRVM! SED LAEVIUS FIT PATIENTIA,
+                  QVICQVID CORRIGERE EST NEFAS.)
+
+On the base:
+
+“THIS TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF AN AMIABLE GIRL WAS INSCRIBED ON HER
+COFFIN THE 16TH OF OCTOBER, 1779, BY A FATHER WHO LOVED HER.”
+
+Who could read, even after a century’s time, this beautiful and tender
+tribute to the gentle young girl, who died so many years ago, without
+feeling deep sympathy with the bereaved father, “who loved her?” The
+unsuccessful worker and the patriot speak plainly also in the lines:
+
+“He has removed you from the trouble which has been our Lot and does not
+suffer you to behold the scenes of horror and distress in which these
+devoted Kingdoms must be involved.”
+
+Mrs. Davis also possessed some of the beautiful Bristol figures of
+Spring, Summer, and Winter, and she patriotically sent them for
+exhibition at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876. Like
+many another rare and beautiful article sent confidingly there at that
+time, they were never returned to their owner. This loss must have been
+hard to endure with patience, not only from the historical and
+hereditary value and interest of the pieces, but also because the
+previous year duplicate pieces of Bristol were sold in London for £54
+each.
+
+One of the most beautiful of Richard Champion’s productions in England
+or America is the medallion plaque of Franklin, described in Chapter
+XIV.
+
+Mr. Owen’s description of Bristol china is very clear and concise. “The
+pieces are graceful in form and well moulded, the flowers brilliant in
+colour and skilfully painted; and the gilding, bright though
+unburnished, is of that particularly rich and solid character that
+always distinguished the manufacture. Though it often bears Dresden
+marks, and is moulded in Dresden shapes, the quality of the paste is so
+different that it is easily distinguished from the Dresden. The glaze is
+rich and creamy white, while the Dresden has a cold, glassy surface.”
+
+[Illustration: Crown Derby Covered Dish.]
+
+Crown Derby is seldom picked up by the china hunter—never I believe in
+country homes in New England. Near New York a few rare pieces have been
+found. Miss Henrietta D. Lyon, of Staten Island, has part of an
+exceedingly rich and elegant Crown Derby dinner service painted in
+delicate colors and gold, one covered dish of which is here shown. The
+gilding and painting upon these pieces is in the highest style of
+artistic beauty and dexterity. They bear the mark used at the Derby
+factory from 1784 to 1796.
+
+The most common piece offered to the china hunter in New England is what
+is known as the willow-pattern ware. It was made first by Thomas Turner,
+at Caughley, in 1780. He manufactured both pottery and porcelain. I
+often have wished that he had never invented that willow-pattern. I have
+had it thrust in my face for purchase until I could scarcely bear to
+look at it. I have had visions of dainty Bow, Bristol, and Plymouth
+china brought before me through vivid but uncertain description, only to
+come face to face with more printed willow-pattern. I should imagine
+that a large proportion of all that ever was made was sent to America.
+And it has been made in vast quantities, too, for it has been certainly
+the most popular pattern ever printed anywhere on stone-ware or
+porcelain. Mr. Jewitt says: “Early examples bearing the Caughley
+mark—the cups without handles and ribbed and finished precisely like the
+Oriental, are rare.” Of course they are, in England, but not in America;
+as the prices prove at the Governor Lyon sale. Old willow-pattern plates
+sold there for one dollar each.
+
+Pieces of willow-pattern ware are often of astounding age and fabulous
+value. Forty dollars is the favorite price that knowing country owners
+assert they can get in the city for their willow-pattern platters. I
+have a favorite formula which I always use in answer to these aspiring
+traders—my “willow-pattern answer.” I reply, gravely, “Yes, that pattern
+is priceless.” It does not mean anything and it pleases them, and if you
+told them that the platter was worth about two or three dollars they
+would look upon you as a swindler. Modern willow-pattern ware is also
+offered at fancy valuations. I have never been able to decide whether an
+old farmer who brought two willow-ware plates about a year old to sell
+to me, assuring me (though they bore the visible mark and stamp of
+modern production) that “this old crockery had been in his fam’ly more’n
+a hundred year”—I have never decided whether that ingenuous bucolic were
+a deep-dyed swindler or the innocent tool of some crafty sharper. I
+answered him soberly with my patent “willow-pattern answer”—“That
+pattern is priceless,” and he went away hugging his antiques with
+delight. I have seen within a year at a well-known dealer’s in New York,
+a modern willow-pattern platter upon which was pasted this printed
+inscription: “This platter belonged to Miles Standish, and was often
+used by him, and is therefore very rare and of great historical value.”
+This was an auction label cut from the catalogue of a sale, and the
+dealer let it remain as a joke for the knowing ones, and possibly as a
+bait for the unsophisticated.
+
+“The Broseley Blue Dragon” and the “Broseley Blue Canton” pieces and
+their imitations are frequently found. These patterns were also made at
+the Caughley or Salopian Works. The “cabbage leaf jugs” came from that
+manufactory.
+
+I have never been able to understand why the willow-pattern should have
+been so much more popular than the Blue Dragon. The latter is certainly
+very handsome and consistent, or rather congruous throughout, while the
+willow-pattern is neither “fish nor fowl nor good red herring”—it is not
+English, and it is certainly not wholly Oriental. The color is good, as
+was all blue at that time.
+
+At a later date than the reign of Lowestoft on “company” dinner tables
+in New England, the fine “best tea china” of well-to-do people was
+English porcelain of copper-lustre and pink and green decoration. Many
+of these pretty lustre sets are still preserved and can be bought of
+country owners. A terrible blow has been dealt, however, to the desire
+to purchase such wares by the fact that modern reproductions showing
+equal beauty of color and similar designs have appeared in large numbers
+within the past two years. Pitchers of pottery, “prankt in faded antique
+dress” of light brown or pinkish purple lustres are now manufactured.
+They bear no marks and cannot be distinguished from the old ones—and are
+just as good, perhaps, for every one but a china hunter. The solid
+lustre teapots, sugar-boxes, and pitchers—copper-colored, brownish
+lustre or silver on a pottery ground, have not, so far as I know, been
+reproduced. On many pieces the lustre is diversified by a pretty design
+in white, sometimes in relief or by painted flowers. The finest old
+pitcher of this ware that I have ever seen bore a graceful embossed
+design which was decorated upon the highest reliefs in pink, green, and
+gold lustre. This was positively affirmed to be part of the Mayflower
+cargo. Most of these lustre pieces are unmarked, hence it is impossible
+to assign them to any factory. A few of them, the clearest and purest in
+paste, and most delicate in decoration are New Hall, for I have plates
+so marked. The stamp is a cursive New Hall not enclosed in a ring. This
+stamp is not given in English books of stamps and marks. Mr. Jewitt says
+such pieces are rare in England. They certainly have not been rare in
+New England. Some of the lustre pieces may be assigned to Newcastle. The
+Woods also manufactured them, while at Shelton were made pieces with
+lustre borders and black printed designs signed “Bentley, Weare and
+Bourne, Engravers and Printers, Shelton, Staffordshire.”
+
+I have never seen a dinner set of lustre ware—only tea-sets, comprising
+usually a teapot, sugar-box, creamer, bowl, a dozen tea-plates (often of
+different design and paste), two cake-plates, a dozen cups and saucers,
+and sometimes a dozen little cup-plates. Salt-cellars, pepper-boxes, and
+mustard-pots of similar lustre are seen, and sometimes wine-glasses, or
+rather wine-cups—but never any of the pieces of dinner services.
+Pitchers appear in various sizes. The china is usually clear and fine in
+quality, but the design is often confused. A few punch-bowls of
+copper-lustre on coarse pottery have also been found in New England, but
+are curious rather than beautiful.
+
+I have never been able to add to my collection, through china hunting,
+but one piece of Worcester porcelain, the one shown on page 29, nor have
+I ever seen in a country home a piece of Chelsea, Coalport, Pinxton, or
+Nantgawr porcelain, and but one set of Spode, which was seized from an
+English vessel by a Yankee privateersman in the war of 1812, and brought
+triumphantly into Salem Harbor. Nor, may I add, have I ever seen a piece
+of pottery or porcelain of Continental manufacture, save Delft. For any
+porcelain save that made in China and England, American collectors must
+turn to china dealers.
+
+
+
+
+                                  VII.
+                    LIVERPOOL AND OTHER PRINTED WARE
+
+
+At the end of the past and beginning of the present century, great
+numbers of cream-colored pottery pitchers and mugs were printed in
+England with various designs and were sent to the United States for
+sale. These pieces were advertised in early Federal days, and are known
+as “yellow ware” and Liverpool ware, and are found in seaport towns on
+the Atlantic coast, especially in New England. Many bore mottoes,
+inscriptions, likenesses, and views relating to America and the
+celebrated Americans of the time, and thus form interesting mementos of
+the wars of the Revolution and of 1812. I have never seen a Liverpool
+pitcher in an inland country home, nor have I ever had one offered to me
+for sale in an inland town, either in a private home or an antique shop.
+The reasons for this are very simple: many of them were brought to
+America by Yankee sailors and sailing-masters who lived, as a rule, in
+seaport towns, and importations of these pitchers were not transported
+inland in ante-railroad days with the facility and safety that we find
+possible nowadays; and, best reason of all, nine-tenths of them with
+their ornamentation of ships and brigs and ropes and anchors were made
+to tickle the fancy of a seafaring man, and did not appeal to the
+sentiment of a land-lubber of a farmer.
+
+It is always a great delight to the inland-dwelling and novelty-seeking
+china hunter when she enters a low, single-storied seaside home, and
+spies on the mantelpiece a creamy Naval or Sailor pitcher flanked by a
+carved Indian idol and an elaborate model of the “Nimble Nine-pence,”
+the “Belisarius,” or the “Three Wives” (named by one stanch old widower
+after he was married to wife number four). Her joy is, as a rule,
+quickly turned to lamentation, for the housewife who values her
+Liverpool pitcher enough to place it on her parlor mantel, will never be
+“willing to part with it.” And here let me render my thanks to the
+American merchant service. Blessings on those dead and gone old
+seafaring Yankees who risked their lives on the stormy seas and brought
+home “behind their wooden walls” the variety and wealth of china and
+crockery that have descended to us, a pathetic reminder of the weary
+watch on deck and the homesick hours in cabin or forecastle.
+
+A few Liverpool plates with Masonic designs are found, and some teapots,
+but the majority of Liverpool ware that was imported to this country was
+in the form of mugs and what are known as “watermelon” pitchers. I know
+of one great yellow ware cheese-dish in Newport—a curious stand or frame
+in which a whole cheese two feet in diameter could be placed upright on
+its edge and thus served and cut on the table; but such pieces are
+exceptional.
+
+I am impressed when looking over the lists of sales and the catalogues
+of existing collections in England, that china collectors find in
+America more, cheaper, and more varied specimens of Liverpool wares,
+especially those bearing transfer prints, than can be found in England.
+They abound in American antique shops. Even the rarest and most
+interesting of all—prints on tiles, pitchers, and teapots bearing the
+mark of Sadler—are often discovered here. A whole set of Sadler’s tiles
+was taken from an old colonial house in Newport.
+
+Previous to the Revolutionary War no porcelain or pottery was made
+specially for America, or, at any rate, none with special designs; but
+after we became a separate nation the English potters made much china
+and crockery for the American market, and made patterns for individual
+purchasers as well. Washington and Franklin were the American names best
+known in England previous to the year 1800; and I have never seen
+Liverpool pieces that could be assigned to an earlier date of
+manufacture than 1800 that bore the names even of any other
+Revolutionary heroes or statesmen, except, possibly, two pitchers
+decorated with battle-scenes, which are entitled respectively, “Death of
+Warren” and “Death of Montgomery;” a pitcher with a portrait of Adams,
+and one mug printed with the name and portrait of John Hancock.
+Englishmen had vague ideas of the names of our States as well, for
+Boston and “Tenasee” often appear on these wares in the list of the
+thirteen States.
+
+The number of stars depicted upon the American flag or shield on these
+and Staffordshire pieces is often held up as ample testimony to the date
+of the piece. Such reasoning is, of course, absurd. English engravers
+and potters were as ignorant about the number of States as they were
+about the names of the States, and might easily have given fifteen stars
+when there were only thirteen States, or clung to the number thirteen
+long after we had twenty States. I have seen several designs with the
+United States flag bearing twelve and even nine stars.
+
+Many of these pitchers are decorated with designs relating to the
+character, life, and death of Washington, and such are known as
+Washington pitchers. A list of the prints upon these pitchers is given
+in Chapter XIII., devoted to the china commemorative of Washington.
+These pitchers bear portraits and sentiments, verses or inscriptions
+eulogizing the virtues and bravery of the “glorious American,” or
+indicative of our national loss, and grief at his death. The lines,
+“Deafness to the ear that will patiently hear, and dumbness to the
+tongue that will utter a calumny against the immortal Washington,” were
+much favored and printed by English potters, and were placed on pitchers
+and mugs of many sizes and shapes. The legend fails to tell, however,
+the awful fate which should fall on the hand which limned the senile,
+feeble, forlorn caricatures of the face of Washington which usually
+appear in company with the lines, and make us suspect intentional malice
+in the British artist. These absurd likenesses vary as much as did the
+canvas portraits of the Father of His Country at the recent Centennial
+Loan Collection at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, and in some
+cases bear no resemblance whatever to the well-known benign countenance,
+and are evidently a portrait of some English general falsely labelled
+Washington.
+
+[Illustration: An English Notion of Washington.]
+
+There is a print found on cream-colored teapots and plates and jugs that
+look like Liverpool ware, which is sometimes called “Washington and
+Martha Drinking Tea,” by American dealers who assert that the two
+figures in the out-of-doors tea-party are intended for the General and
+his “lady,” as he called her. The man in this print certainly bears a
+marked though somewhat mincing likeness to our first President, while
+the fact that the servant who approaches with a teakettle is a negro, is
+offered as conclusive proof that the scene is laid in America; and
+indeed, I have seen one teapot upon which was pasted a paper label with
+the words, “Scene at Mount Vernon, George and Martha Washington Drinking
+Tea.” Of course every china student, and indeed every person of art
+education, knows that the figures of negro servants appear in many
+English tea-party prints of that date, in such, for instance, as the
+watch-back of Battersea enamel engraved by Richard Hancock, of the
+Worcester China Works, and in the transfer prints by the same artist,
+shown on page 235, Vol. I., of Jewitt’s “Ceramic Art in Great Britain.”
+The pieces bearing this “George Washington” print that I have seen, bore
+no stamp to show the place of manufacture; but there is a tea-canister
+numbered G 252 in the Museum of Practical Geology, printed with this
+scene, which has the impressed mark “Wedgwood.” It also has on the other
+side of the canister the same group of shepherds and sheep that I have
+seen on many pieces in America. I am afraid we cannot claim this as a
+Washington print. It was engraved when Washington was a struggling
+surveyor, when no Englishmen, and few Americans, even knew his name.
+Miss Meteyard says that this group is from one of Jenssen’s printed
+enamels, and she gives an illustration of it on page 64, Vol. II., of
+her “Life of Wedgwood.” I only mention this among the Liverpool prints,
+and as possibly eligible to the Washington list, in order to prove (to
+make an Irish bull) that it is certainly not the one and probably not
+the other. It is quite as interesting, however, to the china collector
+(if not to the historical student or the relic hunter) as an example of
+Hancock’s designs for transfer-printing; and when one of these teapots
+is offered for $1.50 (as I have had one in a New York shop within a
+year), it is well for any collector to buy it.
+
+I will say here that these cream-ware pitchers are not from Liverpool
+factories alone, they are from various Staffordshire potteries, but all
+cream-colored printed pitchers are generally known in America by the
+name of Liverpool ware. Some, of course, are unmistakably so, for they
+bear the various marks of the Herculaneum Pottery, or the figure of the
+bird which was the crest of the arms of Liverpool—the liver or lever. A
+special design or mark of the American eagle with the words “Herculaneum
+Pottery, Liverpool,” seems to have been made for pieces intended for the
+American market, and often appears upon them.
+
+The heroes and victories of the American navy form frequent decorations
+of the specimens of this printed pottery that are found in America. The
+first Naval pitchers bore the design of a ship or a frigate under full
+sail, with the American flag and the words, “Success to the Infant Navy
+of America.” These were printed to commemorate Truxton’s capture of the
+French frigates Insurgente and La Vengeance while he was commander of
+the Constellation during our little marine war with France in 1799. This
+capture was honored in a popular song called “Truxton’s Victory,” and
+was as great a source of delight to Englishmen as to Americans. Truxton
+received from England many tokens of esteem, including a service of
+silver plate worth over $3,000. Long and bitterly during the constant
+naval defeats of the English in the War of 1812 must those British
+merchants have regretted that silver token of encouragement to the
+American Navy. A gold medal was ordered by Congress to be struck in
+honor of this victory, as was also done in honor of each of the naval
+heroes of the war of 1812. And many pitchers and mugs were decorated
+with their portraits and names in order to commemorate their victories.
+
+It seems odd that English potters should have made so many pitchers
+bearing testimony to the victories of their late enemies, unless they
+were ordered by American dealers specially for the American market; but
+I have never seen anything to prove that such orders were given.
+
+Many pieces bear the portrait of Perry and the words of his famous
+dispatch, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” I never look at a
+Perry pitcher without thinking with interest and pleasure of this brave
+young captain, who was only twenty-seven years old when he achieved his
+famous victory. He fought the fierce naval battle clad in his sailor’s
+suit, but changed at the last to his full-dress uniform in order to
+receive the surrendering English officer with full dignity. Nor do I
+ever see the jolly round face of Hull on pitcher or mug without thinking
+of his comical appearance during the naval battle between the
+Constitution and the Guerrière, in which he won such deserved honors.
+Hull was very fat, and being somewhat dandified wore very tight
+breeches. When, in that fierce contest, he gave his first roar of
+command to the gunners, “Now, boys, pour into them—Free Trade and
+Seamen’s Rights!” he bent over twice in his intense excitement and split
+his tight breeches from waistband to knee. He was more of a soldier than
+a dandy, however, for he finished the battle and captured the English
+ship in that “undress uniform.”
+
+Of course the pitchers decorated with American subjects are most
+interesting to Americans, but there are many other Liverpool pitchers
+found in New England, which bear, instead of American heroes and
+battles, such lines as these:
+
+                    “Dear Tom this brown jug
+                      Which now foams with new ale,
+                    Out of which I will drink
+                      To sweet Nan of the Vale.”
+
+Another has the jovial inscription, “One Pot more—and then—why
+then—Another Pot of course.”
+
+And this sharp warning is given to those who would wish to drink and not
+to pay:
+
+                  “Customers came and I did trust ’em,
+                  So I lost my money and my custom,
+                  And to lose both it grieves me sore,
+                  So I am resolved to trust no more.”
+
+A few pieces bear less decorous and elegant verses, such as the mug
+deriding the Established Church, labelled, “Tythe in Kind or the Sow’s
+Revenge.” A clergyman bent on collecting tithes is being attacked by a
+sow in a pigsty. The farmer’s family are laughing while the parson is
+crying out:
+
+                   “The fattest pig it is my due;
+                   Oh! save me from the wicked sow.”
+
+Another pitcher has a fling at the Romish Church, for it bears a
+likeness of his Satanic Majesty and of a priest, with the words,
+
+                          “When Pope absolves
+                          The Devil smiles.”
+
+I have seen in America a number of drinking-mugs of cream-colored ware,
+which may properly be spoken of here, though it is doubtful whether many
+of them were made in Liverpool. They have the raised figure of a toad or
+frog placed inside, with the pleasingly jocose intention of surprising
+and scaring the drinker, who would fancy as the ugly head rose out of
+the decreasing liquor that it was a real batrachian climbing up the side
+to jump down his throat. One of these mugs had the frog tinted a dull
+green and brown, entirely too natural and life-like in color to prove
+pleasant or appetizing. Another two-handled Frog mug was of coarse white
+ware, unpainted, and had an exceedingly modern look. This was probably
+Newcastle ware. The price asked for these in “antique shops” is usually
+three or four dollars apiece. I have seen none with mottoes as has the
+one numbered S 17, in the Museum of Practical Geology.
+
+                         “Though malt and venom
+                           Seem united,
+                         Don’t break my pot
+                           Nor be affrighted.”
+
+These Frog mugs are usually large in diameter, and are sometimes
+decorated externally with designs of ships or naval heroes. The frog’s
+appearance in sight would then prove more effectually terrifying than if
+the drinker were warned by an instructive motto of the figured reptile
+within.
+
+Another agreeable old English practical joke is in the shape of puzzle
+jugs, specimens of which exist in England, but have been rarely found in
+America. They were made in Liverpool and Staffordshire in the
+seventeenth and eighteenth century, and in salt-glazed stone-ware at
+Nottingham in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were so
+constructed that when lifted to the lips they emptied by secret passages
+their liquid contents over the face and breast of the drinker. Sometimes
+there were three spouts from the rim. If the drinker covered two of the
+spouts with his fingers, he could drink from the third. This motto is on
+a puzzle jug of earthenware, of Liverpool make, in the collection of
+George M. Wales, Esq., of Boston:
+
+                 “Here, gentlemen, come try y^r skill;
+                 Ill hold a wager, if you will,
+                 That you don’t drink this liq^r all
+                 Without you spill or let some fall.”
+
+Another rhyming inscription reads:
+
+              “From mother earth I took my birth,
+                Then form’d a Jug by Man,
+              And now I stand here filled with good cheer—
+                Taste of me if you can.”
+
+Another short invitation reads:
+
+“This ale is good, taste.”
+
+And when you tasted, in good faith, you received a beery shower-bath,
+which was no doubt considered very funny by eighteenth-century
+Englishmen.
+
+On another is written:
+
+“Mathew the V 16.”
+
+—not a very appropriate text-reference.
+
+Still another rhyming challenge reads thus:
+
+                     “A Crown Ile bet
+                     That None can get
+                       The ale that’s in this Jug,
+                     Nor drink his fill
+                     Without he spill
+                       And shall not use a plug.”
+
+A puzzle jug in the possession of the Vintners’ Company is in the shape
+of a milkmaid bearing a pail. The pail is set on a swivel, and when the
+drinker tries to swallow the liquor, the pail sends its contents over
+his chest.
+
+[Illustration: Masonic Pitcher.]
+
+Cream-ware pitchers bearing Masonic emblems are frequently found,
+usually having also the name of the person by whom they were ordered, or
+for whom they were made. These rather egotistical lines were prime
+favorites among these pitcher-buying Masons:
+
+                  “The world is in pain
+                  Our Secret to gain,
+                  But still let them wonder & gaze on,
+                  For they ne’er can divine
+                  The word nor the sign
+                  Of a Free and Accepted Mason.”
+
+Another much-used set of Masonic verses runs thus:
+
+                   “We help the poor in time of need
+                   The naked cloath, the Hungry feed;
+                     ’Tis our Foundation stone.
+                   We build upon the noblest plan,
+                   Where Friendship rivets man to man
+                     And makes us all as one.”
+
+And a third:
+
+             “To judge with candour and to speak no wrong,
+             The feeble to support against the strong,
+             To soothe the wretched and the poor to feed,
+             Will cover many an idle, foolish deed.”
+
+Some of these Masonic pitchers are of enormous size, as if the buyers
+wished as much of a pitcher as possible for their money. Many of them
+were printed at the Worcester factory. I have also seen some fine
+designs that had been drawn with a pen by hand in mineral colors and
+then fired in. Pitchers and mugs of Chinese porcelain are also seen with
+decorations of Masonic emblems and mottoes.
+
+Sailor pitchers are found in comparatively large numbers, with touching
+prints of a sailor bidding an affectionate farewell to his lass, under a
+flag and over an anchor, accompanied by such appropriate verses as the
+following:
+
+                       “When this you see
+                       Pray think of me
+                       And keep me in your mind;
+                       Let all the world
+                       Say what they will,
+                       Think of me as you find.”
+
+Or this legend, a misquotation from Charles Dibdin’s song:
+
+               “D’ye see a cherub sits smiling aloft
+               To keep watch o’er the life of poor Jack.”
+
+This is often accompanied by the figure of a fat little cherub perched
+in the rigging of a ship. These Sailor pitchers were brought home
+frequently at the end of a voyage as gifts for a sweetheart or a wife,
+as is plainly seen by these verses printed with a picture called “The
+Sailor’s Return”:
+
+                  “I now the joys of Life renew
+                  From care and trouble free,
+                  And find a wife who’s kind and true
+                  To drive life’s cares away.”
+
+And also this tender sentiment:
+
+               “The troubled main, the wind & rain,
+                 My ardent passion prove
+               Lashed to the helm, should seas o’erwhelm
+                 I’ll think on thee, my love.”
+
+Or these lines:
+
+                  “Kindly take this gift of mine,
+                  The gift and giver I hope is thine,
+                  And tho’ the value is but small
+                  A loving heart is worth it all.”
+
+It is a curious fact that feminine owners are exceptionally unwilling
+“to part with” these Sailor pitchers. A halo of past romance, of
+sentimental fancy, surrounds the yellow ware love token that “Uncle Eben
+brought from Injy to Aunt Hannah,” or “my grandpa got painted in Chiny
+for my grandma when he was courtin’ her” (for even these staidly sombre
+English pitchers are gloriously Oriental in country owners’ eyes). This
+latent longing for sentiment, this tender sympathy with youthful love
+and affection, lies hidden deep in every woman’s heart, no matter what
+her age; and, in the dull, repressed life of many New England homes,
+finds expression in a stolid clinging to the only visible token of a
+love and lovers long since dead. One stout old woman, with calm face but
+suspiciously shaky voice and hands, brought out for our admiring view,
+in company with a crimson silk crêpe shawl, a pair of small Liverpool
+pitchers printed with a spirited marine view of a full-rigged ship, the
+names John Daggett and Eliza Maxom, and this doggerel rhyme:
+
+                     “No more I’ll roam,
+                     I’ll stay at home,
+                     To sail no more
+                     From shore to shore,
+                     But with my wife
+                     Lead a happy, peaceful life.”
+
+“Who gave you them pretty picture pitchers, Grandma?” said the little
+child who was clinging to her skirts. “John Daggett ordered ’em painted
+for him an’ me in Liverpool on the last trip he ever went on. He was the
+han’somest man ye ever see! He died on the v’yage home, an’ yer Granpa,
+he was a-seafarin’ then, he stopped an’ got ’em on the way back, an’
+brought ’em home ter me.” Alas! poor John Daggett! your thoughtful gifts
+of love furnished forth another wedding-feast with the considerate
+sailor-companion as groom and comforter. But though passed to “a happy,
+peaceful life” on a far-distant shore, you are not forgotten, but
+through the reminiscent power of your last gift, live a tender idealized
+memory, a dream of eternal unchanging youth and beauty, in your dear
+lass’s thoughts. Your two Liverpool pitchers have never been
+thoughtlessly or carelessly used in your shipmate’s, in “Grandpa’s,”
+home; they have lain for half a century unscratched, unnicked, unbroken,
+true cinerary urns of vanished hopes and promises, wrapped in the
+crimson crêpe shawl in the deep drawer of a high chest in your old
+sweetheart’s “spare-room.”
+
+In this case we encountered a sentiment which we have met more than
+once—a willingness on the part of the owner, when she found we admired
+the piece, to let us have it, since we would cherish it safe and
+unharmed, rather than to give it or leave it to relatives who had openly
+derided it or called it a worthless old thing. As this New England
+sentimentalist expressed it, while she slowly folded the shawl around
+the beloved pitchers, “I’d almost ruther let ye have ’em, ye seem to set
+such store by ’em, than ter leave ’em ter Asa’s wife, she aint brought
+up the children extry careful, an’ I know they’d smash ’em in no time,
+or put ’em in hot water or knock the nose off. Come again next year an’
+I’ll think it over, I hate ter part with ’em just yet after I’ve kep’
+’em fer fifty-two year an’ three months, but I’ll see.”
+
+Various prints that are of more interest to Englishmen than to Americans
+are seen on these Liverpool pitchers; such is the view on the large mug
+owned by an old Newport resident, which bears the inscription, “An East
+View of Liverpool Lighthouse and Signals on Bilston Hill, 1788.” In the
+centre of the design is a lighthouse with forty-four signals around it.
+Each signal is numbered, and below is a key with the names of the
+vessels and their owners. This print also occurs on plates. In the days
+before the telegraph Liverpool merchants were wont to go down to the
+riverside, about two or three hours before high tide, to see whether
+there were any flags hoisted on the lighthouse poles, as was always done
+when a vessel came in sight. Thus were owners notified a few hours in
+advance of the approach of their craft to port.
+
+Another mug owned by the same gentleman has a map with a caricature of
+Napoleon Bonaparte standing with one foot on Germany. The other foot,
+having been placed on England, has been cut off by John Bull, who says,
+“I ax pardon, Master Boney, but, as we say, Pares of Pompey, we keep
+this spot to ourselves. You must not dance here, Master Boney.” Napoleon
+is saying, “You tam John Bull, you have spoil my dance, you have ruin my
+projects.” A second Bonaparte mug has a red print of John Bull sitting
+upon a pedestal, inscribed “The British Constitution.” He looks across
+the Channel at Napoleon, who is weeping and crying out, “O! my poor
+Crazy Gun Boats, why did I venture so far from home,” while John Bull
+says, “I told you they would all be swamp’d, but you would be so Damned
+Obstinate.” The inscription is “Patience on a Monument smiling at
+Grief,” with this distich:
+
+              “The Mighty Chief with fifty thousand Men
+              Marched to the Coast and March’d back again.
+                        Ha! Ha! Ha!”
+
+A third Bonaparte mug is thus described in _Notes and Queries_:
+
+  “Under a trophy of arms are figures of John Bull and Napoleon. John
+    Bull is in the act of striking his opponent with his right fist a
+    severe blow on the nose; the nether end of Napoleon is at the same
+    time in collision with sturdy John Bull’s left boot. Inscription,
+    ‘See here John Bull drubbing Bonaparte!’ On either side of the
+    picture we have,
+
+            ‘What! to conquer all England how dares he pretend,
+              This ambitious but vain undertaker,
+            When he knows to his cost that where Britons defend,
+              He’s unable to conquer one Acre!’
+
+  ‘If your beggarly soldiers come among us, they’ll soon have enough of
+    it; and, damn me, if any ten of you shall have my person or
+    property—so be off!’ ‘Damn ye! you black-hearted, treacherous
+    Corsican! if you were not such a little bit of a fellow in spite of
+    your large cocked hat, I’d crack your skull in an instant with my
+    fist.’”
+
+Another bears these short and pointed lines:
+
+                           “May England’s oak
+                             Produce the bark
+                           To tan the hide
+                             Of Bonaparte,”
+
+which, though shaky in rhyme, are certainly more effective than the
+illiterate, profane, and overlong inscriptions on other Bonaparte mugs.
+
+A well-engraved and well-designed Liverpool print is that of “The
+Farmers’ Arms,” with armorial design ingeniously formed of hay-rakes,
+scythes, flails, ploughs, churns, sickles, etc., the mottoes being “In
+God we Trust,” and “Industry produceth Wealth.” On the other side are
+these verses:
+
+                     “May the mighty and great
+                     Roll in splendor and state,
+                 I envy them not, I declare it,
+                     I eat my own Lamb,
+                     My own chicken and ham,
+                 I shear my own sheep and I wear it.
+                     I have lawns, I have Bowers,
+                     I have Fruits, I have Flowers,
+                 The Lark is my morning Alarmer;
+                     So you Jolly Dogs now,
+                     Here’s God bless the plow—
+                 Long life and content to the Farmer.”
+
+One of these really artistic Farmer pitchers with this inscription and
+design sold at an auction in New York for only seven dollars and a half,
+in spite of the catalogue’s alluring description of its “having once
+belonged to Robert Burns.” A similar one, numbered S 32, is in the
+Museum of Practical Geology in London, and is also described in Mayer’s
+“Art of Pottery and History of its Progress in Liverpool.”
+
+Besides the design of the “Farmers’ Arms” is found that of the
+“Blacksmiths’ Arms,” with the motto “By Hammer and Hand all Arts do
+Stand;” the “Bucks’ Arms,” with stag and huntsmen, and the motto
+“Freedom with Innocence;” the “Bakers’ Arms,” and the motto, “Praise God
+for All;” the “Hatters’ Arms,” with the motto, “We Assist Each Other in
+Time of Need.”
+
+Many of these Liverpool pitchers have an individual interest connected
+with their original manufacture. They were the favorite expression of
+respect of ships crews to their commanders, of workmen to their
+employers. Such is the beautiful pitcher owned by A. M. Prentiss, Esq.,
+bearing the motto, “Success to Henry Prentiss and his Employ, 1789.”
+Henry Prentiss was a Revolutionary hero, a member of the Tea Party, a
+wealthy Boston merchant, a large cotton manufacturer, a successful
+horticulturist, a man whose name brings to old residents of Boston and
+Cambridge the memory of many a story of his shrewdness and intelligence.
+
+S. Yendell, great-grandfather of the present Governor of Massachusetts,
+was similarly honored by a mammoth presentation pitcher, which is owned
+by Mrs. Russel, of Cambridge. It bears a print of the Columbia, on which
+ship Mr. Yendell sailed on the famous voyage when the Columbia River was
+discovered, in 1791. That does not seem very long ago! Mr. Yendell lived
+till 1867. To be sure, he was then the oldest man in Boston,
+ninety-seven years of age.
+
+The art of transfer-printing on pottery and porcelain, by which all
+these pieces are decorated, has completely revolutionized the business
+of china decoration in England, and cheapened the price of decorated
+crockery, as did the invention of types and printing cheapen and
+multiply books. John Sadler, who invented the process of
+transfer-printing, was originally an engraver. He had his attention
+first called to the possibility and desirability of china-printing by a
+very trifling incident—by seeing some children when playing “doll’s
+house” paste on broken pieces of crockery, pictures cut from waste-paper
+prints which he had thrown away.
+
+For years he and his partner, Guy Green, managed to keep his invention
+enough of a secret, so that he printed not only for Liverpool works, but
+for many others. Much of the Wedgwood Queens-ware was stamped by him,
+being made at the Wedgwood factory, carried in wagons over bad roads to
+Liverpool, and, after being printed, returned in the same manner to
+Burslem to be fired. In spite of all this manipulation and
+transportation it could be sold cheaply, for Sadler’s tariff of prices
+for transfer-printing was very low. “For printing a table and
+tea-service of two hundred and fifty pieces for David Garrick, £8 6s.
+1½d. Twenty-five dozen half-tiles printing and colouring, £1 5s.” These
+printed half-tiles were sold for 2s. 6d. a dozen, while the black
+printed whole tiles brought only 5s. a dozen.
+
+Sadler’s process was very simple. He printed on paper with an ordinary
+copper or steel plate, then laid the print while wet on the glazed piece
+of pottery. Then, upon pressing it, the ink was transferred to the
+pottery piece, and afterward burnt in. Nearly all these wares were
+printed in black, but some have the prints in blue, and some in
+vermilion. Others, printed in black outlines, are filled in by hand with
+various colors, sometimes with very good effect.
+
+Hancock and Holdship followed quickly in Sadler’s wake, in printing on
+pottery and porcelain in Worcester, and there bat-printing was
+introduced at a later date. In this process linseed-oil was used instead
+of ink, and the oil design was printed on a “bat,” or sheet of prepared
+glue and treacle, which, being pliable, adapted itself readily to the
+shape of the pottery article to be printed, and transferred to it the
+oil lines of the design. Powdered color was dusted on these oil lines,
+the superfluous color being removed by cotton wool, and then fired in.
+Engravings for bat-printing were usually in stipple work, and the prints
+can readily be recognized and distinguished from those of
+transfer-printing.
+
+It is interesting to us to know that an American who seemed to have a
+hand in every invention of his day, had also his little share in the
+suggestion, if not in the discovery, of printing upon pottery and
+porcelain. Benjamin Franklin wrote thus from London, November 3, 1773,
+to some unknown person:
+
+“I was much pleased with the specimens you so kindly sent me of your new
+art of engraving. That on the china is admirable. No one would suppose
+it anything but painting. I hope you meet with all the encouragement you
+merit, and that the invention will be what inventions seldom are,
+profitable to the inventor. Now, we are speaking of inventions, I know
+not who pretends to that of copper-plate engraving for earthen ware, and
+I am not disposed to contest the honor with anybody, as the improvement
+in taking impressions not directly from the plate, but from printed
+paper, applicable by that means to other than flat forms, is far beyond
+my first idea. But I have reason to apprehend that I might have given
+the hint on which that improvement was made; for, more than twenty years
+since, I wrote to Dr. Mitchell from America proposing to him the
+printing of square tiles for ornamenting chimneys, from copper-plates,
+describing the manner in which I thought it might be done, and advising
+the borrowing from the booksellers the plates that had been used in a
+thin folio called ‘Moral Virtue Delineated,’ for that purpose. The Dutch
+Delft-ware tiles were much used in America, which are only or chiefly
+Scripture histories wretchedly scrawled. I wished to have those moral
+prints, which were originally taken from Horace’s poetical figures,
+introduced in tiles, which, being about our chimneys are constantly in
+the eyes of the children when by the fireside, might give parents an
+opportunity in explaining them to express moral sentiments, and I gave
+expectations of great demands for them if executed. Dr. Mitchell wrote
+me in answer that he had communicated my scheme to several of the
+artists in the earthen way about London, who rejected it as
+impracticable; and it was not till some years after that I first saw an
+enamelled snuff-box, which I was sure was from a copper-plate, though
+the curvature of the form made me wonder how the impression was taken.”
+
+Sadly and deprecatingly must “Poor Richard” have examined the printed
+tiles of John Sadler, for no “moral virtues delineated” thereon are
+depicted. He found, instead, the representation of such trivial and
+unmoral pastimes as dancing, beer-drinking, pipe-smoking,
+fortune-telling—the latter design being of an astrologer seated at a
+table telling the fortunes of two young women. One fair maid smiles with
+delighted anticipation as she receives a paper of prophecy inscribed “A
+brisk husband and son,” while the other poor creature is departing,
+shedding bitter tears of disappointment, with a similar paper bearing
+the depressing words, “Never to be married.” American children doubtless
+lost much desirable and laudable parental instruction when Franklin’s
+worthy scheme failed in execution, but they were also spared many a
+fireside lecture and nagging. How they would have come to hate the sight
+of those moral lesson tiles!
+
+And while I am speaking of transfer-printing, let me call attention to
+some pretty little ceramic relics of a quaint old-time fashion, that are
+sometimes overlooked by collectors—“mirror-knobs”—“Lookeing Glasse Nobs”
+I find them called in ante-Revolutionary advertisements. These knobs
+consisted usually of a painted or printed medallion, frequently
+enamelled on the metal, or on little oval porcelain placques or discs,
+which were then fastened in brass, gilt or silvered frames, and mounted
+on a long and strong screw or spike. Two of these knobs were screwed
+into the wall about a foot apart, so that the oval-framed medallions
+stood out two or three inches from the wall. The lower edge of a mirror
+or picture frame was allowed to rest on the iron screws behind these two
+ornamental heads. These mirror-knobs were also used to fasten back
+window curtains. The head of the mirror-knob was usually decorated by
+the process of transfer-printing; sentimental views of shepherds and
+shepherdesses, mincing heads of powdered French dames, and
+unintentionally funny likenesses of many of our Revolutionary heroes and
+statesmen. The portrait of Washington which was employed was fairly
+good; of Franklin in the fur-cap, quite well drawn; but the others that
+I have seen vied with one another in comical ugliness, save that of John
+Jay, always too fine in feature to be caricatured. In the Huntington
+collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, may be seen a
+few of these mirror-knobs with portraits of Franklin, John Jay, C.
+Thompson, W. H. Drayton, John Dickinson, S. Huntington, Major-General
+Gaines, and an exceptionally ugly one of H. Laurens, with a phenomenally
+attenuated neck, a mere bone of a neck. Often these little printed
+miniatures are in black and white, but more frequently they are printed
+in outline, and faintly and delicately colored. I wish I knew where they
+were made, and who ordered them and imported and sold them, and who drew
+them. I think that they were made in Worcester, not in Liverpool. Aged
+country people tantalizingly tell me of mirror-knobs made of discs with
+white raised heads and figures on blue grounds—Wedgwood medallions, were
+they not? But they have all vanished from my ken, even the printed knobs
+are now seldom seen. I know one drawer of an old dressing-case in quiet
+Hadley town that holds fifteen beautiful mirror-knobs, all whole,
+uncracked, unscratched; but you will never see them nor buy them. You
+might steal them, perhaps, if you only knew which elm-shaded house
+contained them—you might steal the whole dressing-case, indeed, if you
+were only quiet about it, and you might walk the entire mile and a half
+of the beautiful main street with the stolen furniture on your back and
+meet not a soul to question or wonder.
+
+Of the same class and decoration and of the same materials were many
+dainty snuff-boxes and patch-boxes that were made and used in England
+and imported to America. The latter pretty trinkets were tiny oval or
+round boxes about an inch and a half or two inches in diameter,
+frequently made of fine Battersea enamel, or of china medallions set in
+silver or gilt frames. Within the lid was always found a little mirror,
+usually of polished steel, in which the fair owner might peep to freshly
+set or rearrange her coquettish patches. One patch-box I have bears this
+motto on the top:
+
+                       “Have Communion with few,
+                       Be familiar with one,
+                       Deal Justly with all,
+                       Speak evil of None.”
+
+Another has a more frivolous verse:
+
+                 “Within this Beauty views her face
+                 And with the patch gives added grace.”
+
+Still another:
+
+                     “Love and Beauty conquer all,
+                           Love to Beauty.”
+
+Sometimes, as with the mirror-knobs, a little painting of shepherds and
+shepherdesses is set in the lid, and, with the jewelled and enamelled
+border, form a trifle dainty enough to rival any modern bonbonnières.
+These patch-boxes and “Gum Patches,” or “Patches for ladies,” or “Face
+Patches,” were advertised freely in American newspapers for many years
+previous to the Revolution—as early, surely, as 1750 in the _Boston
+Evening Post_; and patches were universally worn by American beauties,
+as Whitefield and other pious travellers sadly deplored. “China Snuff
+Boxes” were offered for sale in the _Boston Evening Post_ of April 16,
+1773, were bought and filled with Kippen’s snuff, were lost on Boston
+streets, were advertised for reward in Boston papers, and no doubt
+proudly and ostentatiously carried by Boston beaux, as well as by
+Charleston macaronis. A few snuff-boxes of Battersea enamel still remain
+to show us how lovely they were, but the frail china ones have nearly
+all been destroyed, and when still existing are usually sadly cracked
+and disfigured. China and Battersea enamel “tooth-pick cases” were also
+imported and carried by Boston beaux.
+
+But we must leave these dainty quaint trinkets and go back to the far
+less beautiful Liverpool pitchers. Though they have no great charm of
+color, shape, or design, and are, in fact, the least graceful and
+beautiful of all the old English wares commonly found in America, all
+the historical pitchers must certainly be of great interest to students
+of American history, as records and relics of the early days of the
+United States. As new pieces bearing hitherto unknown designs are
+constantly being found, they will form, in fact do now form, with the
+old blue Staffordshire plates, a valuable and lasting ceramic record of
+the early days of our nation. Let us hope that they will be carefully
+preserved by all who are fortunate enough to own them; and, if they are
+not placed in the safe keeping of museums or cabinet collections, at
+least be kept from the debasing uses and positions in which I have seen
+them in country homes. My patriotic heart has thrilled with wounded
+indignation to see mugs and pitchers bearing such honored and venerated
+names and faces, battered, nicked, and handleless, despitefully used to
+hold herb-teas, soft-soap, horse-liniment, or tooth-brushes. I saw one
+Washington pitcher, noseless and fairly crenated with nicks, shamefully
+degraded to use as a jug to carry to the hen-house the hot water with
+which to prepare the chicken-food; while another contained a
+villainous-looking purple-black liquid compound which the owner
+explained was “Pa’s hair-restorer.” In spite of careless use, however,
+many specimens still exist, for “antique” dealers find them for their
+shops. In one Newport bric-a-brac shop I saw, in the summer of 1891, at
+least fifteen Liverpool pitchers varying in price from five dollars for
+a small Sailor pitcher to thirty-five dollars for a fine perfect
+Apotheosis Pitcher.
+
+Fortunate is the household, and happy and proud should be its members,
+that possesses one of these historic relics. I know of no better way to
+impress upon a child, or to recall to a grown person, the lesson of
+bravery, courage, and love of country, than by showing him the
+likenesses of Perry, Decatur, and Lawrence on mug or pitcher, and
+telling to him their story, and reading or reciting the old ballads and
+songs written about them. Nor do I know of any more noble example of
+Christian piety than that of the brave Macdonough, whose name is so
+often seen on these pieces of old English ware. Before the battle of
+Lake Champlain, when the deck of the Saratoga was cleared for action, he
+knelt upon the deck with his officers and men around him, asked Almighty
+God for aid, and committed the issue of the contest into His hands. Let
+us echo the toast which was given to him at a large dinner in
+Plattsburg, shortly after his victory. “The pious and brave Macdonough,
+the professor of the religion of the Redeemer—preparing for action, he
+called on God, who forsook him not in the hour of danger. _May he not be
+forgotten by his country._”
+
+Let our respect and affection for our ancestors’ adored heroes save to
+our descendants the Liverpool pitchers bearing such honored historical
+names.
+
+
+
+
+                                 VIII.
+                             ORIENTAL CHINA
+
+
+In that delightful and much-quoted book, “The China Hunters’ Club,” the
+final chapter is devoted to a most humorous description of the
+disbandment and ignominious extinction of the club through a fierce
+quarrel over a disputed piece of china—whether it were Chinese or
+Lowestoft. Could I, as did Charlie Baker in that story, label both my
+china of like character and this chapter “Canton-Lowestoft,” it would
+fitly express my feelings when I attempt to judge and write upon the old
+pieces of hard-paste porcelain, so common in America, called Oriental,
+Canton, India, or Lowestoft, according to the belief or traditions of
+each individual owner. I cannot give any positive rules by which to
+classify this china, nor any by which to judge of independent specimens.
+If I followed my own convictions and my own researches on this puzzling
+subject, I should in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred firmly state the
+disputed piece of porcelain to be Chinese, and I could quote in support
+of my views such an authority as Franks, the great china collector, who
+says that,
+
+“India china (that is, china made for the East India Company for
+European trade—what Jacquemart calls _porcelaine des Indes_) has on one
+hand been attributed to Japan, and on the other, by a still more
+singular hallucination been ascribed to Lowestoft.”
+
+He also says, “There can be no doubt that there was a considerable
+manufactory of porcelain at Lowestoft, but this was of the usual English
+soft-paste. The evidence of hard-paste having been made there is of the
+most slender kind.”
+
+Mr. Owens, in his “Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol,” says, with
+decision:
+
+“There cannot be any doubt that hard porcelain, vitrified and
+translucent, was never manufactured from the raw materials, native
+kaolin and petunste, at any other locality in England than Plymouth and
+Bristol. The tradition that such ware was made at Lowestoft in 1775
+rests upon evidence too slight to be worthy of argument. The East India
+Company imported into England large quantities of porcelain for sale;
+and in the provincial journals of the last century advertisements of
+sales by auction of East India china occur frequently. This particular
+ware, which is very plentiful, even at the present day, and which has of
+late acquired the reputation of having been made at Lowestoft, was
+simply, in form and ornamentation, only a reproduction by the Chinese of
+English earthenware models. The Chinese do not use saucers,
+butter-boats, and numbers of other articles after the European fashion,
+and the agents in China were compelled to furnish a model for every
+piece of ware ordered. These models the Asiatic workmen have copied only
+too faithfully. The ill-drawn roses, the coarsely painted baskets of
+flowers, the rude borders of lines and dots are literally copied from
+the inartistic painting on the English earthenware of by-gone days.”
+
+He also says, “It is painful to see in public and private collections
+examples of Oriental ware labelled Lowestoft, simply because, though
+hard porcelain, they bear English armorial coats and initials. Many
+porcelain punch-bowls are to be found in seaport towns with names and
+portraits of ships and very early dates. Those bowls are often
+attributed to the works at Liverpool and Lowestoft. The officers of the
+East India Company’s ships were accustomed to take out English Delft
+bowls and get them reproduced in common porcelain in China for their
+merchant friends, and many a relic now prized as of home manufacture was
+procured in this manner.”
+
+Mr. Prime writes more cautiously, after describing the pieces:
+
+“These are supposed to have been made on special patterns furnished to
+the Oriental factories by the East India Company. They resemble European
+work in the decoration, and many of the Lowestoft paintings seem to be
+imitations of these. It is, therefore, necessary to be very cautious in
+classifying wares as of Lowestoft fabric.”
+
+And again he says, “The presence of a single decoration like a flower or
+sprig of flowers in European style on porcelain is not a sufficient
+reason for classing the porcelain as European. Many such pieces were
+printed in Japan and in China. And others are possibly the work of
+decorators in Holland.”
+
+Mr. Elliott says of Lowestoft in America:
+
+“It seems certain that this kind of decoration was done at Lowestoft; it
+is equally certain that it was also done in China, from designs sent out
+there. I have myself seen pieces so decorated which were imported direct
+from China to New Haven about the end of the last century.”
+
+On the other hand, that standard authority, Mr. Chaffers, author of
+“Marks and Monograms,” says that “the question about hard-paste
+porcelain having been made at Lowestoft is placed beyond dispute upon
+the best authority. It was introduced about 1773,” and he offers a mass
+of testimony to prove his statements.
+
+Mr. Owens fancies that sailing-masters took out English Delft bowls to
+be reproduced in China; Mr. Marryatt and Mr. Franks, that Chinese
+porcelain was imported to Holland and painted in Delft; another
+collector believes that Chinese kaolin and clay were brought to
+Lowestoft, and there mixed, shaped, fired and painted; and still
+another, that Lowestoft porcelain was taken out to China to be
+decorated. The Catalogue of the Museum of Practical Geology in London
+very shrewdly and non-responsibly says of its Lowestoft specimens: “It
+should be understood that several of the following pieces are exhibited
+as ‘Lowestoft china’ simply in deference to the opinions of certain
+collectors and not as authenticated specimens.”
+
+To show the doubtful eyes with which the Lowestoft aspirants are
+regarded by authorities in England, I will state that in this
+last-mentioned catalogue but twelve lots of Lowestoft porcelain and
+pottery are named—a small proportion—and a sharp lesson to American
+collectors with their reckless and sweeping Lowestoft classifications.
+None of the twelve bear any distinguishing Lowestoft marks or names. The
+descriptions of some of these are not at all like our American Lowestoft
+wares. One reads: “Two plates ornamented with borders in brown and gold,
+and with views of a Suffolk village and river painted in sepia in a
+circular panel in centre of each plate.”
+
+From these few extracts which I have taken from various authorities, it
+is plainly seen that no decision, no judgment can be given in this
+Lowestoft case, that each seeker after china and truth must judge for
+himself.
+
+The history of the production of hard-paste china at Lowestoft is
+exceedingly curious as an example and proof of the suddenness with which
+recent facts and circumstances may be forgotten. It seems fairly
+incredible that the true particulars of the manufacture of this ware
+(which it is alleged was produced in such great quantities from the year
+1775 to 1803) should be entirely lost and forgotten in half a century’s
+time. The descriptions and history of Lowestoft china in Mr. Llewellyn
+Jewitt’s article in the July number of the _London Art Journal_ in 1863,
+were the first to call attention to Lowestoft china, and I still
+consider him the best and most trustworthy authority on the subject.
+Previous to that time, in the catalogues of English Loan Collections and
+Museums, the name even of Lowestoft does not appear, though the ware was
+seen everywhere labelled vaguely “Foreign,” or “Oriental.” At a later
+date Mr. Chaffers’s book appeared with a warm endorsement and
+enthusiastic setting-forth of the Lowestoft factory and its wares, so
+warm and embracing in its description that Mr. Jewitt in his later book,
+“Ceramic Art in Great Britain,” fairly has to protest against such broad
+sweeping into the Lowestoft net; and he must feel that he “builded
+better than he knew” when he “wrote up” the Lowestoft factory. He says:
+“Let me utter a word or two of caution to collectors against placing too
+implicit a reliance upon what has been written concerning Lowestoft
+china, and against taking for granted that all which is nowadays called
+Lowestoft china is really the production of that manufactory. If all
+that is ascribed to Lowestoft was ever made there the works must have
+been the most extensive, and—if all the varieties of wares that are now
+said to have been produced there were made it is asserted
+simultaneously—the most extraordinary on record. The great bulk of the
+specimens now unblushingly ascribed to Lowestoft I believe never were in
+that town, much less ever made there.”
+
+When Mr. Jewitt wrote thus he knew nothing about the vast additional
+stock of Lowestoft in America, enough additional weight to swamp forever
+the Lowestoft pretensions. Mr. Jewitt also resented with proper
+indignation some criticisms which Mr. Chaffers dared to make upon his
+_Art Journal_ paper, saying, with truth, that he (Chaffers) was indebted
+to him for nearly every scrap of information about the Lowestoft factory
+that he has embodied in his work. He might say for every scrap of any
+importance. The three accounts form a typical example of the
+controversies in private life, of the minor disputes that always arise
+among china collectors, not only over the claims of the Lowestoft
+factory, but over even a single piece of Lowestoft hard-paste porcelain.
+
+The specimens of what are called Lowestoft ware that are most frequently
+seen in America, are parts of tea-services, punch-bowls and pitchers,
+coffee-pots and mugs. The pieces often bear crests, coats of arms, or
+initials. Shields supported with birds, and escutcheons in dark blue are
+also frequent. The initials are usually very gracefully interlaced.
+Sometimes the tea-caddy will bear the crest or coat of arms with the
+initials, while the remainder of the tea-service will have the initials
+only.
+
+On many of the pieces the border is of clear cobalt blue (often in rich
+enamel), varied with gold stars or a meander pattern in gold. Some
+unreasoning collectors take their stand upon this blue and gold-starred
+border as being the only positive indication and proof to their minds
+that the piece thus decorated is truly Lowestoft; but I have seen many
+pieces that were positively imported directly from China to America that
+bore this Lowestoft border. A red trellis-border and a peculiar
+russet-brown or chocolate border also abound on these disputed pieces,
+and the scale pattern in purplish pink. A raised border of vine leaves,
+grapes, flowers and squirrels is seen on the beakers; I have found both
+this form and decoration rare in America.
+
+When a flower pattern appears on Lowestoft china the rose predominates.
+Chaffers says that the reason for this use of the rose is twofold; the
+arms of the English borough in which the china is said to have been
+manufactured or painted, is the Tudor, or full-blown rose surmounted by
+an open crown; and the cleverest painter of Lowestoft ware was Thomas
+Rose, and he thus commemorated his name. He was a French refugee, and it
+is to his French taste we owe the delicate style of whatever flower
+ornamentation appears on this china. It is sad to read that he became
+blind and spent the last days of his life as a water-vender, plying his
+trade with two donkeys that had been given him by the town. The pieces
+alleged to have been painted by him, and indeed all the Lowestoft
+pieces, were seldom profuse in decoration. Roses without foliage or
+stems, little bouquets, or narrow festoons of tiny roses with green
+leaves, were his favorite designs. Often a piece bore only a single
+rose.
+
+The mugs and tea and coffee-pots usually have twisted or double handles
+crossed and fastened to the main body of the piece with raised leaves or
+flowers. The large pieces, such as punch-bowls and pitchers and the
+helmet creamers, sometimes have an irregular surface, as if, when in the
+paste, they had been patted into shape by the hands. I have often seen
+this appearance also on blue and white undoubted Chinese ware. The mugs
+are both cylindrical and barrel-shaped; the cups are handleless, as are
+usually the cups of all Oriental china manufactured at that date.
+
+Mr. Chaffers says that occasionally the smaller pieces of Lowestoft will
+be seen embossed with the rice-pattern or basket-work. I have never seen
+a piece thus embossed but was as plainly and unmistakably Oriental as a
+Chinaman’s pigtail and his almond eyes.
+
+The oval teapot shown on page 208 is a typical Lowestoft piece, though
+not a choice one; and by many ignorant collectors all teapots of that
+particular shape, with twisted handles held to the body with embossed
+leaves, no matter with what other decoration, are firmly assigned to the
+Lowestoft factory. Many unmistakably Chinese pieces, however, are seen
+in this exact shape; for instance, a beautiful rice-pattern teapot in
+the Avery Collection, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This piece is
+rich in gold and blue, but has the knobs, twisted handles, and embossed
+leaves of the Lowestoft pattern. Perhaps, in spite of its Chinese
+rice-pattern, and the quality of the paste, Chaffers would class it as
+Lowestoft.
+
+There are found in America certain Oriental vases of typical Lowestoft
+decoration which are usually in one or the other of two shapes,
+cylindrical with suddenly flaring top (or rarely an ovoid cylinder with
+similar top), or a vase with small base, sharply bulging out at half its
+height, and as suddenly contracting to a small neck. These vases, in
+sets or garnitures of three or five pieces, the two end vases always
+alike, graced the mantel of many a “parlour” a century ago, and were
+frequently decorated with initials or coats of arms. Such are the
+beautifully-shaped vases with exquisite blue, brown, and gold
+decoration, given by Lafayette to Cadwallader Jones of Petersburg, Va.,
+one of which is here shown. These vases exhibit the impressed
+basket-work design; they are in perfect preservation, and have recently
+come by gift into the possession of the Washington Association of New
+Jersey.
+
+[Illustration: Lowestoft Vase.]
+
+There are in English collections a few specimens of the early soft-paste
+Lowestoft manufactures, which were always decorated in blue, which bear
+Lowestoft names or distinguishing dates. Indeed, these blue and white
+pieces are the only ones that do have designating Lowestoft marks, or
+bear dates, which seems to me a very significant fact. I have never
+found any of these blue and white Lowestoft pieces in America, either
+marked or unmarked, nor do I know of any marked Lowestoft pieces in any
+American collection. There are none in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. I
+have seen a few rather coarse blue and white Delft-ware pieces which I
+suspect might be classed as Lowestoft.
+
+I fear that in this attempt to throw light, or rather borrow light, on
+the Lowestoft question, I have not succeeded very well, and have perhaps
+cast a deeper shadow. There is one other condition which has influenced
+and helped me to form my condition of mind about Lowestoft china, and
+that is the situation of the town. It is the absolute “Land’s end,” the
+extreme eastern point of England; the sand and some of the clay
+necessary to make all this porcelain would have had to be transported
+from the extreme western “Land’s end” of Cornwall, and the great supply
+of coal to burn in the kilns, from the extreme northern coast of
+Northumberland and Durham—two most inconvenient and expensive
+contingencies. It was, however, near to Holland, that great producer of
+Delft-ware, and had an extensive trade with that country, and Dutch
+vessels constantly entered the Lowestoft port. And the first
+productions—the only marked and dated ones—are all blue and white and
+resemble Delft-ware: none are of porcelain. The Dutch also were great
+importers of Oriental china. Of course we must believe that some china
+also came out of Lowestoft, but these are some of the very bewildering
+accompanying conditions that we cannot crowd out of our minds.
+
+It is difficult to assign prices or values to pieces of Lowestoft china,
+for, as in other wares, the quality of the decoration, of course,
+influences the price. Teapots similar to the one shown on page 208 are
+often offered for from four to eight dollars—one sold in the Governor
+Lyon sale in 1876 for $5. At that same sale Lowestoft plates of ordinary
+design, with single rose decoration, brought $1.50 each; cups and
+saucers of similar design, the same price. A pretty dish of gold and
+buff, with brownish bird in the centre, brought $3. A helmet creamer,
+with decoration of grapes and vines in gold and brown, brought $4; this
+is a decoration and shape frequently seen in America. One bearing the
+Morse coat of arms is here shown. One very curious piece, a custard-cup
+belonging to a “marriage set,” sold for $6.50. This cup was decorated
+with festoons and bunches of roses, and on one side was a hand holding
+two medallions, with initials, tied together with a lovers’ knot of
+ribbon, with the motto “Unit.” On the other side were two coats of arms
+held and supported in the same manner. It is said that this idea of a
+marriage set was in high fashion a hundred years ago. At the S. L. M.
+Barlow sale in New York, in February, 1890, the prices of Lowestoft
+pieces were higher—partly because the specimens were better. A sugar-box
+with blue and gold ribbon decoration sold for $5, teapots for $8 and
+$10.
+
+[Illustration: Helmet Creamer.]
+
+A device found on Lowestoft pieces is very common in America—or at any
+rate, in New England—and is frequently and erroneously supposed to be an
+armorial bearing. It is a monogram or cipher written within an oval or
+an escutcheon, backed by an ermine mantle, surmounted by a wreath on
+which are perched a pair of doves. This device was doubtless sent to
+China to be painted on a service as a wedding gift, and proving popular
+was often repeated. I have seen it on many pieces in many families, in
+gold and various colors, the monogram or initial only being different. A
+letter is in existence, written by a gentleman in China in 1810, to a
+fair bride in Hartford, saying that he sends to her as a wedding gift a
+set of porcelain with this decoration. Portions of the set are still
+owned by the bride’s descendants. This of course proves the device to
+have been painted in China. Perhaps it was painted in England also, but
+I doubt it.
+
+There is a very pretty Lowestoft design which I have seen upon dinner-
+and tea-sets belonging to several families in New England, which may
+have been made specially for the American market, or at any rate must
+have been sent here in large quantities. It consists of the American
+shield and eagle in shades of brown touched with gold, with a pretty
+delicate border of the same colors, and tiny dots of vermilion. I speak
+specially of this design because it is often offered for sale as “George
+Washington’s China,” on the slight foundation, I suppose, of having upon
+it an American shield and eagle; and not only offered but sold, and no
+doubt exhibited with pride by collectors of Washingtoniana. One lucky
+dog of a relic hunter recently secured in New York a “Washington” teapot
+with this design for the sum of $75—a paltry amount, as he considered
+it. There are a number of pieces bearing this decoration in the
+Trumbull-Prime Collection, a portion of a set belonging to a member of
+Mr. Prime’s family. A coffee-pot of the set is here shown. This service
+was purchased in England in 1804. The gilt lettering on it, as on others
+that I have seen, is much worn, while the decoration is in perfect
+condition.
+
+[Illustration: “Washington” Coffee-pot.]
+
+As an indication of the vast amount of Lowestoft wares to be found in
+America, let me state that in the Governor Lyon sale there were
+forty-nine lots labelled Lowestoft, and many more among the historical
+pieces, while there were only six of Delft, three of Bristol, five of
+Chelsea, etc. As Governor Lyon collected nearly all his pieces of
+English porcelain in America this might be thought to be a fair means of
+judging of the proportionate prevalence of china called Lowestoft, but I
+think the number is hardly high enough. In the Trumbull-Prime Collection
+are at least a hundred and fifty pieces of Lowestoft, to which, however,
+Mr. Prime does not definitely assign that title, but explains the doubts
+and questions as to the ware. There are no rice-pattern or basket-work
+pieces among them.
+
+In New England seaport towns, where there has been during past years a
+large direct trade with China, vast quantities of Lowestoft ware are
+found. It would, of course, be argued from this fact that such porcelain
+is Chinese, and in truth it is Chinese in nine cases out of ten. And I
+presume the reason that I am so incredulous about Lowestoft china, is
+that I have really seen so little, my Lowestoft studies having probably
+all been in Chinese porcelain. Then, too, the Lowestoft factory, had it
+sent all its wares direct to America, could never have furnished our
+vast supply, from which we still have plenty of specimens to dispute and
+quarrel over.
+
+And is it not strange that we have no record of this vast trade in
+English porcelain? Who ever knew of a vessel arriving in an American
+port from Lowestoft? Who ever saw an advertisement of Lowestoft china in
+an old American newspaper? On the other hand, we know well how Chinese
+porcelain could have been brought—nay, was brought—in vast quantities to
+New England; for though New York took the lead in sending a single ship
+direct to Canton in 1784, the question of the China trade had been
+agitating Salem for a year previously, and in Connecticut, state aid had
+been asked to further direct commerce with the Orient. This aid had been
+at once refused by the prudent home-staying farmers in the Legislature.
+Providence, Newport, and Boston quickly awakened to the rich
+possibilities of the new commercial opening with the Orient, but Elias
+Haskett Derby, of Salem, known as the “Father of the East India Trade,”
+crowded his great vessels across the ocean to Canton and brought home
+rich stores of Oriental products. His fine Grand Turk sailed from Salem
+in 1785, and the return cargo doubled the money invested; and in the
+rooms of the East India Marine Company at Salem is a great Lowestoft
+bowl bearing paintings of the Grand Turk and the date, Canton, 1786,
+which proves that that piece positively was neither made at Lowestoft,
+painted at Lowestoft, brought to Lowestoft, nor exported from Lowestoft.
+From that year to 1799, of the hundred and seventy-five voyages made by
+Derby’s stanch ships, forty-five were to India and China. He had four
+ships at one time at Canton. In 1793 three Indiamen brought into New
+England ports $14,600 worth of “China-ware;” one of these ships, the
+Rising Sun, landed at Providence. And Billy Gray, of Salem, the largest
+ship-owner in the world at that date, sold many a hogshead of chinaware
+from the cargoes of his great ships, the Light Horse, the Three Friends,
+the Lotus, the Black Warrior.
+
+Though Connecticut farmers and law-givers looked with timid and
+unfavoring eyes on the possibilities and dangers of Oriental commerce,
+Connecticut merchants were not to be left behind in the race for the
+golden prizes of India. A great ship was fitted out in New Haven, and
+the story of her first voyage in 1799 and of its rich results reads like
+the wonder-tales of the East. The ship was manned by thirty-five
+Connecticut men, sons of respectable and well-to-do families; many of
+them were graduates of Yale. In its provisioning and furnishing
+merchants of New Haven, Hartford, Weathersfield, Farmington, Stamford,
+and other neighboring towns joined or “ventured.” The ship took no
+cargo. She sailed to the Falkland Islands. The crew killed 80,000 seals,
+packed away the skins in the ship’s hold, and then sailed to Canton. The
+Neptune was the first New Haven ship that furrowed the waves of the
+Pacific. The sealskins were sold to Canton merchants for $3.75 each.
+With $280,000 of the profits the Connecticut boys laid in a rich store
+of Oriental goods, tea, silks, and 467 boxes of fine china. These goods
+were sold in New Haven at enormous profits. The ship paid to the
+Government, on the results of that single voyage, import duties which
+amounted to $20,000 more than the entire State tax for the year. Mr.
+Townsend, the builder of the ship, cleared $100,000 as his share of the
+profits; the super-cargo, that useful and obsolete officer, took
+$50,000, and the thirty-five Yankee sailors and the Yankee merchants all
+tasted the sweets of this phenomenal venture. Thirty-six other
+Connecticut merchants joined at once in a venture in another ship, and
+the Cowles Brothers, of Farmington, fitted out three vessels for Canton,
+and vast amounts of Lowestoft porcelain were brought back by them to New
+Haven.
+
+It is only recently, and even now only among china collectors and what a
+Newburyport dame called “city folks and Yorkers” (that is Bostonians and
+New Yorkers—or city people in general), that the pieces spoken of in the
+last few pages would be called Lowestoft. In country homes all are still
+Chinese or India porcelain. It is the favorite tradition told of nearly
+every piece, even of undisputed English wares of the last century, that
+“my grandfather brought that bowl to us from Hong Kong,” and even when
+you point out the Caughley or Staffordshire marks, the owners are
+unconvinced and openly indignant. Chinese porcelain evidently denoted
+much higher aristocracy than English ware in early Federal days, and the
+sentiment lingers still among simple folk. Crests, arms, and initials
+are very common, “put on for us in China,” and the “China” or “India”
+tradition, must in such cases never be openly doubted.
+
+Much specially decorated porcelain did come to us from China; there is
+plenty of proof in old letters, bills, diaries, and shipping receipts,
+that persons in both America and England ordered services of porcelain
+such as we now call Lowestoft, to be made and decorated for them in
+China. These orders were sometimes filled in a manner which was vastly
+disappointing. Miss Leslie, the sister of the eminent painter, related
+that she ordered a dinner service to be made and painted for her in
+China. She directed that a coat of arms should be placed in the centre
+of each plate, and made a careful drawing of the desired coat of arms
+and pasted it in the centre of a specimen plate, and wrote under it,
+“Put this in the middle.” What was her dismay when, on the arrival of
+the china, she found on every piece not only the coat of arms, but the
+words, indelibly burnt in, “Put this in the middle.”
+
+Another person ordering porcelain in China sent out a book-plate as a
+guide for outline in decoration, and was much disgusted when the service
+arrived to find it painted by the literal-minded Chinese artist in lines
+of funereal black like the book-plate, instead of the gay colors the
+china-buyer had desired, and which were then so fashionable.
+
+But I feel that in all this about the questionable Lowestoft I am
+neither quite fair nor quite liberal to the claims of the far Orient. We
+do not regard with doubt or with question of English co-operation all
+the contributions of China to our early table furnishings. About the
+pieces just described, many collectors are reckless in judging and
+naming, and too often unjust to our Asiatic ceramic purveyors; but much
+porcelain came to America which is known and acknowledged to be Chinese,
+and which has never for a moment had the shadow of suspicion of
+Occidental manipulation cast over it—I mean “blue Canton china.” A hand
+whose clear and perfect touch made beautiful, yet rendered truthfully
+everything she described, wrote thus of such porcelain:
+
+“The china here, as in all genuine Salem cupboards, was chiefly of the
+honest old blue Canton ware. There were shining piles of these plates,
+which while they are rather heavy to handle, always surprise one by
+being so thin at the edges. There were generous teacups like small
+bowls, squat pitchers with big noses, and a tureen whose cover had the
+head of a boar for a handle. And in all this the blue was dull and deep
+in tint, with a certain ill-defined vaporous quality at the edges of the
+lines, and the white of the cool greenish tinge of a duck’s egg. You can
+buy blue Canton to-day, but it is not old blue Canton.”
+
+The stanch ships of Elias Haskett Derby, of William Gray, of Joseph
+Peabody, brought to Salem hogsheads and boxes and crates of this old
+blue Canton china; it still lingers close-hidden and high-shelved in
+Salem cupboards; it has been crushed grievously under foot in Salem
+attics; has been sold ignominiously to Salem junkmen, and also proudly
+and eagerly bought by Salem collectors.
+
+Many a “venture” was sent out by New England dames to “far Cathay” in
+these East India trading-ships, and many a pretty blue Canton teapot and
+cups and saucers, or great ringing punch-bowl came home from China in
+return for the hoarded egg-money, the inherited Spanish dollars, or the
+proceeds of the year’s spinning and weaving. Do you know what a
+“venture” was a hundred years ago? It was a gentle commercial
+speculation in which all Puritan womankind longed to join, just as all
+New England ministers legally and soberly gambled and revelled in the
+hopes and disappointments of lottery tickets. An adventurer in those
+days was as different from an adventurer of to-day as was an undertaker
+of 1792 from an undertaker of 1892. When a ship sailed out to China in
+the years following the Revolutionary War, the ship’s owner did not own
+all the cargo (if cargo of ginseng it bore), nor send out all the
+contents of the bags of solid specie that were to be invested in the
+rich and luxurious products of the far land. There were no giant
+monopolies in those days. All his friends and neighbors were kindly and
+sociably allowed to join with the wealthy shipmaster in his risks and
+profits, to put in a little money on speculation—in short, to send out a
+sum large or small on a “venture.” Sometimes orders were given that this
+“venture” should be invested in special forms of merchandise; sometimes
+it was only placed in the supercargo’s hands to share in its proportion
+the general profit. Complicated books must Elias Haskett Derby have had
+to keep through all these petty “ventures,” but good profits did that
+honest man render, though he left at his death the largest fortune of
+any American in that century. Women, fired by these alluring profits and
+assailed by a gambling obsession, sold their strings of gold beads,
+their spring lambs, their knitted stockings, and eagerly sent out the
+accumulated sum by the ship’s purser, and received in return tea,
+spices, rock-candy, crapes, china, anything they coveted for their own
+use or fancied they could sell at a profit. Men, too, sent out a
+“venture” as a gift to their new-born children, or to fill their own
+pockets; fair maids bought through a “venture” their bridal finery. From
+Bristol one young miss sent in to a ship-owner her gold earrings to
+“venture” for “a sprigged and bordered India muslin gown of best make,”
+and she got it too, thin and sheer, close-sprigged and deep bordered,
+just as well selected and carefully conveyed as if she had “ventured a
+hundred pound.”
+
+The newspapers of the times abounded in advertisements of blue Canton
+china, such as this from the _Columbia Centinel_ of December 19, 1792:
+
+“Superfine Nankin blue enamelled landscape and fancy pattern China-ware
+direct from China: among other articles are complete dinner setts, tea
+coffee & breakfast do; Teacups & saucers & Teapots separately do; dinner
+breakfast & dessert flat & Deep Plates; Punchbowles Mugs & Pitchers.”
+
+Frequently the china was sold direct from the vessel, or from the wharf
+alongside. How truly Oriental that old Canton china must have been to
+Boston and Providence and Salem dames when they had tiptoed down on the
+rough old wharf in wooden clogs or velvet-tipped golo-shoes, their fair
+faces covered with black velvet masks if the weather waxed cold or the
+wind blew east; when they had seen the great weather-beaten ship, with
+its stained sails and blackened ropes and cables—the ship that had
+brought the fragile porcelain cargo to port—the Lively Prudence, the
+Lively Peggy, the Lively Sally, the Lively Molly, or any of the dozen
+great ships named by Yankee shipmasters and ship-owners for the lively
+young women of their acquaintance. They had been on board the Indiaman,
+perhaps, and smelt its bilge-water and its travelled stale ship-smells;
+had watched the strange picturesque foreign sailors, barefooted and
+earringed, as they brought the packages and spread out the boxes on
+deck, or carried in their brawny arms the great crates on Scarlett’s or
+Rowe’s Wharf, and with their bronzed tattooed hands took out the
+precious porcelain from its rice-straw packing and rice-paper wrapping.
+How that old blue Canton must have savored forever to the fair buyers of
+the “bloom raisins,” the cinnamon, the ginger, palm-oil, gum-copal, and
+ivory, the tea, the otto-of-roses, that had been fellow-travellers for
+months in the good ship’s hold; and have spoken, too, of far-away lands
+and foreign sights, and of “the magic and mystery of the sea.” Truly, we
+of to-day have lost all the romance, the sentiment, that brightened and
+idealized colonial shopping, when we know not the ship, nor scarcely the
+country from whence come our stores.
+
+In Newport, in Bristol, in Providence, in Boston—wherever ships could
+sail from port, and wherever favoring winds wafted them back again, vast
+stores of this old blue Canton ware have been and can now be found;
+“tall coffee-pots, with straight spouts, looking like lighthouses with
+bowsprits; short, clumsy teapots with twisted handles and lids that
+always fall off;” jugs, tureens, helmet pitchers, and sauce-boats. At
+the recent disbandment of the family and selling of the home of one of
+the old presidents of Brown University, a score of old Canton platters
+were found behind trunks and old furniture under the eaves in the
+garret. Too heavy, too cumbersome to be used on our modern tables, they
+were banished to the garret rafters, and there prisoned, were forgotten.
+In past years when roast-pig and giant turkeys were served on that
+hospitable board, these great platters proudly held their steaming
+trophies; but now we have changed all that—the turkey is cut up
+surreptitiously in some unseen corner, and the blue Canton platters,
+dusty and cobwebbed, lie forgotten in the garret.
+
+These vast stores of blue Canton were doubtless part of the cargo of the
+Ann and Hope, the beautiful and stanch ship that in 1799 bore into
+Providence “one hundred and thirty boxes of chinaware in tea and dinner
+sets.” In 1800 she again brought into port three hundred and sixty-two
+boxes and one hundred and twenty-four rolls of chinaware, together with
+such other delightful Oriental importations as two bales of gauze
+ribbons, seven boxes of lacquered ware, five hundred Chinese umbrellas,
+sixty bundles of cassia and five boxes of sweetmeats, forty jars of
+rock-candy, and twenty tubs of sugar-candy. In 1802 came on the Ann and
+Hope one thousand and forty-eight boxes of chinaware, but, alas! no
+sugar-candy, or sweetmeats for Providence lads and lasses, but instead
+forty disappointing boxes of rhubarb.
+
+Hot-water plates of Canton china did every well-regulated and
+substantial New England family own, deep hollow vessels, with their
+strong heavy bottoms and little open ears. Not very practical nor
+convenient of use were they—or, at least, so it seems to us nowadays.
+And another and common form of coarse blue and white Chinese ware which
+our grandmothers had by the score need not be despised by china
+collectors—the old, high-shouldered ginger-jars that fifty and
+seventy-five years ago were so good in color. Some are mammoth jars
+holding nearly a gallon, that are decorated with a chrysanthemum pattern
+in clear dark blue, and when set on the top of a corner cupboard need
+not fear even the proximity of a cabinet specimen of costly old
+hawthorn. A few members of the aristocracy of ginger-jars exist, not in
+common plebeian blue and white, but with a greenish ground covered with
+red and yellow enamelled flowers. These were never sold in China, but
+were used as presentation jars, being usually given by some Chinese
+grandee or trader to some Yankee sea-captain, or sent to America as a
+token of respect to some American merchant or ship-owner. They sell
+readily for $5 each in an out-of-the-way antique shop, for thirty in a
+fashionable one. Six shockingly dirty specimens were found in a
+hen-house on an inland farm on Long Island, and after being pumped upon
+for a long season at the horse-pump, and swept off vigorously with a
+birch-broom, they revealed their original glories of color, and after a
+thorough cleansing and disinfecting now grace teak-wood cabinets in New
+York homes.
+
+A very dainty form of Oriental china was seen in many hospitable homes
+in the beginning of this century, a form now obsolete. I mean a “toddy
+strainer.” It was a shallow, circular saucer or disk of fine Oriental
+ware, blue Canton or Nankin, or white and gold Oriental porcelain, and
+was pierced with tiny holes. It was about four or five inches in
+diameter and bore two little projecting ears or handles, which were
+fastened to the body of the strainer by embossed leaves. On the edge of
+a flip-mug or a toddy glass the ears of the toddy strainer rested when
+used, and when the toddy was poured from the great punch pitcher into
+the glass, the strainer prevented the lemon- and orange-seeds from
+entering the glass below. These toddy strainers are no longer imported
+in our temperance-ruled and invention-filled days, and being of frail
+china, have seldom outlived the years when they were in such constant,
+jovial, and hospitable use. Nor have I seen them elsewhere than in the
+seaport towns of Narraganset Bay. I fancy some luxury-loving,
+toddy-drinking, money-spending old Newport merchant invented, explained
+to the Chinese, and imported to America these pretty porcelain toddy
+strainers.
+
+[Illustration: Chinese Ewer.]
+
+Sometimes a single odd or beautiful piece of Oriental china was brought
+to America in the olden times by those far-roving and home-bringing old
+sea-captains, and the single specimen still exists—a stranger in a
+strange land. Such is the graceful little ewer here shown, a piece of
+Persian shape, but of pure Chinese paste, and “with antick shapes in
+China’s azure dyed.” This design, with its “little lawless azure-tinted
+grotesques,” forms a piece curious enough to be worthy a place in any
+cabinet. Such also is a dull green enamelled and crackled bowl which I
+own, and a Chinese dish of antique earthenware, which has been mended
+and riveted by some Oriental china-mender with gold wire. A great blue
+and white tall jar with red lacquered cover is unique in size as it is
+in its contents—long strings of sugar-coated Chinese sweetmeats,
+sweetmeats so unpleasant and outlandish in flavor and so mysterious in
+appearance that they were regarded with keen disfavor by simple
+stay-at-home New Englanders, who invested the innocent sweets with
+alarming attributes, and laid them under suspicion of concealing within
+their sugary surfaces bits of all the heathenish edibles—sharks’ fins,
+birds’ nests, puppies’ tails, and other unchristian foods that had been
+seen and even tasted in foreign lands by bold travelled mariners. Hence
+there still lie at the bottom of the great jar a few silken strings of
+shrivelled, unwholesome-looking black knobs like some strange Oriental
+beads; despised by generations of sweet-toothed children of the
+Puritans, and now too adamantine in consistency to be tasted or nibbled
+even by the boldest gourmand or curiosity-seeker of to-day.
+
+“Posy-holders” are found of India china with a rich decoration of red,
+blue, and gold, with little flecks of green, the cover pierced with
+holes to keep the stems of the flowers in place; “bowpots” also of
+similar porcelain and ornamentation.
+
+I have not found in my china hunting any old blue hawthorn jars, nor any
+fragile pieces of “grains-of-rice” porcelain, nor sets of covered
+saki-cups in scarlet and gold, nor dainty translucent cups that seem
+naught but glaze, though I have been shown them in other collections as
+country treasure trove. I have seen a few tall green crackle vases and
+jars, of age and dignity enough to chill unspoken within our lips any
+inquiry regarding or suggesting purchase.
+
+[Illustration: Persian Vase.]
+
+A few stray polychrome Chinese bowls of the description known as “real
+Indian” I have found, and I hear that whole dinner services of such
+wares were imported. General Gage had one in Boston, and a few of its
+beautiful plates escaped destruction at the “looting” of the Province
+House. But the old services of Oriental china that I have seen have all
+been blue Canton or Lowestoft. The graceful blue and white vase here
+shown I at first sight fancied to be Chinese, but now believe to be
+Persian. As the country owner of this oddly-shaped and rather
+curiously-decorated vase knew nothing of how it had been acquired by the
+members of her family, nor how long it had been possessed by them, nor
+whence it came, nor indeed anything, save that it had stood for many
+years on her grandmother’s best room mantel-shelf, it may be a
+comparatively modern piece of ware. I have woven about it and haloed
+around it an Arabian Nights romance of astonishing plot and fancy, in
+which a gallant Yankee sailor, a hideous Arabian merchant, and a
+black-eyed, gauze-robed houri fill the leading parts; and perhaps my
+imaginative story of the presence of the Persian outcast in a staid New
+England farm-house is just as satisfactory as many of the wondrous china
+tales we hear.
+
+An everlasting interest rests in all Oriental china in attempting to
+translate the meaning of the Oriental stamps and marks. I have never
+deciphered any save a few of the hundred forms of _Show_—the Chinese
+greeting, “May you live forever,” and the marks on one old Chinese bowl,
+which signified _wan_, a symbol used only on articles made for talented
+literary persons; _Pŏ koo chin wan_ “for the learned in antiquities and
+old curiosities,” and the mark of the instruments used by authors—the
+stone for grinding ink, the brushes for writing, and the roll of paper.
+I was highly delighted, and indeed very proud, when I discovered the
+meaning of these Chinese letters. I tried to fancy that it was a
+significant coincidence—a friendly message from the old world to the
+new—that pointed out that I too belonged to what is in China the ruling
+class, the literati. But the more closely I examined my literary
+tickets, the more depressed I became. I found, alas, that these
+flattering marks were never placed on my bowl by the Orientals; they
+were skilfully painted over the glaze in oil colors by the base, jesting
+Occidental who gave the piece of old porcelain to me.
+
+The china called Lowestoft was, without doubt, the kind most desired and
+most fashionable in early Federal times throughout both North and South.
+Such was the dinner service of the Carrolls of Carrollton, with bands of
+rich brown and gold and a pretty letter C. Such was the family china of
+William Morris; of John Rutledge, with the initials J. R. and the shield
+and eagle; and the tea-service of John Dickinson, with blue and gold
+bands and his initials. Of Lowestoft china was one of the beautiful
+services of General Knox—his “best china” that was used on state
+occasions. It was banded with delicate lines of pale gray, black, and
+gold, and the rich coloring of red, blue, and gold was confined to the
+decoration in the centre of the plate. This was an eagle with extended
+wings, bearing on his breast the seal of the Society of the Cincinnati,
+a round shield with a group of appropriate figures surrounded by the
+motto, “Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam,” a motto certainly very
+significant of General Knox’s patriotism. The eagle was surmounted by a
+wreath of palm or laurel leaves tied with a knot of blue ribbon. Beneath
+the eagle were delicately formed initials about half an inch in
+height—L. F. and H. K.—the H. and K. intertwined just as General Knox
+always wrote them. This beautiful service was a gift to Mrs. Knox from
+her rich grandfather, General Waldo; a wedding gift, it is often
+asserted, though I had hardly supposed that her relatives, being so
+bitterly opposed to the _mésalliance_ of the “belle of Massachusetts”
+with the young clerk in a bookshop, had given her any such rich tokens
+of approval. Then, too, the runaway match was made at the beginning of
+the Revolutionary War, and Mrs. Knox, following her husband from
+battle-field to battle-field, would hardly have needed or thought of
+such fine china. The fact that it bears the decoration of the seal of
+the Cincinnati, points to a date after the establishment of that
+society.
+
+Lowestoft, too, was the china table-ware of John Hancock, the table-ware
+that he ordered to be thrust one side and replaced by old-fashioned
+pewter. And when he lay in his bedroom groaning with the gout and heard
+the rattle of a china plate on the table in the dining-room below, he
+ordered his servant to throw the precious but noise-making dish out of
+the window, and the thrifty black man saved the dainty Lowestoft by
+throwing it on the grass.
+
+But the every-day china, the common table-ware, of all these good
+American citizens and patriots—Knox, Hancock, Paul Revere, the Otises,
+Quincys, and a score that might be named—the plates and dishes of china
+from which they ate their daily bread, were not of Lowestoft, but of
+honest old blue Canton.
+
+
+
+
+                                  IX.
+                            THE COSEY TEAPOT
+
+
+It is small wonder that the craze for the gathering together and
+hoarding of teapots has assailed many a feminine china hunter in many a
+land, and that many a noble collection has been made. Teapots are so
+friendly and appealing, one cannot resist them. No china-loving woman
+can pass them by, they are so domestic as well as beautiful; a steam of
+simple cheer and homeliness ascends forever (though invisible) from
+their upturned spouts, and a gentle genie of cosiness and welcome dwells
+therein.
+
+And then their forms are so varied! Plates, from their nature,
+necessarily show a prosaic flatness and similarity of outline; cups and
+saucers are limited in their capabilities of diversification; but
+teapots! you may find a new shape for every day in the year.
+
+In America we have an extra incentive and provoker of interest in the
+extraordinary great age assigned to teapots. You can hardly find one of
+any pretension to antiquity in America that is asserted to be less than
+two hundred years old; and two centuries and a half are as naught to
+teapot-owners. Sophisticated possessors are a little shy about assigning
+their old teapots to the Mayflower invoice, since we have heard so many
+incredulous and bantering jibes about the size and tonnage of that
+capacious ship; but country owners are troubled by no such fears of
+ridicule, and boldly assert the familiar tradition; while the pages of
+our catalogues of loan collections containing entry after entry of
+“teapots brought over in 1620,” “teapots three hundred years old,” show
+the secret faith and belief of even more travelled and studied
+teapot-owners.
+
+1630—1640—1650! It would seem, could we trust tradition, that teapots
+just swarmed in America in those years. There were none then in England
+or Holland or China, and no tea even in England; but it is proudly
+boasted that we had teapots and, of course, tea also in America. I
+wonder we do not claim the teapot as a Yankee invention! The Chinese
+knew naught of any such “conveniencys” at that time; they stupidly
+steeped their tea in a cup or dish or bowl; indeed, they do so still in
+the great shops, and tea-gardens, and yaamens of China, and would
+doubtless have conservatively clung to the same simple and primitive
+fashion in all their houses to this day, had not the opened traffic with
+the western world shown them the restless craze for change common to
+nearly all Europeans and awakened in them a desire for novelty and
+improvement.
+
+The first mention of English teapots which I have chanced to see is in
+the private memorandum book of John Dwight, of Fulham, potter. The date
+of the entry is previous to 1695. It is a receipt for “the fine white
+clay for Dishes or Teapots to endure boiling water.” Under date of
+November, 1695, he says: “The little furnace where the last Red Teapots
+was burnt I take to be a convenient one for this vse.” An entry dated
+1691 tells of a “strong Hardy Clay fit for Teapots;” and again of a
+“dark colour’d Cley for marbled Dishes and teapots to endure boiling
+water.” In Houghton’s Collections of 1695 we read: “Of teapots in 1694
+there came but ten, and those from Holland, but to our credit be it
+spoken, we have about Fauxhall made a great many, and I cannot gainsay
+but they are as good as any came from abroad.” The first successful
+experiment of Bottcher in the manufacture of porcelain took the form of
+a teapot; and potters of succeeding years have spent much time and
+thought in inventing new shapes and decorations for tea-drawing vessels.
+Would it not be interesting to have a cabinet with a chronological and
+also a cubical succession of teapots, from the tiny ones of Elers-ware
+used in the time of Queen Anne, when tea was sold in ounce packages at
+the apothecaries, down to the great three-quart teapot used by Dr.
+Johnson and sold at the sale of Mrs. Piozzi’s effects? There would I
+stop and never admit as a teapot the ugly great spouted earthen casks
+made in Japan, to satisfy abnormal-minded and craving collectors. Into
+one of these hideous monstrosities in the possession of a well-known
+collector, two men were able to crawl, seat themselves, and have the
+cover placed over them—a sight to make the judicious china-lover grieve.
+
+In still another china-succession might we write the history of the
+teapot in America, from the simple plebeian undecorated earthenware pot
+in which was sparingly placed the precious pinch, through the
+gayly-colored and larger teapot, earthen still, through Wedgwood’s
+varied wares in which our patriotic grandmothers drank their wretched
+“Liberty Tea,” to the fine porcelain treasures of Worcester, Minton,
+Derby, Sèvres, and Dresden of to-day—a story of the growth of our nation
+in luxury and elegance.
+
+The earliest known mention of the use of tea by Englishmen is in a
+letter written in 1615 by one wanderer in China to another
+fellow-soldier, asking for a “pot of the best sort of chaw” and also for
+“three silver porringers to drink chaw in.” By 1664 it appears to have
+been sold in England in some considerable quantity, in spite of Pepys’s
+oft-quoted entry in his diary in the year 1665 about tasting “thea a
+China drink” that he never had drunk before. Pepys was far from rich at
+that time, and tea may have been in frequent use for some years among
+persons of wealth and quality without his ever having tasted it. It
+quickly grew in favor in the court, the first importations all coming
+from the Continent, from Holland, and soon was plentiful and
+comparatively cheap. Among the common people and conservative country
+folk, however, beer still held its own at breakfast and supper until
+Swift’s time.
+
+New England dames followed the fashions, fancies, and tastes of their
+sisters in Old England as soon as their growing prosperity allowed. When
+in 1666 the fragrant herb cost sixty shillings a pound in England, I
+hardly think our frugal Pilgrim Fathers imported much tea. The first
+mention of tea which I have found shows that in 1690 Benjamin Harris and
+Daniel Vernon were licensed to sell “in publique,” in Boston, “Coffee
+Tee & Chucaletto.” The following year two other tea-houses were
+licensed. Dr. Benjamin Orman had a “Tinn Teapott” in Boston previous to
+his death in 1695, an article of novelty and luxury that probably few of
+his neighbors possessed. Though Felt, in his “New England Customs,” and
+Weeden, in his “Social and Economic History of New England,” both say
+that green tea was first advertised for sale in Boston in 1714, I find
+in the _Boston News Letter_ of March, 1712, “green and ordinary teas,”
+advertised for sale at “Zabdiel Boyltons (or Boylstons) Apothecary
+Shop,” and in the same year teapots and tea-tables were sold at the
+Swing Bridge by “Publick Outcry.” In 1713 Zabdiel Boylston had Bohea
+tea; in 1714 “very fine green tea, the best for color and taste,” was
+advertised; and in 1715 tea was sold at the Coffee House, thus showing
+that it was being imported in larger quantities. The taste quickly
+spread, and wherever there was tea there was also a teapot. Weeden says
+that it is strange that Judge Sewall, with all his fussing about wine,
+and “chokolet,” and “cyder,” and “pyes,” and cakes, and “almonds and
+reasons,” and oranges and figs, says naught of tea. He does speak of it;
+he drank at a “great and Thursday” lecture, at Madam Winthrop’s house in
+the year 1709, “Ale Tea & Beer,” and he does not especially note it as a
+rarity. I do not believe, however, though he lived until 1730, when it
+was sold in every Boston dry-goods, grocers’, hardware, millinery, and
+apothecary shop, and advertised in every Boston newspaper, that he often
+drank the “cup that cheers but not inebriates.” He may have regarded it
+as did Henry Saville, who wrote deploringly of tea-drinking in 1678 as a
+“base and unworthy Indian practice,” saying sadly, “the truth is, all
+nations are growing so wicked.”
+
+In 1719 Bohea tea was worth twenty-four shillings a pound in
+Philadelphia. In 1721 it had risen six shillings higher in price, while
+by 1757 it cost only seven shillings a pound. In 1725 they had both
+green and Bohea tea in Virginia and the Carolinas, as is shown by the
+writings of the times; while, though I have not found it advertised till
+1728 in New York, the “tea-water pump” showed its large use in that
+town. When tea was first introduced into Salem it was boiled in an iron
+kettle, and after the liquor was strained off, it was then drank without
+milk or sugar, while the leaves of the herb were placed in a dish,
+buttered and salted and eaten.
+
+A letter printed in “Holmes’s Annals,” and written in 1740, thus
+complains: “Almost every little tradesman’s wife must sit sipping tea
+for an hour or more in the morning, and maybe again in the afternoon, if
+they can get it, and nothing will please them to sip it out of but
+chinaware. They talk of bestowing of thirty or forty shillings on a tea
+equipage, as they call it. There is the silver spoons, the silver tongs,
+and many other trinkets that I cannot name.” Bennett, in his Travels,
+told the same tale of Boston women. Each woman then carried her own tiny
+teapot when she made one of those much-deprecated tea-drinking visits,
+and often her own teacup also, else she might have to drink from a
+pewter cup. And she frequently brought her own precious thimbleful of
+tea, especially if she chanced to have a decided fancy in the variety of
+the herb that she used.
+
+In the latter half of the eighteenth century tea and teapots were common
+enough in America, and the “China herb” played a part in our national
+history that would have immortalized it had it no other claims to our
+love and consideration. In December, 1773, Boston Harbor was made one
+great “tea-drawing,” and after that memorable event many American dames
+gave up from a sense of duty their favorite beverage, but they did not
+destroy their tea-sets. Here is the lament of one matron over her empty
+urn:
+
+          “Farewell the tea-board with its gaudy equipage
+          Of cups and saucers, Cream-bucket, Sugar-tongs,
+          The pretty tea-chest, also lately stored
+          With Hyson, Congo and best Double Fine.
+          Full many a joyous moment have I sat by ye
+          Hearing the girls tattle, the old maids talk scandal
+          Though now detestable.
+          Because I am taught and I believe it true
+          Its use will fasten Slavish chains upon my Country
+          To reign triumphant in America.”
+
+There is in New Bedford one very interesting old teapot which lays a
+very definite, decided, and special claim to having been brought over in
+the Mayflower. It is said to have been the property of Elder Brewster,
+and is known as the “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It is a pretty little
+cylindrical vessel with fluted bands, and is decorated with gilt lines
+and dark red flowers and border. Scoffers, of course, will bring up to
+you all the oft-enumerated points—that the Pilgrims had no china, that
+tea was not known in England, and probably not known in Holland in 1620;
+that teapots are a comparatively modern invention—but still we feel an
+interest in this “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It brought at the sale of
+Governor Lyon’s effects only $45, which low price was, I fear, an
+indication that the belief of the scoffers prevailed among the buyers
+there assembled. The firm of Richard Briggs & Co., of Boston, caused to
+be manufactured in 1874 a number of reproductions of this teapot. Before
+taking the original to Messrs. Wedgwood, at Etruria, they were careful
+to obtain the opinion of a china expert, Mr. Townsend, of the South
+Kensington Museum, who pronounced the “Elder Brewster Teapot” old Delft,
+and showed to Mr. Briggs several specimens similarly decorated. Whatever
+it may be—old Delft, old Meissen, old Staffordshire, or even
+comparatively modern ware—the reproduction is certainly a pretty little
+teapot, even if the Mayflower episode in the career of the original be
+said to be fabulous. The story of the acquisition of this teapot by
+Governor Lyon is very interesting. He bought it from an old lady in
+Vermont, but only after repeated visits, much cajolery, many rebuffs,
+and a very stiff purchase sum.
+
+There is in Morristown, in the beautiful old colonial mansion known as
+Washington’s Headquarters, a tall teapot which is dissimilar in shape to
+the Elder Brewster teapot, but which is exactly like it in paste, in
+decoration of dull vermilion and maroon, and as a further resemblance,
+it has the same rather curiously modelled flower as a knob on the cover.
+This teapot is labelled “Old English ware,” and old English Delft it
+apparently is. It certainly looks like a sister of the Elder Brewster
+teapot.
+
+At this home of the Washington Association may be seen many other
+curious and interesting teapots—old Spode, Staffordshire, and Wedgwood.
+Black basalts and cream-ware specimens of good design are found in the
+well-kept and well-arranged cases. All have a story or a history of past
+owners to make them interesting, aside from the longing we feel for them
+as “specimens.” I would we could pour out from their spouts in old-time
+words the stream of Continental tattle that has been poured into them;
+we could write therefrom a social and economic history of our country
+that would excel in point of detail Boswell’s Johnson, Pepys’s Diary,
+and Horace Walpole’s Letters all rolled into one.
+
+A famous and curious teapot was the shape known as the Cadogan. They
+were also used for coffee, and were formed from a model of Indian
+green-ware brought from abroad by the Marchioness of Rockingham, or the
+Hon. Mrs. Cadogan, and from her received the name. They were made at the
+Rockingham works; and George IV., then Prince Regent, a connoisseur in
+tea, chancing to see one and to praise the tea that came from it, the
+Cadogan teapots sprang at once into high fashion. Mortlock, the dealer,
+ordered for one season’s supply, £900 worth. This teapot was all in one
+piece; it had no cover. It was filled through a hole in the bottom. A
+slightly spiral tube ran up from this hole nearly to the top of the
+teapot. It can plainly be seen that when it was filled with an infusion
+of tea and inverted, that the liquid could only escape through the
+spout. The teapots were decorated on the outside with raised leaves and
+flowers. Some of these Cadogan teapots of course came to America, and
+are now found in collections. I have also seen Japanese “puzzle teapots”
+fashioned in the same manner, to be filled at the bottom. Another
+Japanese “puzzle-teapot” looks like a gray earthen doughnut with a
+handle and spout, the tea being poured into it through the hollow
+handle.
+
+George IV. was a connoisseur in teapots not only from a gastronomic
+point of view, but he was a collector of them as well, and had at the
+Pavilion at Brighton great pyramids formed of a vast variety of teapots.
+Many collections of them have been made in England. Mrs. Hawes left to
+her daughter three hundred choice teapots which were arranged in a room
+built specially for them. A number that had belonged to Queen Charlotte
+were in this gathering. Such a collection is interesting and
+instructive, the pieces being from various factories and lands. Even
+more instructive still, because gathered with a definite purpose and
+forming a serial guide to the perfect knowledge of the ceramic
+productions of a single country, is such a collection of teapots as that
+in the unrivalled Morse Collection in the Boston Museum of Art. But
+collections of modern Japanese teapots, gathered simply for the sake of
+seeing how many different kinds and what grotesque shapes one can get,
+do not appeal to me. Such is said to be the modern “assorted lot” of
+Madame de Struve, the wife of the minister to Japan, who gathered
+together nine hundred and seventy-five Japanese teapots. Such a
+collection can be formed in a week by any person having money enough to
+pay for them and interest enough to order the cratefuls sent home; while
+a collection of good old teapots of Oriental, English, French, and
+German wares is a matter of a lifetime, especially if historical
+interest is a desideratum, and good taste as well.
+
+I have not seen in America, as may be found in boudoirs and dining-rooms
+in France and England, any friezes “three row deep” of teapots round the
+top of the room; but one fair New York china-maniac, who says with the
+vehement exaggeration so typical of American women, “I love my teapots
+and my tea as I love my life,” has a narrow shelf quite round the
+wall-top, about a foot below the ceiling, filled closely with a gay
+procession of vari-colored, vari-formed teapots. It is a unique and
+striking decoration—in good taste, since the frieze teapots are none of
+them gems, but simply gay and effective bits of Oriental color and
+grotesque shape. In a cabinet, glass-covered and screened, are all the
+old teapots which she owns, a rare and dainty company of ancients and
+honorables.
+
+At Stockbridge, in the possession of Mrs. Plumb, may be seen, arranged
+on shallow shelves, a large and good collection of teapots, gathered
+chiefly from farm-houses in the country around. Over one hundred old
+English pieces are among the number, some of them being very beautiful
+and rare.
+
+Mottoes, names, and inscriptions are often found on ancient teapots
+found in America. One of Leeds-ware bears on one side the words:
+
+                        “May all loving friends
+                          Be happy and free
+                        In drinking a Cup
+                          Of Harmless Tea.”
+
+Another bears these verses:
+
+                  “My Lad is far upon the Sea
+                    His absence makes me mourn
+                  The bark that bears him off from me
+                    I hope will safe return
+                  And from his earnings I’ll save up
+                    If lucky he should be
+                  And then when old with me he’ll stop
+                    And go no more to sea”
+
+Another friendly teapot has the lines:
+
+                 “Kindly take this gift of mine
+                 Full of love for thee & thine. 1769.”
+
+A fourth this good advice:
+
+                            “Drink only tea
+                            & Sober keep.”
+
+Many of the sailor mottoes found on Liverpool pitchers are also seen on
+teapots of Liverpool ware, as if made to some sailor’s order for a gift.
+
+[Illustration: Lowestoft Teapot.]
+
+Perhaps the teapots most commonly used by our grandmothers are the types
+here shown; one a cylindrical Canton china teapot known now as
+Lowestoft, and one a gayly painted Bristol pottery teapot. Specimens of
+the latter and Staffordshire pottery teapots differed much in shape, an
+hexagonal form being frequent, and the swan or dolphin knob being seen
+on many of the varied shapes. The black Jackfield teapots with raised
+designs, looking like black glass, are sometimes found, silver mounted
+and quaint.
+
+[Illustration: Bristol Pottery Teapot.]
+
+For the perfection, the idealization of the teapot we must turn to the
+productions of Josiah Wedgwood. Appropriate and convenient in shape,
+elegant in decoration, perfect in manufacture, they have handles
+adjusted in precisely the best possible balancing place, spouts shaped
+to empty the contents in the most perfect and thorough manner, covers
+that slide or fit with ease and yet with exactitude, bases that are
+perfectly proportioned and levelled—in a Wedgwood teapot we find
+elegance and fitness equally combined, it obeys and satisfies every
+artistic, economic, and mathematical rule; “built by that only law—that
+use be suggestive of beauty.” Our modern tastes do not run now to the
+black basalts, the blue jasper, the cream-ware of Wedgwood; we fancy a
+glazed, painted porcelain for every-day use, but the fact remains the
+same—the Wedgwood teapots are the best, the most perfect ever made; even
+in China and Japan, the acknowledged home of teapots, where the little
+vessels are not only used to hold tea, but as an omniparient cistern of
+every other liquid, even in those countries can be found no more perfect
+teapots than those of Wedgwood. They deserve the appellation of De
+Quincey, “an eternal teapot.”
+
+
+
+
+                                   X.
+                        PUNCH-BOWLS AND PUNCHES
+
+
+There is no individual piece of china around which shines such a glowing
+halo of warm hospitality, of good-fellowship, of good cheer, as around
+the jolly punch-bowl. A plate, a mug, a pitcher, is absolutely devoid of
+any interest or sentiment save what may come from knowledge of past
+ownership, or from beauty or quaintness of decoration; a teapot conveys
+a sense of cosiness and homeliness; but a punch-bowl, even a common,
+ugly, cracked crockery punch-bowl—visions of good company and good
+companions rise at the very sight, even at the very name.
+
+What tales of colonial and continental times an old American punch-bowl
+could tell if it only could and would repeat half that it has heard;
+what gay drinking-songs, what stirring patriotic speeches, what sharp
+legal wit, what sober and circumspect clerical jokes, what kindly
+eleemosynary plans would echo cheerfully out of its great sounding bell
+could it, like the phonograph, give forth what has rung into it in the
+past! What scenes of rollicking mirth, of dancing feet and dicing-games
+have been photographed on its insensitive and unchanging glaze! In what
+scene of cheerfulness and of seriousness alike did not the colonial
+punch-bowl take its part? It encouraged the soldier on eve of battle, it
+bade the sailor God-speed. The heavy Delft bowl stood filled and
+refilled to the brim at the husking-party, the apple-bee, the
+wood-spell, the timber-rolling, the muster, the house-raising, the
+lottery-drawing, the election; while the big India china bowl stood even
+on the church steps at an ordination or a church dedication. It held the
+water to christen the baby; it made cheerful the wedding-feast; and even
+in times of sadness it was not banished, but side by side with the
+funeral baked meats the omnipresent punch-bowl stood to greet and cheer
+every sad comer.
+
+Indeed, at a funeral the punch-bowl specially shone. Great pains were
+taken and no expense spared to properly concoct and serve the sombre
+funeral-punches. “Rum, lemons, a loaf of sugar, and spices,” sometimes
+also “Malligo raisins and rose-water,” were items on every reputable and
+_à la mode_, as they called it, undertakers’ bills. A sober,
+responsible, and above all, an _experienced_ committee was appointed to
+carefully mix and flavor the last libation that could ever be offered to
+the dead friend. Small wonder with such good cheer that even sober Judge
+Sewall openly called a funeral a “treat.” And we can understand why a
+very worthy old gentleman, a lover of the olden times, complained with
+much bitterness in the early part of this century that “temperance had
+done for funerals.” The gayly-flowered and gilded punch-bowl was not
+sadly draped in trappings of woe, nor set one side in seclusion, but
+standing cheerfully in a prominent position with its spicy welcome, made
+even sad mourners feel that life was still worth living.
+
+The punch-bowl certainly flourished proudly in America through the
+eighteenth century, just as it reigned in honor in England at the same
+time. Previous to that date the English prototype of the punch-bowl had
+been the posset-pot, and that primitive form still exists, and indeed is
+made and used in Derbyshire and the neighboring English counties to the
+present day. A few posset-pots have made their way to America with
+Derbyshire emigrants and have been gathered in by rapacious collectors.
+On Christmas eve in olden times the great vessel, which sometimes held
+two gallons, was filled with the “good drink,” and a silver coin and a
+wedding-ring were dropped in when the guests assembled; each partaker in
+turn dipped out a great spoonful or ladleful of the drink, and whoever
+was lucky enough to fish up the coin was certain of good luck during the
+ensuing year, while the ring-finder would be happily and speedily
+married. Posset was a very good mixture—a “very pretty drink”—not so
+good as punch, of course, but to us invested with a reflected glory.
+Hath not Shakespeare oft spoke to us of posset? In my little “Queen’s
+Closet Opened,” a book of culinary, medical, and potatory recipes
+collected by and for Queen Henrietta Maria, I find half a dozen rules
+for the brewing of “sack-posset.” “To make a Sack-Posset without Milk or
+Cream: Take eighteen Egs, whites and all, taking out the Treads, let
+them be beaten very well, take a pint of Sack, and a quart of Ale
+boyl’d, and scum it, then put in three-quarters of a pound of suger and
+a little Nutmeg, let it boyl a few wames together, then take it off the
+fire stirring the Egs still, put into them two or three Ladlefuls of
+drink, then mingle all together, and set it on the fire, and keep it
+stirring til you find it thick then serve it up”—and not drink it, but
+cut it up and eat it, one might fancy. There is no recipe for punch in
+my “Queen’s Closet.” I fear Queen Henrietta did not know about that new
+drink, punch, in 1676, when this quaint old book was published. Had she
+done so, she had not needed so many nostrums for insomnia. Englishmen in
+India knew of it; “spiced punch in bowls the Indians quaff,” wrote one
+in 1665, and in 1697 Tryer spoke of it and basely libelled it as “an
+enervating liquor.” The punchless Queen knew, however, how to make
+hypocras, metheglin, mead, caudle, cordial-water, aqua-cœlestis,
+aqua-mirabilis, clary-water, gillyflower-wine, usquebarb, and, best and
+delectablest of all, she knew how to make a Damnable Hum, and I doubt
+not she served it in a punch-bowl as was befitting so noble a drink.
+
+The posset-pot had some cousins in England—the goddard, the
+wassail-bowl, the gossip-bowl, the caudle-cup—poor relations, however,
+and feeble ancestors of the glorious punch-bowl. To the Orientals, not
+to the English, we owe our punch-bowls and our punches. Punch or “pauch”
+was an Indian drink, and the word meant five, and was named from the
+five ingredients used in its composition—arrack, tea, sugar, water, and
+lemon-juice. A “pauch” was also a conclave of five men, a “pauch-pillav”
+a medicine of five ingredients, and so on.
+
+The English people took very readily to the new Oriental drink and the
+new vessel to hold it, as it did to everything else in India. We read in
+the old ballad of “Jock-o’-the-Side,” “They hae gard fill up a
+punch-bowl,” and when a ballad adopts a word, then it is the people’s.
+As the potter’s art advanced in England, great bowls were made to hold
+punch at taverns and halls, often for the special use of the potters
+themselves. Cheerful mottoes did these potters’ punch-bowls sometimes
+bear. For simplicity and terseness this excels, “One Bowie more, and
+then”—does it not speak a never-ending welcome? A blue and white
+potter’s bowl ten inches in diameter has this descriptive motto:
+
+                      “John Udy of Luxillion
+                      his tin was so fine
+                      it glidered this punch-bowl
+                      and made it to shine,
+                      pray fill it with punch
+                      let the tinners sitt round
+                      they never will budge
+                      till the bottom they sound.”
+
+Glider meant to glaze, not to gild, and the verses refer to the
+stanniferous opaque white glaze formed by the use of Cornish tin.
+
+Another bowl has these sententious lines:
+
+        “What art can with the potter’s art compare?
+        For of what we are ourselves of such we make our wares.”
+
+More serious rhymes still are found. At North Hylton, in England, were
+made many punch-bowls of lustre ware, and the proprietor, Mr. Phillips,
+must have been a very serious-minded and inconsequential man, or he
+never would have put these lines on so worldly a vessel:
+
+                    “The loss of gold is great,
+                    The loss of health is more,
+                    But losing Christ is such a loss
+                    As no man can restore.”
+
+This bowl may, however, have been for a parson. On another specimen of
+the Hylton pottery gayly decorated with a print of a ship, a public
+house, and a hat-and-feathered young woman with an umbrella and small
+dog, are these sober and comically incongruous verses:
+
+                   “There is a land of peaceful rest
+                   To mourning wanderers given,
+                   There’s a tear for souls distrest,
+                   A balm for every wounded breast,
+                   ’Tis found above in Heaven!”
+
+Were it not for the public house, and the hat and feathers, we should
+know that this punch-bowl was surely made purposely to use at funerals.
+
+One of the finest punch-bowls ever figulated is twenty inches and a half
+in diameter. It is of Liverpool Delft, painted in blue with ships and a
+landscape, and the inscription, “Success to the Africa Trade, George
+Dickinson.” When we remember of what the “Africa Trade” consisted—the
+slave-traffic—we wonder the punch did not poison the drinkers. I have
+often seen this bowl referred to by authors as of extraordinary and
+unique size. It is not as large as the grand blue and white punch-bowl
+used by the first Continental Congress, a bowl which is now at
+Morristown, at Washington’s Headquarters. I do not know whether this
+mammoth Congressional bowl is Canton china or English delft, for, since
+it stands in a cupboard, one cannot examine it closely. The color and
+design are good, and the size impressive, and altogether it is a noble
+relic, for this courage-giver of those troubled and anxious Federal days
+may have played no unimportant part in the affairs and history of our
+nation; I regard it with grateful awe and veneration, and also with a
+rather unworthy pride and satisfaction in its great size.
+
+There were hosts of punch-bowls at that date in America. Watson wrote in
+1830, of old colonial Philadelphia: “A corner was occupied by a beaufet,
+which was a corner closet with a glass door, in which all the china and
+plate were intended to be displayed for ornament as well as for use. A
+conspicuous article was always a great china punch-bowl.” And they
+needed a punch-bowl, and a large one too, if we can trust the local
+annals of the time. William Black recorded in his diary in 1744, that he
+was given in Philadelphia cider and punch for lunch, rum and brandy
+before dinner, punch, Madeira, port, and sherry at dinner, bounce and
+liqueurs with the ladies, and wine and spirits and punch until bedtime.
+Well might he say that in Philadelphia “they were as liberal with wine
+as an apple-tree with its fruit on a windy day.”
+
+A clergyman named Acrelius gives us the most abundant proof why
+Philadelphians and their neighbors always should need a punch-bowl. In
+1759 there was printed in Stockholm a detailed account of Pennsylvania
+or New Sweden, written by this Parson Acrelius. He fairly revels in his
+descriptions of the appetizing drinks to be had in the new land, and he
+unctuously explains how to concoct the “mixed drinks” in the most
+approved fashion. Here is the list of American drinks that he sent back
+to Sweden to encourage emigration. French Wine, Frontenac, Pontac,
+Port-a-port, Lisbon Wine, Phial Wine, Sherry, Madeira Wine, Sangaree,
+Mulled Wine, Currant Wine, Cherry Wine, Raspberry Wine, Apple Wine or
+Cider, Cider Royal, Mulled Cider, Rum “which is like French Brandy, only
+with no unpleasant odor,” Raw-dram, Egg-dram, Egg-nogg, Cherry-dram,
+Cherry Bounce, Billberry Bounce, Punch, Mamm, Manathann (made of small
+beer, rum and sugar), Hotchpot (also of beer, curd and rum), Sampson (of
+warm cider and rum). More familiar and modern names appear also: Tiff,
+Flip, Hot Rum, Mulled Rum, Grog, Sling; then come Long-sup, Mint-water,
+Egg-punch, Milk-punch, Sillabub, Still Liquor (which was peach brandy),
+Anise Cordial, Cinnamon Cordial—in all a list of fifty drinks with an
+added finish of liqueurs, “drops almost without end,” meads, metheglins,
+and beers. Now, do you wonder that they had great and many punch-bowls
+in Philadelphia? What a list to make a toper wish that he had lived in
+Pennsylvania in colonial days.
+
+Sober Boston was not one whit behind its Quaker neighbor. As early as
+1686 John Dunton had more than one “noble bowl of punch” in that Puritan
+town. Bennett, a visitor in Boston, in 1740, wrote, “As to drink they
+have no good beer. Madeira wines and rum-punch are the liquors they
+drink in common.” Boston people of fashion served a great punch-bowl of
+flip or punch before dinner. If the bowl were not too large it was
+passed from hand to hand, and all drank from it without the ceremony of
+intervening glasses. I doubt not it was a test of high fashion to handle
+well and gracefully the punch-bowl.
+
+Various and strange were the names of the contents of these
+punch-bowls—names not on Parson Acrelius’s list. Madam Knights wrote in
+1704, that “the Bare-legged Punch had so awfull or rather awkerd a name
+that we would not drink.” Berkeley wrote that the strong drink of
+Virginia in 1710 was “Mobby Punch, made either of rum from the Caribbee
+Islands, or Brandy distill’d from their Apples and Peaches.” Another
+Virginian traveller wrote in 1744, “Our liquor was sorry rum mixed with
+water and sugar, which bore the heathenish name of Gumbo punch.”
+“Pupello punch” was made from cider brandy. “Sangry punch” was probably
+an accented sangaree. “Rack punch” was made from arrack; while “Jincy
+punch” I leave to the philologists, antiquaries, or expert bartenders to
+define or analyze.
+
+Where are all those great punch-bowls now that we read of in history? I
+wish I could see the punch-bowl used by the Newburyport ministers in
+their frequent social meetings, the punch-bowl in the picture painted
+over Parson Lowell’s mantel, the picture with its great bowl, the
+parsons all smoking, and the cheerful motto, “In Essentials, Unity; in
+Non-essentials, Liberty; in All Things, Charity.”
+
+I should like to see the bowl which played such an important part in the
+transfer of the four hundred acres of land which formed the birthplace
+of Thomas Jefferson. Old Peter Jefferson made a very canny trade when he
+acquired the deed of that large tract in exchange for “Henry
+Weatherbourne’s biggest punch-bowl full of arrack punch.” Golden should
+have been that bowl, and vast its size, to justify its purchase-power.
+
+I would I could see the great punch-bowls used by the rollicking,
+hunting, drunken clergy of Virginia in ante-Revolutionary times, at
+their “Monthly Meetings,” the tale of whose disgraceful revelry has been
+told us by Mr. Parton in his “Life of Jefferson.” Where is the
+punch-bowl used at the Wolfes Head Tavern in Newburyport, on September
+26, 1765, “at the greate uneasyness and Tumult on acasion of the Stamp
+Act;” the bowl from which the alarmed citizens of Newburytown drank
+fifty-seven pounds worth of “double and thribble bowles” of punch, and
+in company with which they had two pounds worth of supper and coffee.
+Well might we say, “O monstrous! But one penny worth of bread to this
+intolerable deal of Sack!” “Greate uneasyness,” no doubt, they felt.
+
+One of the oldest punch-bowls—indeed, one of the oldest pieces of china
+in the country—is the beautiful India or Chinese bowl now owned by
+Edmund Randolph Robinson, Esq., of New York. It is eighteen inches in
+diameter, of rich red and gold decoration, and is mounted upon a black
+wood stand upon which is a silver plate bearing the noble historical
+names of its past owners, so far back as known. It is supposed to have
+been brought to America by William Randolph, as his son, Sir John
+Randolph, is known to have long possessed it. This gentleman was one of
+the early Governors of Virginia, and Attorney-General in the first part
+of the eighteenth century. His son Peyton was president of the first
+Continental Congress in 1774, and Attorney-General of Virginia. From him
+it passed to Edmund Randolph—also Governor and Attorney-General of
+Virginia—aide-de-camp to Washington, and first Attorney-General and
+second Secretary of State of the United States. He was the
+great-grandfather of the present owner. This beautiful relic has passed
+through good service as a christening-bowl for many generations of
+Governors and Attorney-Generals, as well as enduring a vast amount of
+use on less solemn occasions.
+
+How many punch-bowls did George Washington own? The great India china
+bowl with a picture of a frigate; the “rose china” bowl now at Mount
+Vernon; the fine great bowl now in the National Museum; the china bowl
+given by him to William Fitzhugh. He gave a beautiful punch-bowl to his
+friend and aide-de-camp, Colonel Benjamin Eyre; another to Tobias Lear,
+and another to Mrs. Allen Jones, of Newberne, N. C. And still less can
+we number the punch-bowls out of which he once drank. We all have one in
+the possession of some member of our family—I wonder, with all his
+punch-drinking, that the father of his country was ever sober.
+
+[Illustration: Bowl Given to Mrs. Allen Jones.]
+
+This beautiful great bowl, eighteen inches in diameter, was given by
+Washington to Mrs. Allen Jones, and has had sad usage. It was buried in
+the ground to hide it from Tarleton’s men, and is grievously cracked and
+broken. It is of richest decoration of red, blue, and gold on an India
+china ground. It is now owned by the Washington Association of New
+Jersey.
+
+Washington’s India china punch-bowl, which was at Arlington House in
+1840, is thus described by Mr. Lossing. “The great porcelain punch-bowl
+has a deep blue border on the rim spangled with gilt dots. It was made
+expressly for Washington, but when, where, and by whom is not known. In
+the bottom is the picture of a frigate and on the side are the initials
+‘G. W.’ in gold upon a shield, with ornamental surroundings. It is
+supposed to have been presented to Washington by the French naval
+officers.”
+
+And the “rose china” bowl at Mount Vernon! That was purchased by the
+Mount Vernon Association in 1891 from the Lewis estate, for $250—and it
+is broken too. It is sixteen inches across and five and a half in depth.
+On the rim, both inside and outside the bowl, is an odd pink and yellow
+band. Scattered over it are flowers of various colors, in which pink
+predominates.
+
+The beautiful Chinese bowl given to Colonel Benjamin Eyre, the
+Revolutionary patriot, by Washington, is now in the possession of
+Colonel Eyre’s great-grandson, Benjamin Eyre Valentine, Esq., of
+Brooklyn. It is about fifteen inches in diameter and five and a half
+inches high, of fine Canton china, and bears around the outside of the
+bowl a scene in a Chinese town, and at regular intervals flaunting flags
+of all the known nations which were then engaged in maritime pursuits,
+our new flag—the stars and stripes—being conspicuous among them. This
+bowl thus possesses an additional historical interest, in that it is the
+oldest known piece of Chinese porcelain bearing the decoration of the
+American flag. It is a counterpart in size and shape to the Washington
+bowl now in the Smithsonian Institution, but the latter is decorated
+with Chinese landscapes and figures. It came into the possession of the
+Government through the sale of Washington relics by the Lewis family.
+
+[Illustration: Cincinnati Bowl.]
+
+The most curious Continental punch-bowl that I have ever seen is the
+great bowl which is here shown. It is now owned by the Washington
+Association of New Jersey, and once belonged to Colonel Richard Varick,
+aide to Washington. It is a beautifully-proportioned vessel of Lowestoft
+or Canton china, about eighteen inches in diameter. It has a dark blue
+border with festoons of gilt, and bears on the side, in well-chosen
+colors, all the words and design of the full certificate of membership
+of the Society of the Cincinnati. The winged figure of Fame, and the
+other symbolical figures are carefully painted, and all the lettering,
+including the fine text of the Latin mottoes on seal and crest, is clear
+and exact. Doubtless a certificate of membership was sent to be copied
+when the bowl was ordered by Colonel Varick. It is in perfect condition,
+and is one of the finest historical relics of early Federal times that I
+have ever seen. It plainly shows the pride and delight of Revolutionary
+heroes in their new country and new associations. There are in the same
+building—Washington’s Headquarters—half a dozen other punch-bowls, all
+of historical interest, and all large enough to show the vastly
+hospitable intent of the new-made citizens of the new Republic.
+
+How pleased good, plain American Republicans were with that Society of
+the Cincinnati, and how it tickled their pride to wear the Order! Adams
+and Franklin were seriously alarmed at the powerful hold and influence
+the decoration seemed to have, and used argument and ridicule against
+it. One patriotic and vain citizen had his portrait painted in the
+bottom of his punch-bowl, with the Order proudly displayed around his
+neck. Around him encircled that favorite emblem, the thirteen-linked
+chain; great black links these were, with the name of a State in each.
+On the side of the bowl the Order was again displayed in larger size.
+
+There is a gallant ten-gallon bowl in Upper Faneuil Hall, which belongs
+to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery of Boston. Captain Ephraim
+Prescott, when in China in 1795, procured this great bowl as a suitable
+present for his companions at arms. The generous captain died during the
+voyage home, and on its arrival in port the punch-bowl fell into strange
+hands. Thirty years later Hon. Jonathan Hunnewell heard of its
+existence, bought it for $15, and gave it to the military company for
+whom it was originally purchased. Curious old orders and entries exist
+about the purchase of wine, rum, sugar, and “sourings” for the
+manufacture of the ancient and honorable punches. “But if sowrings be
+scarce & dear, wine & rum only.” You might make a punch without lemons,
+on a squeeze, but not without wine and rum.
+
+“Sourings” ought to have been cheap enough. Even as early as 1741 lemons
+were plentiful and not at all dear. In the _Salem Gazette_ in 1741, is
+this notice: “Extraordinary good and very fresh Orange Juice, which some
+of the very best Punch Tasters prefer to Lemmons, at one dollar per
+gallon. Also very good Lime Juice and Shrub to put into Punch, at the
+Basket of Lemmons. J. Crosby.” So there was with all the punch-bowls, a
+regular profession of punch-tasting; just fancy it.
+
+Occasionally there is some definite means of tracing the age of one of
+these pieces. Thus the fine, perfect punch-bowl owned by William C.
+Townsend, of Newport, is said to have been brought out by Captain Jacob
+Smith, of the Semiramis, a ship that, returning home in 1804 after an
+absence of three years, was lost on Nantucket Shoals. Of her cargo,
+valued at three hundred thousand dollars, but little was saved; but,
+strange to say, this great punch-bowl, twenty-two inches in diameter,
+holding eight gallons, was brought off in safety. It has the typical
+Lowestoft border of blue enamel with gold stars, and on the sides are
+large medallions so European in appearance that at first they seem to
+stamp the bowl as English. Examination, however, shows that the figures
+have the almond eyes of the Chinese, as well as other Oriental
+characteristics, and were undoubtedly copied from French or English
+prints sent to Canton.
+
+A modern writer thus sadly deplores the “good old times:”
+
+“Fifty years ago the punch-bowl was no mere ornament for the side-board
+and the china-cabinet; it was a thing to be brought forth and filled
+with a fragrant mixture of rum, brandy and curacoa, lemon, hot water,
+sugar, grated nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. The preparation of the bowl
+was as much a labor of love as that of a claret-cup, its degenerate
+successor. The ladles were beautiful works of art in silver—where are
+those ladles now, and what purpose do they serve?” Yes, it is true, the
+days of universal use for the punch-bowl are over—ornamental and curious
+they now are, and nothing more. Lucky it is for us china collectors,
+that dinners and everything else _à la russe_ did not obtain with our
+hospitable ancestors. No great tureens, no generous pitchers, no vast
+platters, and no noble punch-bowls should we now have to admire and
+gloat over, and place in our cabinets as monuments of ceramic art. Had
+they lived as we do, not a single punch-bowl should we have to glory in
+and grow sentimental over. An ignorant butler would have carelessly and
+prosaically mixed the drink in his pantry in any kind of a pot or a pan,
+and then ignominiously bottled it, and brought it in when required in
+driblets, in stingy little glasses that say plainly: “Drink this, and no
+more.”
+
+Indeed, I doubt we ever would have had punch, for in the gustatory and
+potatory laws of cause and effect, I know the punch-bowl evoked or
+generated punch instead of being made to hold punch. I would not go back
+to the rollicking, roaring, drunken ways of the olden time, but on the
+whole I am glad our grandfathers had those ways and bequeathed to us the
+glorious, great, ringing punch-bowls, in which they brewed and mixed and
+concocted, and from which they drank that “most insinuating drink” with
+which so often they got sadly, hopelessly “lusky, bosky, buffy, boozy,
+cocky, fuddled, balmy, pickled, screwed, funny, foggy, hazy, groggy,
+slewed, ruddled, dagged, jagged, comed, elevated, muddled, tight,
+primed, mainbrace well spliced, gilded”—or whatever elegant, chaste,
+colonial appellation our synonym-lacking language afforded to express
+being drunk.
+
+One worthy tribute to an old punch-bowl has been written by one of our
+best-loved poets. I would his bowl had been like my theme, china instead
+of silver—ah, no! I do not, for had it been of “tenderest porcelane” it
+might have been broken a century ago, and we should have known neither
+his punch-bowl nor his perfect poem. How true the opening verses!
+
+   “This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,
+   Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;
+   They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,
+   That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.”
+
+And can I end better than with the concluding verses?
+
+ “I tell you there was generous warmth in good old English cheer,
+ I tell you ’twas a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here;
+
+ ’Tis but the fool that loves excess—hast thou a drunken soul?
+ Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl!
+
+ “I love the memory of the past, its pressed yet fragrant flowers,
+ The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its towers—
+ Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed—my eyes grow moist and dim,
+ To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim.
+
+ “Then fill a fair and honest cup and bear it straight to me,
+ The goblet hallows all it holds whate’er the liquid be,
+ And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin,
+ That dooms one to those dreadful words, ‘My dear, where have you been?’”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XI.
+                  GEORGE AND MARTHA WASHINGTON’S CHINA
+
+
+In the long and apparently extravagant orders which George Washington
+sent to England previous to the Revolutionary War, for the purchase and
+exportation to him of dress goods and house and table furnishings of
+various descriptions, I find no mention of table china. In 1759 he wrote
+for “four Fashionable China Branches or Stands for Candles,” and for
+“Busts of Alexander the Great, Charles XII. of Sweden, Julius Cæsar, and
+King of Prussia, fifteen inches high and ten wide. Others smaller of
+Prince Eugene & Duke of Marlborough. Two wild Beasts twelve inches high
+and eighteen inches long, and Sundry Small Ornaments for the chimney
+piece.” As these were to be “finished neat and bronzed with copper,” or
+to be gilt, they were doubtless all of plaster or some similar
+composition. A portion of the items in the order were sent to him, the
+wild beasts being “Two Lyons.” These two plaster “lyons,” shorn of their
+golden lustre and painted ignominiously black, stood for years over a
+doorway at Mount Vernon, were inherited by Lawrence Washington, and sold
+in Philadelphia on April 22, 1891, for thirty dollars.
+
+I can find no hint of any china possessions of Washington until the War
+of the Revolution was gloriously ended. He had plenty of pewter—dinner
+dishes of that humble metal with his initials and crest are still
+preserved. His camp-service of forty pieces was entirely of pewter, and
+I doubt not the greater part also of his home table furnishings in his
+early married life.
+
+In his directions for remodelling and refurnishing his house at Mount
+Vernon, after the expiration of his terms as President, he ordered that
+a small room be appropriated for “the Sèvres china and other things of
+that sort which are not in common use.” Mr. Lossing says:
+
+“He undoubtedly referred to the sets of china which had been presented,
+one to himself, and the other to Mrs. Washington, by the officers of the
+French Army. The former was dull white in color, with heavy and confused
+scroll and leaf ornaments in bandeaux of deep blue, and having upon the
+sides of the cups and tureens, and in the bottoms of the plates,
+saucers, and meat dishes, the Order of the Cincinnati held by Fame
+personated by a winged woman with a trumpet. These designs were
+skilfully painted in delicate colors.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: Cincinnati China.]
+
+While this description of Mr. Lossing’s is accurate as to the decoration
+of the china, if not as to the quality of the decoration, a china
+collector would at once discover that the “Cincinnati set” was not
+Sèvres, but was plainly Chinese. It is the well-known dull white, hard
+paste of Canton manufacture, with a border of commonplace Oriental
+design in deep blue under the glaze. Some of the pieces have (all,
+perhaps, had originally) a narrow rim of gilt on the outer edge, and a
+narrow line of gilt within the border. The rather insignificant and
+undersized figure of Fame has bright brown wings and trumpet, a robe of
+light green, a scarf of bright pink, while the bow-knot sustaining the
+colored Order of the Cincinnati is light blue. This design is not
+painted at all skilfully but quite crudely over the glaze. Some of the
+covered dishes bear upon the cover the order without the figure of Fame.
+In a note made by Governor Lyon he states that this service was “made in
+Canton in 1784, the design being furnished by General Miranda.” Though
+the design be insignificant and the execution crude, much interest is
+added to the Cincinnati china to know that the “most gentlemanlike of
+filibusters” made the drawing for the decoration. That plausible and
+brilliant man who “talked so like an angel” that Americans, Russians,
+and Englishmen vied in endeavors to assist him in his visionary schemes;
+who helped to establish independence in America, to give freedom to
+France, to liberate his native land, Venezuela; who aided in freeing
+thousands of others, died himself in a Spanish dungeon a slave, a most
+miserable captive, in chains, with an iron collar around his neck.
+
+No one was apparently better fitted to give information on the subject
+of the Cincinnati china than Governor Lyon, for he was a frequent
+visitor at Mount Vernon and Arlington House in the middle of this
+century; he was also collecting facts and details with a view to writing
+a “History of the Ceramic Relics of the Revolution.” Unfortunately he
+relied much on his memory, and hence left few notes.
+
+Much ignorance about this Cincinnati china is displayed, even by writers
+upon pottery and porcelain. The author of “The Ceramic Art” calls it
+Sèvres, and places the most Chinese-looking illustration of it alongside
+the print of equally Frenchy Sèvres vases. That careful observer and
+exact recorder, the author of “The China Hunters’ Club,” falls into no
+such error, and though unable to examine specimens closely, says “they
+looked like so-called Lowestoft, and may have been Chinese, English, or
+of some French factory.” Another well-known writer says that this set
+was given to Washington in 1780. As neither the Society of the
+Cincinnati, nor its badge, existed until 1783, this statement is
+palpably false.
+
+The authorities at the National Museum, and all the owners of pieces of
+the set, consider that it was presented to General Washington by the
+entire Society of the Cincinnati, and not by the French officers alone,
+as Mr. Lossing states. It would seem probable that had the French
+officers made the gift, it would have been of French china of some
+elegance, instead of such commonplace Chinese porcelain. Hon. Hamilton
+Fish, the President of the Society of the Cincinnati, tells me that the
+general society, and, as far as known, the individual State societies,
+have no records of the gift of this china to Washington; nor have I seen
+any letters, any entries, any notes of the time, to prove, or even hint,
+that this china was the gift of the Society of the Cincinnati. Though
+Martha Washington mentions the set in her will, she does not specify it
+as a gift, as she does the “set given me by Mr. Van Braam.”
+
+While I have never seen any statements to prove that this set of china
+was the gift of the Society of the Cincinnati, there is in the
+possession of Ferdinand J. Dreer, Esq., of Philadelphia, a letter which
+would seem to indicate that Washington may have bought the china
+himself, or, at any rate, it proves that china with the decoration of
+the badge of the Cincinnati was ordered for the general American market.
+The letter, which is very characteristic of Washington’s thrift and
+prudence, is addressed to Colonel Tench Tilghman and runs thus:
+
+                                              MT VERNON 17th Augst 1785.
+
+  DEAR SIR: The _Baltimore Advertiser_ of the 12th inst announces the
+  arrival of the ship at that Port immediately from China, and by an
+  advertisement in the same paper I perceive that the Cargo is to be
+  sold by public Vendue on the first of Octo. next.
+
+  At what prices the enumerated articles will sell on the terms proposed
+  can only be known from the experiment, but if the quantity at market
+  is great, and they should sell as goods have sold at vendue bargains
+  may be expected.—I therefore take the liberty of requesting the favor
+  of you, in that case, to purchase the several things contained in the
+  enclosed list.
+
+  You will readily perceive my dear sir, my purchasing or not depends
+  entirely upon the prices—If _great bargains_ are to be had, I would
+  supply myself agreeably to the list. If the prices do not fall _below_
+  a cheap _retail_ sale, I would decline them altogether or take such
+  articles only (if cheaper than common) as are marked in the margin of
+  the Invoice.
+
+  Before October, if none of these goods are previously sold, and if
+  they are, the matter will be ascertained thereby, you will be able to
+  form a judgment of the prices they will command by Vendue—upon
+  information of which, I will deposit the money in your hands to comply
+  with the terms of the Sale.
+
+  Since I began this letter I have been informed that good India
+  Nankeens are selling at Dumfries (not far from me) at 7/6 a pc this
+  Curr F——. But if my memory has not failed me, I used to import them
+  before the war for about 5S sterl. If so, though 50 per cent is a
+  small advance upon India Goods through a British channel (and the
+  duties and accumulated charges thereon) yet quaere? would not 7/6 be a
+  high price for Nankeens brought immediately from India, exempted from
+  _such_ duties and charges? If this is a conjecture founded in
+  fairness, it will give my ideas of the prices of the articles from
+  that country and be a government for your conduct therein, at or
+  before the day appointed for the public Vendue.
+
+                          With the highest esteem and regard
+                                I am Dr Sir,
+                                      Yr affect friend and Obedt Serv’t
+                                                          G. WASHINGTON.
+
+  Invoice of Goods to be purchased by Tench Tilghman Esqr on account of
+  Geo Washington agreeable to the letter accompanying this of equal
+  date.
+
+        A sett of the best Nankin Table China
+        Ditto—best Evening Cups & Saucers
+        [1] A sett of _large_ blue & white China
+        Dishes say half a dozen more or less
+        [1] 1 Doz. _small_ bowls blue & white
+        [1] 6 Wash hand Guglets & Basons
+        6 Large Mugs or 3 mugs & 3 jugs
+        A Quart^r Chest best Hyson Tea
+        A Leagure of Battavia Arrack if a Leagure is not large.
+        About 13 yards of good blu: Paduasoy
+        A ps of fine muslin plain
+        [1] 1 ps of Silk Handkerchiefs
+        12 ps of the Best Nankeens
+        18 ps of the second quality or coursest kind for servants.
+
+                                                          G. WASHINGTON.
+
+  17th Augst 1785.
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+    With the badge of the society of the Cincinnati if to be had.
+
+The sentimental and high-flown announcement in the _Baltimore
+Advertiser_ of the arrival of the vessel referred to by Washington reads
+thus:
+
+“On Tuesday evening last arrived here, directly from China, the ship
+Pallas commanded by its owner Capt. O’Donnell. She has on board a most
+valuable Cargo consisting of an extensive Variety of Teas, China, Silks,
+Satins, Nankeens, &c., &c. We are extremely happy to find the Commercial
+Reputation of this Town so far increased as to attract the attention of
+Gentlemen who are engaged in carrying on this distant but beneficial
+Trade. It is no unpleasing Sight to see the Crew of this Ship, Chinese,
+Malays, Japanese and Moors with a few Europeans, all habited according
+to the different Countries to which they belong, and employed together
+as Brethren; it is thus Commerce binds and unites all the Nations of the
+Globe with a golden Chain.”
+
+The advertisement of the auction sale is also given:
+
+“To be sold at Public Vendue at Baltimore on the 1st of October next in
+Lots The Following Goods Just Imported in the Ship Pallas, direct from
+China: Hyson Teas, of the first Quality in Quarter-Chests and Canisters
+of about 2¼ lb each; Hyson Tea of the second sort in Chests; Singlo,
+Confee, Hyson-Skin, and Gunpowder Teas of the first Quality in Chests;
+and a large Quantity of excellent Bohea Tea; Table-Sets of the best
+Nankin blue and white Stone China; white stone and painted China of the
+second Quality in Sets; Dishes of blue and white Stone China 5 and 3 in
+a Set; Stone China flat and Soup-Plates; Breakfast Cups and Saucers of
+the best blue and white Stone China in Sets; Evening blue and white
+Stone China Cups and Saucers; Ditto painted; _Ditto with the Arms of the
+Order of Cincinnati_; Bowls—best blue and white Stone China in Sets;
+blue and white Stone China Pint Sneakers; Mugs—best Stone China in Sets;
+small Tureens with Covers; Wash Hand Guglets and Basons; brown Nankeen
+of the first and second Quality; plain, flowered and spotted Lustrings
+of all Colours; Satins, the Greatest Part Black; Peelongs of different
+Colours, in whole and half Pieces; Sarsnet of different Colours;
+embroidered Waistcoat Pieces of Silks and Satins; Silk Handkerchiefs,
+very fine, and 20 in a piece; spotted and flowered Velvets; painted
+Gauzes; Bengal Piece-Goods and Muslins, plain flowered and corded; Silk
+Umbrellas of all Sizes; elegant Paper-Hangings; japanned Tea-Chests;
+Ditto Fish and Counter Boxes; Sago; Cinnamon and Cinnamon Flowers;
+Rhubarb; Opium; Gamboge; Borax; very old Battavia Arrack in Leagures;
+with Sundry other Articles; the enumeration of which would take up too
+much Room in a Public Paper.”
+
+Then follow the terms and methods of the sale.
+
+Though this inventory is of special interest to us on account of the
+specification of the china with the Arms of the Order of Cincinnati, the
+other items also merit attention as showing the goods and merchandise
+imported at that date to America. And the strange, obsolete names of the
+china articles excite our curiosity. A “guglet” is a juglet or little
+jug; and the word “sneaker” is not a low Baltimorean Americanism, but
+good old Addisonian English; for we read in _The Freeholder_, No. 22,
+these lines: “After supper he asked me if I was an admirer of punch, and
+immediately called for a sneaker.” A sneaker was originally a smaller
+drinking mug or beaker than was ordinarily used, and was drunk from by a
+“sneak-cup,” that contemptible creature who wished to shrink from his
+convivial duties by “balking his drink,” or, to speak plainly, who
+wished to drink less than his companions fancied he ought to. It came
+gradually to be used as the name of a small mug, and as such frequently
+appears in the inventories of china made and sold at Worcester.
+Washington was no “sneak-cup,” he boldly and liberally ordered large
+mugs instead of pint sneakers.
+
+We can well imagine the pride of Washington as he read this announcement
+of the arrival of the ship direct from China with its load of rich
+goods, his pride in the prosperity and increasing commerce of the new
+Federal nation. The Pallas was the second ship only to arrive in the
+United States direct from Canton—for Canton was at that date the only
+Chinese port open to European and American vessels.
+
+Watson, the author of the “Annals of Philadelphia,” states that the
+first ship to bring porcelain direct to America from China was commanded
+by Captain John Green, and sailed patriotically from New York on
+February 22d, Washington’s birthday, 1784, and landed in return on May
+11, 1785. He says: “I have now a plate of the china brought by him—the
+last remaining of a whole set.” This ship was the Empress of China, and
+one of her officers was Captain Samuel Shaw, a brave Revolutionary
+officer who had been one of the original and active founders of the
+Society of the Cincinnati; in fact, one of the framers of the
+constitution of the society. Thus it is easy to see the means and manner
+by which the pattern of the figure Fame bearing the Cincinnati badge,
+which had been drawn by General Miranda, was conveyed to China. It is
+possible, of course, that Captain Shaw brought home with him in the
+Empress of China the “Cincinnati set,” as a gift for General Washington;
+but General Knox had a similar set. It remained in his great
+china-closet at his beautiful home in Thomaston, Me., until the year
+1840. A two-handled cup of this set, bearing General Knox’s initials as
+well as the Order of the Cincinnati, sold for twenty-one dollars at the
+Governor Lyon sale in 1876. Two of the plates that had belonged to
+General Washington’s set sold at the same time for one hundred dollars
+each. Though I have had two of these Cincinnati plates offered to me by
+dealers, within a year, for a smaller sum, one with an authentic history
+cannot now be purchased for less than three hundred dollars. A plate and
+bowl were sold by Sypher in 1890 for six hundred dollars. At the Loan
+Collection held at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, in 1889, on
+the occasion of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of George
+Washington as President of the United States, there were shown several
+pieces of the Cincinnati china that had belonged to Washington, one
+plate belonging to Luther Kountze, Esq., of New York; a plate and saucer
+belonging to Edmund Law Rogers, Esq., of Baltimore, who is a grandson of
+Eliza Parke Custis, the granddaughter of Martha Washington. Mrs. Caleb
+Lyon also exhibited two plates, a tray, and teapot. These pieces, with a
+pickle leaf and “small terreen,” are now in the possession of Miss Lyon,
+of Staten Island, and from them the illustrations on page 231 were
+taken. There are no fewer than forty pieces of this set in the National
+Museum in Washington; most of these were purchased by the Government
+from the Lewis family in 1878.
+
+There are also in the National Museum several pieces of the china known
+as the Martha Washington set. The smaller of the plates shown on page 9
+is one of this set. Of this china Lossing writes:
+
+“The set of china presented at the same time by the French officers to
+Mrs. Washington was of similar material, but more delicate in color than
+the General’s. The ornamentation was also far more delicate, excepting
+the delineation of the figure and Cincinnati Order on the former. Around
+the outside of each tureen and the inside of each plate and saucer is
+painted in delicate colors a chain of thirteen large and thirteen small
+elliptical links. Within each large link is the name of one of the
+original thirteen States. On the sides of the cups and tureens, and in
+the bottom of each plate and saucer, is the interlaced monogram of
+Martha Washington—M. W.—enclosed in a beautiful green wreath composed of
+the leaves of the laurel and olive. Beneath this is a ribbon upon which
+is inscribed, in delicately-traced letters, ‘_Decus et tutam enabillo._’
+From the wreath are rays of gold which give a brilliant appearance to
+the pieces. There is also a delicately colored stripe around the edges
+of the cups and saucers and plates.”
+
+This description conveys an excellent idea of the set to a careless
+observer, but is not wholly correct. The “delicately colored stripe” is
+a blue and gold snake with his tail in his mouth—a significant emblem.
+There are fifteen long and fifteen short links instead of thirteen,
+Kentucky and Vermont having at that time been added to the thirteen
+original States. And the motto upon the pink ribbon scroll to me appears
+to be, “_Decus et tutamen ab illo._” Mr. Lossing also says: “At that
+time the china like that presented by the French officers was only made
+at the Sèvres manufactory, the art of decorating porcelain or china ware
+with enamel colors and gold being then not generally known.” This, of
+course, is an incorrect statement, since it was at the time of the
+greatest splendor in the English factories. The decoration of china with
+gold was forbidden for some time in France except in the Sèvres factory,
+but this Martha Washington set is not Sèvres. It is apparently Chinese.
+Mr. Lossing wrote me a long letter on this subject. In it he says that
+the French officers would not have sent as a gift to Washington china
+from any factory save Sèvres; but it seems now to be very doubtful
+whether this set was the gift of the French officers. In the National
+Museum at the Smithsonian Institution are pieces labelled, “Presented to
+Martha Washington by LaFayette.” There is no authority for the
+ascription to Lafayette of the gift of this china. The only reason given
+at the National Museum for thus labelling it is a good one—that the
+ticket was on the china when it was in the Patent Office in 1871, and so
+it will still be kept on it until some good evidence is brought that
+such a label is incorrect. The pieces exhibited at the Loan Collection
+in 1889, by individual owners—Edmund Law Rogers being one—were marked as
+the gift of Mr. Van Braam. Mrs. Beverly Kennon, of Washington, D. C., is
+the niece of George Washington Parke Custis, and owns a cup and saucer
+of this set. She tells me that the “Martha Washington china was
+presented (so said my mother and uncle—both grandchildren of Mrs.
+Washington—who certainly ought to have known) by General Washington’s
+early friend, a Hollander named Van Braam. It was made in China and
+painted in England.” Mr. Custis thought that Mr. Van Braam was a
+merchant in China; the Dutch at that time had the closest business
+connections with that country. Miss Lyon also says that Mr. Custis told
+her that the set in question was the gift of Mr. Van Braam. In addition
+to all this testimony in favor of Mr. Van Braam, may be given the clause
+from Martha Washington’s will, referring to the “sett of china given me
+by Mr. Van Braam.” Captain Van Braam was a friend of Washington’s youth
+and taught the future President the art of fencing. The gay
+fencing-master cut but a sorry figure at a later date, being more than
+suspected of treason and unsoldierly behavior.
+
+Though neither of these sets were of Sèvres porcelain, Washington is
+said to have owned two sets of Sèvres. In the National Museum are twenty
+pieces of a service called Sèvres that belonged to him, and which he
+used both while he was President and at Mount Vernon. At the Governor
+Lyon sale a white Sèvres plate, catalogued as having belonged to
+Washington, brought twelve dollars. Miss Lyon still owns a custard-cup
+of the set. It has a pretty gold “dontil” rim and a gilt cherry as a
+knob on the cover. It bears the Sèvres mark.
+
+Another white and gold breakfast service, marked “Nast”—a well-known
+French china-maker—also belonged to Washington. Miss Mary E. M. Powel,
+of Newport, has a coffee-cup and saucer of the set. It was presented to
+Colonel John Hare Powel, of Powelton, by Mrs. Custis, in 1812. The
+butter-dish of this service is illustrated in “Mount Vernon and its
+Associations.”
+
+Another white and gold set of Canton china still has existing pieces to
+show its character. This was probably a dessert-service. A berry-dish
+and two dessert-plates were sold in Philadelphia, in 1890, for H. L. D.
+Lewis (one of the Washington heirs), for fifty dollars. They were
+purchased by the Washington Association of New Jersey (and can be seen
+at their building in Morristown), with a cup of white porcelain with
+maroon ribbon and wreath decoration, which also came from Mount Vernon.
+Still other pieces of Washington china were sold in Philadelphia in
+1891, among them portions of a set of Crown Derby with tiny sprigs and
+flowered border. Pieces of this set were owned by the late William Henry
+Harrison, Esq., of New York.
+
+A very interesting plate is in the possession of Doctor Allan McLane
+Hamilton, of New York. It was given as a keepsake to Mrs. Alexander
+Hamilton by Mrs. George Washington. It descended from Mrs. Hamilton to
+Philip Hamilton, the father of the present owner. It is of French
+porcelain, twelve and a half inches in diameter, with slightly crenated
+edges. On the left rim it is decorated with a festoon of oak leaves with
+gold acorns; on the right with a border of laurel or myrtle. Above is a
+lyre with a garland—both in gold. In the centre of the plate is an
+eagle, perched upon a bundle of thunderbolts, while on his head are the
+thirteen stars, all in gold; beneath, in script, are the letters G. & M.
+W., surrounded by a wreath of roses and forget-me-nots. This plate is
+unique, the remainder of the service being either lost or destroyed.
+
+In the diary of Baron Von Closen, under the date of July 19, 1792, this
+entry is found: “On my arrival Mrs. Washington requested me to invite
+Count de Custine—who was then at Colchester—with all the officers of his
+regiment, to dinner for the next day. The Count accepted the invitation
+with ten officers of the regiment, and sent Mr. Bellegarde before him
+with a very valuable present, a set of china coming from his own
+manufactory at Niederweiler, near Pfalzburg, in Lorraine. It was
+ornamented with a coat of arms and initials of General Washington,
+surmounted by a laurel wreath, and was received by Mrs. Washington with
+most hearty thanks.” I can well believe the latter statement, for this
+Niederweiler china was by far the most beautiful in quality, decoration,
+and shape that Washington ever possessed. The pieces were all slightly
+different, the only universal decoration being a beautiful cipher of
+Washington’s initials surrounded by a golden brown cloud background, and
+surmounted by a tiny rose-wreath. The other decorations were of festoons
+or interlaced wreaths. A saucer of this set, owned by J. Chester Lyman,
+Esq., is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was given to Timothy
+Dwight, Mr. Lyman’s ancestor, by Mrs. Custis. The design on this piece
+consists of festoons of very delicate leaves in various shades of gold.
+Another piece has wreaths of tiny roses around the edge. A sugar-box and
+bowl, owned by Mrs. Beverley Kennon, of Washington, bear still different
+designs. A covered jug of the set is here shown. The mark on this china
+was the interlaced Cs, the stamp used by Count Custine, and it also is
+numbered “No. 29.” Martha Washington divided this set among her three
+granddaughters during her lifetime, which is the reason it is not
+mentioned in her will.
+
+[Illustration: Washington’s Niederweiler China.]
+
+At Mount Vernon are two beautiful dishes which were presented to the
+Association by Mr. Corcoran, and are said to have been George
+Washington’s. One is a salad or berry-dish, seven and a half inches
+square and an inch and a half deep; the edges are irregularly and
+gracefully scalloped. There is a narrow rim of gold around the edge;
+within, a wide band of blue broken by a chain of circular rings in gold,
+each enclosing a gold dot; within this a narrow band of gold; and a
+delicate gold beading forms the inside edge of the border. Little
+bunches and sprigs of flowers are scattered over the centre, having gold
+stems and leaves and blue blossoms. The plate has the same decoration.
+Both have the small blue S of the Salopian or Caughley works on the
+base. Mrs. Russel, of Cambridge, Mass., has a plate of this set, which
+was given to her by Mr. Corcoran. These three pieces are evidently part
+of a dessert-service—but where are the other pieces?
+
+The “blue and white china in common use,” referred to in Martha
+Washington’s will, was of a kind familiar to us all, “old blue Canton.”
+Several pieces of it are now in the National Museum. Miss Lyon has two
+dishes of rather better quality that came from Mount Vernon, Nankin
+china apparently. Others have recently been sold at auction in
+Philadelphia in 1891. Washington used this cheerful, substantial Canton
+china “for common use” on his every-day table, just as did every other
+good and wealthy American citizen of his day and time. Besides the
+pieces of blue and white Canton china which he ordered of Colonel
+Tilghman in 1785, Washington also wrote to General Robert Ridgway, on
+September 12, 1783, a long and carefully expressed letter ordering wine
+and beer glasses, and decanters and china. “If a neat and complete set
+of Blue & white Table China could be had upon easy terms, be pleased to
+inform me of it, and the price—not less than six or eight doz., however,
+and proportionable number of deep and other Plates, Butter-Boats, Dishes
+& Tureens will suffice. These things sometimes come in complete Setts
+ready packed; should this be the case and the number of Pieces greater
+than what is here mentioned, I should have no objection to a case on
+that acc’t.”
+
+Washington had very decided opinions and tastes about table furnishings,
+as he had about dress. When wine was served to him and his visitors in
+some very ugly cups at Princeton, and he was told that the cups were
+made by a man who had since turned Quaker, he replied, with his
+cumbersome and rare humor, that it was a pity the man had not turned
+Quaker before he made the cups.
+
+The china of Mary Washington did not go to her illustrious son. By her
+will, made in 1788, she left to her grandson, Fielding Lewis, “half my
+crockery ware, half my pewter, and my blue and white tea china,” and to
+her granddaughter, Betty Carter, the other half of the crockery and
+pewter, and “my red and white china.” Perhaps she fancied the General
+had enough china, as he apparently did.
+
+Washington progressed in mantel decoration somewhat beyond the plaster
+“Lyons” and busts that decorated the home of his early married life. The
+mantel vases described by Mr. Lossing, and shown in an illustration in
+his book, were sold in Philadelphia, in February, 1891, for four hundred
+and fifty dollars each. They stood about eighteen inches high, were
+decorated with butterflies and flowers on a dark blue ground, and had
+covers surmounted by the Dog Fo. Other vases which once graced the
+chimney-pieces of Mount Vernon are still owned by members of the Custis
+family. The profuse mantel decoration of to-day was, however, undreamt
+of by him.
+
+There are many other pieces of table china now in existence, and proudly
+shown, that are said to have belonged to Washington. Doubtless their
+owners consider that they have sufficient proof of the authenticity of
+their relics, but as I know not the value of their proofs I will not
+mention their china. I think, with the great number of punch-bowls that
+once belonged to Washington, and that are mentioned in another chapter,
+with the vast assortment of rich glass-ware that once was owned by
+Washington, and that is now in the National Museum, in other public and
+in many private collections, that the amount of china already named will
+quite swell up a value far beyond the item in the sworn inventory of the
+executors of George Washington’s will—“Glass & China in the China
+Closet, & that up-stairs, & that in the cellar, $800.” What would be a
+relic-lover’s estimate of the value of that glass and china to-day?
+
+
+
+
+                                  XII.
+                           PRESIDENTIAL CHINA
+
+
+The sets of china used by other Presidents than Washington, while their
+various owners were living in the Executive Mansion, deserve to be
+mentioned and described on account of historic interest, though not
+always for their value as ceramics, and because specimens of them are
+within the possibility of possession by a china collector. I think the
+true china-lover will, however, care little to own any piece of
+porcelain simply because it is said to have belonged to or was eaten
+from by some great man—if that be its only virtue; and I am sure will
+care little for much of the china that has graced the table at the White
+House.
+
+Jefferson was, without doubt, as profusely hospitable a President as
+ever dwelt in the Executive Mansion of the United States. For this
+lavish hospitality he may have had a double reason—not only to gratify
+his well-known liberal disposition and his love of good company as well,
+but to prove his shrewd suspicion, or rather his firm conviction, that a
+well-cooked dinner was often a potent factor in accomplishing his
+desired end when his smooth and persuasive argument or his apparent
+candor would have failed. A good illustration of his crafty, worldly
+wisdom is shown in the result of the historically renowned dinner given
+by him, when Secretary of State, in 1789, at Philadelphia, to President
+Washington and the prominent leaders of both parties of the House and
+Senate. A fierce dispute between the Northern and Southern members of
+Congress had risen over the location of the national capital. The
+Southerners insisted that the banks of either the Delaware or Potomac
+should be chosen as a site; the Northerners were equally determined upon
+the borders of the Susquehanna. An amicable and peaceful settlement
+followed this famous dinner, and shrewd Jefferson had his own way—the
+seat of government was placed at Washington, on the Potomac. This lavish
+hospitality, both in the Executive Mansion and in private life,
+doubtless had much to do with Jefferson’s subsequent financial
+embarrassments. Very few of the pieces of table-ware used and owned by
+Jefferson, either in public or private life, are now to be found. His
+married life was short, and his housekeeping, both when Secretary of
+State and President, was entirely in the hands of servants, a condition
+never favorable to the preservation of china. The dispersion of his
+household effects caused the disappearance from sight and knowledge of
+what few pieces remained. Though his silver is carefully preserved by
+his descendants, they own no china.
+
+An octagonal plate of Rockingham ware, used by Jefferson when President,
+is now in Washington. It bears the stamp “BRAMELD.” It is of the dark
+blue shade frequently used in the Chinese designs on that ware, a blue
+so rich and deep that it gives a character and tone rarely found on
+pottery, and makes the plate as glorious in tint as a block of choicest
+lapis lazuli. The glaze is “crazed” on the entire surface of this
+particular plate, both glaze and color being splintered in places from
+the brownish pottery body. The plate has evidently been frequently and
+severely heated in an oven. I have seen other pieces of the same shape,
+bearing the same design, which had not, however, the honorable
+distinction of having been owned by Jefferson.
+
+An exceedingly beautiful plate was sold at auction in New York, about
+fifteen years ago, that was catalogued as having been the property of
+Jefferson and used on his dinner-table. It was apparently of Chinese
+manufacture of the type known as Lowestoft. The rim and inner border
+were diapered in dark blue, relieved by dainty lines of gold. In the
+centre was the letter “J,” in gold, enclosed in a shield outlined in
+blue enamel adorned with thirteen stars. Above the shield was a blue and
+gold helmet with closed visor. This plate brought $40, being of ceramic
+value as well as of historic interest. There was sold at the same time,
+for $2.50, a custard-cup of French porcelain painted with detached
+bachelor’s buttons, which was also said to have been Jefferson’s.
+
+Of the china used by either President Adams I have no definite
+knowledge, though I have seen several pieces of Oriental china that bore
+the reputation of having been used by these Presidents during their
+terms of office.
+
+The china used by Madison was a set of finely painted Lowestoft.
+Portions of it are owned by descendants in Virginia. He also owned a set
+of fine French china with his initials.
+
+The next White House china-service of which I have seen authentic pieces
+is the one known as the Monroe set—Madison’s official china having been
+destroyed at the burning of the Executive Mansion by the British in
+1814. This Monroe set is of French china of good quality. It has around
+the edge a half-inch band of pale coffee color or brownish buff, edged
+with a burnished gilt line on either side. It has a small and pretty
+coffee-cup with extraordinarily flat saucer.
+
+The Andrew Jackson set was of heavy and rather coarse bluish porcelain,
+apparently of Chinese manufacture, with bands of ugly dull blue and
+coarsely applied gold, and a conventional and clumsy shield in the
+centre. It was not very tasteful nor beautiful, any more than was its
+Presidential owner, and very fitly furnished forth his dining-table.
+
+In Franklin Pierce’s time what is now known as “the red-edged set” was
+bought, the border being of dark red and gilt, with an inner circle of
+gilt. It was of French china of fair quality. The cups of this set were
+very large, while the saucers were exceedingly diminutive; though people
+of fashion, even at that date, had not wholly given up drinking tea from
+their saucers. A lady at whose home Judge Story and Daniel Webster were
+frequent visitors, tells me that those two representative men of their
+day always drank their cooled tea from their saucers.
+
+The Buchanan set was of very commonplace ware, with a stiff, meagre, and
+ill-painted spray of flowers in the centre of each plate and on the side
+of each dish. Ugly as they are, the plates are now valued at forty
+dollars each. The saucers of this set were disproportionately large,
+holding much more than the cups. A few pieces of this Buchanan set still
+remain in Washington, though none are preserved at the White House.
+
+[Illustration: Lincoln China.]
+
+A very full set of Presidential china was bought in Abraham Lincoln’s
+time. It is of finest French porcelain, with a border of crimson purple
+or plum color, with delicate lines and dots of gold, and the plates,
+platters, and saucers have slightly scalloped edges. In the centre of
+the plates and on the sides of the dishes and small pieces is a very
+spirited version of the coat of arms of the United States, with the
+motto “E Pluribus Unum” upon a clouded background of gold. A plate and
+cup of this set, now in the possession of Miss Henrietta D. Lyon, of
+Staten Island, is here shown. This design is very dignified and
+appropriate, and, with the substitution of a blue border with gilt ears
+of Indian corn, has been reproduced for the present mistress of the
+White House. Plates of this Abraham Lincoln set sold at the Governor
+Lyon sale for $4.25 each, and little covered custard- or egg-cups for
+$1.50 each. I have recently had some of these plates offered to me for
+$25 apiece. Portions of this set still remain and are used at the White
+House.
+
+[Illustration: Grant China.]
+
+The General Grant set is well known, and is very handsome. The border is
+of buff and gold, broken once by a small United States shield in high
+colors. In the centre is a well-painted spray or bunch of flowers, many
+being the wild flowers of the United States. The coffee-cups of this set
+were ordered to use at the wedding of the President’s daughter, and were
+known as the “Nellie Grant cups.” A plate said to have been ordered for
+the White House in General Grant’s time is here shown.
+
+Of the beautiful and costly set ordered by Mrs. Hayes too much is known,
+and too many cheaper copies have been sold, and may be seen in any large
+china-shop, to make it worth while to give any detailed description
+here. It was made at Limoges by the Havilands, as was also the “Grant
+set.” It makes a fine room decoration when the various pieces are
+arranged in the beautiful buffet that President Arthur had made for it,
+and is more satisfactory in that position than when in use on the table.
+
+It may be asked how all these pieces of Presidential china come to be
+found in private collections, and offered for sale, and so generally
+distributed over the country. A very reprehensible custom existed until
+recent years (and indeed may still be possible) of selling at auction at
+the end of each Presidential term, or in the middle if thought
+necessary, whatever household effects the house steward and house
+occupants chose to consider of no further use. These Presidential sales
+were, of course, eagerly attended by relic-hunters. At such a sale in
+President Grant’s day a lot of “old truck,” as it was irreverently
+called, valued at $500, brought $2,760. As there must be, of course,
+much breakage of china in the pantry and dining-room of the White House,
+and as it was considered for many years necessary to have full “sets” of
+china table-ware, enough to serve an entire dinner, the odd plates, cups
+and saucers, and dishes were ruthlessly “cleared out” whenever an
+appropriation was made by the Government, or the President desired to
+buy a new set. It seems a pity that a few pieces of each of these “state
+sets” should not have been preserved in a cabinet at the White House to
+show us the kind of china from which our early rulers ate their daily
+meals and served their state dinners, as well as to show our varying and
+halting progress in luxury, refinement, and taste.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XIII.
+                     DESIGNS RELATING TO WASHINGTON
+
+
+One scarcely knows where to begin or end this list when one considers
+the vast number of pieces of pottery and porcelain that bear the name
+and ostensibly bear the portrait of Washington—more and more varied even
+than the Lord Nelson prints in England. Often Washington’s portrait is
+found with that of Franklin or Lafayette; in such cases I have given the
+subject of the most prominent or the named design the honor of
+determining the place on the list. The largest number of these
+Washington designs occur upon Liverpool mugs and pitchers in black
+prints. Some few are in blue upon Staffordshire earthenware. In the
+Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York,
+may be seen a vast number of ceramic likenesses of the great American.
+Many of these are single specimens painted by hand—both by artists and
+amateurs, apparently. One set of four plaques has copies of the Savage,
+Trumbull, Peale, and Stuart portraits of Washington. Such I have not
+attempted to describe or classify. One specially comical portrait
+plaque, painted in China, shows an almond-eyed Washington with his hair
+_à la chinoise_, with feminine hair ornaments, while on his republican
+shoulders rests the dark blue sack garment familiar to us as the
+festival garb of our Chinese washermen. There are in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection a large number of Washington pitchers, from which some of the
+entries on this list are described.
+
+One Liverpool print deserves special mention, for a very interesting
+story is attached to it, and is told in detail by Benson J. Lossing in
+his “Mount Vernon and Its Associations.” A dealer in Philadelphia
+imported a number of pitchers of various sizes, each bearing a portrait
+of Washington, the design for which had been taken from Gilbert Stuart’s
+picture painted for the Marquis of Lansdowne. Nutter had engraved this
+portrait for Hunter’s edition of Lavater, and a copy of the engraving
+was printed upon the pitchers. Mr. Dorsey, a sugar-dealer of
+Philadelphia, purchased several of these pitchers, and after a number of
+unsuccessful attempts to separate the part bearing the portrait from the
+rest of the pitcher, managed at last, by using the broad-faced hammer of
+a shoemaker, to break out the picture unharmed with a single sharp blow.
+The pottery fragment bearing the portrait was handsomely framed by Mr.
+James R. Smith, of Philadelphia, and sent to Judge Washington at Mount
+Vernon, where it was hung and was known as the pitcher portrait. A copy
+of it is here shown.
+
+[Illustration: Pitcher Portrait.]
+
+Mr. Smith owned a crayon portrait of Washington, a copy made by
+Sharpless himself of his original picture of Washington. On the back of
+this Sharpless portrait was a long eulogy of Washington, written by an
+English gentleman. Mr. Smith copied a portion of this eulogy on the back
+of the pitcher portrait—as much of the inscription, in fact, as there
+was room to write. It ran thus, as given in “Alden’s Collections of
+American Epitaphs and Inscriptions:” “Washington the Defender of his
+Country, the Founder of Liberty and the Friend of Man. History and
+Tradition are explored in vain for a parallel to his character. In the
+annals of modern greatness he stands alone, and the noblest names of
+antiquity lose their lustre in his presence. Born the Benefactor of
+Mankind he united all the qualities necessary to an illustrious career.
+Nature made him great, he made himself virtuous. Called by his country
+to the defense of her liberties, he triumphantly vindicated the rights
+of humanity and, on the pillars of National Independence, laid the
+foundations of a Great Republick. Twice invested with supreme
+magistracy, by the unanimous vote of a free people, he surpassed in the
+cabinet the glories of the field; and voluntarily resigning the sword
+and the sceptre, retired to the shades of private life. A spectacle so
+new and so sublime was contemplated with the profoundest admiration, and
+the name of Washington, adding new lustre to humanity, resounded to the
+remotest regions of the earth. Magnanimous in youth, glorious through
+life, great in death, his highest ambition the happiness of mankind, his
+noblest victory the conquest of himself. Bequeathing to posterity the
+inheritance of his fame, and building his monument in the hearts of his
+countrymen he lived—the ornament of the eighteenth century, he
+died—regretted by the mourning world.”
+
+The centre portion of this inscription has been within a few years cut
+out of the back of the frame by some vandal hands. The entire eulogy, as
+written on the back of the Sharpless portrait, can be seen in Lossing’s
+“Mount Vernon and Its Associations,” and in Sparks’s “Writings of
+Washington,” and as a masterpiece of flattery—and honest flattery,
+too—it knows no equal.
+
+This pitcher portrait descended to Lawrence Washington, Esq. It was
+exhibited at the Philadelphia State-House in 1876, and was sold at
+auction April 22, 1891, at Philadelphia, for $75.
+
+Liverpool pitchers bearing the design like that of the pitcher portrait
+are rare in America, but are found in a few private collections; and
+oval plaques are also found bearing the same portrait. These latter have
+a swelling surface, as if cut from the side of a pitcher. There are
+specimens with this print in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. Some years
+ago a framed pitcher portrait was found in the attic of an old house in
+Washington Street, Newport, and is now in the possession of Benjamin
+Smith, Esq., of Philadelphia.
+
+Some very interesting ceramic portraits of Washington were made in
+China, early in this century, on four porcelain toddy-jugs, by order of
+Mr. B. C. Willcocks, of Philadelphia. It is said that the portraits were
+copied from one of these pitcher portraits, but the head on the
+toddy-jugs is longer and narrower, and the neck is much longer. This
+elongating may have been done by the Chinese artist, but it looks more
+like the other Stuart portrait, the one with lawn ruffles; the pitcher
+portrait has a lace ruffle. One of this quartette of covered toddy-jugs
+was kept by Mr. Willcocks, and the other three he presented to three
+life-long friends who met frequently and regularly to play whist with
+him. One of these Washington toddy-jugs is now in a Washington
+collection in Newport. It is a foot in height and seven inches in
+diameter, of white Chinese hard porcelain. It has foliated handles,
+heavy rim, and “chimera” knob on the cover, all of gilt. On one side is
+the portrait of Washington, but by reason of the bluish shade of the
+hard porcelain it lacks the softness of the print on the Liverpool ware.
+The portrait is banded with a heavy gold edge, and in a similar gilt
+oval on the opposite side of the pitcher is a pretty cipher, B. C. W.
+
+[Illustration: Washington Monument Pitcher.]
+
+To this pitcher-portrait design, since so much honor has been paid to
+it, I will assign the first place on my Washington list.
+
+1. Washington. Head from Stuart’s Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+On oval plaques and pitchers. Described on pages 258 _et seq._, and
+shown on page 259.
+
+2. Washington. Head from Stuart’s portrait. Canton.
+
+On Chinese toddy-jug. Described on preceding page.
+
+3. Washington. Medallion head on monument. Liverpool.
+
+This oval design is printed on pitchers of three sizes. In the centre is
+a monument bearing a poor medallion portrait of Washington, surmounted
+by a laurel wreath and urn, and bearing the words “George Washington
+Born Feb 22, 1732 Died Decr. 17, 1799.” Below the coat of arms of the
+Washington family, a shield bearing five bars in chief three mullets. A
+weeping female figure leans against the monument, and a very sad eagle
+droops in the foreground, with two equally drooping willows on either
+side. Above the design are the words, “Washington in Glory,” below,
+“America in Tears.” A pitcher bearing this design is here shown.
+
+4. Washington. Medallion head. Liverpool.
+
+Similar design to No. 3, but more coarsely engraved, while the
+inscriptions are within the oval line of the print.
+
+5. Washington. Medallion. Liverpool.
+
+This is printed in black on mugs and pitchers of various sizes. One is
+shown on page 139. The portrait is mean and poor to the last degree. On
+the right stands America with the words, “Deafness to the ear that will
+patiently hear, and dumbness to the tongue that will utter a calumny
+against the immortal Washington.” On the left Liberty says, “My favorite
+Son.” Below, the inscription, “Long Live the President of the United
+States.” This, of course, was made previous to 1799, the date of
+Washington’s death.
+
+6. Washington. Portrait. Staffordshire.
+
+Printed in black. Marked F. Morris, Shelton. Liberty holds a wreath over
+the head of Washington. The inscription reads, “Washington Crowned with
+Laurels by Liberty.” This is surrounded by a chain with fifteen large
+links inclosing the names of fifteen States.
+
+7. Washington. Monument.
+
+A plate of cream-colored ware printed in dull reddish brown. Within a
+ring dotted with fifteen stars is the figure of the Goddess of Liberty,
+with a shield and olive branch. Behind her stands a pyramidal monument
+bearing a portrait of Washington and inscribed, “Sacred to the Memory of
+Washington.” On one side is seen the ocean with a ship, and at the foot
+of Liberty is an eagle and a scroll with the words, “E Pluribus Unum.”
+Around the edge of the plate are long oval medallions of stripes and
+stars.
+
+8. Washington. Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+Printed in black or red. A poor portrait of Washington, over which a
+cherub holds a wreath inclosing the word “Washington.” Justice and
+Liberty on either side of portrait, and Victory at base. A ribbon scroll
+has the names of fifteen States and incloses fifteen stars.
+
+9. Washington. Apotheosis. Liverpool.
+
+Oval print, with a label at the base, the word Apotheosis. A tomb with
+seated figures of Liberty and an Indian in the foreground. Time is
+lifting Washington, clothed in a shroud, from the tomb, while an angel
+holds the patriot’s hand and points up to rays of glory. On the tomb the
+words, “Sacred to the memory of Washington ob 17 Dec. A.D. 1799. Ae 68.”
+Outside the oval are winged cherub heads. Often under the nose of the
+pitcher is seen the motto, “A Man without Example, A Patriot without
+Reproach.” Pitchers bearing this specially hideous print seem to be
+eagerly sought after by all china collectors. It is a reduced copy of a
+large engraving three feet long and two wide, which was issued by Simon
+Chandron and John J. Barradet, in Philadelphia, in January, 1802. This
+engraving is still frequently seen in old Philadelphia homes, and was
+common enough in the middle of the century. In the large engraving many
+funny details can be seen which are lost or blurred in the pitcher
+print. For instance, the various decorations owned by Washington,
+including the Order of the Cincinnati, are proudly displayed, hanging
+over the stone of the open tomb. Sometimes the print is seen without the
+word Apotheosis. One of these pitchers is here shown.
+
+[Illustration: Apotheosis Pitcher.]
+
+10. Washington. Monument. Liverpool.
+
+This design is printed in a scalloped oval. In a landscape with water,
+ships, and a church, is a monument with a medallion portrait of
+Washington and the words: “First in War, First in Peace, First in Fame,
+First in Victory.” Fame stands on the right, and a naval officer on the
+left. In front is an American flag, cannon, swords, etc. Around the edge
+of the oval are the names of thirteen States. I have several times had a
+pitcher with this design offered to me for purchase for $8, $10, or $15,
+according to the size and condition; but I saw one in a jeweller’s shop
+in New York during the Centennial celebration in 1889, marked $150, and
+it was asserted that it was sold at that price. The revival of interest
+at that time in anything and everything that related to Washington, of
+course afforded the explanation of this enormous and absurd price.
+
+11. Washington. Medallion Portrait. Staffordshire.
+
+A poor full-face portrait, not resembling Washington, with same legend
+as No. 5. It is marked F. Morris, Shelton.
+
+12. Washington. Profile Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+This is printed in black on small pitchers. Over the portrait the
+legend, “He is in Glory, America in Tears.”
+
+13. Washington. On Horseback. Liverpool.
+
+This design appears upon a gallon bowl in the collection of the
+Connecticut Historical Society, and also upon one in a collection in
+Newport. Pitchers also have been seen with it. Washington appears
+mounted, on a battle-field, with the accompanying inscription: “His
+Excellency General George Washington, Marshal of France, and Commander
+in Chief of the North American Continental Forces.”
+
+Though this inscription dubs Washington a marshal of France, it seems
+uncertain whether the title was correctly applied. It is said that when
+Colonel Laurens was special ambassador to France, a discussion arose as
+to the command of the united armies in America. Of course Laurens
+insisted firmly that Washington must have absolute control; but Count de
+Rochambeau, an old lieutenant-general, could be commanded only by the
+king or a maréchal de France. Laurens with ready wit solved the
+difficulty by suggesting that Washington be made a maréchal. This
+suggestion was carried out, and the French at Yorktown addressed
+Washington as Monsieur le Maréchal. On the other hand, when Lamont, in
+his volume of poems, addressed Washington by his French title of
+maréchal, Washington wrote to him in 1785, saying: “I am not a marshal
+of France, nor do I hold any commission or fill any office whatever
+under that government.” This letter would appear to be conclusive
+evidence.
+
+The bowl also bears a fur-cap portrait of Franklin, the print of the
+soldier and the British lion described in No. 106, with the legend, “By
+virtue and valor we have freed our country,” and also the “spatch-cock”
+American eagle and shield.
+
+14. Washington. On Horseback. Liverpool.
+
+This print is similar to No. 13, but is apparently of earlier
+manufacture.
+
+The mounted figure has the right arm raised. One is upon an octagonal
+Liverpool plate in the Huntington Collection, and has the inscription,
+“His Excellency George Washington.”
+
+15. Washington. Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+Small portrait of Washington in black print on Liverpool pitcher, with a
+design of Liberty cap and flags, and the verses:
+
+       “As he tills your rich glebe your old peasant shall tell,
+         While his bosom with Liberty glows,
+       How your Warren expired, how Montgomery fell,
+         And how Washington humbled your foes.”
+
+16. Washington. Medallion. Liverpool.
+
+A background of weeping willows. In the foreground a monument surmounted
+by an urn and bearing a medallion portrait of Washington. Beneath this
+the arms of the Washington family, and crossed swords with palm or
+laurel branches. Above the entire design the words, “Washington in
+Glory.” This design resembles No. 3, but is smaller. On the reverse of
+the pitcher, a design of Ceres and Pomona at either side of a cannon,
+and a spread eagle with the words, “Peace, Plenty, and Independence.”
+
+17. Washington. Map of United States. Staffordshire.
+
+Printed in black on bowls, plates, and pitchers. It is thus wittily
+described by George Champlin Mason in his book on old Newport:
+“Washington and Franklin are inspecting a map of the United States,
+which shows thirteen States. Liberty and History look smilingly upon the
+pair, while Fame blows a trumpet and flourishes her heels in dangerous
+proximity to Washington’s head, who is the more prominent of the two,
+Franklin being screened in part by the pine-tree flag.” On this map
+Louisiana is called the Country of Mines, and stretches up to Lake
+Superior. The pitcher is marked F. Morris, Shelton. There are three
+slightly varying prints of this design, one having reference numbers and
+a key with the names of the figures. A bowl twelve inches in diameter
+bearing this print can be seen in the Huntington Collection at the
+Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is also one in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection. One in Newport bears the date 1796. A pitcher from the
+Trumbull-Prime Collection with this print is here shown.
+
+[Illustration: “Map” Pitcher.]
+
+18. Washington. Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+A full-face portrait of Washington, with inscription “His Excellency
+Gen^l Washington,” and the fur-cap portrait of Franklin, on the outside
+of a bowl which has on the inside a design of a full-rigged frigate, the
+Insurgente, and the same legend as No. 101. It also has the motto:
+
+                          “My love is fixed,
+                          I cannot range;
+                          I like my choice
+                          Too well to change.”
+
+19. Washington. Cameo. Wedgwood.
+
+Made in white on colored grounds and in pure white. Mentioned in
+Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787.
+
+20. Washington. Intaglio. Wedgwood.
+
+In highly polished black ware for use as a seal. Though so small a head,
+the likeness is good. In Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787. A specimen may be
+seen in Huntington Collection.
+
+21. Washington. Medallion. Wedgwood.
+
+Made both in black basalt and blue and white jasper. This head is very
+fine, and an excellent copy may be seen in the Huntington Collection.
+
+22. Washington. Bust. Wedgwood.
+
+This bust is in black basalt. The height is thirteen inches. A fine
+engraving of it may be seen in Miss Meteyard’s “Wedgwood and his Works,”
+numbered Plate XVIII. One is owned by a collector in Chicago.
+
+23. Washington. Medallion. Neale & Co.
+
+An oval medallion in pottery with the head of Washington in high relief.
+
+24. Washington. Statuette. Enoch Wood.
+
+This statuette is fifteen inches high, and is identical in dress and
+figure with the statuette of Franklin, No. 46, save that the head of
+Washington is covered with white powdered hair or a white wig, instead
+of the dark natural locks that grace the Franklin statuette. The head
+and face only are colored, though the buttons, buckles, and coat
+ornaments or frogs are gilded. It seems rather unjust in Enoch Wood to
+put the head of Washington on Franklin’s extremely rotund body. In the
+right hand of the figure is a scroll with vague lettering, and under the
+left arm a cocked hat. I know of but one of these statuettes with the
+Washington head; it is in the Huntington Collection.
+
+25. Washington. Statuette. Badin Frères.
+
+This French statuette is about ten inches in height. Washington is
+dressed in a yellow coat and blue waistcoat, and carries a scroll marked
+“Patria.” By his side is an American eagle crowing over a broken tablet
+painted with a picture of the British lion. On the pedestal in gilt
+letters, “Badin Frères, D’leurs, à Paris.” Specimen in the Huntington
+Collection.
+
+26. Washington. Statuette. Badin Frères.
+
+Statuette of glazed pottery. Washington has his foot on a thoroughly
+subdued British lion and the British flag. He carries in his hand a
+scroll with word “Independence.” Specimen in the Huntington Collection.
+The face of this statuette (as well as that of the preceding one, No.
+25) bears more of a likeness to the Rembrandt Peale portrait of
+Washington than to any other.
+
+27. Washington. Parian Pitcher.
+
+An embossed full figure of Washington on a Parian pitcher in the
+Huntington Collection. Also designs of flags and spread eagles.
+
+28. Washington. Bust. Ralph Wood.
+
+Number G. 367, in the Catalogue of the Museum of Practical Geology in
+London. It is thus described:
+
+“Bust of Washington, 10 inches high, in plain cream-colored ware, with
+impressed mark Ra. Wood, Burslem.” Ralph Wood, whose name is stamped on
+this piece, was the father of Aaron Wood and grandfather of Enoch Wood.
+
+29. Washington. Relief Portrait. Dresden.
+
+Profile portrait of Washington in relief, gilded, on _bleu de roi_
+ground. On other side similar relief portrait of Franklin. In front an
+American eagle. Dresden mark. One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection.
+
+30. Washington. Medallion. Dresden.
+
+Dresden china cup and saucer, gilded without and within. On the cup a
+blue oval medallion with exquisite head in white relief of profile
+portrait of George Washington. This beautiful piece is owned by Mrs.
+Nealy, of Washington, D. C.
+
+31. Washington. Bust.
+
+A bust of Washington in cream-colored oily pottery. It is about four
+inches in height and is one of a set comprising busts of Clay, Webster,
+Calhoun, Lafayette, Franklin, etc. I think the date of manufacture was
+about 1850. They are common in America. Specimens may be seen in the
+Huntington Collection.
+
+32. Washington. Mirror Knob.
+
+A portrait of head of Washington, in a cocked hat, on a porcelain
+mirror-knob. A transfer print in black; sometimes being printed in
+outline and filled in with pale colors. For description of mirror-knobs
+see page 159 _et seq._
+
+33. Washington. Tomb. Wood.
+
+This dark blue design represents a bewigged man with knee-breeches at
+the tomb of Washington. In his hand he carries a scroll. This print is
+usually known as “Lafayette at the tomb of Washington.” The face does
+not resemble Lafayette, and when Lafayette visited Washington’s tomb he
+wore trousers, knee-breeches being out of date. It has been suggested
+that the solitary figure is intended for Jefferson. In the background is
+a view of a town and water, with shipping. The print is usually
+indistinct and poor, though the color is good. It is seen on all the
+pieces of tea and toilet services. Impressed mark, Wood.
+
+34. Washington. Funeral Urn. Canton.
+
+The pieces bearing this design are extremely beautiful in shape,
+quality, and decoration, every detail being perfect. The owner called it
+Lowestoft, but it is plainly Oriental in manufacture, being of very
+hard-paste, and the character of the design (showing that it was
+executed after the death of Washington) would hardly point to the
+Lowestoft manufactory as its place of birth. The platters and plates
+have an open-work basket-design border lined with delicate threads of
+golden brown and gold. At each intersection of the interlaced border is
+a tiny embossed rosette colored in gilt or bronze, with a darker centre.
+The delicacy and beauty of this dainty border can hardly be described.
+In the centre of each piece, in various shades of gold—both dull and
+polished gold being combined—is a design of a funeral mound and an urn
+bearing the word “Washington,” overhung by a weeping-willow. The leaves
+and branches of this tree are models of the gilder’s art. On each piece
+are in gold the gracefully intertwined initials J. R. L., probably the
+initials of the person for whom the set was made. For beauty of design
+and workmanship these pieces excel any others I have ever seen bearing
+any so-called Washington design.
+
+35. Washington Memorial.
+
+This plate, with irregularly scalloped edge, is green in the centre,
+with red border. The decoration is a scene with a seated classical
+figure writing upon a tablet, and with a Greek temple in the background.
+The border contains four medallions of funeral urns and weeping willows.
+On the back is stamped in red a funeral urn with the word “Washington,”
+and the initials E. H. Y. S. The printing of this design is very clear
+and the lines very delicate, and the drawing is good.
+
+36. Washington. Medallion.
+
+A bowl of clear white china with plain band of gilt on the edge. On one
+side, in blue, a medallion of Washington between two flags, surmounted
+by a spread eagle. Unmarked.
+
+37. Washington. Funeral Urn.
+
+Plate with pink flower border, centre in green. A statue of Washington
+and a cinerary urn with the word “Washington.”
+
+38. Washington. Portrait.
+
+A portrait of Washington printed in black on a white stone-ware
+pitcher—apparently modern. Crossed flags painted in colors. This pitcher
+may have been made to use in a hotel or on a steamboat.
+
+Washington. Portrait.
+
+On “Emblem of America” Pitcher. See No. 98.
+
+Washington. Views of Mount Vernon.
+
+See No. 195 _et seq._
+
+Washington. Portrait. Erie Canal.
+
+See No. 166.
+
+Washington. Portrait. Erie Canal.
+
+See No. 170.
+
+Washington. Inscription. Proscribed Patriots.
+
+See No. 86.
+
+Washington. Medallion. Staffordshire.
+
+See No. 251.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIV.
+                      DESIGNS RELATING TO FRANKLIN
+
+
+The great popularity and long residence of Benjamin Franklin abroad
+would account for the many and varied ceramic relics relating to him
+that were manufactured in England and France during his lifetime, and
+that are still in existence, more varied in quality and shape even than
+those relating to Washington. Nor after his death did the production
+cease. I will place at the head of the list the most beautiful of them
+all.
+
+39. Group of Louis XVI. and Benjamin Franklin. Niderviller.
+
+[Illustration: Neiderweiler Statuette.]
+
+This lovely statuette is of purest white porcelain bisque, and is about
+twelve inches in height, and ten inches in length. The face of the
+figure of Franklin is exceedingly fine, and is, in a degree, unlike any
+other portrait of him that I have seen. It has all the benignancy and
+sweetness of expression with which we are familiar, and an added
+nobility and intelligence which is more marked and more impressive than
+in any other likeness. It is an ideal portrait of Franklin, which must
+be regarded with pleasure and interest by every historical student. The
+figure of the King is also extremely fine and imposing. The face is
+beautiful, the carriage manly, and the half suit of armor, with the long
+royal cloak of ermine, form an impressive contrast with the simple
+fur-trimmed garment of Franklin, whose figure is slightly bent, but
+still impressive. The King holds in his hand a parchment book or scroll
+bearing on one leaf in golden letters the words, “Indépendance de
+l’Amérique,” and on another leaf, “Liberté des Mers.” This group was
+made to commemorate our treaty with France in 1788. It is beautifully
+modelled and of highest artistic merit, and must take rank as the most
+important relic of our country that has yet been figulated. It bears the
+stamp “Niderviller,” and was made at that factory while it was owned by
+Count Custine. He had fought with Lafayette in the war for American
+Independence, and doubtless knew Franklin. The statue was evidently
+modelled from life. Count Custine also gave to Washington the beautiful
+tea-service described on page 244 _et seq._ Three only of these portrait
+groups of Franklin and Louis XVI. are known to exist; the only perfect
+one is owned by William C. Prime, Esq., of New York, and will form part
+of the Trumbull-Prime Collection at Princeton; from it the illustration
+here given was taken. Another imperfect one is in the possession of
+William A. Hoppin, Esq., of Providence; and a third and mutilated
+specimen is in the Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of
+Art.
+
+40. Franklin. Medallions. Nini.
+
+Some very good medallions of Benjamin Franklin were manufactured by Jean
+Baptiste Nini, who in 1760 entered the employ of M. Leray, or M. de
+Chaumont, at Chaumont. Nini was a glass engraver of rare merit, and his
+work on these medallions was very beautiful. The fine copper moulds for
+his medallions that he employed were melted down into ingots in 1820.
+His work may be known by the mark engraved in the soft-paste of “Nini,”
+or “J. B. Nini F.”—sometimes with the date. He made at least six
+different sizes of medallions of Franklin, some of which bear the date
+in relief.
+
+Franklin, writing from Passy in 1779 to his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Bache,
+speaks thus of these Nini medallions: “The clay medallion of me you say
+you gave Mr. Hopkinson was the first of the kind made in France. A
+variety of others have been made since of various sizes; some to be set
+in the lids of snuff-boxes, and some so small as to be worn in rings;
+and the numbers sold are incredible. These, with the pictures and prints
+(of which copies upon copies are spread everywhere), have made your
+father’s face as well known as that of the moon, so that he durst not do
+anything that would oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover
+him whereever he should venture to show it. It is said by learned
+etymologists that the name of doll for the image children play with is
+derived from the word idol. From the number of dolls now made of him he
+may be truly said, in that sense, to be idolized in this country.”
+
+In several other published letters Franklin speaks of making gifts of
+these medallions to his friends, and states that they were made at
+Chaumont. Madame de Campan says that they were sold at the palace of
+Versailles, and bore this motto, “_Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque
+tyrannis._”
+
+There are in the Huntington Collection several specimens of these Nini
+medallions, that collection containing in all eleven medallions of
+Franklin, many of which being unmarked it is futile to attempt to
+classify. A Nini medallion having a fine fur-cap portrait sold in the
+Governor Lyon sale for ten dollars. Mr. Huntington wrote thus to Hon.
+John Bigelow, of Nini and his medallions: “He must have had a certain
+vogue in his time, medallions of folks of the superior classes from his
+hand still turning up at sales and in curiosity shops. He did two
+Franklins—both at the Metropolitan Museum—dated and signed. The smaller
+one, with the cap, ‘1777 B. Franklin, Américain,’ was among the earliest
+of the Franklin idols made here, and has been numerously reproduced by
+French, English, and other engravers. The larger, which is of the more
+usual size of Nini’s work, is much rarer, has never been engraved from,
+as far as I know, and is to my notion one of the most finely
+characterized of all the Franklin portraits—1799 (and in some copies
+MDCCLXXIX.; you will find specimens of both in the museum), with
+Turgot’s lines for the legend. In his letter to his daughter, Passy, 3d
+of June, B. F. writes: ‘The clay medallion of me you say you gave Mr.
+Hopkinson was the first of the kind made in France.’ This must be the
+one with the cap. If the Ven. F. is correct in his statement, it would
+curiously seem that his friend Chaumont set Nini at him as soon as he
+caught the artist, to start (we should now say inaugurate) his furnace
+at Chaumont with the likeness of his friend.”
+
+41. Franklin. Medallion. Wedgwood.
+
+This appears in Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787 under the head of
+“Illustrious Moderns.” It was made in black basalt and blue and white
+jasper. There appear to have been two of these portraits; for at the
+sale of the collection of Dr. Gibson, in London, March, 1877, a blue
+jasper medallion of Dr. Franklin, by Wedgwood & Bentley, was sold for
+£12 12s., while one with the fur-cap by Wedgwood sold for £11. Specimens
+can be seen in the Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of
+Art, and in the Trumbull-Prime Collection at Princeton.
+
+42. Franklin. Cameo. Wedgwood.
+
+In Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787. Made in white on colored grounds, and
+in pure white.
+
+43. Franklin. Intaglio. Wedgwood.
+
+This is named in Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787. It was smaller, to be
+used as a seal, and was of black ware highly polished. One may be seen
+in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+
+44. Franklin. Oval Plaque. Bristol.
+
+This medallion of Franklin is upon one of Richard Champion’s exquisite
+flower-plaques. This plaque is considered by Owen to be “the most
+important” of Champion’s work. Champion was an ardent admirer of America
+and Americans, and his special veneration for Franklin evidently
+impelled him to produce this elaborate work. It is eight and a half
+inches in length, and seven and a half in width, the portrait bust being
+surrounded immediately by a laurel wreath tied with a bow-knot, and
+outside the laurel wreath by a rich wreath of roses and lilies in highly
+raised and most delicate work. Another specimen of the same medallion is
+known to exist upon a plain ground plaque, and has often been attributed
+to the Sèvres manufactory. One of these flower-plaques with the bust of
+Franklin was exhibited at the Loan Collection in New York, in 1889, by
+Dr. Caspar Wister Hodge, of Princeton, N. J. Rev. Dr. Hodge was the
+grandson of William Bache, the grandson of Franklin. Dr. Hodge’s mother
+was born in Franklin’s house in Philadelphia, and her account of the
+flower-plaque was that it was made at the Sèvres manufactory and was the
+gift of Louis XVI. to Benjamin Franklin; that it had been sent to
+America by private hands, in connection with a similar one of George
+Washington, which was surmounted by a gilt crown; and that the
+messenger, in officious democratic zeal, picked off the crown with his
+penknife before delivering the medallion.
+
+Dr. Hodge said it was a complete surprise to him, and it could not have
+been a very pleasant one, when he offered the plaque for exhibition in
+New York, to be told that it was Bristol china, and was not unique. Of
+course these latter facts might be so without destroying the other part
+of the family tradition—that it was a royal gift; but it is far more
+probable that Richard Champion presented this choice specimen of his
+work to Franklin, for in a letter to Champion, written from Paris,
+January 2, 1778, the unknown writer speaks of a visit to Franklin, and
+says: “He begs his compliments and is much obliged for your present,
+which arrived in perfect safety. He says that there is a good likeness
+with Wedgwood & Bentley’s, only with this difference, that he wears his
+hair, which is rather straight and long, instead of a wig, and is very
+high in his forehead.”
+
+In the Lewis sale of Washington relics, held in Philadelphia, in
+December, 1890, there was sold an “oval porcelain plaque with a bust of
+Benjamin Franklin in a wreath of china roses and lilies, 8½ inches by 7½
+inches.” This I believe to have been the one which tradition in the
+Hodge family says came over to Washington. Some of the Bristol
+flower-plaques had a crown above the medallion; one in Mr. Edkin’s
+Collection is illustrated in Owen’s “Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in
+Bristol.” The Franklin plaque sold in Philadelphia for ninety dollars—a
+price to make an English collector groan with envy—while the one in Mr.
+Edkin’s Collection (from which is taken the engraving in Mr. Owen’s
+book) sold in England in 1874 for £150. Dr. Hodge had an insurance of
+one thousand dollars offered to him on his Franklin plaque when it was
+in New York.
+
+45. Franklin. Medallion. Neale & Co.
+
+The head of Dr. Franklin in pottery, by Neale & Co., Hanley. It is an
+oval medallion.
+
+Franklin. Relief Portrait. Dresden.
+
+See No. 29.
+
+46. Franklin. Statuette. Wood.
+
+This pottery statue is fifteen inches in height, and is neither very
+impressive nor well modelled. One in the Huntington Collection is
+colored, Poor Richard being gayly attired in gray coat, yellow
+waistcoat, and pink breeches. He carries his hat under his left arm, and
+a scroll in his left hand. Another in the same collection is precisely
+like it, save that the head only is colored. It is labelled, in gold
+letters, “General Washington.” This mistake easily arose, for the
+statuette of Washington, described in No. 24, is exactly like this
+Franklin statuette except the head, which in the latter has flowing
+natural hair. A number of these Franklin statuettes bear the name of
+Washington, and it does not matter much, for they do not closely
+resemble either of the great Americans. This statuette is attributed to
+Ralph Wood or Enoch Wood, of Burslem. There are three of these figures
+in the Trumbull-Prime Collection, dressed in vari-colored garments, one
+being much smaller, about thirteen inches in height. But for the right
+arm being more extended, it would appear that the original mould had
+become worn and a new one cast, which in shrinking made this reduction
+in the size of this figure. One of these statuettes of Franklin in the
+S. L. M. Barlow Collection was sold in 1890 for forty-two dollars.
+
+47. Franklin. Statuette.
+
+In the Catalogue of the Museum of Practical Geology, Number G. 374, is
+described thus: “Statuette of Dr. Franklin painted in colors. Height,
+13¼ inches. Mounted on square marbled pedestal with oval yellow
+medallions in relief; unmarked. This may be a Salopian figure.” One of
+these statuettes is in the Huntington Collection; the medallions being
+in blue and white. Dr. Franklin wears in this case white breeches, blue
+waistcoat, scarlet coat, a blue ribbon with an order, and a long ermine
+cloak. This statuette is rather funny, though at first glance it is
+quite impressive. The Doctor, comparatively devoid of pendulous chin,
+stands erect and beautiful, with his head thrown back with a most
+imperious and even imperial air, to which the ermine cloak gives added
+weight and zest. He is so erect and so slender that we hardly know him.
+But when we glance at his feet, the impression of youthfulness and
+beauty vanishes. With feet several sizes too large for his figure, and
+gaudy light green slippers several sizes too large even for those feet,
+we turn away to our familiar good old dewlapped man with the fur-cap,
+and like him better than this splay-footed, ermine-cloaked plantigrade.
+
+48. Franklin. Statuette.
+
+Parian figure about seven inches in height. The likeness is good, though
+the feet are abnormally narrow and pointed; unmarked. A copy may be seen
+in the Huntington Collection.
+
+49. Franklin. Statuette.
+
+Pottery figure about seven inches in height, leaning on a pink pedestal
+decorated with raised white eagles. The coat is black, breeches yellow,
+and waistcoat pink. This gayly garbed slim young fellow does not at all
+resemble our own Franklin. The statuette is unmarked. A specimen may be
+seen in the Huntington Collection.
+
+50. Franklin. Statuette.
+
+This pottery figure is fifteen inches in height, and is in feature and
+figure and dress like No. 46, and was evidently modelled by the same
+hand. It is a poor thing, and bears but little resemblance to Franklin.
+A dilapidated specimen is in the Huntington Collection.
+
+51. Franklin. Mirror Knob.
+
+Print of Franklin in black on oval porcelain plaque in a mirror knob.
+For description of these knobs see page 159 _et seq._
+
+52. Franklin. Fur-cap Portrait.
+
+Round plate with fluted border, with splashes of purple and yellow like
+No. 81. In the centre a good rendering of the fur-cap portrait of
+Franklin. In the Huntington Collection.
+
+53. Franklin. Fur-cap Portrait.
+
+Plate with pierced border like No. 82. Well-painted portrait in centre.
+In the Huntington Collection.
+
+54. Franklin. Portrait. Dresden.
+
+A Dresden plate with flower border and good portrait of Franklin. In
+Huntington Collection.
+
+55. Franklin. Bust.
+
+Small bust of Franklin in bisque, mounted on a yellow and gold pedestal.
+Marked “Francklin.” In Huntington Collection.
+
+56. Franklin. Bust.
+
+A bust of Franklin in what appears to be modern majolica. In Huntington
+Collection.
+
+57. Franklin. Bust.
+
+White pottery bust glazed, about ten inches in height. Around the base a
+wreath of laurel. In Huntington Collection.
+
+58. Franklin. Bust.
+
+White porcelain bisque bust, five inches in height, mounted on dark blue
+and gold stand. In Huntington Collection.
+
+59. Franklin. Portrait. Dresden.
+
+A portrait of Franklin on a great cylindrical covered jar, twenty inches
+in height and eight inches in diameter. The portrait is good, though the
+mouth is exaggeratedly small and the chin exaggeratedly remultiplied. It
+is surrounded by a well-painted wreath of flowers.
+
+Franklin. Figure on Pitcher.
+
+See No. 17.
+
+Franklin. Fur-cap Portrait.
+
+See No. 13.
+
+Franklin. Emblem of America Pitcher.
+
+See No. 98.
+
+60. Franklin. Tomb.
+
+This design was printed in dark blue on dinner, breakfast, tea, and
+toilet services in vast numbers. In such large numbers, in fact, that
+the pieces with this design are cheaper than any others bearing the
+names of any historical personages. I have bought a large teapot for a
+dollar, cups and saucers for a dollar, etc. This might be classed among
+the Lafayette prints, but as we are not sure that the seated figure is
+intended for Lafayette, and Franklin cannot escape the formal witness of
+his inscribed tomb, we place it in this place in the list. A teapot
+bearing this print is here shown.
+
+[Illustration: Tomb of Franklin Teapot.]
+
+61. Franklin. Print. Fur-cap Portrait.
+
+This print is in black on pitchers and bowls. It is the fur-cap portrait
+with the glasses. The legend reads: “Benj^n Franklin Esq. LL.D. and
+F.R.S., the brave defender of the country against the oppression of
+taxation without representation—author of the greatest discovery in
+Natural Philosophy since those of Sir Isaac Newton, viz.: that lightning
+is the same with the electric fire.” See No. 18.
+
+62. Franklin. Portrait.
+
+A full-length print of Franklin on mug, with various maxims of Poor
+Richard’s.
+
+63. Franklin. Portrait.
+
+A light blue print of Franklin found on toilet services. The philosopher
+is seen flying his famous kite.
+
+64. Dr. Franklin’s Maxims.
+
+Plate of cream ware with relief border of scrolls and scallops
+intertwined, with words in ornamental capitals, “Fear God: Honour your
+Parents.” In the centre is a green print of a view of the inside and
+outside of a shop, with figures. Those within are working, those without
+are idle. Above, the words, “Dr. Franklin’s Maxims.” Below, the maxims,
+“Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee,” “If you would have your
+business done, go; if not, send.” This plate is in the possession of
+Mrs. Nealy, of Washington, D. C.
+
+65. Franklin’s Morals. Staffordshire.
+
+Dark blue plate with waving edge, and dainty border of fruit, shells,
+and flowers. In the centre a man carrying a large key. Houses and a
+bridge in the background. On the back of the plate the words,
+“Franklin’s Morals, ‘The used key is always bright.’”
+
+66. Franklin. House at Passy.
+
+Upon a beautiful Sèvres vase at the Executive Mansion in Washington is
+seen a view of Franklin’s house at Passy.
+
+67. Franklin. Portrait Plaque.
+
+Oval plaque of Italian majolica marked with inscription, “Cortoni Fab
+Alari. Beniamino Franklin, C. Brunacci Depinse.” In the Huntington
+Collection. There are also three other majolica plates and plaques in
+this collection bearing portraits of Franklin.
+
+I may say, in conclusion, what I have already shown in detail, that
+there can be no better opportunity of studying the face of Franklin, as
+shown in pottery and porcelain, than in the Huntington Collection. There
+are eleven relief medallions, eleven enamels, nine busts, six statues,
+and a large number of plates and plaques. You can also compare these
+ceramic portraits with innumerable bronzes, engravings, art gems,
+cameos, gold and silver and pewter work bearing the same serene,
+benignant face, and with some very funny though unintentional
+caricatures of Franklin by Japanese and Chinese artists, in some of
+which the well-known fur-cap has been transformed into a close crop of
+short woolly curls.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XV.
+                     DESIGNS RELATING TO LAFAYETTE
+
+
+I have never seen in America any pieces of English pottery or porcelain
+bearing the name, portrait of Lafayette, or any reference to him that
+could be assigned to an earlier date of manufacture than 1824, the time
+of Lafayette’s last visit to America. It is worthy of note, however,
+that the Lafayette pieces of crockery that were printed to commemorate
+and illustrate that memorable visit and that triumphal journey are, as a
+rule, in a much better state of preservation, freer from marks of fierce
+assaulting knives, barer of nicks and cracks, than other American
+historical pieces of the same date. The great veneration and affection
+felt by all Americans for the noble character of Lafayette, and their
+gratitude for his assistance in times of war, were doubtless the cause
+of the careful preservation of the pieces relating to him and printed in
+his honor. The fine platter shown on page 294, which is the clearest,
+darkest, “Landing” print I have ever seen, was always kept carefully
+wrapped in an ancient hand-woven “flannel sheet,” and laid away in an
+upper drawer of a high chest, a “high-boy,” in a New England farm-house,
+until it was ruthlessly removed from its honored seclusion of half a
+century, and hung on the wall of my dining-room.
+
+During the triumphal journey of Lafayette through this country in 1824,
+ladies, in honor of him, wore sashes and belt-ribbons printed with his
+name and likeness, gloves with his portrait stamped upon the back, and
+medallions with laudatory inscriptions relating to him fastened upon
+their neck-ribbons and necklaces; while men and boys wore Lafayette
+medals, medallions, and buttons. Of all these tokens few now remain; but
+the various Lafayette plates and pitchers form lasting mementos of the
+visit of the “Nation’s Guest.” Few families in New England appear to
+have had more than two or three of the Lafayette pieces, but in the
+vicinity of New York persons purchased whole dinner services, especially
+of the “Landing” pattern. Mrs. Roebling owns the remains of an entire
+set purchased by her father, General Warren. Mr. William C. Prime also
+owns an entire service.
+
+La Grange, the home of Lafayette, was a familiar scene to Americans, for
+many transparencies and paintings of the château were exhibited during
+Lafayette’s tour in 1824, and two views of it appear on plates and
+platters. With these I continue the list of historical designs and
+subjects.
+
+68. Lafayette. La Grange. Enoch Wood & Sons.
+
+This is a dingy and poorly printed view of the gloomy entrance to the
+château, with its great fir-trees, an engraving of which is seen in
+Cloquet’s “Recollections of Lafayette.” The blue is good in tint, though
+the print is indistinct. It has a poor, confused shell border. On the
+back the stamp of Enoch Wood & Sons, and the mark “La Grange, the Home
+of Lafayette.” A plate with this design is here shown.
+
+[Illustration: La Grange Plate.]
+
+69. Lafayette. La Grange 2. Wood.
+
+The superb platters with this print bear on the back, in a wreath of
+laurel, the stamp “Southwest view of Lagrange, the residence of Marquis
+La Fayette,” also the impressed stamp of Wood. The color is of the
+richest dark blue tint, a true “lapis to delight the world.” Across the
+top of the platter the border is formed in a graceful design of grapes
+and vine leaves. On the left the border is composed of finely drawn
+stalks of hollyhocks. On the right a tree and foliage form the border.
+On the lower rim is a design of fleur-de-lis and roses. The view of the
+château is different from No. 68, the whole front of the house being
+shown. A broad expanse of lawn fills the foreground, across which two
+dogs are running. Up a path on the left walk a man, woman, and child. I
+have never seen but two pieces bearing this design, both large platters
+twenty-three inches long. I purchased one for $12, which large price was
+unwillingly paid; but as I had never seen nor heard of any pieces
+bearing such a design, I could not bear to lose it when I believed it to
+be unique. Within a week after this purchase I saw the second and better
+platter and bought it for $1.50, and now I expect to find many another
+piece with this “Southwest view of Lagrange.” I give these prices to
+show the impossibility of assigning a definite value to those “old blue”
+Staffordshire pieces. One of these platters was obtained through the
+sale of the old dining-room furnishings of Barnum’s Hotel, in Baltimore.
+
+70. Lafayette. Medallion.
+
+This design is the head of Lafayette in blue on a white porcelain plate,
+with the surrounding words, “Welcome, Lafayette, the Nation’s Guest and
+our Country’s Glory.” The plate has an embossed border similar in design
+to that upon some New Hall plates in my possession. It is unmarked. The
+portrait is exceedingly ugly and mean.
+
+71. Lafayette. Portrait.
+
+A pitcher of stone-ware printed in blue, with a portrait of Lafayette on
+one side, with this legend, “In commemoration of the visit of Lafayette
+to the United States of America in 1824,” and a wreath entwined with
+these words, “Lafayette, the Nation’s Guest.” On the other side a head
+of Washington. Beneath the nose of the pitcher a spread eagle, and the
+terse sentence, “Republicans are not always ungrateful.” One may be seen
+in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. I have also seen several for sale in
+city “antique shops.”
+
+72. Lafayette. Medallion.
+
+Medallion portrait of Lafayette and similar one of Washington on common
+white stone-ware mug. Some of these mugs also have the date 1824, not
+the year of manufacture apparently, but the date simply of Lafayette’s
+visit to America.
+
+73. Lafayette. Medallion.
+
+A pitcher ten inches in height, bearing on both sides a good portrait of
+Lafayette, with this legend, “General Lafayette was born at Auvergne, in
+France. At 19 he arrived in America in a war-ship furnished at his own
+cost in 1777, & volunteered in our army as Major General. At Brandywine
+he was wounded but refused to quit the field; he assisted the army with
+£10,000 from his own purse, and kept in service until our independence
+was sealed and country free; in 1784 he returned to France loaded with
+honors and the gratitude of the American people; in 1824 the Congress
+unanimously offered a ship for his return, he declined the honor, but
+landed from the Cadmus at New York, August 24th, 1824, amid the
+acclamations of 60,000 freemen.” In front of the pitcher is another
+portrait of Lafayette in vignette, with this legend above it, “General
+Lafayette, welcome to the land of Liberty,” and below, “He was born at
+Auvergne in France, 1757, joined the American struggle in 1777, and in
+1824 returned to repose in the bosom of the land whose liberty he in
+part gave birth to.” This pitcher is globose in shape, is in a good
+shade of blue, and is unmarked.
+
+[Illustration: Cadmus Plate.]
+
+74. Lafayette. Cadmus. Enoch Wood & Sons.
+
+This was the name of the ship which brought Lafayette to America in
+1824. The stamp “Cadmus” appears on a few only of the plates, and the
+others must be classified by the knowledge of, and comparison with, the
+marked ones, or with the illustration here shown. This is an exceedingly
+beautiful plate; the graceful shell border is so rich and dark a blue,
+and the centre expanse of water and full-sailed ship and sloop are so
+distinct and bright, that it gives one the impression of looking out
+from a dark cave upon the sunny ocean. Every plate that I have seen
+bearing this design has been of the finest color, clearest print, most
+brilliant glaze, and in good preservation. They have the stamp “Enoch
+Wood & Sons.” The Cadmus was built for Mr. William Whitlock, and
+belonged to the Havre line of packet-ships organized and managed by
+William Whitlock, Jr., & Co., of 46 South Street. When this eminent
+shipping-house learned that Lafayette had declined the offer of a
+national vessel, the members at once put the Cadmus at his service,
+declining to receive any remuneration therefor. No other passengers were
+allowed on board save the General and his suite, and the ship took no
+cargo. Captain Allyn was the commander. Lafayette fully appreciated this
+initial act of American friendship and hospitality, and the first
+private house at which he dined after arriving was at Mr. Whitlock’s.
+The ship became in later years a whaling vessel. The Long Island
+Historical Society have a portion of the wood-work of the berths from
+the state-room occupied by Lafayette.
+
+75. Landing of Lafayette. Clews.
+
+Pieces bearing this print are perhaps more eagerly sought after by
+collectors, patriots, and historical students than are those bearing any
+other design. The prints are all in dark blue of good tint (except a few
+rare polychrome prints of which I shall speak), but vary in clearness
+and distinctness. It is said that whole dinner services and tea-services
+were printed with it, but I have never seen either teapots or creamers.
+I have found four sizes of plates, including the tiny cup-plates; large
+soup-plates, pitchers, platters, bowls, and vegetable-dishes, and lovely
+little pepper-pots and salt-cellars. And I have also seen an imposing
+toilet service proudly bearing in richest blue the “Landing of
+Lafayette.” The border is a handsome design of what I think is intended
+for laurel leaves (but which more resemble ash), clusters of flowers
+which are perhaps laurel blossoms, and larger flowers which may be wild
+roses, but look like jonquils. In the centre of the plates and on the
+sides of the larger dishes is a spirited design bearing at the base, in
+dark blue letters, the words, “Landing of Lafayette. At Castle Garden,
+New York, August 24th, 1824.” In the foreground of this view are
+marshals or sentinels on horseback, then comes a row of six smoking
+cannon, then the bay covered with beflagged shipping and small
+sail-boats, and two clumsy, strangely shaped steamers, the Robert Fulton
+and Chancellor Livingston, with their side-wheels quite up out of the
+water. At the right, a small bridge over the water leads to an inclosed
+fort, over which floats the flag of the United States. Over all is a sky
+of strongly defined clouds. On the back is the impressed stamp,
+“Warranted Clews Staffordshire.” A platter with this design is here
+shown. Plates of this pattern sell for from four to ten dollars,
+according to clearness, condition, and size. This design has been seen
+in polychrome. A few years ago there stood in a barroom in New York an
+enormous punch-bowl capable of holding many gallons. It bore printed or
+painted in high and varied colors the “Landing of Lafayette.” Plates and
+platters also have been offered for sale in New York with the design in
+many colors. Sometimes this design is found upon pitchers with a poor
+portrait of Lafayette.
+
+[Illustration: Lafayette Landing Platter.]
+
+Lafayette arrived in the Cadmus at Staten Island on Sunday, but
+postponed by request his entrance into New York until the following day.
+The landing at the Battery must have been a magnificent sight. The
+steamship Robert Fulton, manned by two hundred sailors from the
+Constitution, and her companion ship the Chancellor Livingston, “led in
+triumph rather than towed the Cadmus to the place of landing.” Two
+hundred thousand persons welcomed the General with shouts, cannon
+thundered from the shore, the forts, the vessels. Flags, triumphal
+arches, decorations of various kinds adorned the streets and buildings.
+For those who, when they glance at their “Landing” plates, wish to find
+the image of the General there present, I will add that he was then
+sixty-eight years of age, was conceded by all to be far from a beautiful
+or heroic figure, with his small head, staring eyes, retreating
+forehead, and bad complexion, and he wore on that occasion “nankeen
+pantaloons, buff vest, and plain blue coat with covered buttons.”
+
+76. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.
+
+A plate of coarse pottery, with border of blue and yellow leaves. At the
+top two blue and yellow flags, and in the centre of the plate this
+legend in hand-painted, irregular letters of blue:
+
+                 (“Cadet Rousette a des plats bleus
+                 Qui sont beaux, qui n’vont pas au feu;
+                 Si vous voulez en faire emplette,
+                 Adressez-vous à La Fayette.
+                 Ah! Ah! Ah! mais vraiment,
+                 Cadet Rousette est bon enfant.”
+                                 1792.)
+
+This is a good specimen of the “Faïences Patriotiques.” These
+revolutionary emblems were made at the Nevers Pottery, in France, in
+large numbers, at the time of the French Revolution. They were coarsely
+painted with patriotic, though frequently ill-spelled, designs and
+mottoes, and were designed to appeal to and influence the French
+peasantry. The great heat used in the firing prevented the potters from
+using red paint (since that color was destroyed by the high
+temperature), so in direct violation of all “rules of revolutionary
+iconology,” the liberty cap was rendered in blue or yellow. It was in
+honor of the “Fayence of Nevers” that the poem of Defraney was written
+that begins,
+
+          (“Chantons, Fille du Ciel, l’honneur de la Fayence!
+          Quel Art! dans l’Italie il reçut la naissance
+          Et vint, passant les monts, s’établir dans Nevers.
+          Ses ouvrages charmans vont au delà des mers.”)
+
+This Nevers plate is in the Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan
+Museum of Art.
+
+77. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.
+
+Plate of coarse Nevers pottery with hideous profile portrait of
+Lafayette in yellow and blue, and date 1794. Border of blue leaves. Also
+in the Huntington Collection.
+
+78. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.
+
+Plate of coarse Nevers pottery with scroll border of green, yellow, and
+blue. A full-face portrait of Lafayette in bright yellow, with purple
+hair. In the Huntington Collection.
+
+79. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.
+
+Large plate of Nevers pottery, fourteen inches in diameter, with
+slightly scalloped edge. In the centre a design of a long-legged bird
+with man’s head, saying, “La Fayette, Je tends mes filets.” The bird
+tramples under foot, or under claw, a head marked “le Roi Soliveau,” and
+is addressing his remarks to a head on a pole with a flag marked “Loi
+Martiale.” There is also a network or fence inclosing frogs. Above all,
+the inscription, “Les grenouilles qui demandent un Roi, ou le Roi
+Soliveau.”
+
+80. Lafayette. Portrait. Sèvres.
+
+A Sèvres plate with an exquisitely painted portrait of Lafayette in full
+uniform. A rich border of red, blue, and gold. In the Huntington
+Collection.
+
+81. Lafayette. Portrait.
+
+Square plate with fluted border, with splashes of purple and yellow,
+like No. 52. A spray of flowers in each corner. In the centre a fine
+profile portrait of Lafayette in full uniform. In the Huntington
+Collection.
+
+82. Lafayette. Portrait.
+
+Plate with pierced border like No. 53. In the centre the same portrait
+as in No. 81. In the Huntington Collection.
+
+83. Lafayette. Bust.
+
+Bust four inches in height. One of same set described in No. 31. One can
+be seen in Huntington Collection.
+
+84. Lafayette. Medallion.
+
+White porcelain profile medallion about two inches and a half in
+diameter. No mark.
+
+Lafayette. At the Tomb of Franklin.
+
+Were we sure that the figure in this design is Lafayette, it would
+properly be placed here, but it is very uncertain whether the seated
+mourner is Lafayette, or merely some sombre-minded, non-historical,
+though patriotic citizen; so a description and illustration of this
+design will be found among the Franklin Prints, No. 60.
+
+Lafayette. At the Tomb of Washington.
+
+See No. 33. The figure in this design may not be that of Lafayette.
+
+Lafayette. Portrait. Erie Canal.
+
+See No. 166. The presence of Lafayette at the formal opening of the Erie
+Canal was naturally felt to be a great honor, hence the appearance of
+his name on many of the plates; but as the other design is more
+prominent it is classed under that name.
+
+There are many modern Parian busts of poor likeness and indifferent
+artistic merit, and occasional hand-painted plaques of Lafayette, but
+they hardly come within the intentions and purpose of this list.
+
+
+
+
+                                  XVI.
+                    PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL DESIGNS
+
+
+The heroes and the naval battles of the War of 1812 furnished manifold
+subjects for the designs printed on a vast number of mugs and pitchers.
+They were made and printed at the Liverpool and Staffordshire pot-works
+to supply the American trade, and were imported in great numbers to this
+country. English potters appeared to have none of that form of patriotic
+pride and independence that would prevent them from celebrating and
+perpetuating the virtues and victories of their late enemies, or hinder
+them from printing inscriptions and verses insulting to their native
+land and their fellow-countrymen; they were plainly and unsentimentally
+mercenary. These portraits, mottoes, and battle-scenes appear in various
+combinations of subjects, sometimes in juxtaposition with Washington
+designs. Occasionally a mammoth pitcher is found—a dozen pitchers rolled
+into one—decorated with a dozen different but generic prints. Such is
+the great heroic vessel known as the “Historical Pitcher of the War of
+1812.” It was made by Enoch Wood & Sons of Burslem, Staffordshire,
+England, about 1824, by the order of Horace Jones, Esq., of Troy, N. Y.
+It is now owned by his grandson, Horace Jones Richards, Esq., of the
+same city. It stands twenty inches in height, and measures twenty inches
+from the end of the spout to the extreme point of the handle. The body
+is eighteen inches in diameter—a foot and a half, and it holds eleven
+and a half gallons. It has an embossed border around the top, and is
+decorated with a coarse design in copper-lustre and green. On the front
+of the pitcher is the name of the purchaser, Horace Jones, and around
+the body are various prints that are often seen singly on other and
+smaller pitchers. In front, about five inches above the base of the
+pitcher, is a small projection or knob. This served as a second handle
+by which to carry the pitcher (for it is a great weight when filled—if
+it ever is filled), and it formed also a support to rest on the edge of
+a smaller vessel when pouring from the pitcher. On either side of this
+small handle are portraits of Washington and Adams. There are on one
+side of the great pitcher-body portraits of Captain Jones, of the
+Macedonian, Major-General Brown, of the Niagara campaign, Commodore
+Bainbridge, of the Constitution. Below these portraits a circle of
+prints representing the Constitution escaping from the British fleet;
+Commodore Macdonough’s victory on Lake Champlain, and a large American
+eagle with the motto, “E Pluribus Unum.” On the other side of the
+pitcher are the portraits of Commodore Decatur, Commodore Perry, and
+Captain Hull, of the Constitution; below are the engagements between the
+Chesapeake and Shannon off Boston Harbor, June 1, 1813, and Commodore
+Perry’s victory on Lake Erie. Below the large handle on the right are
+two views of the manufactory and the names of the makers, and on the
+left a naval monument with flags and motto, “We have met the enemy and
+they are ours.”
+
+This pitcher arrived in Troy a short time before Lafayette made his
+visit to that city in 1824, and was first publicly used at the reception
+given to him September 18, 1824. Since then it has been used on many
+notable occasions. A bill was introduced to the State Legislature in
+Albany, in the spring of 1891, for the purchase of this pitcher and its
+preservation in the State Library. The purchase sum required was three
+hundred and fifty dollars. The bill did not pass. It is a pity it cannot
+be in the possession of the National Museum at Washington, since the
+State of New York did not care to preserve it as a relic.
+
+There are some designs of the American eagle and flag, and a few
+relating to men of Revolutionary times, which may be assigned, though
+without any positiveness, to the period between the War of the
+Revolution and the War of 1812. With these prints I resume the list of
+American subjects.
+
+85. John Adams. Portrait.
+
+A pitcher, eight inches in height, printed in black, with a very good,
+though coarse, portrait of Adams, and the inscription, “John Adams,
+President of the United States.” Underneath is a design of two fat
+cherubs tying up a parcel and bundles—possibly an idealization of
+emigration. The print is signed “F. Morris, Shelton, Staffordshire.”
+Strange to say, this pitcher was purchased in Chester, England.
+
+86. Proscribed Patriots. Liverpool.
+
+A design printed in black on pitchers, and here shown. On the side a
+medallion with a willow-tree and monument. On the monument the
+inscription, “G. W. Sacred to the memory of G. Washington, who
+emancipated America from slavery and founded a republic upon such just
+and equitable principles that it will” (remainder illegible). Around
+this medallion the legend, “The Memory of Washington and the Proscribed
+Patriots of America. Liberty, Virtue, Peace, Justice, and Equity to all
+Mankind.” Under this, “Columbia’s Sons inspired by Freedom’s Flame Live
+in the Annals of Immortal Fame.” Under the monument are portraits of
+Samuel Adams and John Hancock, and the letters S. A. and J. H.; and
+under these a beehive and cornucopia. On the front of the pitcher is the
+American eagle and shield, with inscription, “Peace, Commerce, and
+Honest Friendship with all Nations, Entangling Alliances with none.
+Jefferson. Anno Domini 1804.” Under the handle, “Fame,” in clouds.
+
+[Illustration: Proscribed Patriots Pitcher.]
+
+87. William Franklin. Medallion. Wedgwood.
+
+Two blue and white jasper medallions of the son of Benjamin Franklin.
+These medallions appear in Wedgwood’s “List of Illustrious Moderns.”
+William Temple Franklin was the last Royalist governor of New Jersey,
+but his claim to fame rests only on his being the son of his father. Two
+of these medallions are in the Huntington Collection.
+
+Samuel Adams. Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+On Proscribed Patriots Pitcher. See No. 86.
+
+88. Jefferson. Name in Inscription.
+
+On a pitcher bearing a portrait of the American eagle, with motto, “E
+Pluribus Unum,” are these stanzas:
+
+               “Sound, Sound the trump of Fame,
+               Let Jefferson’s great name
+               Ring through the world with loud applause
+               As the firm friend of Freedom’s cause.
+
+               “Let every clime to freedom dear
+               Now listen with a joyfull ear.
+               With honest pride and manly grace
+               He fills the Presidential place.
+
+               “The Constitution for his guide,
+               And Truth and Justice by his side,
+               When hope was sinking in dismay,
+               When gloom obscured Columbia’s day,
+               He mourn’d his country’s threaten’d fate
+               And sav’d it ere it was too late.”
+
+Jefferson. Quotation. Liverpool.
+
+See No. 127.
+
+Jefferson. At Tomb. Staffordshire.
+
+See No. 33.
+
+Jefferson. Portrait. Staffordshire.
+
+See No. 166.
+
+89. John Hancock. Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+A black print on a mug. On a ribbon scroll the inscription, “The
+Honorable John Hancock.”
+
+John Hancock. Portrait. Liverpool.
+
+On Proscribed Patriots Pitcher. See No. 86.
+
+John Hancock. House.
+
+See No. 157.
+
+90. Montgomery. Battle-Scene. Liverpool.
+
+Black print on a pitcher of a battle-scene entitled “The Death of
+Montgomery.” One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+
+91. Warren. Battle-Scene. Liverpool.
+
+Black print on a Liverpool pitcher of a battle-scene, with name “The
+Death of Warren.” One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+
+92. American Eagle. Sailor Pitcher. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with an American spread eagle over the words
+“Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool.” On one side waves and a full-rigged
+ship bearing American flag; sometimes printed in black, and often
+coarsely colored by hand. This print is often seen on sailor pitchers
+with other prints of different designs. On the other side, a sailor’s
+ballad surrounded by wreath of flowers, with engraver’s signature, “Jo^h
+Johnson, Liverpool.”
+
+93. American Eagle. Masonic Pitcher. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with American eagle and shield. On the other side,
+Masonic emblems. There were a vast number of these Masonic designs, one
+is shown on page 147, and as they were not specially American, though
+doubtless made largely for Americans, it is useless to specify them.
+
+94. Ship Alligator.
+
+A pitcher with view of the ship Alligator on one side. On the reverse a
+spread eagle, with a scroll border in gilt containing the names of
+fifteen States.
+
+95. Mug. Union to the People.
+
+A mug of Liverpool ware printed with a group of three men clasping
+hands. They are supposed to be Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, but may be
+any other American statesmen. Above the group, a liberty cap with the
+words “Union to the People.” Below are branches with leaves and the
+legend, “Civil and Religious Liberty to all Mankind.”
+
+96. Salem Ship-building. Liverpool.
+
+Two prints representing scenes of timber-rolling and ship-building,
+intended to commemorate the era of great prosperity in Salem ship-yards.
+They are accompanied with these verses:
+
+     “Our mountains are covered with Imperial Oak
+       Whose Roots like our Liberties Ages have Nourish’d;
+     But long e’er our Nation submits to the Yoke
+       Not a Tree shall be left on the Field where it flourish’d.
+
+     “Should invasion impend, Every Tree would Descend
+       From the Hilltops they shaded Our Shores to defend;
+     For ne’er shall the Sons of Columbia be slaves
+       While the Earth bears a Plant, or the Sea rolls its waves.”
+
+The finest specimen of Liverpool ware bearing these prints and verses is
+a great punch-bowl, eighteen inches in diameter, in the rooms of the
+East India Marine Society in Salem. It also bears on the inside of the
+bowl, in large letters, the name of the Society and other inscriptions,
+and the date 1800. Pitchers also are found with these prints, and also
+with the spread eagle with the mark “Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool.”
+One may be seen in the rooms of the Bostonian Society in the old
+State-House, Boston. These prints are perhaps the most pretentious of
+any made for commercial interests in this country, and are usually very
+clear and good.
+
+97. Plan of City of Washington. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with black print of a map between two female
+figures. Inscription, “Plan of the City of Washington.” On reverse is
+Washington design No. 13.
+
+98. Emblem of America. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with a coarse black print of a female figure holding
+the American flag, and facing two clumsily-drawn, stumpy Indians. In the
+background a group of oval portraits labelled Raleigh, Columbus,
+Franklin, Washington, etc. The legend “An Emblem of America.” On the
+reverse a Washington design.
+
+99. Crooked Town of Boston. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher printed in black, red, or green, with inscription,
+“Success to the Crooked but Interesting Town of Boston.” On the other
+side a long ballad, varying on different pitchers.
+
+100. Liberty. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with black print. Design, a seated figure of Liberty
+with the legend, “May Columbia Flourish.”
+
+101. Infant Navy. Naval Pitcher.
+
+This design is found on Liverpool pitchers of at least four sizes. Under
+the nose of the pitcher is in large letters the inscription, “Success to
+the Infant Navy of the United States.” On the side of the pitcher
+sometimes was seen a black transfer print of a full-rigged ship,
+sometimes the American flag and eagle, sometimes a large print of a
+naval battle with this printed motto, “L’Insurgente French Frigate of 44
+guns and 411 Men striking her Colours to the American Frigate
+Constitution, Commodore Truxton, of 40 guns, after an action of an hour
+and a half in which the former had 75 Men killed & wounded & the latter
+one killed & three wounded, Feb. 20th, 1799.” A very good pitcher with
+the latter design may be seen at Washington’s Headquarters, at
+Morristown. See also No. 18, and pages 141 _et seq._
+
+102. American Flag.
+
+This print is found on pitchers and mugs, sometimes colored over the
+print. It is found on pieces with various other Washington and Sailor
+prints.
+
+103. For America. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with the Farmers Arms, described on pages 153 _et
+seq._ Legend, “For America.”
+
+104. Peace and Prosperity to America. No. 1.
+
+Liverpool pitcher printed in red, with scrolls of pink lustre. The
+design is a shield supported by two female figures; the word “New York”
+on the top of the shield in large letters, and the names of twelve other
+States, including Boston, on a ribbon scroll. Legend, “Peace, Plenty and
+Independence.” On the other side a shield supported by an eagle and an
+Indian. Legend, “Success to the United States of America, E Pluribus
+Unum.” In front of pitcher the motto, “Peace and Prosperity to America.”
+
+105. Peace and Prosperity to America. No. 2.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with a wreath of ribbons and stars bearing names of
+eleven States, two of them being “Boston” and “Tenassee.” In centre of
+wreath the words, “Peace, Plenty, and Independence.” This wreath forms a
+medallion or shield supported by two female figures, each with a
+cornucopia. Above the medallion an eagle and flag. On the front of the
+pitcher, the motto, “Peace and Prosperity to America.” This much
+resembles No. 104.
+
+106. United States Soldier.
+
+Liverpool pitchers and bowls with black or red print of United States
+soldier standing with his foot on the head of a British Lion. Legend,
+“By Virtue and Valor we have freed our Country, extended our Commerce,
+and laid the foundation of a Great Empire.” In the background stand four
+Continental soldiers.
+
+107. Liberty. Naval Pitcher.
+
+A black print of ribbon scroll with names of sixteen States, enclosing
+verses beginning,
+
+                     “Oh Liberty! thou goddess
+                       Heavenly bright,
+                     Profuse of bliss,
+                       And pregnant with delight.”
+
+On the reverse, a print of a ship with American flag.
+
+108. People of America.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher with a print of three men holding hands and
+elevating a liberty cap on a pole. Underneath, “People of America” on a
+scroll, and the words, “Civil and Religious Liberty to All Mankind.” On
+the reverse, Liberty seated, and a soldier standing with a harp between
+the two figures. Beneath, the words “Tun’d to Freedom for our Country.”
+
+109. Historical Pitcher of War of 1812.
+
+Described on page 299 _et seq._
+
+110. American Heroes.
+
+Pitcher printed in copper-lustre. On one side a full-rigged ship
+surrounded by a chain of elliptical links containing the names, Hull,
+Jones, Lawrence, Macdonough, Porter, Blakey, Beatry, Stuart, Washington,
+Perry, Rogers, Bainbridge, Decatur. Above are two clasped hands holding
+the chain. On the other side is the American eagle with “E Pluribus
+Unum,” and a similar enclosing chain with clasped hands and the names
+Brown, McComb, Ripley, Pike, Porter, Miller, Bainbridge, Izard, Van
+Rensallaer, Adair, Lewis, Gaines, Scott, Jardson. This pitcher is
+globose in shape, and of fine quality of ware.
+
+111. Naval Pitcher. Liverpool.
+
+This print of two men-of-war in a close engagement, appears with various
+names. A pitcher is here shown with the words Macedonian and the United
+States.
+
+[Illustration: Naval Pitcher.]
+
+112. Perry. Portrait.
+
+A white pottery plate with a black print of the portrait of Commodore
+Perry, surrounded by a design of flags, cannon, and a frigate; above the
+name “Perry.” The edge is scalloped, with a black border. Impressed
+mark, “Davenport.” This design appears on pitcher described in No. 115.
+
+113. Perry. Portrait.
+
+A white pottery plate with a black print. In the centre, a full-length
+portrait of Commodore Perry surrounded by a design of flags,
+powder-kegs, cannon, and a full-rigged frigate. Above the name “Perry.”
+The plate has a scalloped edge with a black border.
+
+114. Perry. Portrait.
+
+A portrait of Commodore Perry with the name O. H. Perry, Esq. On a
+ribbon scroll, the legend, “We have met the enemy and they are ours,”
+the words of Perry’s famous despatch. Under this, the words, “Hero of
+the Lake.” See page 142 for description of Perry at this battle.
+
+115. Jackson. Portrait.
+
+A large globose pitcher with a portrait of Jackson, and the words “Major
+General Andrew Jackson.” On the other side same portrait of Perry as No.
+112. This print is also seen upon plates.
+
+116. Decatur. Portrait.
+
+A portrait of Decatur on a mug. Above, the words “Commodore Decatur;”
+below, on a ribbon, the famous war-motto, “Free Trade Sailors Rights.”
+The old ballad says,
+
+                  “Then quickly met our nation’s eyes
+                    The noblest sight in Nature,
+                  A first-class frigate as a prize
+                    Brought back by brave Decatur.”
+
+117. Lawrence. Portrait. Newcastle.
+
+A portrait of Lawrence in copper-lustre on cream-ware pitcher, with
+motto, “Don’t surrender the ship.” His dying words, “Don’t give up the
+ship,” have become a national watchword. On the other side of pitcher, a
+portrait of Decatur, with his name.
+
+118. Bainbridge. Portrait.
+
+A mug with a portrait of Bainbridge, with words, “Commodore Bainbridge,”
+and his characteristic words, “Avast, boys, she’s struck!” Commodore
+Bainbridge commanded the Constitution—Old Ironsides.
+
+                 “On Brazil’s coast She ruled the roost
+                 When Bainbridge was her Captain.”
+
+119. Hull. Portrait.
+
+A pitcher bearing portrait of Captain Hull, and the words, “Captain
+Hull, of the Constitution.” On the other side, a portrait with the
+words, “Captain Jones, of the Macedonian.”
+
+120. Pike. Portrait.
+
+A pitcher with the portrait of General Z. M. Pike; above it the word
+“Pike;” below, his noble words, “Be always ready to die for your
+country.” On the other side, a portrait and name, “Captain Jones, of the
+Macedonian.” A specimen can be seen in the collection of the Bostonian
+Society in the old State-House in Boston.
+
+121. Pike. Portrait.
+
+Same portrait of Pike and same legend as No. 120. On the other side,
+portrait of Hull and legend, “Captain Hull, of the Constitution.”
+
+122. Jones. Portrait.
+
+Plate with a portrait of Captain Jones printed in blue in the centre,
+with a ship on the left and flags on the right. Black shell border.
+Impressed mark, “Davenport.” This description was given me by Mr. Prime.
+
+Jones. Portrait.
+
+See No. 120.
+
+123. Preble. Portrait.
+
+A pitcher with a good portrait of Preble, signed “D,” with a figure of
+Fame on one side and the American flag on the other, and the name
+“Commodore Preble.” On the other side of the pitcher, a well-drawn oval
+print of ships attacking fortifications. Above, the inscription
+“Commodore Preble’s Squadron Attacking the City of Tripoli Aug 3. 1804.
+The American Squadron under Commodore Preble consisting of the
+Constitution 44 guns 2 Brigs & 3 Schooners 2 bombs & 4 Gunboats
+Attacking the City and Harbour of Tripoli Aug 3, 1804. the city was
+defended by Batteries Mounting 115 Pieces of heavy Cannon & the Harbour
+was defended by 19 Gunboats 2 Brigs 2 Schooners 2 Gallies and a Zebeck.
+the city Received Great Damage Several of the Tripolitan Vessels were
+sunk 3 of their Gunboats taken & a Great Number of Men Killed.” On the
+front of the pitcher is the American spread eagle and the words,
+“Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool.”
+
+124. Trophy.
+
+Pitchers printed in lustre and purple with a trophy of arms and the
+verses,
+
+                 “United & Steady in Liberties Cause,
+                 We’ll ever defend our Countries Laws.”
+
+Under the nose the legend,
+
+                “May the tree of Liberty ever flourish.”
+
+125. Macdonough. Bombardment of Stonington.
+
+A pitcher of cream ware with a black print entitled “The Gallant Defense
+of Stonington Aug 9th 1814.” It represents that famous defence when the
+inhabitants of the town, with one gun successfully resisted the attack
+of the British force of several vessels, sinking one ship and driving
+off the others. Underneath, the legend, “Stonington is free whilst her
+heroes have one gun left.” On the other side is the print of a ship with
+the words, “United States Frigate Guerriere, Com. MacDonough bound to
+Russia July 1818.” Mr. Prime says that a citizen of Stonington who went
+to Russia on public service in the Guerriere ordered these pitchers in
+Liverpool. He may have made the drawing of the battle for the engraver.
+
+Macdonough. Victory on Lake Champlain.
+
+Dark blue print on Staffordshire ware. See No. 188.
+
+126. Naval Battle.
+
+A globose pitcher printed in vermillion with a design of a naval battle.
+Underneath, the words “The Wasp and The Reindeer.”
+
+127. Militia. Liverpool.
+
+A Liverpool pitcher, twelve inches in height, bearing an oval medallion
+with design of cannon, flags, etc., with a man in full militia uniform.
+Above, this legend, “America! whose Militia is better than Standing
+Armies.” At base, within the medallion, “May its Citizens emulate
+Soldiers, its Soldiers Heroes.” Below all, the lines:
+
+       “While Justice is the throne to which we are bound to bend
+       Our Countries Rights and Laws we ever will defend.”
+
+Under the nose of the pitcher is the spread eagle, with this legend,
+“Peace Commerce and honest Friendship with All Nations Entangling
+Alliances with None; Jefferson.” This pitcher is printed in black and is
+painted in colors. It was made in 1808, in Liverpool, for a Narragansett
+sea-captain.
+
+DeWitt Clinton. Portrait. Erie Canal.
+
+See No. 166.
+
+DeWitt Clinton. Monogram.
+
+See No. 172.
+
+DeWitt Clinton. Eulogy.
+
+See No. 168.
+
+128. Steamship.
+
+Printed in red on a cream-ware tea-service. On the large pieces are two
+views, one a steamship at sea, with land and a fort in distance. The
+ship floats American flag, and has the smoke-stack nearly as tall as the
+mast. The other view, a ship flying American flag over the British,
+approaching a shore upon which lies an anchor. An American eagle on the
+shore holds a laurel branch among the stars. The scroll border is in
+purple lustre. This is apparently Newcastle ware. Specimens can be seen
+at the rooms of the Essex Institute, in Salem.
+
+129. Liberty Medallion. Head.
+
+Embossed head of Liberty on Castleford teapots. The same head used on
+gold coins of United States of 1795.
+
+130. Liberty Medallion. Figure.
+
+Embossed figure of Liberty seated. Found on Castleford wares.
+
+131. American Eagle. Medallion.
+
+Embossed eagle and shield on Castleford wares. Same as die on United
+States gold coin of 1797.
+
+132. Harrison. Pitcher. American Pottery Co.
+
+This pitcher is the most interesting piece of American pottery bearing
+an historical design that I have ever seen. The dealer who offered it to
+me asserted that only six were ever manufactured. He also said that he
+could easily procure dozens of Washington pitchers that were _two
+hundred years old_, but that I would find it hard to get a _colonial_
+pitcher with a picture of Harrison on it. To this latter assertion I
+warmly agreed. It was six-sided, bulging in the middle to a diameter of
+about nine inches, about eleven inches in height, and with a foliated
+handle and scalloped lip. It was of coarse-grained brownish pottery,
+darker in shade than Liverpool ware. On four of its sides the pitcher
+bore a view of a small log-cabin above a good portrait of Harrison, with
+the words, “The Ohio Farmer W. H. Harrison.” Below all, a spread eagle.
+On the bottom of the pitcher was printed in black, “Am. Pottery Manf^y
+Co., Jersey City.” It is the only piece of American ware with printed
+decorations similar to Liverpool ware that I have ever seen.
+
+133. Columbian Star. Jno. Ridgway.
+
+This plate, which is printed in light blue, is popularly known as the
+“Log-cabin” plate. In the centre is a domestic scene of a log-cabin with
+open door, and a woman and child are seated outside watching a man who
+is ploughing a field in the foreground. A “lean-to” joins the house,
+beneath which stands the cider barrel of “hard cider.” A man in the
+background is chopping stumps. A small river bears a canoe with a single
+figure. Across the stream is a flagstaff with an American flag.
+Pine-trees are grouped near the cabin, and abundant smoke rises from the
+chimney. The border is composed of large stars set in a firmament of
+small ones. The inscription is, “Columbian Star. Oct. 20, 1840. Jno.
+Ridgway.” It will be remembered that William Henry Harrison was elected
+President in the fall of 1840. This plate is owned by Mrs. Nealy, of
+Washington, D. C.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVII.
+                          STAFFORDSHIRE WARES
+
+
+No ceramic specimens are of more interest to the American china
+collector than the pieces of dark blue Staffordshire crockery that were
+manufactured in such vast variety of design, and were imported in such
+great numbers to America in the early years of this century. Their
+beauty of color—the color called by the Chinese “the light of heaven,” a
+blue like the lapis the Bishop wished for his tomb at St. Praxed’s, a
+tint unexcelled and hardly equalled in modern wares—makes them a
+never-ceasing delight to the eye; and the historical character of the
+decoration frequently adds to their interest and value. Mr. Prime wrote
+in 1876 of these pieces of crockery, “they have ceased to be common, are
+indeed becoming rare, and collectors will do well to secure good
+specimens.” Since that year specimens have become rarer and more
+valuable still. The Staffordshire pieces that date from the year 1830 to
+1850, though still printed with American views, are lighter and duller
+in tint of blue, and are more frequently stamped in green, pink, sepia,
+chocolate, black, or plum color. The designs, as well as the colors, are
+weaker, as if fading gradually and dying into the vast expanse of
+dead-white crockery and china which spread its uninteresting level over
+the tables of country folk for the quarter of a century that elapsed
+before the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, that turning-point in
+household art decoration in America.
+
+[Illustration: Pickle Leaf.]
+
+The shapes of the pieces of table-ware also became degraded, and were
+not so graceful as the Staffordshire tea and dinner sets of the first
+quarter of this century. One specially pretty piece that came with many
+dark blue dinner sets of the latter-named date was the low fruit-dish
+with its tray, both with pierced basket-work borders. The pickle leaves
+also were gracefully shaped. The pitchers, both of the table and toilet
+sets, were graceful, and “poured” well, that most important, and
+ofttimes lacking, attribute of pitchers. Both basins and pitchers of
+toilet sets were, however, inconveniently small. There was also not the
+monotony of design which we find nowadays on sets of china. I mean that
+all the pieces of a set were not stamped with the same design. I am
+convinced that the tea-sets, such as the familiar Tomb of Washington and
+Tomb of Franklin design, seldom were furnished with a set of plates
+bearing the same decoration, but consisted only of teapot, water-pot,
+creamer, slop-bowl, sugar-bowl, and occasionally two cake-plates. The
+copper-lustre china tea-sets of the early part of the century seldom had
+tea-plates like the rest of the sets.
+
+[Illustration: Philadelphia Library Plate.]
+
+It was only the most popular and universally widespread designs, such as
+that of the Landing of Lafayette or the Pilgrim, or the Boston
+State-House, that were found on all the pieces of dinner services and
+sold together. Sets were formed, usually having the same border, with
+different designs on the different-sized plates. We found in the summer
+of 1891, under the eaves of an old farm-house in Worcester County, a
+painted blue sea-chest which contained a sight to make a china hunter
+both smile and weep. The dust of years covered the chest, the floor, the
+ladder-like stairs that led to the attic. Every step of the staircase
+had to be cleared for our climbing entrance of the accumulated and
+forgotten autumn stores of what had been ears of seed-corn, but were now
+only rat-nibbled cobs, bunches of cobwebbed herbs, broken chairs, dried
+and withered gourds and pumpkins. The house-mistress frankly
+acknowledged that she hadn’t “been up garret for years,” she had been
+“so poorly and tissicky.” We smiled when we opened the lid of the chest
+and saw the familiar and much-loved color, the color of our guiding star
+in our search, the rich, dark blue. But we grieved as we lifted the
+pieces out, for fully half of them were broken. There was an entire
+dinner service of the “Beauties of America,” set of J. & W. Ridgway. All
+had the same medallion border that is here shown on the Philadelphia
+Library plate. As the chief beauties of America in those days were not
+fair maids, but almshouses, all the larger dishes and tureens bore
+monotonously ugly views of square and many-windowed almshouses. The
+views on the gravy tureens, with their little accompanying platters,
+were all of the Exchange at Charleston; the large platters were of the
+Capitol at Washington; the smaller, of the Boston Hospital. The twelve
+dinner plates bore a view of New York City Hall; the breakfast-plates
+were of the Philadelphia Library; the soup-plates all bore the view of
+the Boston Octagon Church; little plates six inches and a half in
+diameter had a view of the Boston Insane Hospital; the pickle leaves and
+handleless bowls of the ladles were still different, bearing a small,
+unnamed house with the same border. Tumbled in a crushed heap in the
+corner of the chest was the saddest sight of all, a superb old Worcester
+cream-pitcher, four pieces of Plymouth porcelain, an India china
+tea-set, three Pilgrim plates, all broken, surmounted by two heavy
+tankards which the owner thought were pewter, but which were solid
+silver. They are all there still, huddled in sad fragments in the old
+blue chest; and the Staffordshire dinner set also, for the owner, though
+ignorant of the value of the crockery and china, of their number even,
+and their condition, still “couldn’t spare them” when we asked to buy
+the whole pieces and thus rescue them from the sad fate of their
+brothers. The wife was deaf and poor and sick, and the husband looked
+sicker and poorer still, but both were stubborn, good-temperedly
+stubborn, in their assertion that they “couldn’t spare them.” We sat
+down in the dust of the floor and begged; we raised our offer to city
+prices; we offered to send another dinner set of French china to replace
+the Staffordshire one, but all in vain; we drove away and returned again
+to use fresh entreaties; the owner did not care for the “old crockery;”
+scorned the assertion that the tankards were silver, and threw them
+carelessly back into the chest; had no association with the pieces, no
+sentiment against selling them; but he “couldn’t spare them.”
+
+It is difficult to find a full dinner set of the old Staffordshire dark
+blue ware. The scattering of families and consequent division of
+property, the destruction through every-day careless use, have seldom
+left so full a set as the one just described. The Ridgways issued
+another set of views of the various colleges and buildings of English
+universities. The stamp on the back was in blue, a pointed oval, about
+three inches long, with words, “Opaque China, J. & W. Ridgway;” in the
+centre of the mark was the individual name of the building in the
+design.
+
+A great number of these pieces appeared in the antique shops in the
+winter of 1890, through the sale of the dining-room furnishings of an
+old hotel in Baltimore, which must have consisted largely of this set of
+college views. The owners sold all the old blue and white table
+crockery, the old substantial and beautiful Sheffield plated trays and
+tea-sets, and bought nice new American “hotel ware” and shining
+electro-plated silver.
+
+The name Cambridge on many of these University plates enabled some
+unscrupulous or ignorant dealers to palm off the college views of that
+University to a few thoughtless buyers, at high prices, as views of
+Harvard College, in Cambridge, Mass. Views of private residences in
+London are frequently found in America with the same border as the
+University pieces, a wreath of convolvulus broken by pretty cameo-like
+medallions of boys playing with goats.
+
+All these English views are exceedingly useful for wall decorations,
+especially for high shelves, or as a background for lighter-colored bits
+of china, where it is not necessary that the design of the decoration
+should be carefully distinguished; and their vast variety makes them a
+constantly interesting subject for investigation and purchase. I have
+seen one collection of over two hundred Staffordshire plates bearing
+each a different English view, and I have seen many scores—perhaps
+hundreds—still different.
+
+Some of the richest pieces of color are the dark blue plates printed
+with the “Wilkie Designs,” such as the well-known Letter of
+Introduction, and the much sought after Valentine design. The Don
+Quixote series is also good. Equally glorious and resplendent in color
+are pieces bearing the Dr. Syntax designs. I have seen only plates and
+tureens with the latter. These Syntax plates have an additional source
+of interest in the wit of the humorous scenes that they represent. “Dr.
+Syntax’s Noble Hunting Party,” “Dr. Syntax Upsets the Beehive,” “Dr.
+Syntax Painting the Portrait of his Landlady,” “Dr. Syntax Star-Gazing,”
+“Dr. Syntax Reading his Tour.” These I have seen, and there are
+doubtless many others. They were printed from a set of pictures drawn by
+Thomas Rowlandson, one of the most celebrated designers of his day of
+humorous and amusing subjects. They were drawn to illustrate a book
+published by William Combe, in 1812, called “Dr. Syntax’s Tour in Search
+of the Picturesque.” A second tour, “In Search of Consolation,” appeared
+in 1820. This was also illustrated by Rowlandson. A third tour, “In
+Search of a Wife,” was printed the following year. These books had an
+immense and deserved popularity. Not only did these Staffordshire plates
+appear, but a whole set of Derby figures were modelled—“Dr. Syntax
+Walking”—“In a Greenroom”—“At York”—“Going to Bed”—“Tied to a
+Tree”—“Scolding the Landlady”—“Playing the Violin”—“Attacked by a
+Bull”—“Mounted on Horseback”—and were sold in large numbers. The
+Staffordshire plates have survived in greater variety in this country.
+Doubtless they were imported in larger quantities than were the Derby
+figures.
+
+Strangely enough, no Biblical scenes are represented on these
+Staffordshire plates, save one with a print of the Flight into Egypt.
+
+Other interesting forms of ware manufactured in Staffordshire were the
+old drinking-mugs known as “Tobys.” They were seated figures of rummy,
+old, red-nosed fellows with drinking-mugs in their hands. They wore
+usually cocked hats, the hat forming the lip of the mug. They were gayly
+dressed in high colors, and were sometimes twelve and even fourteen
+inches in height. A terrible damper has been put, within a few years, on
+the joy of collecting these “Tobys,” by the fact of their reproduction
+in vast numbers after precisely the old models, and in precisely the
+same colors. Of course, the modern Tobys are very shining and new, and
+upon examination are easily distinguished from the old ones; but when a
+closet-door in an antique shop suddenly and most unadvisedly swung open,
+the sight of a row of twenty or thirty Tobys, all precisely alike, did
+not seem to enhance the value of the asserted-to-be-unique specimen on
+the shop shelf, nor make me very warm about purchasing further
+specimens, were they old or new.
+
+It is impossible to obtain any information in England about this dark
+blue earthenware, or “semi-china,” which was made for so many years in
+such vast quantities for the American market. The Staffordshire pottery
+works have all changed owners; the plates from which these wares were
+printed have all been lost or destroyed; the present owners of the works
+are ignorant of the existence even of these printed American pieces.
+There are almost no specimens to be seen in English collections, not
+even of pieces bearing English views; none for sale in English shops;
+and even in so exhaustive, extended, and careful a treatise on the
+ceramic art of Great Britain as that of Mr. Jewitt, he does not speak of
+them, and evidently is ignorant of the wares, the stamps, and marks. A
+careful search throughout the Staffordshire region developed absolutely
+not one fact about these “American historical pieces;” and I may add
+that a collection of Staffordshire ware bearing both American and
+English views is now being gathered in America for presentation to the
+Museum at Burslem, and consequent enlightenment of English collectors
+and manufacturers. Hence it is plain that each American collector must
+be a law to himself with regard to marks; or rather, American collectors
+must unite and form a new table of marks of “American pieces.” I will
+specify a few that I find on my Staffordshire pieces.
+
+A circular impression about an inch in diameter, with an inclosed circle
+having in the centre the word “Warranted,” and a spread eagle bearing a
+thunderbolt and laurel leaf. In the quarter-inch ring inclosing this
+inner disk are the words, in capital letters, “T. Mayer. Stone.
+Staffordshire.” Accompanying this impressed stamp is always found (on my
+pieces) a very spirited rendering in dark blue of the American eagle,
+bearing a laurel branch in his right claw, and a bunch of arrow-like
+thunderbolts in his left. He measures two and three-quarters inches from
+tip to tip of wings, has an American shield on his breast, and a ribbon
+bearing the words “E Pluribus Unum” in his mouth. The lighter, clouded
+background has thirteen white stars. This mark is the richest in color
+and best in drawing of any that I have seen. This T. Mayer was, I judge,
+the Thomas Mayer who had the Dale Hall Staffordshire works from 1829,
+and of whom Shaw speaks as having made the best specimen of solid
+earthenware ever produced at that time—a vast table. This stamp and mark
+are given by neither Chaffers nor Jewitt, nor Phillips and Hooper. The
+marks E. Mayer, and E. Mayer & Son, are frequently seen. These firms
+were in existence from 1770 to 1830 in Hanley.
+
+A distinct circular impression an inch in diameter; in the centre
+appears a spread eagle with shield on his breast, and below him the
+words “Semi China;” surrounding all the words “E. Wood & Sons, Burslem.
+Warranted.” In conjunction with this impressed stamp appears often a
+dull blue mark, an oblong panel an inch and a half long and about
+three-eighths of an inch wide, inclosing the name of the view on the
+face of the plate. On this panel stands an eagle with laurel branch in
+his right claw, and in his beak a written scroll attached to a small
+United States shield, and bearing the words “E Pluribus Unum”—the whole
+on a clouded background. Many of the pieces bearing both of these marks
+are confused in outline, as if the dies or plates from which they were
+printed were worn out. And they also have the poorly drawn, ugly shell
+border. This stamp and mark are not given by Chaffers or Jewitt. The
+ware also varies greatly, the earlier plates being of much lighter
+weight. The impressed circular mark appears alone on some very richly
+colored, clearly printed, and beautifully drawn pieces decorated with
+spirited marine views and clear and graceful shell borders. These were
+evidently made for the American market, for on all of them appears
+prominently a full-rigged ship bearing the American flag; yet they
+cannot be classed as “American views.” The names given to some of these
+views are “A Ship of the Line on the Downs,” “In a Full Breeze,”
+“Christianeburg,” “Danish Settlement on the Gold Coast, Africa,” “York
+Minster.”
+
+The name “Wood,” alone, appears impressed, and often accompanied by an
+impressed crescent. The date of this mark is apparently about 1818, when
+the firm was no longer Wood & Caldwell, and Enoch Wood’s sons had not
+been taken into partnership. All the pieces with this stamp are rich in
+color and clear in outline, as if the dies or plates were fresh and new.
+
+The mark “E. W. & S.” on lighter-blue pieces I have also fancied stood
+for E. Wood & Sons.
+
+A circular stamp, impressed, of a crown, surrounded by words “A.
+Stevenson, Warranted Staffordshire.” This stamp appears with a mark
+printed in blue of an eagle holding a tablet, with the name of the view
+on the face of the plate; or sometimes with a blue printed mark of an
+urn festooned with drapery, on which is printed the name of the view,
+which is usually of an English scene. The Cobridge Works were erected in
+1808, were owned for a few years by Bucknall & Stevenson, and afterward
+by A. Stevenson alone. The works were closed in 1819, hence pieces
+bearing this mark can have the date quite definitely assigned. The
+circular mark is given by Chaffers as appearing once on a painted
+faïence plate. The impressed mark of name Stevenson in capital letters
+is found on many “American historical pieces,” usually on plates with a
+beautiful vine-leaf border and white impressed edge.
+
+A circular stamp of concentric rings, impressed, about one inch in
+diameter. In the centre a crown, and in surrounding ring the words
+“Clews Warranted Staffordshire.” After 1819 the Cobridge works passed
+into the hands of Mr. James Clews, who continued them until 1829, when
+they were again closed and remained so until 1836, when they were opened
+under another firm name. Mr. Clews came to America, and an account of
+his enterprise here is given on page 97 _et seq._ This mark is not given
+by Chaffers, who calls the firm J. & R. Clews, and says they made “pale
+cream-colored ware.” During the ten years that Mr. Clews owned these
+Cobridge Works some of the richest pieces of dark blue color that were
+ever made by any potter took the form of pieces bearing American
+historical designs, and bear the last-mentioned stamp.
+
+The mark of an open crown surmounting the words “Clews Warranted
+Staffordshire” appears on a set, “Picturesque Scenery.” Upon the back of
+each piece appears also the colored stamp which was placed by the
+manufacturers to designate this set, all of which were printed with
+American views. It is a little landscape of pines and a sheet of water
+with a sloop. This scene is crossed diagonally with an oblong stamp
+bearing the words “Picturesque Views,” and the name of the special view
+printed on the face of the piece; for instance, “Penitentiary in
+Allegheny nr Pittsburgh Pa.” This set of views of “Picturesque Scenery”
+was of much later date than the rich dark blue pieces, being printed in
+sepia, green, chocolate, or plum color, thus showing the degraded taste
+of the second quarter of the century.
+
+An impressed mark of Rogers appears sometimes in conjunction with an
+eagle stamped in blue. Occasionally, also, the eagle is seen without the
+Rogers mark. Sometimes the chemical sign for iron is found with these
+marks. The firm of Rogers was in existence in Burslem until 1849.
+
+A circular impressed mark, one inch in diameter, with a star in the
+centre, surrounded by words “Joseph Stubbs Longport.” This mark is not
+given by Chaffers, nor the name of the manufacturer or manufactory.
+Jewitt, who gives no marks, says that he was a successful potter at Dale
+Hall from 1790 to 1829, preceding T. Mayer at his pottery, and thus
+proving that pieces with the Stubbs mark are the earlier of the two. The
+circular mark of “Stubbs & Kent, Longport,” also unknown in England,
+appears on many pieces; for instance, the dark blue basket and rose, and
+the milkmaid designs so common on toilet and dinner services. Still
+another impressed mark of “Stubbs” alone, in capital letters, appears on
+many American historical pieces, particularly on the ones with what is
+known as the eagle, rose, and scroll border.
+
+A large number of pieces were printed, with views of public buildings in
+America, by the firm of J. & W. Ridgway. These pieces bore on the back
+an oblong stamp inclosing the name of the building and its location, as,
+for instance, “City Hall, New York;” above this the words “Beauties of
+America,” below, J. & W. Ridgway. One of the set is shown on page 319.
+The pieces bearing this stamp are only medium blue in tint, though the
+color is good and some of the shading is dark. These pieces are
+disfigured by the border, which has the effect of oval medallions
+inclosing alternately a single stiff rose and a six-petalled flower—a
+myrtle blossom, perhaps. This border is poorly shaded and far from
+graceful in designing. I cannot definitely assign the date of these
+pieces; the firm succeeded Job Ridgway & Sons in 1814, and was in
+existence in 1829. This mark is not given by Chaffers. Another Ridgway
+mark is an oval medallion with the initials J. R. under a crown, and
+with the names of the pattern in a scroll. Still another has the
+initials J. W. R., another Jno. Ridgway, and another W. Ridgway.
+
+A large number of very beautiful English views, printed in dark blue,
+are found on dinner services of Staffordshire ware, bearing the mark in
+blue of a spray of rose-leaves with a double scroll and name “Riley,”
+and name also of the view—for instance, “Goggerdan, Cardiganshire.” The
+firm of John & Richard Riley rebuilt in 1814 the Hill Works, that had
+formerly been owned by Ralph Wood, and ran them until 1839. The prints
+of this firm are clear and distinct, and really artistic in drawing, the
+borders being specially graceful. The only mark given by Chaffers is
+“Riley Semi-China” on blue willow-pattern ware. This I have also found,
+the words appearing within a circular belt. The impress Riley also is
+seen.
+
+R. Hall’s wares were imported to America in large quantities, especially
+his “Select Views.” I do not know whether this is R. Hall who ran the
+“Sytch Pottery” in Burslem until 1830, or whether he was Ralph Hall who
+owned the Swan Banks Works, Tunstall, during the first quarter of the
+century. Chaffers does not mention either Hall, and Jewitt gives no
+marks. The stamp most frequently seen is an oval ring in blue; at the
+top, “R. Hall’s Select Views;” below, a sprig of flowers and the words
+“Stone China.” The ring inclosed the name of the view, Biddulph Castle,
+Staffordshire, and Pains Hill, Surrey, being the most frequent. I have
+seen hundreds of Pains Hill plates in New England, fully half the
+country houses that I have entered had a few on cupboard or pantry
+shelves.
+
+Still another Hall mark is a crown-shaped blue stamp with “Hall” and the
+name of the set—for instance, “Quadrupeds.” Another, a blue stamp in an
+irregular shield, at top and bottom “R. Halls Picturesque Scenery,” in
+the middle the name—for instance, “Fulham Church Middlesex.” Another is
+an irregular shield, with scrolls with words “Oriental Scenery, I. (or
+J.) Hall & Sons;” and also “Italian Scenery, I. Hall & Sons;” and
+“Indian Scenery, I. Hall & Sons.” The views, of course, on these pieces
+are indicative, respectively, of the marks on the back.
+
+The views of Oriental scenery were taken from the illustrations of
+Buckingham’s Travels in Mesopotamia, of the date 1828.
+
+A very interesting mark is a wreath of blue flowers inclosing the words
+“Bristol Flowers,” and accompanied either by impressed initials in
+capitals, E. & G. P., or an impressed cross like the Bristol stamp. This
+mark has been seen only on pure white “semi-china,” decorated in clear
+blue, with a design of fruit and flowers in which the passion-flower
+predominates.
+
+Still another blue mark, on pieces a trifle lighter in tint, is a fine
+spread eagle; above, the word “Ironstone;” below, “Sydenham J.
+Clementson.” Chaffers does not mention this name or mark. Jewitt gives
+no marks, but says Clementson became proprietor of the Sydenham works
+about 1832, and manufactured for the American market.
+
+The impressed mark of “Adams Warranted Staffordshire” appears in a
+circle around an American eagle. And the initials R. S. W., in a
+graceful scroll with a branch of leaves, appear on many beautiful
+American views. I have been told that this was the stamp of R. S.
+Warburton, but can give no proof nor further information. It may be the
+stamp of some member of the Wood family, so many of whom were potters.
+
+When we examine all these special American marks on English pottery, it
+seems odd to read Mr. Jewitt’s statement, that marks were frequently
+omitted on the English china sent to America, “on account of the jealous
+dislike of the Americans of that day to anything emanating from the
+mother country.”
+
+With the pieces of Staffordshire wares bearing American designs, and a
+few pieces which cannot be classed elsewhere, I conclude my list.
+
+134. Albany.
+
+View of city of Albany printed in black on plate. Date of view
+apparently about 1840.
+
+135. Albany.
+
+View of Albany in bright dark blue. E. Wood & Sons. Marked on back,
+“City of Albany State of New York,” and spread eagle with E Pluribus
+Unum. In centre the Capitol Hill with old Capitol. On the river a
+steamboat and sailing vessels. Cows grazing in foreground. Shell border.
+
+Albany. Capitol.
+
+See No. 166.
+
+Albany. Theatre.
+
+See No. 170.
+
+Albany. Canal.
+
+See No. 171.
+
+Alleghany.
+
+See No. 241.
+
+136. Anti-Slavery Plate.
+
+This design is printed in a purplish and rather light blue on various
+pieces of dinner and tea-services. The plates are most frequently found.
+One is here shown. They have slightly scalloped edges and a scroll
+border dotted with stars. Four American eagles and shields are in the
+border, and four medallions. The upper one contains the figure of
+Liberty standing beside a printing-press, while a negro kneels at her
+feet. Around the design are the words, “The Tyrants Foe—The People’s
+Friend.” In the lower medallion is the design of the scales of Justice.
+In the medallion to the right are the words, “Of One Blood are All
+Nations of Men.” In the medallion to the left, “We hold that all men are
+created equal.” In the centre of the plate, against the background of a
+sun-burst, are these words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an
+establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
+abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the
+people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a
+redress of grievances. Constitution U. S.” On some of the
+pieces—pitchers and teapots, for example—there also is seen this
+inscription, “Lovejoy—the First Martyr to American Liberty. Alton, Nov.
+7th, 1837.” It is asserted that the pieces bearing this design were the
+gift of the English Anti-Slavery Society to the American Abolitionists,
+shortly after the death of Lovejoy; that they were sold at auction in
+New York, and the proceeds devoted to the objects of the Society of
+Abolitionists. If this account is true, these plates are certainly among
+the most interesting relics of those interesting days.
+
+[Illustration: Anti-Slavery Plate.]
+
+Battery. New York.
+
+See No. 217.
+
+137. Baltimore. Battle Monument.
+
+A plate printed in black, dark brown, or green, with border of flowers.
+In the centre a view of the city of Baltimore with a monument in the
+foreground. Name on the back, “Battle Monument Baltimore.” This
+monument, which stands in Battle Square at the intersection of Calvert
+and Fayette Streets, is commemorative of those who fell defending the
+city when it was attacked by the British in 1814. It has a square base
+twenty feet high, with a pedestal ornamented at the four corners with
+sculptured griffins. On each front is an Egyptian door with bas-reliefs
+and inscriptions. A column eighteen feet high rises above the base and
+is surrounded by bands inscribed with the names of those who fell in
+battle. The column is surmounted by a marble figure typical of the city
+of Baltimore.
+
+138. Baltimore. Exchange.
+
+View of Exchange building, in dark blue. This plate is very rare.
+
+139. Baltimore. Court-House.
+
+A dark blue plate with a rose and fruit border. In the exact centre of
+the plate is the Court-House in an open square. Pedestrians are walking
+to and fro. The design of this plate is very stiff and ugly. The mark on
+the back is a scroll of blue, with words “Baltimore Court-House;” also a
+circular impressed mark, smaller than the Clews mark, with words
+“Warranted Staffordshire.”
+
+140. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Wood.
+
+Plates printed in dark blue with rich shell border, with a train of
+little cars like stage-coaches, and the stumpy little locomotive which
+it is said was designed by Peter Cooper, and which was originally
+intended to have sails like a boat to help propel it along. The
+corner-stone of this railroad was laid in Baltimore, July 4, 1828, by
+Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the
+Declaration of Independence. This event was considered of so great
+importance that it was celebrated by a great trades-procession in
+Baltimore, during which the cordwainers made a fine pair of satin shoes
+which were at once sent to the idolized Lafayette, and were placed in
+the museum at La Grange.
+
+In 1830 the first locomotive was placed on the road. Peter Cooper thus
+describes it:
+
+“The engine was a very small and insignificant affair. It was made at a
+time when I had become the owner of all the land now belonging to the
+Canton Company, the value of which, I believe, depended almost entirely
+upon the success of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. When I had completed
+the engine I invited the directors to witness an experiment. Some
+thirty-six persons entered one of the passenger cars, and four rode on
+the locomotive, which carried its own fuel and water; and made the first
+passage of thirteen miles over an average ascending grade of eighteen
+feet to the mile, in one hour and twelve minutes. We made the return
+trip in fifty-seven minutes.”
+
+The locomotive on these blue plates is not like the Tom Thumb locomotive
+in an old print which I possess; it is more like the “Stourbridge Lion,”
+the first engine made in England for America, which arrived in New York
+in 1829. Marks on plate both E. Wood and Wood.
+
+141. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Down Hill.
+
+This plate is in dark blue with a shell border. It has a stationary
+engine at the top of a hill, with a number of small freight cars running
+down a very steep grade, with the cars at a very singular angle. Both
+Baltimore & Ohio plates are here shown.
+
+There were several of these down-hill tram-roads built at an early date
+in America. One on the western slope of Beacon Hill, in Boston, was
+constructed in the year 1807. It was used for transporting gravel from
+the top of the hill down to Charles Street, which was being graded and
+filled. The descent of the heavy gravel-loaded train drew up the empty
+cars—thus the machinery was worked without horse-power. In 1810 a
+similar one was built in Ridley, Pa., for transporting stone. In 1825 a
+third road was built, in Nashua, N. H., to carry down earth from a hill
+to fill up a factory location on a grade below. In 1826 a road three
+miles long at Quincy, Mass., carried in the same manner granite to the
+Neponset River. In 1828 the coal-mines at Mauch Chunk, Pa., had a road
+nine miles long to the Lehigh River. The empty cars were drawn up by
+mules. In 1828 the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, and the Bunker Hill
+Monument Company, had similar tram-ways or roads.
+
+[Illustration: Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Plates.]
+
+Other views of early railroads and locomotives appear, and are often
+sold as of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. They are probably views of
+English railways.
+
+142. Boston. Almshouse. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+This view is upon the cover of an enormous soup-tureen, described in No.
+178. The set medallion border is shown on page 319, and is found on all
+pieces of this “American Beauties” set. Stamp on back in oblong disk,
+“Beauties of America. J. & W. Ridgway. Almshouse, Boston.”
+
+143. Boston. Common.
+
+Comparatively modern print in black of a view on Boston Common.
+
+144. Boston. Hospital. Stevenson.
+
+Dinner set printed in dark blue with view of the Hospital. Trees in
+foreground, and a smart chaise with man and woman driving. Border of
+vine leaves on dark blue. White impressed or fluted edge on some
+specimens. Mark in blue on back, “Hospital, Boston.” Impressed mark,
+“Stevenson.” There is said to be another view of this hospital with a
+canal in the foreground.
+
+145. Boston. Insane Hospital. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+Printed in dark blue on various pieces of a dinner service. Small
+building in centre with high fence in foreground. Same medallion border
+as shown on page 319. Stamp on back in blue, “Beauties of America.
+Insane Hospital, Boston. J. & W. Ridgway.”
+
+146. Boston. Octagon Church. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+A plate printed in dark blue, with view of the church and of other
+buildings. In the foreground a curious covered coach or carriage with
+two horses, one carrying a postilion. The same medallion border as shown
+on page 319. Stamp on back, “Beauties of America. Octagon Church,
+Boston. J. & W. Ridgway.” This Octagon Church was often known as the New
+North Church, and was built in 1815. A description of it is given in
+Drake’s “History of Boston,” page 552.
+
+[Illustration: State-House Plate.]
+
+147. Boston. State-House.
+
+Print in dark blue, on dinner and toilet services, of a view of the
+State-House and surrounding buildings, including the John Hancock house.
+Trees and the Common in foreground, and a group of grazing cattle. Three
+poplar-trees appear at the right; also a man with a wheelbarrow. The
+border is a pretty design of roses and forget-me-nots. The mark on the
+back is different from any stamp I have seen—simply the American
+“spatch-cock” eagle in blue. This State-House plate is popularly known
+as “the one with John Hancock’s cows.” One is here shown. The “New
+State-House” was built on a portion of John Hancock’s field, where not
+only his cows, but those of many of his fellow-townsmen, found
+pasturage. During the memorable visit of D’Estaing and his officers to
+Hancock, the latter’s servants milked all the cows on the Common to
+obtain milk enough to supply the visitors. This pasturing of cows on the
+Common in front of the State-House continued until the year 1830, when
+accidents from bovine assaults upon citizens became so frequent that the
+cows were exiled from their old feeding-ground. The pitchers printed
+with this view are very handsome, often having an extended view of
+Boston in the vicinity of the State-House encircling the body of the
+pitcher. I have seen one with the initials R. S. W. on the base, though
+I have always attributed this view to Rogers.
+
+148. Boston. State-House.
+
+Print in rather light blue of a view of the State-House. Surrounding
+buildings do not show in this design. In the foreground is a horse and
+chaise with driver. No maker’s stamp. Border of roses.
+
+149. Boston. State-House. Jackson.
+
+View of State-House with group of persons in foreground. Printed in
+pink. Mark, “Jackson.”
+
+150. Boston. St. Paul’s Church.
+
+Blue and white plate with view of St. Paul’s Church.
+
+151. Boston. Athenæum. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+This dark blue design is on plates of different sizes, and possibly on
+other pieces of dinner services. It has the set medallion border shown
+on page 319. Mark on the back, “Boston Athenæum. Beauties of America. J.
+& W. Ridgway.” In the present Athenæum building may be seen one of these
+plates with this note: “This building stood in Pearl St., and one-half
+was given by Mr. James Perkins, the other half bought of Mr. Cochran in
+1822, and the whole occupied by the Athenæum until 1849.”
+
+152. Boston Court-House. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+This design is on platters, plates, and dishes in dark blue. It has the
+set medallion border shown on page 319, and in the centre a view of the
+Court-House. Mark on the back, “Boston Court-House. Beauties of America.
+J. & W. Ridgway.”
+
+153. Boston. Lawrence Mansion.
+
+Though all the plates, pitchers, and basins which bear this beautiful
+dark blue design are unstamped and unmarked, it is well known that it is
+a view of Mr. Lawrence’s handsome house, which stood on Winter Street,
+Boston. It is a view of a large three-storied double mansion, surmounted
+by a steeple which at first sight seems a part of the house, but which
+is intended for the steeple of the Park Street Church in the background.
+A garden is on one side of the house. It has a clear vine-leaf border.
+
+154. Boston. Warehouse. Adams.
+
+This is a rich plate printed in clear dark blue, with a design showing
+Boston streets and buildings. A large warehouse stands at the right, on
+the left a block of buildings, and in the background the wharves and
+harbor with shipping. The beautiful border is formed on the top and
+sides by a design of trees with foliage. On the back is the stamp, in
+blue, “Mitchell & Freemans China and Glass Warehouse Chatham St. Boston
+Mass.;” also the impressed mark, “Adams.” No doubt these plates were
+made at the order of the Boston firm whose name they bear. I have known
+of but four pieces with this design. A plate may be seen at the rooms of
+the Bostonian Society, in the old State-House in Boston.
+
+155. Boston. Almshouse.
+
+A view printed in dark blue of the old Almshouse on Leverett Street. The
+border is the beautiful design of vine leaves like that on No. 144, and
+the plates and platters have a white edge. Mark on back, “Almshouse
+Boston.”
+
+156. Boston Mails.
+
+Plate printed in brown or black. The border contains the figures of four
+steamships with these names severally printed under them—Acadia,
+Columbia, Caledonia, Britannia. In the centre is a view labelled
+“Gentlemen’s Cabin.” Mark on the back, “Boston Mails.” These plates were
+doubtless printed to commemorate the opening of the first line of
+steamships between Liverpool and Boston. I have seen the date of the
+first trip given as July, 1840, when the Britannia arrived in Boston.
+
+[Illustration: John Hancock’s House.]
+
+157. Boston. John Hancock’s House.
+
+This print is seen in red, blue, or green on cups and saucers, or on
+slightly scalloped plates. One of the latter is here shown. This
+historic house is not now in existence. It was the intention of Governor
+Hancock to present the handsome and substantial mansion, with its
+elegant furniture, by bequest, to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to
+be preserved as a memorial of great historical events, and to be used,
+if necessary, by the Governor of the State during his residence in
+Boston through his term of office. Hancock died without signing this
+bequest, and his heirs then offered it to the Government for a modest
+purchase sum. After many years of indecision, half-acceptance, and final
+refusal on the part of the State, this fine old house was in 1863 pulled
+down. In it Washington, Lafayette, and scores of other distinguished men
+were visitors. There D’Estaing made his home in 1778, and with forty of
+his officers dined with hospitable welcome every day for many weeks. It
+was during this visit that the event occurred of which Madame Hancock
+complained—that D’Estaing went to bed overcome with Hancock’s good wine,
+and tore her best satin bedspread in pieces with his spurs, which he had
+been too drunk to remove.
+
+158. Brandywine Creek.
+
+View of Gilpin’s Mills on Brandywine Creek. Dark blue. Mark on back of
+scroll, eagle and E Pluribus Unum.
+
+Brooklyn. View from.
+
+See No. 208.
+
+Bunker Hill Monument.
+
+See No. 164.
+
+159. Burlington. Richard Jordan’s House. J. S. & Co.
+
+View of a commonplace frame house and outbuildings, and an inclosed
+door-yard, with a broad-brimmed Quaker and a cow in foreground. Mark,
+“Richard Jordan’s House. J. S. & Co.” This house was in Burlington, N.
+J. The design is printed in pink or black on tea-services, and appears
+to have been a popular one in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
+
+Cadmus.
+
+See No. 74.
+
+Cambridge. Harvard College.
+
+See No. 179 _et seq._
+
+Capitol at Washington.
+
+See No. 259 _et seq._
+
+160. Catskills. Pine Orchard House.
+
+This is a pretty landscape in dark blue, with hotel in the distance, and
+a man on horseback in the foreground. Mark on back, “Pine Orchard House,
+Catskills.” It is doubtless made by E. Wood & Sons.
+
+161. Catskills.
+
+Print in rich dark blue of a mountain-scene with cliffs, peaks, and
+pines, and a solitary figure. A confused shell border. Mark on the back,
+of eagle with E Pluribus Unum, and an oblong stamp with the words, “In
+the Catskills;” also a confused impressed stamp, probably E. Wood &
+Sons.
+
+162. Centennial.
+
+Various pieces of ornamental and useful nature were made of a clear
+white china for the Centennial of 1876. The stamp on the bottom was,
+“Manufactured solely for J. H. Shaw & Co., New York. Trade Mark,
+Philadelphia, 1876.” Each piece bore the words, “A Memorial of the
+Centennial, 1876;” also in high colors a medallion with portrait of
+Washington and two United States flags surmounted by an eagle. These
+modern pieces deserve mention among the historical china, since a single
+piece is usually desired by collectors. Views also were made of the
+different buildings at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, on porcelain
+plates, with ugly purple and brown border.
+
+163. Charleston. Exchange. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+This is one of the few Southern views. Dark blue print, with medallion
+border shown on page 319. Stamp on back, “Exchange, Charleston. J. & W.
+Ridgway. Beauties of America.” This historical building was erected in
+1767, at a cost of £60,000. It was used as a “provost” during the
+occupation of Charleston by the British during the Revolution. Prisoners
+were confined in the cellars. Colonel Isaac Haynes, an American officer,
+spent, in 1781, the last few months of his life in confinement within
+its walls, and from thence he was taken to his execution amid the
+protests of the entire populace. His death so enraged the officers of
+the American army that they joined in a memorial to General Greene,
+proposing measures of retaliation on captive British soldiers and
+officers, thus subjecting themselves to a certainty of like death in
+case they were captured by the enemy. After the Revolution the Exchange
+was used as a Custom-House and Post-Office, and is now used in the
+latter capacity. It is still standing. The cupola has been removed.
+
+164. Charlestown, Mass.
+
+A view in black of Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Mass.
+
+Chief Justice Marshall. Steamboat.
+
+See No. 185.
+
+City Hall. New York.
+
+See No. 211 _et seq._
+
+City Hotel. New York.
+
+See No. 218.
+
+Columbus. Landing of.
+
+See No. 186.
+
+Constitution of United States.
+
+See No. 136.
+
+165. Conway. New Hampshire.
+
+A pink or red print. In the centre a view of dwellings, including a
+log-cabin with sheds; mountains, highway, pine-trees, and people. Marked
+on the back “View near Conway N. Hampshire.” A plate bearing this design
+is usually considered to be worth about a dollar and a half.
+
+Deaf and Dumb Asylum.
+
+See No. 178.
+
+166. Erie Canal. A. Stevenson.
+
+This print is in dark blue on plates. In the centre of the plate is a
+view of buildings, among them a church with a high fence. These are said
+to be intended to represent the Capitol grounds and surroundings at
+Albany. The border is of oak leaves and acorns, broken by five designs,
+four being the portraits of Jefferson, Washington, Lafayette, and
+Governor Clinton, with their respective legends, “Jefferson,” “President
+Washington,” “Welcome Lafayette The Nations Guest,” and “Governor
+Clinton.” The fifth design, at the bottom of the plate, is the picture
+of an aqueduct with the words, “View of the Aqueduct Bridge at
+Rochester.” Mark, impressed, “A. Stevenson warranted Staffordshire,” in
+circle, with crown in centre. Another mark printed in blue is of an urn,
+wreath, and the words “Faulkner Ware.” This plate is in the possession
+of A. G. Richmond, Esq., of Canajoharie.
+
+167. Erie Canal. Utica.
+
+The plate bearing this design is usually known as the “Utica Plate.” In
+the centre is printed these words, “Utica, a village in the State of New
+York, thirty years since a wilderness, now (1824) inferior to none in
+the western section of the state in population, wealth, commercial
+enterprise, active industry, and civil improvement.” This inscription is
+inclosed in a laurel wreath. The border of this plate has two views of a
+canal lock and aqueduct, and two of a canal-boat. The print is also seen
+on pitchers.
+
+168. Erie Canal.
+
+Same border, with designs of canal-boats and locks as No. 167. In the
+centre the words, “The Grand Erie Canal, a splendid monument of the
+enterprise and resources of the State of New York. Indebted for its
+early commencement and rapid completion to the active energies,
+pre-eminent talents, and enlightened policy of DeWitt Clinton, Late
+Governor of the State.” I have seen pitchers bearing this design and the
+design described in No. 167.
+
+169. Erie Canal at Buffalo, N. Y.
+
+This print is in black upon a plate marked “R. S.” (Robert Stevenson.)
+
+Erie Canal.
+
+This entry might properly come under the head of either No. 166 or No.
+167, since it describes a pitcher which had both of those decorations in
+blue, and also an American eagle with the words “E Pluribus Unum.”
+
+170. Erie Canal.
+
+Black print upon a pitcher. On the right of the handle is a large view
+of an aqueduct, river, hills, and buildings, and the words, “View of the
+Aqueduct Bridge at Little Falls.” At the left of the handle a building,
+with the words “Albany Theatre 1824.” Below the spout a front view of
+the head of Washington, and words, “President Washington.” This piece is
+not marked with maker’s name.
+
+171. Erie Canal. Clews.
+
+Entrance of the Erie Canal into the Hudson at Albany. Marked “Clews.” It
+is a pretty view of a canal lock with boats, and with high-wooded hill
+in the background. In foreground, groups of men fishing. This design is
+seen on dinner and toilet services. The border is of roses. The color is
+rich and dark.
+
+172. Erie Canal.
+
+Oval platter of Oriental china of greenish tint, decorated in gay
+colors, with a gold edge, and the monogram D. W. M. C. (DeWitt and Maria
+Clinton). In the centre a landscape with the Erie Canal. This odd and
+interesting piece sold at the Governor Lyon sale for $10.
+
+Fairmount Park.
+
+See No. 227 _et seq._
+
+173. Fishkill.
+
+This is one of the sets of Clews Picturesque Views. Marks are described
+on page 327. Printed in red, green, black, and brown. The name on back,
+“Nr Fishkill Hudson River.” This is a pretty view of an old Dutch house
+and kitchen on a high bank. In the background, poplar-trees and a
+manor-house. By the side of the water fishermen are stretching nets.
+
+Fort Gansevoort, New York.
+
+See No. 215.
+
+Gilpin’s Mills.
+
+See No. 158.
+
+Girard’s Bank.
+
+See No. 231.
+
+174. Harper’s Ferry. W. Ridgway.
+
+Print of landscape view in black or sepia. Mark on back, “Harper’s Ferry
+from the Potomac side. W. Ridgway.”
+
+175. Hartford, Conn. State-House.
+
+Print in dark blue of the old State-House, with two stiff poplar-trees
+on either side.
+
+176. Hartford, Conn. Mount Video.
+
+Print in dark blue of Mount Video, now known as Wadsworth Tower.
+
+177. Hartford, Conn. Mount Video. Jackson.
+
+Print in black of view similar to No. 176. Mark, “Jackson Ware.”
+
+178. Hartford, Conn. Asylum. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+Print in dark blue on enormous soup-tureen and other pieces of a dinner
+service, of a view of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at Hartford which was
+established by Dr. Gallaudet. Same medallion border as shown on page
+319. Mark on back, “Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Hartford. J. & W. Ridgway.
+Beauties of America.”
+
+179. Harvard College. R. S. W.
+
+A very finely printed plate in dark blue of the College buildings. Only
+three halls are shown. The trees in foreground are unusually well drawn.
+The clear border of oak leaves and acorns is on a stippled background.
+Mark on back, in scroll with rose branch, “Harvard College,” and some
+specimens also R. S. W. A plate is here shown.
+
+[Illustration: Harvard College Plate.]
+
+180. Harvard College. E. Wood & Sons.
+
+Black print with flower border marked “E. Wood & Sons.”
+
+181. Harvard College. E. W. S.
+
+A clear and beautiful print in medium shade of blue on white ground. The
+edge has a white beading. The border is a most artistic design of
+flowers and fruit, with a pretty spray of blackberries. In the centre a
+well-drawn view of four college buildings. A pond is in the foreground,
+with tree at right and left. By tradition this platter once formed part
+of the table-furnishing of the College dining-hall. Mark on back,
+“Harvard College. E. W. S.”
+
+182. Hoboken. New Jersey.
+
+A view of the old Stevens mansion, marked on the back “View at Hoboken
+New Jersey.”
+
+183. Hudson, N. Y. Clews.
+
+View of the town of Hudson as it looked in 1823, printed in black, with
+rose and vine border. On the back or underside of this dish are views of
+Stockport, a few miles above Hudson. It is said that engravings were
+sent abroad by Hudson residents, from which these views were copied.
+
+184. Hudson River. Baker’s Falls.
+
+Black print of view of Baker’s Falls.
+
+Hudson River, near Fishkill.
+
+See No. 173.
+
+Independence of Texas.
+
+See No. 254.
+
+Jordan, House of Richard.
+
+See No. 159.
+
+185. Hudson River. Steamboat. E. Wood & Sons.
+
+This is a view in dark blue of a steamboat on the Hudson River taking
+passengers from the shore in a small boat attached to a rope which is
+wound around the steamer’s wheel. Accidents became so frequent from this
+means of transfer that the method was quickly abandoned. There are two
+of these sets of plates, precisely alike, save that on one on the
+wheel-house of the boat is the name “Chief Justice Marshal Troy,” and on
+the other the words “Union Line.” On another flag, which is seen on both
+plates, are the words “Troy Line.” They are marked “E. Wood & Sons.” I
+have seen three sizes of plates bearing these designs. One is here
+shown.
+
+[Illustration: Steamboat Plate.]
+
+186. Landing of Columbus. Adams.
+
+A plate stamped in pink or black with a pretty design of the landing of
+Columbus. He stands with his two captains dressed in Spanish costume;
+Indians peer out from behind the trees; the three Spanish ships lie
+anchored off the shore. A scroll and flower border inclosing four
+medallions of quadrupeds. The stamp is “Adams.” The name “Columbus” is
+on an anchor.
+
+Landing of the Fathers.
+
+See No. 240.
+
+Landing of Mayflower.
+
+See No. 240.
+
+187. Lake George.
+
+A beautiful view printed in dark blue on platters and plates, with shell
+border. Mark on back “Lake George, State of N. Y.” This is doubtless by
+E. Wood & Sons.
+
+188. Lake Champlain. Macdonough’s Victory. Wood.
+
+This is a rather confused view of a naval encounter representing the
+battle of Lake Champlain. It has the clear, beautiful shell border, and
+the color is invariably rich and dark. It appears on all the pieces of
+tea and dinner services, and must have been sent to America in large
+numbers. On a rock in the foreground are the words “Commodore
+MacDonough’s Victory.” On the back, the impress mark “Wood.” A plate is
+here shown.
+
+[Illustration: MacDonough’s Victory Plate.]
+
+Lawrence Mansion.
+
+See No. 153.
+
+189. Lexington. Transylvania University. E. Wood & Sons.
+
+A plate with a view of Transylvania University in the centre. On either
+side are rows of stiff poplar-trees, and in the foreground a man and
+woman walking. The print is in a good shade of dark blue, and has the
+poor shell border. It is marked on the back with an eagle, shield, and
+“E Pluribus Unum,” and words “Transylvania University Lexington.” Also
+the impressed mark of E. Wood & Sons. I have rarely seen this plate—one
+lot of three only, and all three were rather indistinctly and poorly
+printed; still they may be plentiful in the South or in the neighborhood
+of the University.
+
+190. Lexington. Transylvania University.
+
+Transylvania University. A print in black or light blue of a smaller
+representation of the University and grounds. Apparently quite modern.
+
+Little Falls. Erie Canal.
+
+See No. 170.
+
+191. Louisville. Marine Hospital.
+
+A rich dark blue plate with shell border. Stamp on back, “Marine
+Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky.” This is doubtless by E. Wood & Sons.
+
+Macdonough Victory.
+
+See No. 188.
+
+Marine Hospital. Louisville.
+
+See No. 191.
+
+192. Maryland. Arms of State. T. Mayer.
+
+A large oval soup-tureen and plates, printed in dark blue, with a
+handsome and spirited version of the arms of the State of Maryland. The
+stamp of T. Mayer and the blue mark of an eagle that appear on these
+pieces are fully described on page 324. The border is a beautiful design
+of trumpet flowers and roses, while the extreme edge of the plates is
+ornamented with a conventionalized laurel wreath broken at intervals of
+about six inches with a star.
+
+Mayflower. Landing of The.
+
+See No. 240.
+
+193. Mendenhall Ferry. Stubbs.
+
+A print in clear dark blue of a landscape with cattle in the foreground
+and a comfortable house, a story and a half high, a Lombardy poplar and
+an elm-tree, and a narrow river. In the background, on the opposite side
+of the river, hills with several dwelling-houses. The main point is the
+ferry—a cable stretching across the river, and by which boats were taken
+from side to side. The ferry-boat is shown. The border is a scroll, with
+eagles with half-spread wings and flowers, such as is shown on page 354.
+Though these pieces have no maker’s stamp, the impressed mark on pieces
+bearing the same border is “Stubbs.” The only mark on this piece is the
+name Mendenhall Ferry in an oval medallion. Mendenhall is an old
+Pennsylvania name, but I do not know where the ferry was located. Joseph
+Mendenhall owned a farm of a thousand acres on the Brandywine, below
+Shadd’s Ford, in Chester County, and it is very probable that the ferry
+was there.
+
+Merchants’ Exchange. New York.
+
+See No. 204.
+
+194. Millennium.
+
+A plate printed in blue, plum, green, black, and pink. In the centre a
+design of a lion led by a child, while lions and lambs lie peacefully at
+their feet. Above, the words, “Peace on Earth,” surmounted by a dove
+with olive branch. Below, the words, “Give us this day our daily Bread.”
+The border is a design of wheat sheaves and fruit, broken at the top of
+the plate by an eye and a Bible open at Isaiah. Mark on back,
+“Millennium.” One is shown on page 24.
+
+Mitchell & Freeman’s Warehouse.
+
+See No. 154.
+
+195. Mount Vernon.
+
+This view of Mount Vernon is in black on a cup and saucer of white
+china. It is the front view of the house, and in the foreground a negro
+is leading a prancing white horse. At the top is this inscription,
+“Mount Vernon, Seat of the late Gen’l Washington.” Inside the cup is a
+dotted border. It has no stamp or mark of maker. I have also seen this
+print upon a cup and saucer of cream-colored Liverpool ware.
+
+196. Mount Vernon.
+
+Landscape in dark blue. Marked “Mount Vernon nr Washington. J. & W.
+Ridgway.”
+
+197. Mount Vernon.
+
+Dark blue plate with Mount Vernon in foreground and city of Washington
+in background. Mark, “View of Washington from Mt. Vernon.” Geographical
+and topographical laws were naught to English potters.
+
+198. Mount Vernon.
+
+Stamped in pink. In the centre a group of visitors at a monument; the
+border a good floral design. On the back of plate the mark, “Virginia.”
+
+Mount Video.
+
+See No. 176 _et seq._
+
+199. Nahant. No. 1. Stubbs.
+
+[Illustration: Nahant Plate.]
+
+This plate is ten inches in diameter, of a rich dark blue color, and is
+very handsome—as are all the plates with its border, a scroll containing
+alternate eagles and roses. In the centre is a view of the Nahant Hotel,
+with the ocean and rocks in the foreground. On one rock are a dog, and a
+man firing a gun; on a second, two women fishing; on a third, a man and
+woman walking. On the right of the foreground is an old-fashioned
+curricle with two horses harnessed tandem. On the back of the plate is
+an oval blue stamp with the words, “Nahant Hotel near Boston.” One of
+these plates is here shown. This hotel was built of stone in the year
+1818, by the Hon. Edward H. Robbins, at a cost of sixty thousand
+dollars. It was enlarged by a wooden addition until it contained three
+hundred rooms. It was burnt on September 12, 1861, and has never been
+rebuilt. The view on the plate shows only the old stone part of the
+hotel. It has been suggested that these plates were decorated for and
+used in the hotel. There is no evidence to prove this, nor is it
+probable. I have never seen any pieces save plates with this design.
+
+200. Nahant. No. 2. R. S. W.
+
+Same view of the hotel at Nahant, with a large tree in the foreground at
+the left, and no curricle. The border is the oak leaf and acorn design,
+shown on page 361; the stamp on the back, “Nahant Hotel nr Boston R. S.
+W.” The plates bearing this design are about an inch less in diameter
+than the ones described in No. 199.
+
+201. Natural Bridge. Virginia.
+
+A poor and small view of the Natural Bridge, printed in light blue or
+pink in the centre of a white plate. Sometimes the plate has a weakly
+drawn flower border.
+
+202. Newburgh, on the Hudson River. W. R.
+
+This is a black print on a white china plate twelve inches in diameter.
+On the back an impressed shield and eagle, and an oblong stamp
+surmounted by an eagle and having a pendent festoon of flowers. The name
+“View from Ruggles House in Newburgh Hudson River,” and the initials W.
+R., are on the stamp. There is no border. In the centre of the plate is
+a pretty view of the Hudson River with the familiar mountains in the
+background. The water is dotted with sloops and little boats, and a
+large tree is at the left of the foreground.
+
+203. Newburgh, on the Hudson River.
+
+Black print on dinner set of a view of Washington’s Headquarters at
+Newburgh. Confused rose border.
+
+204. New York Fire, or Ruins of Merchants’ Exchange.
+
+This plate is ten inches in diameter, in a brown or dull blue print. A
+view of the ruins of the Merchants’ Exchange, with the front still
+standing, is in the centre of the plate. A safe and books and papers,
+and a group of persons, are in the foreground, also a squad of four
+soldiers with an officer. Sentries patrol in front of the Exchange;
+groups of lookers-on are on either side; and flames and smoke in the
+background. The border is divided by eight scrolls bearing alternately
+the words “Great Fire” and “City of New York.” The spaces contain
+alternate subjects; one a group of old fire-implements, a fire-engine,
+fireman’s hat and trumpet, and underneath the date, 1833; the other
+space contains a phœnix with flames behind, against a background of old
+city buildings, and underneath the date, December 16th. On the back of
+the plate, the same phœnix over the stamp “Ruins Merchants Exchange,”
+and in fine letters the mark “Stone-Ware.”
+
+This plate was printed to commemorate the terrible fire which devastated
+the business portion of New York in 1833, burning over thirteen acres in
+extent and causing a loss of seventeen million dollars. The fire
+extended from Coffee House Slip along South Street to Coenties Slip,
+thence to Broad Street, along William Street to Wall Street, burning
+down the south side to the East River, with the exception of the
+buildings from Number 51 to 61. The Merchants’ Exchange was one of the
+last buildings to yield to the flames.
+
+This beautiful marble building had a front of one hundred and fifteen
+feet on Wall Street, was three stories high above the basement, and was
+considered at the time the handsomest building in the United States
+except the New York City Hall. The Post-Office had been established in
+its basement in 1827. The letters and mails were removed to a place of
+safety, but the noble marble statue of Alexander Hamilton, which stood
+in the Rotunda, was crushed by the falling sidewalls. The Seventh
+Regiment (then called the National Guard) kept guard over the ruins, and
+the funny fur-capped sentries shown on the plate are doubtless of this
+regiment. A fine view of the front and rear of the ruins of the
+Merchants’ Exchange is shown in William L. Stone’s “History of New
+York;” but the old stone-ware plates form an equally faithful, and much
+more curious and interesting, memorial of the great conflagration.
+
+205. New York. Arms of State. T. Mayer.
+
+The arms of New York with seated figures, instead of standing figures as
+in the present coat of arms; also the motto “Excelsior” and name New
+York. On the back is printed in blue the American eagle, with motto “E
+Pluribus Unum,” also the impressed mark of “T. Mayer, Stone,
+Staffordshire.” Both marks are described on page 324. There were
+doubtless dinner services with the arms of all the existing States of
+the Union, but I have seen only the plates and platters with arms of New
+York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and the
+soup-tureen with the arms of the State of Maryland.
+
+206. New York. Arms of State.
+
+I have seen in many collections, the Trumbull-Prime Collection being one
+of the number, pieces of Lowestoft china bearing a poor and crude
+rendering of the Arms of State of New York. These must have been
+decorated in China in large numbers, to be so widespread and numerous.
+
+207. New York Bay. Clews.
+
+This view of the Bay is taken from Castle Garden. In the centre is the
+fort on Governor’s Island. A side-wheel steamer and frigate are among
+the shipping. The stamp on back is “View of New York Bay.”
+
+208. New York. Stevenson.
+
+A dark blue print of a view of New York from Brooklyn Heights. In the
+foreground is a pretty old Dutch homestead view, low sheds, a well, and
+a man on horseback. On the river is some shipping and a small steamboat.
+In the background the lower portion of New York, showing Trinity Church
+spire. The border is a rose pattern. On the back is the mark “View of
+New York from Brooklyn Heights by (or for), Wm. C. Wall Esq.” Also the
+impressed mark of “Stevenson Warranted.” A plate with this print is in
+the rooms of the Long Island Historical Society, in Brooklyn.
+
+209. New York. Jackson.
+
+A view of Castle Garden, with a tree to the right, printed in brown.
+Marked “Jackson’s Ware.”
+
+210. New York. Scudder’s Museum. Richard Stevenson (?).
+
+A dark blue plate with a design in the centre of the plate of a house
+with the sign “American Museum,” and a garden in front. The border is a
+pretty design of oak leaves. On the back, in a scroll, the mark
+“Scudder’s American Museum R. S.” This museum stood in a garden on the
+corner of Broadway, where now is the great _New York Herald_ building.
+It was a famous place of amusement in its day, and afterward passed into
+the possession of P. T. Barnum; there he laid the foundation of his fame
+and fortune.
+
+211. New York. City Hall. Jackson.
+
+This is a black or brown print with a flower border. In the centre is
+the City Hall with flag flying from the staff on the roof; in the
+foreground a horse and wagon, men and boys. Stamped on the back “City
+Hall New York;” and “Jackson Warranted.”
+
+212. New York. City Hall. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+A plate printed in dark blue with a view of the New York City Hall. In
+the foreground are large trees and a wondrouslyattired man, woman, and
+child standing facing the building, to which the man points with his
+cane. The border is the ugly set medallion border of flowers shown on
+page 319. Mark in blue on the back, “City Hall New York. Beauties of
+America. J. & W. Ridgway.” The corner-stone of this building was laid in
+1803, and the edifice was completed in 1812. It stood with the bridewell
+on the west, the almshouse behind it, and the jail on the other side. It
+cost half a million dollars—a most reasonable expenditure when compared
+with the twelve million dollars for its neighbor the Court-House—and was
+at that time the handsomest structure in the United States. The “three
+fronts,” as they were called, are of Stockbridge marble. It is still
+standing, a good example of pure design and style. A very simple way of
+dating the various City Hall prints is found in the presence in the
+design of the clock in the cupola; this was placed in its position in
+1830. Some prints show the dial very distinctly.
+
+[Illustration: City Hall Pitcher.]
+
+213. New York. City Hall. Stubbs.
+
+Same view of City Hall as No. 212, but the park in the foreground is
+intersected with paths and the trees are different. The border is of
+scrolls, roses, and eagles, shown on page 354. Color, dark blue. Mark on
+back, “City Hall New York.” This view is taken, I think, from a drawing
+by W. G. Wall, which was published December 20, 1826.
+
+214. New York. City Hall.
+
+Same view of City Hall as No. 213, with no trees in the foreground. Oak
+leaf border with outer edge of white. Color dark blue. Probably by
+Stevenson. A pitcher bearing this view is here shown.
+
+215. New York. Fort Gansevoort.
+
+Printed in dark blue on various pieces of a dinner service. A view of
+the fort with water and sloop in foreground. A confused leaf border. The
+pieces I have seen bore no maker’s mark.
+
+216. New York. Almshouse. J. &
+
+A view printed in dark blue of the ugly Almshouse on Blackwell’s Island.
+One of the Beauties of America set, with same marks and border as shown
+on page 319.
+
+217. New York. Battery.
+
+A view of the Battery in common black print.
+
+218. New York. City Hotel. R. S. W.
+
+A plate printed in dark blue, with a view looking down Broadway, and
+including Trinity Church. In the foreground, in the middle of Broadway,
+in front of a hotel, a man is sawing wood on an old-fashioned saw-buck.
+The clear oak leaf and acorn border, and scroll mark on back, with R. S.
+W., as in No. 219.
+
+219. New York. Park Theatre. R. S. W.
+
+[Illustration: Park Theatre Plate.]
+
+A view of the Park Theatre, including the lower end of City Hall Park
+with its ancient brick posts, where now stands the Post-office. In the
+distance the spire of the Old Brick Church, where Dr. Spring preached. A
+clear oak leaf and acorn border, and scroll and leaf mark, with initials
+R. S. W. A plate is here shown. The first Park Theatre was built in
+1797. It stood in Park Row, about two hundred feet from Ann Street. It
+was opened on January 29, 1798, the first play being “As You Like It;”
+$1,232 were taken in at the first performance. In May, 1820, it was
+burned to the ground. In 1821 it was rebuilt, and opened with “Wives as
+they Were and Maids as they Are.” It was burnt on December 16, 1848. An
+original water-color drawing of the interior is in the rooms of the New
+York Historical Society, with a key to the members of the audience, for
+the figures are portraits. Many of the men are sitting with their hats
+on. In this theatre appeared Thomas A. Cooper, Charles Mathews, the
+Keans, Charles and Fanny Kemble, Malibran, Celeste, Fanny Ellsler,
+Madame Vestris, Clara Fisher, Julia Wheatley, Master Burke, the Ravels,
+Mr. and Mrs. Wood, Charlotte Watson, Charlotte Cushman, Ellen Tree,
+Taglioni—what prettier memento of the old New York stage can there be
+than the old Park Theatre plate?
+
+220. Niagara.
+
+A view of Niagara Falls in a pink print on small plate.
+
+221. Niagara.
+
+Print in medium shade of blue. A large house and trees in foreground and
+diminutive semi-circular waterfall in background. On back the stamp
+“Niagara.”
+
+222. Niagara. Table Rock.
+
+This beautiful dark blue plate has the rich shell border of Wood, though
+it does not bear his impressed mark, and has only the stamp with eagle
+and motto “E Pluribus Unum” and words “Table Rock Niagara.” The view is
+taken from the foot of Table Rock looking upward, and is very artistic.
+Entire dinner services bearing this design were exported to America.
+
+Park Theatre. New York.
+
+See No. 219.
+
+Passaic Falls. Trenton.
+
+See No. 256.
+
+223. Peace and Plenty. Clews.
+
+A medium blue plate decorated with border of fruit and flowers. In
+centre, a Roman husbandman crowned with grain and surrounded by sheaves
+of wheat; in his right hand a sickle, and in his left a basket of fruit;
+by his side a shield with the American eagle and the motto “Peace and
+Plenty.” Made by Clews. Two plates bearing this design sold at the
+Governor Lyon sale for three dollars each.
+
+Penn, Wm. Treaty with Indians.
+
+See No. 267.
+
+224. Pennsylvania. Arms of. T. Mayer.
+
+A very spirited and beautiful rendering of the arms of this State,
+printed in dark blue on platters and plates, with border and marks like
+No. 190. Marks fully described on page.
+
+225. Pennsylvania Hospital. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+In dark blue, marked “J. & W. Ridgway. Beauties of America.” Border
+shown on page 319.
+
+226. Philadelphia. View.
+
+This print is in dark blue upon a plate six inches in diameter. The
+border is a confused scroll with roses. The spires of two churches are
+seen, and in the foreground is a wharf with a derrick, and a sloop
+alongside. Some of the plates have upon the back the stamp “View of the
+city of Philadelphia.” Also the impressed stamp of a star like the
+Worcester mark.
+
+227. Philadelphia. Fairmount Park. Stubbs.
+
+A view of Fairmount, with a large tree in the foreground, and a man and
+woman in the dress of the early part of the century. On the opposite and
+further shore of the lake are two of the handsome dwelling-houses which
+stood there at that time. The border is the handsome design of scroll,
+roses, and eagles. The medallion stamp on back “Fairmount near
+Philadelphia.” Impressed mark, Stubbs. A plate with this design is here
+shown.
+
+228. Philadelphia. Upper Bridge. Stubbs.
+
+This is one of the four Fairmount Park views. It bears on the back the
+impress and the oval blue stamp “Upper Bridge over River Schuylkill.”
+The border is the same as shown on page 364. On the left of the
+foreground of the view is a large tree, and under it is a group of
+persons, one of whom is sketching. At the left is an old covered
+Pennsylvania wagon with six horses. The view of the ferry bridge is
+clear and good, and the color is a good blue, though not rich and dark.
+Impressed stamp on some specimens, Stubbs.
+
+[Illustration: Fairmount Park Plate.]
+
+229. Philadelphia. Library. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+Plate printed in dark blue with set medallion border. In the centre a
+view of the Library at Philadelphia. Mark on the back, “Philadelphia
+Library. Beauties of America. J. & W. Ridgway.” One of these plates is
+shown on page 319.
+
+230. Philadelphia. Stoughton Church. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+Plate printed in dark blue with set medallion border shown on page 319.
+In the centre a view of the old church which stood on Filbert Street
+above Eighth. The church looks like an old Grecian building. Mark on the
+back, “Stoughton Church. J. & W. Ridgway, Beauties of America.”
+
+231. Philadelphia. Girard’s Bank. Jackson.
+
+A view, printed in pink or black, of Girard’s Bank. Mark on back,
+“Jacksons Warranted.”
+
+232. Philadelphia. United States Hotel.
+
+A view of the hotel in rich dark blue, with a border composed chiefly of
+the foliage of two trees standing at the right and left and meeting
+overhead.
+
+233. Philadelphia. Woodlands. Stubbs.
+
+View of a low building like a lodge and landscape in dark blue. Scroll,
+eagle, and rose border shown on page 364. Stamp on back, “Woodlands near
+Philadelphia.”
+
+234. Philadelphia. Washington Church.
+
+235. Philadelphia. Race Street Bridge. Jackson.
+
+Print in black, brown, or pink, marked on back with name of view and
+“Jacksons Warranted.”
+
+236. Philadelphia. Race Street Bridge. Stubbs.
+
+Eagle, rose, and scroll border like No. 225. Impressed mark, “Stubbs.”
+
+237. Philadelphia. Waterworks. R. S. W.
+
+Low building with dome in centre of the plate, fountain at right, and
+trees, fence, and an old-time covered emigrant wagon in foreground.
+Distinct oak leaf and acorn border, like No. 180. Clear dark blue in
+color. Mark on back in scroll with leaves, “Philadelphia Waterworks. R.
+S. W.”
+
+238. Philadelphia. Waterworks. Jackson.
+
+Same view as No. 237, but smaller, and printed in black. Mark on back,
+“Jacksons Warranted.”
+
+239. Philadelphia. Bank of the United States. Stubbs.
+
+A plate in dark blue with street and buildings in the centre. Eagle,
+rose, and scroll border shown on page 364. This is the bank which was in
+1833 forced into bankruptcy by President Andrew Jackson.
+
+240. Pilgrims. Enoch Wood & Sons.
+
+[Illustration: Pilgrim Plate.]
+
+This Plymouth Rock decoration is found on plates and pitchers, and the
+pieces are perhaps more highly prized than any other historical
+Staffordshire wares, especially by all descendants from and lovers of
+the Pilgrims. The print is clear and good, though the blue color is not
+very dark. In the centre of the plate is a print representing a
+“rock-bound coast” with the Mayflower and a small boat overfilled with
+Pilgrim Fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, upon which are inscribed the
+names Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Brewster, Standish. Two Indians are
+also perched on the rock. Above this print is the small-lettered
+inscription “The Landing of the Fathers at Plymouth, Dec. 22, 1620.” The
+border consists of a handsome design of eagles and scrolls, broken by
+four medallions or shields. The upper one contains the words “America
+Independent, July 4, 1776;” the lower the words, “Washington born 1732,
+died 1799;” on the right a little view of two full-rigged ships with
+names Enterprise and Boxer (?); on the left a part of the print on No.
+128—a steamer, rock, and eagle. On the back is the blue stamp “Enoch
+Wood & Sons Burslem.” One of these plates is here shown. In spite of the
+presence of the steamship, the name of Washington, and the date 1799, I
+have been gravely informed by country owners that these plates were two
+hundred years old, and once even that they “came over in the Mayflower.”
+We have often been told that the plates were “made for the dinner at the
+laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument, in 1824, when Daniel
+Webster spoke.” This account was obviously improbable, since nothing in
+the design on the plate bore reference to that occasion, and the
+probability seemed equally clear that the celebration was instead the
+bicentennial celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims, which was held
+in Plymouth in 1820, and at which Webster, clad in silk gown and satin
+small-clothes, made the address which laid the foundation of his
+reputation as an orator. I was glad to receive confirmation of my belief
+from Mr. T. B. Drew, Librarian of Plymouth Hall, at Plymouth. He says,
+“The Pilgrim plates you refer to were made in England by order of John
+Blaney Bates, a well-known contractor and builder of his day, who in
+1820 was building the Plymouth County Court-House. He had it so nearly
+completed that the dinner of the celebration was provided in that
+building. It was, as you say, the bicentennial of the Landing of the
+Pilgrims, but often termed by us the Webster celebration, on account of
+Daniel Webster being the orator of the day. There were two sizes of
+pitchers and two of plates, and one of the plates has on the rock the
+names as you describe. After the dinner the wares were sold either at
+auction or private sale, and the different pieces became distributed
+quite widely through New England. I know of no publication that gives
+any account of what I have been telling you, but the facts were well
+known and have been told by aged people who remember the circumstances.”
+To this information I can add in one respect. There are six sizes of
+plates, one being deep like a soup-plate. An old lady still living in
+Plymouth, asserts that while the plates were furnished by Mr. Bates, her
+husband, seeing their popularity and ready sale, ordered the pitchers,
+as she remembers, from Holland. As the print on the pitchers varies from
+that on the plates, being encircled also by a narrow ribbon scroll with
+the words “The Landing of the Fathers,” and as the former do not bear
+the stamp of Enoch Wood of Burslem, this reminiscence is probably
+correct, except possibly the point that the pitchers came from Holland.
+These plates are usually found one in a family, but from one household,
+near Worcester, Mass., were purchased by a china hunter eight
+tea-plates, and from another family two soup-plates, four tea-plates,
+seven saucers, and ten “cup-plates.” By cup-plates I mean the little
+flat saucers in which our grandmothers set their teacups when they
+poured the tea in the deep saucers to cool.
+
+Pine Orchard House.
+
+See No. 160.
+
+241. Pittsburg Penitentiary.
+
+This is upon large and small platters and plates in purplish pink, blue,
+brown, and black prints. The ware is stone-ware of good quality. The
+border is a pretty scroll-work design with roses and other flowers and
+eagles. The edges are slightly scalloped. This Pittsburg plate has a
+clear unperspectived drawing of the Penitentiary, with high hills at the
+background. Stiff little houses and trees are scattered around. In the
+foreground a man in knee-breeches is holding a horse which is harnessed
+to a chaise. The building in this print is the Western Penitentiary of
+Pennsylvania, at Alleghany City. It is an enormous stone building of
+ancient Norman style of architecture, that was built in 1827.
+
+242. Pittsburg.
+
+Print in pale blue, brown, or black of a view of Pittsburg, with the
+Iron Mountain in the background and two large steamers, named
+respectively “Home” and “Pennsylvania” in the foreground. Mark on the
+back, “Picturesque Views, Pittsburg.”
+
+243. Pittsfield. Clews.
+
+A winter view of the town common at Pittsfield, Mass., with the church
+and other public buildings. In the foreground an elliptical enclosure
+with a skeleton elm-tree, intended to represent the famous great
+Pittsfield Elm. The author of “The China Hunters’ Club” quotes from a
+newspaper of 1864, that the trunk of this tree was made into bowls and
+other relics, and that “about 1825 Mr. Allen, a merchant of Pittsfield,
+had a view of the elm and park, as they then appeared, taken and sent to
+England, where it was reproduced on blue crockery ware.” As the fence
+which appears in the view on the plate was not placed around the elm
+until 1825, this date is probably correct. Before that the tree had been
+entirely unprotected; it was sadly nibbled by the farm horses that were
+frequently hitched to the iron staples that were driven into its trunk.
+When the elm fell in 1861, a great number of these staples were found
+imbedded in the wood. The design of the church appears in four
+medallions in the border of the plate. It is marked “Clews” and the name
+“Winter View of Pittsfield Mass.” I have also seen this same view with a
+vine-leaf border.
+
+Plymouth Landing.
+
+See No. 240.
+
+244. Quebec.
+
+Dark blue print of view of the heights at Quebec. Mark on back in blue
+scroll “Quebec,” also the impressed stamp of a Greek cross.
+
+245. Quebec. Falls of Montmorency.
+
+Dark blue view of the Falls, with a shell border. Stamp on the back
+“Falls of Montmorenci near Quebec.” This and the previous number are the
+only views of Canadian scenery that I have ever seen on old
+Staffordshire plates. Persons who have gathered china in Canada tell me
+that they have found no other views there.
+
+246. Rhode Island. Arms of State. T. Mayer.
+
+Dark blue print marked “T. Mayer Stone Staffordshire.” Same border as
+No. 192. Marks fully described on page 324.
+
+247. Richmond, Va. College.
+
+View of college printed in light blue.
+
+248. Savannah. Bank. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+View of the Bank at Savannah. It has the same set medallion border shown
+on page 319. Mark on back “Bank, Savannah, Beauties of America. J. & W.
+Ridgway.”
+
+Scudder’s Museum. New York.
+
+See No. 210.
+
+249. South Carolina.
+
+A plate with a palmetto-tree in the centre, and a ship in the distance,
+on either side a flag. A shield with the date July 4th and the motto of
+the State of South Carolina. Flower border like plates of E. Wood &
+Sons.
+
+250. South Carolina. Arms of State. T. Mayer.
+
+Dark blue plate. Marked “Stone Staffordshire T. Mayer.” Same marks and
+border as No. 192, and a very clear rendering of the State arms.
+
+251. States. Clews.
+
+This design is the larger plate shown on page 9. It is found on all the
+pieces of a dinner service, but I have never seen a tea-set. The dinner
+plates are exceptionally large. The print is in a rich shade of dark
+blue. In the centre is a medallion of what is said to be the White
+House, at Washington, with sheep or cattle grazing in foreground. It is
+supported on one side by a kneeling figure with plumed helmet and
+bearing a liberty cap—labelled Independence. On the other side the
+figure of a woman kneeling on her ankles with the bandage of justice on
+her eyes, and Masonic emblem on her apron. She holds a portrait
+medallion labelled Washington. On the pedestal at her ankles, the word
+“America.” The border is of flowers and a scroll with names of fifteen
+States, and with fifteen stars. On some pieces these stars are simply
+crosses. Impressed stamp “Clews Warranted Staffordshire.” On the larger
+pieces, such as tureens, the centre view is often of an English
+castle—the White House view not being large enough, apparently, to fill
+the space. Some of the platters have in the centre a view of a two-story
+house, while in the foreground are two men and a sheet of water with a
+sloop. This is sometimes called the Washington Masonic Plate.
+
+252. Steamship.
+
+A dark blue print of a side-wheel steamship, bark rigged, under full
+sail, and flying the American flag. Impressed mark of “E. Woods & Sons.”
+This may commemorate the Savannah, the first steamer to cross the
+Atlantic, in 1819.
+
+Stevens Mansion.
+
+See No. 182.
+
+Stoughton Church.
+
+See No. 228.
+
+Table Rock. Niagara.
+
+See No. 222.
+
+253. Temperance Plate.
+
+This curious and finely printed plate is very rare. It is made of a soft
+yellowish paste, and the decoration is printed in black. The edges are
+slightly scalloped and have a little line of black. In the centre of the
+plate is a shield supported by the figures of a man and woman; the man
+bearing a banner inscribed with the word “Sobriety,” and the woman a
+similar banner with the words “Domestic Comfort.” By the side of the man
+is a small figure of a boy seated reading; on the opposite side that of
+a girl sewing. The shield is surmounted by a crest—an oak-tree—and above
+that a scroll containing the motto “Firm as an Oak.” Below the shield
+are clouds and two shelves of vases and jars of antique shapes; and
+beneath all a scroll with the motto “Temperance, Sobriety.” The shield
+is divided by perpendicular lines and transverse bars. In the spaces
+thus formed are designs. That of a beehive has on the bar beneath it the
+word “Industry;” that of a farmer working in a field, the word “Health;”
+that of a sailor, the word “Freedom;” that of a pile of money, the word
+“Wealth;” that of a cornucopia, the word “Plenty;” that of a snake, the
+word “Wisdom;” in the lower space are an open Bible and the letters
+I.H.S. There is no stamp or mark on the back. It is probably a Masonic
+design, but is called the “Temperance Plate.”
+
+254. Texas. J. B.
+
+English stone-ware with blue or pink prints. Trophies of war in the
+corners, and on the sides symbolical figures of Peace and Plenty. In the
+centre, a fight between Texans and Mexicans, marked “Gen. Taylor in
+Texas.” It was doubtless printed to commemorate the Independence of
+Texas. Marked on the back with initials J. B. A large platter bearing
+this design sold in the Governor Lyon sale, in 1876, for $7.50.
+
+255. Texan Campaign.
+
+Plates with a small, poor print in sepia green, red, or black, of a
+scene with troop of soldiers with mounted commander. Border, a scroll
+with trophies of arms and flags. Stamp on the back “Texan Campaign.”
+
+Transylvania University.
+
+See No. 189 _et seq._
+
+256. Trenton Falls.
+
+This plate is eight inches in diameter, of a rich dark blue. The
+handsome shell border indicates it to be one of Clews manufacture (as
+Mr. Prime asserts); the impressed stamp on the back cannot be
+deciphered. The view in the centre of the plate is a pretty group of
+pine-trees with the Passaic Falls in the middle. On the back is a blue
+stamp of an eagle with the scroll and the words “E Pluribus Unum,” and
+the name “View of Trenton Falls.”
+
+257. Troy. Clews.
+
+A view of Troy, N. Y., from Mount Ida, marked Clews.
+
+Union Line. Steamboat.
+
+See No. 184.
+
+United States Bank.
+
+See No. 239.
+
+United States Hotel.
+
+See No. 232.
+
+Utica.
+
+See No. 167.
+
+Virginia. Natural Bridge.
+
+See No. 201.
+
+Virginia.
+
+See No. 198.
+
+258. Virginia. J. W. Ridgway.
+
+Print in black or brown with floral border. In centre a landscape view.
+Mark on back “Virginia. J. W. Ridgway.” The house bears a close
+resemblance to Arlington House.
+
+Wadsworth Tower.
+
+See No. 176.
+
+Washington’s Headquarters.
+
+See No. 203.
+
+Washington, D. C. View of.
+
+See No. 197.
+
+259. Washington, D. C. Capitol. J. & W. Ridgway.
+
+A view of the Capitol in dark blue with man and woman on horseback in
+the foreground. Medallion border shown on page 319. Marked “J. & W.
+Ridgway. Beauties of America. Capitol Washington.” This appears usually
+on large platters.
+
+260. Washington, D. C. Capitol. R. S. & W.
+
+[Illustration: Capitol Plate.]
+
+A very beautiful dark blue plate with slightly scalloped edge, with view
+of the Capitol, large tree in foreground. A vine-leaf border. Mark on
+back in shield “Capitol Washington. R. S. &. W.” One is shown here.
+
+261. Washington, D. C. Capitol. Stevenson.
+
+Dark blue print of same view. Vine-leaf border and white fluted edge.
+Impressed mark, Stevenson.
+
+262. Washington, D. C. Capitol. E. Wood & Sons.
+
+Dark blue plate with view of the Capitol. Confused shell border. Mark
+“E. Wood Warranted Staffordshire.”
+
+263. Washington, D. C. White House. Jackson.
+
+This is a view of the Executive Mansion at Washington, with garden to
+the left and a group of figures to the right. It is printed in black and
+marked “Jackson.”
+
+264. Washington, D. C. White House.
+
+Another view printed in black of the White House. Scalloped edges and
+wide ornate border. Marked on the back “White House Washington.”
+
+265. Washington, D. C. White House. Jackson.
+
+Pink and white printed plate marked on the back “Presidents House
+Washington,” and mark “Jacksons Warranted.” Same border as No.    .
+
+White House. Washington. States.
+
+See No. 251.
+
+266. West Point. Clews.
+
+View of West Point, with river and steamboat and row-boat. Mark on back
+“Picturesque Views. West Point Hudson River,” also impressed mark
+“Warranted Clews Staffordshire.”
+
+267. William Penn. Treaty with Indians. Jackson.
+
+Print in black or brown on dinner service of a view with William Penn,
+in Quaker garb, talking with an Indian chief. At their feet a box of
+treasure, including a string of beads which an Indian woman is
+examining. Border a stencil design.
+
+Woodlands.
+
+See No. 233.
+
+
+
+
+                                 XVIII.
+                             CHINA MEMORIES
+
+
+What fancies we weave, what dreams we dream over a piece of homely old
+china! Every cup, every jar in our china ingatherings, has the charm of
+fantasy, visions of past life and beauty, though only imagined. I like
+to think that the china I love has been warmly loved before—has been
+made a cherished companion, been tenderly handled ere I took it to be my
+companion and to care for it. It is much the same friendly affection
+that I feel for an old well-read, half-worn book; the unknown hands
+through which it has passed, the unseen eyes that have gazed on it, have
+endeared it to me. This imagined charm exists in china if it be old,
+though we know not a word of its past, save that it has a past and is
+not fresh from the potter’s wheel and the kiln. The very haze of
+uncertainty is favorable to the fancies of a dreamer; I summon past
+owners from that shadowy hiding-place; weave romances out of that cloud;
+build past dwelling-houses more quaint, more romantic than any in whose
+windows I have gazed, whose threshold I have trodden in my real china
+hunting. Victor Cousin says: “If beauty absent and dreamed of does not
+affect you more than beauty present, you may have a thousand other
+gifts, but not that of imagination.” If you have no imagination you may
+have none of these china dreams—these “children of an idle brain,” but
+you still may have china memories. Fair country sights does my old china
+bring to my eyes; soft country sounds does it bring to my ears, the
+sound of buzzing bees, of rustling branches, “the liquid lapse of
+murmuring streams,” of rippling brooks where we dipped the old blue
+crockery mugs and cups the day we found them, and drank the pure but
+sun-warmed water. When I look at this queen’s-ware creamer, I hear the
+sweet, clear, ear-thrilling notes of the meadow-lark, “in notes by
+distance made more sweet”—who sang outside of the farm-house where I
+first saw the dainty shell of china. Sweet scents, too, does the old
+china bear. When I found that old yellow Wedgwood dish in the country
+tavern, it was filled with tiny fragrant wild strawberries—I smell, nay,
+I taste them still. That flaring-topped vase was full of sweet white
+honeysuckle when I espied it in a farm-house window—I carried away the
+scent of the honeysuckle when I bought the vase. This old mottled
+stone-ware jug, with the hound handle, stood in the deep shade of a
+stone wall by the side of a sunny hay-field when first it met my view.
+It was filled with honest home-brewed beer for the hay-makers. We sat
+fuming and sizzling in the hot sun, watching them spread and turn the
+fragrant hay until the beer had all been drunk (and we did not have to
+wait long), and we bore the jug off in triumph, breathing to us forever
+the scent of new-mown hay with, to speak truthfully, a slight tinge of
+stale beer.
+
+A halo of “sweet Sabean odors” fairly envelops all family china. In
+those blue and white Canton sugar-bowls, and in that great jar with the
+red lacquered cover, my grandmother kept her fragrant spiced
+rose-leaves—there are rose-leaves in them now. In that tall pitcher she
+always placed the first lilac and cherry blooms—and lo! as I look at the
+poor cracked thing, “sweet is the air with budding haws and white with
+blossoming cherry-trees.” More prosaic and homely, but equally
+memory-sweet, what a penetrating aroma of strong green tea rises out of
+that copper-lustre teapot! What a burnt and bitter, but wholly
+good-smelling steam arises from that old flip-mug, the steam from many a
+quart of flip brewed from New England rum, and home-made beer, stirred
+with the red-hot iron loggerhead.
+
+[Illustration: Crown Derby Plate.]
+
+Like Charles Lamb, I was born china-loving. “I am not conscious of a
+time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination.”
+When I was a little child the dearest treasures of my doll’s house were
+a small cup-plate of purest porcelain, delicately bordered with a
+diagonal design of tiny berries and spike-shaped bachelor’s buttons and
+fine lines of gold, and a nicked India china tea-caddy, cork-stoppered,
+and filled with precious rose-water—rose-water of my grandmother’s own
+make, distilled in the old rose-water still that stood, when unused, a
+cumbrous and mysterious machine under the dusty eaves of the garret. I
+suspect that still had been employed in early colonial days to
+manufacture a less innocuous liquid than rose-water, but now only the
+petals of the Queen of the Prairie, the sweet-brier, the cinnamon roses,
+went into its innocent limbec; and its sweet-scented product was
+intensified by the contents of one of the long, thin, gilt glass bottles
+of ottar of roses that my great-uncle, Captain Royal, who “followed the
+sea,” brought home in such vast numbers from China. One day there poured
+out from the door of my doll’s house a penetrating fragrance of roses; I
+peered within—the keen anguish of that moment fills me even now; the
+tea-caddy had fallen—nay, had been knocked on my precious little plate,
+and both were broken. There on her back, drenched with my cherished
+rose-water, lay the iconoclast, my miserable maltese kitten, in mischief
+still, pulling down with her sharp, wicked claws my proudest
+masterpiece, a miniature chandelier of wire and glass beads over which I
+had spent many a weary hour. I burst into a loud wail of hopeless
+despair; the bedraggled kitten rushed frightened from my side, shedding
+odors of Araby as she bounded away,
+
+                   “An amber scent of odorous perfume
+                   Her harbinger.”
+
+Ah! never again, even at sight of housemaids’ broken spoils, have I felt
+such heart-breaking grief. To this day, when I look back at the plate
+here shown and the little coffee-cans of the blue Tournay sprigged set
+which I now know to be Crown Derby, and to have been bought by Uncle
+Royal in a sudden streak of extravagance (perhaps he, too, was
+china-mad); to this day I grieve for their companion, the little broken
+cup-plate, and again I smell the sweet, cloying fragrance of rose-water.
+
+These old dark blue plates also tell a tale. They are known to us as
+“the doctor’s pie-plates,” not from the comical figure of Dr. Syntax
+with which they are decorated, but so called in derision. An old New
+England physician, a pie-hater, stole, one Thanksgiving eve,
+twenty-eight carefully made pies that his patient wife and daughters had
+provided for his Thanksgiving guests. He rose stealthily in the dead of
+night, threw lemon and apple, quince and cranberry, mince and
+“Marlborough” pies to the pigs, and hid the blue pie-plates in an old
+rat-nibbled, cobweb-filled, musty, dusty coach that had stood for half a
+century in his carriagehouse, and in which his English grandmother had
+journeyed in state throughout New England. Thirty years later, after his
+death, at the destruction of the old coach, these hidden pie-plates were
+found by his descendants. They are therefore not simply “good pieces of
+blue,” they are ceramic monuments of the household tyranny of man.
+
+Shall I ever forget my first view of my largest and choicest Washington
+pitcher? It stood filled with dried grasses and pressed and varnished
+autumn leaves, and painfully covered with an ignominious shell of
+decalcomanie and scrap-book pictures, on a table in a lonely lighthouse.
+Only by its shape did we know it, the old watermelon shape of Liverpool
+ware. Not a vestige of its early decoration could be seen, but we bought
+it as a hazard of fortune. Oh, the delight I felt when I reached home
+and scraped off Pauline Hall’s smirking and high-colored countenance,
+and saw with a thrill of friendly recognition the black-lined face of my
+own solemn and immaculate Washington surmounting her full-blown, rosy
+shoulders and scarlet and gold bodice. Never do I look at my fully
+restored pitcher but I see him again, as then, with his dignified head
+turned very much aside, as if sadly shocked at the position and dress he
+found himself in.
+
+The clear blue letters on these old Delft apothecary jars speak not to
+me of the drugs and syrups, of the lohocks and electuaries that were
+contained within them in olden times; they are abbreviations of various
+Biblical proverbs, such as “Every fool will be meddling,” and “Let him
+that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” The little, ill-drawn
+blue cherubs that decorate these jars seem always to wink and smirk
+maliciously at me, and to hold their fat sides as though they were
+thinking of the first time they gazed at me and jeered at me out of the
+window of the gray old farm-house in Narragansett, as I stood entrapped
+by the sudden crushing in of a peaked-roofed hen-house upon which I had
+climbed to peer within a window at the hidden Delft treasures. There I
+stood on broken eggs and piercing splinters for one hour, with only
+distracted hens and scarcely less distracted thoughts for company, until
+the owner of hen-house and Delft jars returned and kindly chopped me out
+of my absurd and well-deserved stocks. Severe and unceasing monitors are
+my old apothecary jars.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: Delft Apothecary Jars.]
+
+When I stick gillyflowers and clove-pinks in the pierced tops of these
+three-legged India china “posy-holders,” I am, like Marjorie Fleming,
+“all primmed up with Majestick Pride”—the honest pride of a successful
+china-finder who has snatched her prize from before the very face of a
+dozen other collectors. These “posy-holders” stood for forty years on
+the high-towering mantel-tree of a country parlor, a parlor that was
+viewed yearly by scores of inquisitive and curiosity-seeking summer
+visitors, visitors too dull-visioned to recognize these china treasures.
+Perhaps the high-shelved station of the china, a foot only from the
+ceiling, helped to hide them. Perhaps the gruesome row of oval silvered
+disks that stood in their company, tarnished coffin-plates bearing the
+names of past and dead dwellers in that home, may have chilled and
+repelled investigation. Perhaps the scarlet, blue, and gold dragons and
+shrimps on the posy-holders were dulled by the greater glories of their
+surroundings, for this parlor shone resplendent with glowing color. The
+walls had been painted by a travelling artist in the early part of this
+century, and lavish was his fancy and his sense of color. Above the high
+black mantel-shelf a yellow ochre sun threw his rays over vermillion and
+purple clouds. These rays of light were gilded and curved in various
+directions, and gave Phœbus the appearance of a good-tempered, smiling
+octopus, withal somewhat intoxicated. At either side of the fireplace
+sprung a great palm-tree that bore at the base of a spreading cluster of
+leaves luscious bunches of great hanging pineapples. Around one tree a
+frightful serpent coiled, his striped folds most beautifully diversified
+with gilded spots. Behind the other tree lurked a crouching tiger. On
+the plastered wall were painted two portraits with fine simulated gold
+frames, apparently held in place by heavy cord and tassels; one was of
+George Washington, the other the past owner of all these glories. It was
+curious to see the marked and comic likeness a fair young daughter of
+the house, the village school-mistress, bore to the hard-faced,
+non-perspectived old daub of a grandfather on the wall; had you dressed
+her in a brass-buttoned blue coat and a high stock, she would have been
+far more like the portrait than most portraits are like their originals.
+One large space was decorated with a full-passengered coach with four
+prancing horses; the other bore a marine view—fierce waves, and a
+strangely rigged brig, with gilded cannon, and fine flags and pennants
+all blowing stiffly against the wind that filled the sails. A steamboat,
+too, sailed these waters blue—the greatest triumph of the painter’s art.
+Robert Fulton’s invention was in its infancy when this steamboat was
+evolved, and it was plainly constructed from the artist’s imagination.
+The cranky hull bore two brick chimneys; it rested on crossbars like a
+wagon, and had four great wheels that sat well up out of the water. The
+floor of this room was painted a dull drab color, and in brilliant
+yellow was displayed a diagram of the solar system, planets, moons, and
+orbits, sadly worn and defaced, however, by the footsteps of three
+generations of New Englanders.
+
+Do you wonder that the china posy-holders were overlooked in all this
+blaze of glory? I recount the gaudy decorations with grateful praise.
+Through them my treasures stood, ever “eye-sweet and fair,” but
+unnoticed, for years, humbly awaiting my china-loving and china-spying
+vision.
+
+These dainty egg-shell cups and saucers have also their memory, their
+lesson—a word softly spoken but clear; they were once owned by two
+silver-haired “antient maides” of Chippendale elegance and Pilgrim
+blood, who lived under the moss-covered, decaying rooftree of a pallid,
+gaunt, old colonial home in New England. These “last leaves on the tree”
+kept their dainty, shallow, apse-shaped china closets in a state of
+snowy purity, of precise and unvarying order, of unspotted
+contamination, which might be taken as an emblem of their narrow, pure,
+and monotonous lives. No thick, substantial modern wares, no gayly
+painted crockery, no vessels of common clay, stood on their well-ordered
+and softly shining shelves, just as no modern notions, no knowledge of
+the common, the evil things of life, had ever entered their simple
+minds, had ever shocked their fair souls. Fragile, graceful, antiquated,
+pale in decoration, were their weakly sprigged, lavender-bordered,
+delicately fluted cups; looking like their own softly wrinkled faces,
+their meagre, bent figures, their slender hands. Worn was the gilt on
+the china, faded was the furniture of their rooms, as ill-health had
+worn their gentle spirits. Rather scantily filled were their china
+shelves, as were thin and few their garments, as was sparsely filled
+their larder. Deep green shadows fell on the glass doors and white
+shelves of their china closets from the thick-branched old lilacs that
+close-screened each small-paned window, from the dark century-old cedars
+that overhung their home; death and loneliness and scanty means had
+shadowed their lives. My pure, dignified, and silent old cousins, no
+sweetly-perfumed, softly-tinted, strong-growing blossoms of New England
+life were you, but rather the sad, white, scentless “life everlasting”
+that waved like summer snow-drifts over your own sterile, rock-filled
+fields. These fragile porcelain emblems of your colorless life shall not
+be carelessly handled and rudely gazed at in their new home, but,
+close-hidden away in an old apple-wood beaufet which once stood beside
+your virginal china closets, shall forever teach to me the lesson of
+contentment, simplicity, and resignation which you showed in your gentle
+lives, the lesson which through your old china still lives—the lesson of
+peace and rest.
+
+[Illustration: Copper-Lustre Pitcher.]
+
+A halo of mysterious ghost-seeing, an eternal radiance of poesy,
+surrounds this copper-lustre pitcher. We found this irradiated pitcher
+when we went a-spinet-hunting. We found the ghost also, a tall, pale,
+terrifying apparition, who stealthily entered our room at midnight as we
+slept in the old Pardon tavern, who mysteriously and quietly carried off
+our gowns, but who proved in the cold disillusionizing daylight to be
+our landlady’s daughter, an amateur dressmaker of unbounded ambition and
+few resources. And our poet! we found him also, a unique and untutored
+son of the gods, a rare product of New England soil. We prosaically
+hired this Yankee Walt Whitman to drive us to the Maybee farm—the house
+which we had been assured held both china and spinet. Our
+dearly-remembered poet was a tall, wiry New Englander, whose only
+visible attire was a moth-eaten fur hat, a woollen shirt, a pair of
+heavy boots, and faded overalls, held in place by a single suspender. He
+looked too thinly clad for the raw spring weather, but seemed perfectly
+comfortable and contented in his light clothing. Poet-like, his hair was
+long. Four little wintry curls blew out from under the old hat. We had
+been warned that he did not call himself a farmer, but proudly avowed
+and named himself a poet; and it was hinted that he was a little “luny.”
+He had begun his rhyming career with the composition of epitaphs for all
+the village inhabitants, both living and dead; and from thence had
+advanced to the constant use of rhymes in every-day life and hence had
+acquired the name of “Rhyming Darius.” He “lisped in numbers for the
+numbers came;” and proudly did he display his God-given talent to us
+prosy city folks. He also combined with his vocation as poet the
+additional talent of employing intensely legal forms of speech; for he
+had at an early period of his life been a witness in some country
+trespass case, and had since then always spent a day “in court,”
+whenever the rare days of idleness of a New England farmer would permit.
+As a result, he always cross-questioned everyone with whom he had any
+conversation, and adopted, as far as he could remember, a lawyer’s
+phraseology and legal terms. He had a wily manner of evading questions,
+and seldom gave a direct answer; so between questions and answers we
+held “open court” all the way to the Maybee farm.
+
+Our poet also made a strange introduction of the letter “u” into
+words—which use he evidently regarded as something extremely eloquent
+and scholarly, but which produced some very astonishing variations in
+our vernacular speech. He was much excited at the nocturnal abstraction
+of our gowns and he poured forth a perfect volley of rhymed questions
+upon the subject to us as he drove, seated sidewise, fixing us “with his
+glittering eye:”
+
+               “Why didn’t she apply to ye purs-u-nal
+                 An’ ask ye fur the garment?
+               Did she retain the artucle
+                 Long enough to bring a warrant?
+               Did she take it with malice of forethought
+                 Or unpre-med-ure-tated?
+               Did she terrure-fy ye very bad
+                 A-purloinin’ as ye stated?
+               What air ye goin’ to do?
+                 Did her mother know it too?
+               Why didn’t ye holler out?
+                 An’ ask her what’s she’s about?”
+
+At last, to stop his flood of inquiry, we began to question him, to draw
+him out about the spinet and china.
+
+“Do you know the Maybees well?”
+
+                    “Wall—I may perhaps assert
+                      And assure-vure-rate I do;
+                    At any rate I know him
+                      And I s’pose I know her too.”
+
+“Is it an old farm, and an old house?”
+
+                  “It ain’t so old as some,
+                    And it’s a little older ’n others.
+                  The farm ’s older ’n the house;
+                    It used to be my brother’s.”
+
+“How long have you known them?”
+
+                “Oh—quite an in-ture-val,
+                  But I ain’t known ’m all my life;
+                I’ve known him sence I was two year old,
+                  And a leetle longer his wife.”
+
+“Do you know whether they have an old spinet?”
+
+                  “I’ll tell you in a minute
+                  If you’ll tell me what’s a spinet?”
+
+“It is like a little old-fashioned piano. Have they got such a one? Is
+it old? Is it small? Describe it to us.”
+
+               “They ‘ve the funniest thing you ever see;
+               It’s just as cur-u-ous as it can be;
+               How to dure-scribe it just beats me;
+               Spinet’s the name for it down to a T.
+               It ain’t so big as some pianures,
+               And it ain’t so small as othures;
+               ’Tain’t so old as some you’d see,
+               And ’tain’t so new as it might be;
+               That is all that I can say.
+               I heard old Maybee tell one day
+               He’d a mus-ure-cal com-bure-nation
+               He’d be glad to sell for a very small sum;
+               ’Twas as old and mean
+               As any he’d seen,
+               And he’d like to sell it, he says,
+               Before it drops to pieces.”
+
+We looked at each other in amazement at this strange specimen of Yankee
+humanity—that is, we did it whenever his gaze was averted long enough to
+give us any chance to look at each other. We sank back in despair of
+ever receiving a definite description of the spinet, and above all of
+any china—that most indescribable of country possessions. We feebly
+tried to parry him with some of the skill which he himself displayed,
+but failed ignominiously under the scathing sharpness of this “lawyer”
+of thirty years’ experience. We finally answered his rhyming questions
+with as much directness and truth as the chief witness in a murder
+trial. As we alighted from the wagon and were about to enter the Maybee
+door, Darius pulled me back by the sleeve and whispered:
+
+                  “Ye mustn’t mind Miss Maybee
+                    If ye find her a leetle cross;
+                  She ain’t at all e-lab-ure-ate,
+                    Any more than my old horse.
+                  She won’t show any man-ures
+                    When you ask to see her pianure.”
+
+A sharp-featured young woman advanced to meet us. Her hair bore two
+partings, an inch apart, and the middle lock was strained painfully
+back. Her face was curiously mottled with yellow patches which showed
+plainly that dyspepsia and biliousness had marked her for their own. She
+looked so sour, so sharp, so devoid of “man-ures” that we quailed
+visibly before her keen black eye. What new specimen of humanity had we
+here? Into what world was our China and spinet-hunting carrying us?
+
+We began the conversation very mildly by saying that we had heard that
+Mrs. Maybee had some china that she wished to sell.
+
+“Then you’ve heard a lie,” the acrid voice broke in.
+
+“But surely we have heard that you have a piano to sell?”
+
+“Well, I ain’t. I’ve got a musical combination, but I ain’t so awful
+anxious to sell it.”
+
+For minutes we stood there, facing this resentful being, who showed no
+desire to have us seat ourselves, while we pleaded, we praised, we
+cajoled, we apologized, and we questioned, until, at last, she allowed
+us to see her precious spinet. We entered the gloomy “best room” where
+it stood, gave one glance at it, and sank on the haircloth sofa. It was
+a _melodeon_—a forlorn, broken-down, old _melodeon_—to which some
+farm-tinker had added an oblong frame strung with catgut and wire
+strings, in the apparent hope of forming some instrument of the nature
+of an Æolian-harp.
+
+Tears of disappointment fairly sprang to our eyes; but the contrast, the
+revulsion of feeling, the sense of the ludicrous, was so keen, that we
+gave way to hysterical laughter; we could not suppress it. Where, alas!
+were our “manners?” I was the first to recover my self-possession. I
+turned to Mrs. Maybee, who stood before us speechless with angry
+astonishment, and said pacifically: “You were very good to let us see
+it. It is not quite what we expected to find. It is so much newer than
+an old spinet! I fear my sister could not afford to buy it, as she has
+one piano already. It is very curious and very ingenious, and no doubt
+you will sell it to someone.” We were walking slowly toward the open
+door in the hope of immediate escape; but we were not to escape so
+easily, not without punishment for our adventurous raid. As we drew
+back, Mrs. Maybee advanced; and it seemed for a while that we should be
+obliged to buy the old melodeon and take it off with us. But I seized
+upon a diversion, a godsend, in the shape of a row of window-plants in
+the kitchen. One fine geranium flourished in this “copper-lustre”
+pitcher, which had had a hole knocked in the bottom, to permit the water
+to drain out. I immediately began to admire that geranium, and offered
+Mrs. Maybee a dollar for the pitcher and plant. This diverted her mind
+from the unfortunate “spinet;” and after much sharp talk and bargaining
+we paid her one dollar and seventy-five cents for the geranium and
+pitcher, rushed from her inhospitable door, and drove away with our
+poet. “The True Story of the Life, Temper, and Adventures of Orvilla
+Maybee,” related to us in legal verse by “Rhyming Darius” on our
+homeward drive, made us wonder that we escaped unharmed from that New
+England vixen.
+
+So our broken lustre pitcher was all that we had to carry home with us
+from our “spinet hunt.” And I will close this little tale of New England
+experience with a simple statement of the cost of the pitcher and the
+geranium (which died when transplanted).
+
+           Two fares to Pardon and return              $4 00
+           Bill for supper, bed, and breakfast for two  1 50
+           Wagon, poetry, and legal advice              1 00
+           Paid Mrs. Maybee for pitcher                 1 75
+                                                       —————
+                      Total cost of pitcher            $8 25
+
+As I have since seen a fac-simile of our pitcher (only whole and
+unbroken) in a bric-a-brac shop, ticketed $2, we cannot consider the
+trip financially successful; though, truth to tell, it was far more so
+than many another expedition we have made. But a golden lustre, the
+memory of our legal poet, englamours forever in our eyes our copper
+pitcher. When we look at it we hear again the strident voice, the
+bizarre pronunciation, the voluble rhymes of our poet of the soil, our
+Darius, as he exclaimed in amazement:
+
+              “Ye don’t hang ’em on the wall,
+                Them cracked old kitchen dishes!
+              An’ keep a frac-tured pitcher
+                As if ’t was act-ure-ly precious!
+              They say that city folks
+                Is mighty extrav-ure-gant,
+              But with such test-ure-mony
+                I’m willin’ to swear they ain’t.
+              There ain’t a party in this town
+                So stingy an’ such a non-com
+              As to hang that pitcher on the wall,
+                Lookin’ ’s if ’t was jest goin’ ter fall,
+              An’ the hole showin’ in the botturm.”
+
+Many ghosts has our china hunting revealed to us; the ghosts of the
+past, the visions and dreams that never become realities, the inexorable
+fate, the sad kismet of New England life. Such was the story of the
+house of Hartington, a story sadly typical of many New England homes; a
+story which the sight of these little lettered and escutcheoned cups
+always retells to us.
+
+A description had been given to us of an old town with old houses and
+old people and old china, and after a gloomy night in a hideous country
+hotel we started out to find some townsman of whom we could hire a horse
+and carriage of some or any sort to carry us to Rindge and Anthony
+Hartington’s house—the oldest house of all.
+
+A thin, auburn-haired, freckle-faced Yankee, about twenty-one years old,
+answered our questions with the greatest interest, and finally offered
+us the use of his own horse and open wagon for the whole day for two
+dollars. “And I’ll drive fer ye, too,” he added, with enthusiasm. “Ye’d
+never find old Hartington’s if ye took the hoss yerself, an’ I do’ ‘now
+as I can neither, without some pretty tall huntin’ and questionin’.”
+
+So off we started on the back seat of an open country “express wagon” to
+find “old Hartington’s farm.” The warm October sun streamed down upon
+us, the great red and russet rock-broken fields stretched off into the
+beautiful lonely purple mountain, “heeding his sky affairs,” the dying
+brakes and weeds sent forth their sweet nutty autumn fragrance, the soft
+yellow and brown leaves fluttered down on us, and the ripe chestnutburrs
+fell rustling by our side as we rode through the narrow wood-roads. The
+hard New England landscape was softened and Orientalized by the yellow
+autumn tints. The half-sad stillness of dying nature and the warmth of
+the Indian summer inclined us to ride quietly and thoughtfully along the
+country roads, but that neither Mr. Simmons, nor his new wagon, nor
+Jenny, his steed, would for a moment permit. She had the unpleasant
+habit, so common among country horses, of “slacking-up” suddenly at the
+foot of every hill. The wagon was a “jump-seat,” so the back seat was
+not fastened in securely. At every hill (and the New England hills are
+countless) we and the seat were pitched forward on Mr. Simmons’s back.
+He seemed to expect this assault and rather enjoy it. To quite
+counterbalance this sudden stoppage of progression, Jenny would spring
+forward with much and instantaneous speed whenever she caught sight of
+Mr. Simmons’s short whip. This whip he used as a pointer in his many and
+diffuse explanations, so whenever our attention was called to an old
+house, or a poor “run-out” farm, or “the barn old White hung himself
+in,” Jenny emphasized the explanation with a twitch of our necks that
+brought into active play muscles little used before.
+
+At last the long hill leading to the Hartington house was reached, the
+longest and steepest yet seen. The road was almost unused, a mere track,
+and spoke to our china hunting instincts most favorably of the little
+intercourse held by the Hartingtons with the rest of the world. Slowly
+plodded Jenny over the fringed gentians, for here the road was full of
+them, as open and blue as the October sky over our heads. We had never
+seen this lovely delicate flower growing elsewhere than sparsely by a
+brookside or in damp ground, but here, on this rocky hill-side, in this
+poor soil, it opened its blue eyes in such luxuriance that the road was
+as full of its azure bloom as in September the fields are yellow with
+goldenrod, or in June white with daisies. As we turned in from the main
+country road we passed an elderly man with bowed head, ragged clothes,
+slouching gait, and a general appearance of extreme depression and
+sadness more marked even than is usual in the carriage of the New
+England farmer. As he did not lift his head to look at us, nor nod with
+the cordial common country form of recognition, we did not speak to him,
+and he slowly followed us up the hill.
+
+The Hartington house was a mansion, a brick manor-house. We were met at
+the great door by a young untidy woman, whose clear pink-and-white
+complexion and curly hair could not, however, compensate for her lack of
+good teeth, several front teeth being missing and the others discolored.
+This poor care and poor condition of the teeth is most common among New
+England women in the country. Nearly every woman over thirty years of
+age will show when speaking two rows of blue-white porcelain disks so
+evidently false that they hardly seem like teeth, but look like a “card”
+of cheap buttons. We thought her the daughter of the house; she proved
+to be its mistress, the wife of Anthony Hartington. A more desolate,
+unhappy, hopeless home I have never seen. The elderly gloomy man, who
+now entered, proved to be Anthony himself. He spoke but little, and from
+the young wife, who seemed in a feverish state of excitement at our
+visit, we learned the forlorn and desolate story of the household.
+
+Anthony had married early in life and had had nine children, all of
+whom, with his wife, had died of that fell curse of New
+England—consumption. The last child, a daughter, Luriella, had died in
+June. This young wife had been her school friend and had married the
+forlorn old man two years ago, in order to come to live there and nurse
+her friend through her last illness, thus giving a touching example of
+the life-sacrifices and self-abnegations so sadly frequent in New
+England country homes. “We didn’t think she’d live through the winter,”
+she said, “but she did, and died in June. I was glad she lived till it
+was warm. It is so cold here in winter,” she added apologetically.
+
+A heavy gloom settled on us as we walked from room to room, and I was
+additionally overwhelmed by the uncanny, unreasoning sense that I had
+been there before, had lived there. It was all so familiar to me, so
+strangely well known, that I could scarcely speak, but walked bewildered
+and frightened through the rooms I had known a hundred years ago. I have
+never felt at any other time that sense of pre-existence, but I know
+that nothing about that old house was new to me.
+
+The upper part of the windows were of small panes of greenish
+“bull’s-eye” glass, rarely found in the country now; the lower panes of
+cheap, modern glass, some being broken and pasted over with dirty bits
+of calico and paper, and all as opaque with dirt as the ancient upper
+panes. Outside the windows lay an unkempt tangle of lilac bushes,
+shrubs, weeds, straggling withered flowers, box borders, and thistles,
+that once had been a lovely, well-kept garden, but had evidently been
+unentered and unheeded for years. It stretched down the hill-side to the
+well-tenanted family graveyard with its moss-grown and chipped slate
+headstones with their winged cherubs’ heads and crossbones. I had often
+gathered flowers in that garden; I remembered it well, and had walked
+and played among the gravestones.
+
+Inside the four great parlors hung cobwebs and dust—and wasps! the
+floors were sprinkled with them; thousands lay dead in the two-feet-wide
+window-seats, while swarms of live ones buzzed loudly at the dingy
+windows. “They won’t touch you,” she said, as we drew back. “He thinks
+there must be a nest somewhere.” A nest! A colony of nests rather—a
+hundred nests, the accumulated nests of years.
+
+The parlors had few pieces of furniture, and all were broken except a
+modern marble-topped table and a “what-not.” “I bought these,” she said,
+“when I was married, to please Luriella; I didn’t want to spend much,
+for fear she would need medicine. But she didn’t take much at last; she
+thought it didn’t do any good.”
+
+A set of painted book-shelves in a corner held a few books, two or three
+china dogs, some common seashells, a large ginger-jar, and a number of
+really beautiful pewter porringers with handles. My companion had
+already conveyed to “him” our wish “to buy any old pieces of furniture
+or china you may wish to part with,” and though we had not heard a word
+nor seen a gesture of assent, the wife told us that “he” was willing to
+sell. Yet, when we said we would like to buy the little handled
+porringers, he walked out of the room without a word.
+
+All the wood-work in these parlors—the wainscoting, the high mantels,
+the panels of the doors, the heavy window-frames—were ornamented with a
+curious design, a row of half-pillars joined at the top in a series of
+pointed arches, with carved sunbursts in the spandrels. It was most
+graceful and odd—I have never seen it elsewhere—yet it was perfectly
+familiar to me; I could almost remember, yes, I could remember, counting
+the number of pillars in the room.
+
+The two kitchens were enormous rooms. One, entirely closed away and
+disused, disclosed a horror of dirt and rubbish, old pots and pans, and
+tubs, and wheels, thrown, a shapeless mass, into the fireplace, and
+scattered over the floor. In the smaller kitchen the chimney-nook, the
+great fireplace, had been boarded over, and a small rusty kitchen stove
+placed for daily use. I seemed to remember when I sat by this ingleside,
+and great logs lay on this broad hearth, and the roaring flames surged
+up the great chimney and threw their cheerful light into the now
+desolate room.
+
+Through this kitchen there wailed a moaning noise from the empty
+chimney, which made even my cheerful companion look solemn and
+depressed. She “didn’t like to hear it, either,” our guide said,
+quietly.
+
+Two bedrooms and a “living-room” completed the number of apartments on
+the ground floor. But the living-room was not lived in; the two bedrooms
+were the only apartments that bore signs of occupation. There was not a
+carpeted floor in the house, but to these two rooms, braided rag rugs
+and strips of homespun carpet gave an appearance of comparative comfort.
+The “rising-sun” and “twin-sister” patchwork quilts on the untidy beds
+added to the effect.
+
+The most incongruous, most inadequate apartment on this floor was the
+pantry, a little dark box of a closet, to which one small greenish glass
+window dispensed a dingy light. We had intended to ask for our dinner,
+since it was then “high noon,” but a sight of this cooking sanctum
+dispelled all thought or wish for dinner. It was so cobwebby, so dusty,
+so poor-looking, that we could not wish to eat any dinner that could
+issue from its dark shadows. We found afterward, beyond the disused
+kitchen, a large square room which, in the early days of the prosperity
+and good cheer of this house, had doubtless been a pantry, but was now
+filled with broken grindstones, crushed Dutch ovens, fragments of
+crockery, pails and pans, “peels” and “slices,” yarn-winders, and part
+of an old rose still. Indeed, through this entire house, nothing could
+ever have been wholly destroyed or carried away, but was thrown, in its
+broken, grimy desuetude, into some neglected closet or room to gather
+years of dust and dirt, as if the owner, too poor to buy new furniture,
+still clung to the shattered remnants of past plenty.
+
+We rescued from the dingy little pantry, from among the litter of broken
+cups and plates and knives, bunches of dried herbs, empty spice-boxes,
+cracked woodenware, and greasy pans, a few treasures which we spread out
+on the kitchen table—half a dozen “Pain’s Hill” plates (a favorite
+pattern throughout New England), two open-work bordered Leeds platters,
+a dear little boat-shaped queen’s-ware creamer with dainty twisted
+handles, two helmet pitchers, two teacups, and half a dozen plates of a
+set of old Lowestoft china bearing a pretty armorial device and
+initials. We hardly dared ask to buy the latter pieces until we saw the
+evident contempt the farm-wife had for them. Nothing so American as a
+Lafayette or Pilgrim plate was to be seen.
+
+One large dresser in the kitchen was found to be literally filled with
+battered and broken brass and pewter candlesticks, glass whale-oil
+lamps, snuffers, pewter savealls, extinguishers, and trays, and brass
+chimney hooks for shovel and tongs. We rescued from this medley several
+candlesticks, two curious Dutch hanging-lamps, and a really beautiful
+but broken candelabra of Sheffield plate. These we placed with the china
+on the kitchen table. I wished to add the pewter porringers found in the
+parlor, but the wife softly drawled in her nasal voice: “He won’t sell
+’em—they were hers—she used to make mud-pies in ’em when she was
+little.” And pretty playthings they must have been—fifteen dear little
+shallow pewter posnets and porringers with flat pierced handles, varying
+in size from one large enough to hold a pint to a true doll’s or a
+“’prentice” porringer an inch and a half in diameter. They were full of
+little, common, colored pebbles and shells, dried seeds, and old purple
+glass beads, perhaps just as “she” had last played with them. Other and
+more distant memories, too, may have clung to the old porringers—of days
+when the old man was a boy and took his “little porringer” and ate his
+supper of bread and milk from it; and perhaps, in the far years when the
+old man was a baby, his mother had had served to her in one of these old
+porringers her “dish of caudle,” that rich mixture of eggs, spices,
+bread, milk, and wine which was thought years ago to be the proper diet
+for a sick person.
+
+Then we mounted the spiral staircase to the second floor, the chambers.
+Through this dreary expanse we walked slowly—the dusty half-furnishings
+growing shabbier and shabbier—still stumbling over broken furniture on
+the uneven floors, until we entered a south room that was such a blaze
+of cheerful, yellow, tropical light that we exclaimed with delight.
+Walls and ceilings were hung solid with long yellow ears of corn, left
+to dry for use in the winter. Even the old cherry fourpost bedstead was
+draped with them. Such a color! Such a glory! “She used to like to see
+them too,” the low voice murmured.
+
+A third story, a gambrel-roofed attic, was too dusty and repelling to
+enter, but in one of the deserted bedrooms we found, whole, though black
+with dust, a dressing-table which had been the lower portion of a high
+chest of drawers. As is common now in New England farm-houses, the top
+drawers had been lifted from this table portion and set upon the floor
+to use as a bureau; not half so tidy and cleanly a fashion of furniture
+as when it stood on its high legs and let a broom or brush sweep freely
+every portion of the floor under it. The upper portion of this high
+chest was seen afterward in the outer wood-shed full of strips of
+leather, broken harness, nails, and pieces of iron. It had been gnawed
+by rats and whittled by knives till it was valueless. The lower or table
+portion was whole. It had three shallow “jewel drawers,” three deep
+drawers with brass handles and carved “sunbursts.” It proved, when
+dusted, to be of curled maple; and after long discussion with Mr.
+Simmons we decided to take it with us. Its bowed legs ended in
+claw-and-ball feet that would just set within the carriage sides. “If
+one on ye don’t mind settin’ in front with me, the other can set in the
+back seat with the table in front of her,” he said.
+
+This young wife had not once shown the usual country curiosity about us,
+but as she turned away to find some newspapers to wrap around the
+plates, I said to her, “There is much here we should like to buy and
+take away with us, but it would cost so much to move the pieces so far,
+and they are so out of repair.” Then we told her who we were, whence we
+came, what we should do with the china, and that we should often think
+and speak of her when we looked at the plates this coming winter. “I
+can’t bear to think of the winter without her,” she answered, softly.
+
+Jenny had been fed and watered and “hitched up,” and we prepared to
+start. I clambered into the back seat of the wagon, then the
+dressing-table was lifted in and placed in front of me. Luckily its legs
+were long enough, so the weight did not rest on my legs, else I could
+never have taken it. Our laps were filled with the frail china; the
+candlesticks, lamps, and two warming-pans were placed on the floor of
+the wagon, and we started, leaving the two dreary figures and the dreary
+house behind us. All the way down the steep hills I had to hold the
+table to keep it off the occupants of the front seat, and all the way up
+the steep hills it lay heavily in my lap; but at last we reached the
+country station and packed our china and brass in two market-baskets
+which Mr. Simmons brought us from his “store.” We could hear the sallies
+of country wit from the loafers at the station at Mr. Simmons and his
+strange load, and his indignant and most offensively personal and
+profane answers in return. Then we received a baggage-check for the
+dressing-table, and finally entered the train rather conscious that two
+warming-pans and two newspaper-covered market-baskets are hardly
+ordinary or desirable travelling luggage.
+
+A few days later, when cleaning the inside of the dressing-table, the
+following letter was found. It had been caught and held by a splinter of
+wood under the top of the table, and had evidently lain untouched for
+years. It was folded in the old-fashioned way, dated May 12, 1810, and
+addressed to Madam Janet Hartington. It read thus:
+
+  D^R AND RESPECT^{ED} MOTHER The letter which I wrote you some three
+  months ago on the s’bj’ct of my proposed marriage was answered by you,
+  and the answer duly rec^d by me.
+
+  The two letters I wrote you since on the same s’bj’ct have rec^d no
+  answer.
+
+  And now it is too late to receive any further advice on the matter,
+  for I wish to most Respectfully inform you that I married the object
+  of my choice a week past to-day in Kings Chapel in Boston. There were
+  but few present, as was Oriana’s wish.
+
+  The plans you wrote me, most Respect^{ed} Mother, for the advancement
+  and future prospects of our family, interested me much, and I quite
+  concur in them all.
+
+  And no one could be more fully fitted to assist me in my career than
+  my Oriana. Her graceful and ladylike deportment fit her to adorn any
+  circle no matter how exalted.
+
+  She is quite ready to become a most dutifull and obedient daughter to
+  you and I trust, my D^r Mother, the fact of her being an orphan will
+  open your heart to her; and then the wish you have always had, viz, to
+  have a daughter, may thus find its fullfillment.
+
+  I know not from what source you obtained the strange advice that her
+  Father did amass his fortune in the African Slave Trade. I have never
+  wounded her tender heart by inquiry as to the source of her Fathers
+  wealth (tho’ ’tis a calling & trade has been followed by many citizens
+  apparently much respect^{ed}). But the thought of his “ill-gotten
+  gold” need no further trouble you. Thro’ ill advice and knavery, her
+  fortune has dwindled to a thousand dollars, and now her wealth is only
+  in her beauty and her amiable disposition. She has however much good
+  furniture and china which will grace well our home.
+
+  I regret much to hear that my bills and debts in College have cost you
+  so much, and that the Farm is so run behindhand. This, with the debts
+  my Father left behind him, make it most advisable for me to give up my
+  intention to practice as a lawyer, and have decided me to return to
+  manage your Farm.
+
+  It is quite opportune and most Providential that your Farmer is dead,
+  since he managed so ill.
+
+  With your wise instructions and counsels, we can no doubt retrieve the
+  money that has been lost, and carry out my Grandfathers plans to make
+  our house and name one of the most powerful in the State.
+
+  Thus shall I assume the position in town and county that you always
+  wished me to take.
+
+  We shall leave by coach for Ringe in a week, our household goods and
+  furnishings to follow us in waggons.
+
+  I know, D^r Mother, that you will admire and praise my Oriana, as who
+  could do otherwise?
+
+  I have talked much to her of your aspirations and ambitions, and she
+  hopes most Respectfully to help to carry out any plans you may have.
+
+  With most affectionate greeting from Oriana and myself, I am
+
+                                      Your Loving and Honour^{ed} Son
+                                                      GEORGE HARTINGTON.
+
+In due time the table was scraped, cleaned, and polished, and with its
+cheerful mottled golden color and shining brass handles, was most
+thoroughly attractive and satisfying. The pretty Lowestoft china cups
+were set on it and used for petty toilet purposes. An old canopied
+mirror was hung over it, and every night after I had lighted the candles
+in the repaired and resilvered candelabra, I sat there looking at the
+china, thinking of the blue-fringed gentians, the old house, of the
+lonely empty rooms, the poverty, the dreariness; then of the high hopes
+and ideas of George Hartington, and ambitions of his mother, and, above
+all, the strange familiarity I had had with my old home.
+
+At last I wrote to the wife at the farm, telling her of the old letter;
+asking of the career of George Hartington, his success, his life, his
+fate. I thought he must be Anthony’s grandfather or granduncle. The
+answer came, written in a stiff, uneven hand, but showing more
+intelligence than her conversation: “George and Oriana Hartington were
+my husband’s father and mother. My husband is seventy-five years old,
+and was their only child. George Hartington died three years after he
+was married. My husband remembers his mother as a feeble, sickly woman
+who didn’t have much to say on the farm, and seemed always afraid of
+Madam Hartington. She died of consumption when he was twelve years old.
+That was her china you bought with the O on it. His grandmother lived to
+be ninety-two years old. He is not very well this winter, he has a bad
+cough. If you know of any good cough medicine, I could buy it with the
+money you gave us for the table and china,” etc.
+
+And this is the end of all Madam Hartington’s ambitions—a broken-down,
+broken-hearted, childless old man. It is the New England kismet.
+
+Sad often are many of the memories, sad are the pictures, brought to my
+mind by my old china. It speaks to me too often of deserted farms, of
+unthrifty farmers; of shabby homes, the homes of drunken fathers and
+sickly mothers; of rasping young Philistines, haters of old things and
+old ways; of miserly old women and extravagant young ones; of gloomy
+widowers and miserable bachelors; of the hopeless round of toil of New
+England farm-wives, those human beasts of burden, bending grievously
+under the heavy load of loneliness and labor; it speaks sadly to me of
+the pinched ways and poor living, the _res angusta domi_ too frequently
+to be seen, alas! in my beloved New England. All these shadows, however,
+are softened and lessened by the lapse of time, just as in my memory the
+days of my china hunts have all been sunshiny and bright; it never
+rained, nor was it cold nor windy, nor was it ever sultry or dusty when
+I have been a china hunting; all china days were Emerson’s
+
+                               “... charmed days
+                 When the genius of God doth flow.
+                 The wind may alter twenty ways,
+                 A tempest cannot blow;
+                 It may blow north, it still is warm;
+                 Or south, it still is clear;
+                 Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;
+                 Or west, no thunder fear.”
+
+
+
+
+                                  XIX.
+                           CHINA COLLECTIONS
+
+
+In past years any stray china-lover who wished to see and to learn had
+to search well to find any public collections, or even specimens of old
+china, in America. In town-halls, in the curiosity shops of eccentric
+old women, or in the “museums” of land-stranded old sailors, a few
+pieces might be seen—not saved nor shown because they were china, but
+because “Parson Boardman, who preached forty-nine years in this town,
+owned this tea-set;” or “this china was taken out of the cabin of an
+English frigate in 1813;” or “these mugs were used when George
+Washington passed through the town.” In this class of discursive and
+disjointed collections, though of course in a superior and highly
+honored way, might be placed the china of the Museum of the East India
+Marine Company in Salem, of whose arrangement Eleanor Putnam wrote, “it
+was as if each sea-captain had lounged in and hustled down his
+contribution in any convenient vacant space.” In that old museum, as I
+remember it a decade ago, elaborate models of Chinese junks and American
+merchant vessels bore on their miniature bowsprits strange additions to
+their rigging, and shadowed by their dusty hulls queer and varied
+trophies, queerer then than now—sharks’ teeth, Turkish pipes,
+sandal-wood beads, Italian crucifixes, Peruvian pottery, and South Sea
+shells and savage weapons. Teak-wood furniture and miniature palanquins
+and pagodas sheltered many curious china treasures which I vaguely
+recall, queer in name and shape—nests of egg-shell saki-cups and
+saki-bowls galore; ink-stones of green celadon with their accompanying
+water-bottles and little cakes of gilded India-ink; perfume flasks of
+painted Japanese wares; bottles of purest porcelain for Oriental
+hair-oil, or, rather, hair-glue; pottery jars full of unpleasant-looking
+mouldy mysteries, which might be preserved fruit or might be mummies;
+“plaster boxes” lettered in Chinese; strange triangular bits of blue and
+white Persian porcelain “to clean out shoes with;” old Liverpool mugs
+taken from a wreck and wildly labelled “from Ceylon;” and, chief of all,
+two vast soup-tureens of purest white Canton porcelain, duck-shaped, six
+feet in length from beak to tail by _memory’s_ measurement. In the cold
+light of recent and more mature inspection these two great East India
+birds of good cheer, like many another remembered object of the good old
+times, shrank to about half their ancient size; but are still impressive
+relics of the great days and great dinners of the old East India Marine
+Company, the dinners where, filled to the wings with some hot,
+well-peppered Indian broth, the twin tureens graced the board around
+which gathered all these old treasure-bringing and treasure-giving Salem
+mariners.
+
+A recent visit to my dearly loved and warmly-remembered old museum
+grieved my heart; its charm was gone. Great, light, airy rooms have been
+added to the old building; an arranger, a labeller, and a model
+cataloguer have ruthlessly invaded the dusty cases and weeded out the
+boxes of dried-up and shrivelled fruits, the skins of moth-eaten birds,
+and of seedy and disreputable fishes. The Chinese paper-fans and woven
+baskets, once rare enough to be carefully treasured in a museum, now
+seen in every dry-goods shop in the land, seem wholly to have
+disappeared. The iconoclasts have prosaically separated each old
+sea-captain’s relics into parcels and placed them in wonderfully
+well-arranged and classified cases, labelled Madagascar, Alaska,
+Sumatra, or whatever the land of their early home may be. I suppose the
+shoe-cleaners and hair-oil bottles are there somewhere in their properly
+assigned places, but I did not search for them. I glanced at my old
+friends, the punch-bowls, and the great duck-tureens, but the old-time
+glamour, the “unstudied grace” of the museum was gone.
+
+In many public buildings at the present day, among treasured colonial
+relics, may be seen fine specimens of old china. A neighbor of the East
+India Marine Company, the Essex Institute, has a small but interesting
+and well-labelled collection of old Salem china.
+
+The Bostonian Society displays in its rooms in the old State-House in
+Boston a number of old Liverpool pitchers and about twenty Staffordshire
+plates and platters with American designs, as well as some pieces of the
+china of John Hancock and a few other good Boston citizens.
+
+In the rooms of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, in Locust
+Street, Philadelphia, may be seen a number of interesting pieces,
+including a set of Dresden cups and saucers, presented to Benjamin
+Franklin by Madame Helvétius, of Auteuil, that extraordinary friend of
+Franklin’s whose behavior so shocked Mrs. Adams. By the side of this
+Dresden set are the beautiful coffee-cups, teacups, saucers, teapot,
+creamer, bowl, and chocolate-pot presented to Mrs. Robert Morris, wife
+of the United States Minister of Finance, by Luzerne, the French
+Minister; a cup and saucer said to have been used at the wedding of
+George Washington; a punch-bowl made for the Society of the Cincinnati
+by order of Colonel Hampden; several Washington pitchers; a Perry
+pitcher, and an Erie Canal pitcher.
+
+In the Deerfield Memorial Hall, in the rooms of the Connecticut
+Historical Society, of the various societies of antiquity, and local
+associations throughout New England, may be seen good pieces of old
+pottery and porcelain, often with an interesting and doubtless authentic
+story attached, but too frequently wildly and amazingly labelled as to
+place of manufacture and date.
+
+Many rich private collections exist. Vast stores of old colonial
+treasures are preserved in private houses in our Eastern States. The
+Washington pieces of pottery and porcelain in the Huntington Collection
+are far outdone in beauty and in rarity by many private collections,
+such, for instance, as that of Miss Powel, in Newport; of Mrs. Russell,
+in Cambridge; while the varied collection of old china at the house of
+the Washington Association of New Jersey, with the exception of the
+historical interest which attaches to it through the story of various
+past owners of renown, and excepting, of course, the rare and beautiful
+punch-bowls, is equalled and excelled in many a New England home. In
+Hartford the collections of Mr. Trumbull, of Dr. Lyon, would make
+envious any English china-buyer. In Albany, in Philadelphia, in
+Worcester and Providence, in New Haven and Washington, in New York and
+Brooklyn, many a closet and room full of well-preserved colonial china
+show the good taste and careful judgment of loving owners. In Boston the
+collection of Mr. Wales is of unbounded interest and value.
+
+There is but one public collection in America which I have seen that is
+of positive and unfailing worth to the American china collector—the
+Trumbull-Prime Collection. I mean for the china collector for whom these
+pages are written, the gatherer of household wares of colonial times and
+of the early part of this century. It is much deplored by residents of
+New York that this beautiful and instructive collection has not found a
+home on shelves neighboring the Avery Collection of Oriental porcelains
+in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it has been placed where it will
+serve a nobler purpose than contributing to the pleasure or profit even
+of china-lover or china collector—where it will instruct the
+china-maker. In the spacious cabinets of the beautiful art building of
+Princeton College, it is near the great china factories of Trenton; and
+may the owners of those factories soon learn the lesson of beauty and
+variety of form, color, and paste, that is so plainly shown in the china
+treasures gathered by Mr. and Mrs. Prime.
+
+It has been easy for anyone, for everyone, who had any idea or knowledge
+of old china, to form a collection of china in America. Of course, the
+value of the accretion was variable, not so much resulting from the
+length of the purse of the gatherer as from his judgment and care in
+buying. It is still possible to obtain such a collection. The old china
+is not yet all discovered and culled from country towns. One china
+hunter found in Northampton, that besearched city, in a summer week in
+1891—found and bought and bore away in triumph—a large States pitcher, a
+Boston State-House pitcher, a Trenton Falls plate, a Capitol plate, two
+State-House plates, several pieces bearing the design of McDonough’s
+victory, a dozen or more plates with English views, two helmet-pitchers,
+several pepper-pots, and, in addition to the “treasures of clay,” a tall
+clock and four harp-backed chairs that once were Jonathan Edwards’s, a
+Chippendale table, and various trophies of pewter and brass. Dealers
+might have visited these Northampton folk in vain, but this beguiling
+china hunter bore away his cart-load of old furniture and crockery for a
+sum total as small as in days of yore.
+
+It is for such slow and careful collectors that these pages are written,
+for the collectors who having read and studied all the foreign
+text-books and histories and manuals of pottery and porcelain still know
+very little of the china within their gates, the china to be gathered in
+America. The number of such china hunters is steadily crescent. In
+Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, china collections are being formed; and
+many of the finest specimens of American historical china that have been
+offered for sale in New York and Boston “antique shops” during the past
+year have been purchased and sent to California.
+
+[Illustration: A Beaufet.]
+
+It is a matter of course that this old china should show to its best
+advantage in an old-fashioned house, or in a new house built in
+“American colonial” style of architecture. But whatever the house may be
+in which all these loved china waifs are assembled and cherished, it
+should not conceal them, as in Charles Lamb’s “great house,” in a
+china-closet. A suitable resting-place for the old pieces is in the
+sheltering home in which it passed its early days—in a corner cupboard.
+This was in olden times called a “beaufatt,” or “bofet,” or “beaufet,”
+or “bofate,” or as Cowper wrote of it—
+
+                 “This china that decks the alcove
+                   Which here people call a buffet,
+                 But what the gods call it above
+                   Has ne’er been revealed to us yet.”
+
+A corner cupboard seems to be, like all old-fashioned furniture, well
+adapted for the express purpose for which it was made. It is not a
+modern pattern combination china-closet, washstand, and refrigerator all
+in one, but for the simple purpose of china-holding and china-showing it
+is perfect. The old china never looks prettier (except when on the
+table) than in its wonted home—a corner cupboard or beaufet. The narrow
+scalloped or crenated shelves with their wider rounded projections at
+the extreme back seem expressly shaped to show each piece to its best
+advantage. Even the Gothic small-paned glass door, when present, does
+not hide the dainty pieces. The apse-shaped, shell-fluted top with its
+pillared frame and carved sunbursts, and its surmounting brass eagles or
+balls, seems a fitting roof to shelter the fragile ingatherings.
+
+The old china seems always to look better and more at home in an
+old-time setting. On page 44 is shown a shallow dresser, an adaptation
+of an old kitchen fashion, with narrow ledges of shelves hung with old
+pewter porringers, which proves also a delightful way to show to plain
+view the rows of blue and white plates, especially the dainty gems of
+“cup-plates,” which are so treasured and loved by the china hunter that
+there never seems to be any spot altogether worthy to hold and display
+them quite as they ought to be shown. Of course, large articles—what
+were called in olden times “hollow-ware”—cannot be placed on a dresser;
+tiny pepper-pots, salt-cellars, tea-caddies, very small creamers, and
+plates and platters set on edge must form the dresser’s only burden.
+
+[Illustration: China Steps.]
+
+Another old-fashioned resting-place for china may be adopted in modern
+times for the sustentation of any broken-nosed, handleless, nicked,
+cracked, or scorched treasure, “the broken teacups wisely kept for
+show,” which no true china hunter will despise, but which will not bear
+the too close examination of scoffers, and to which distance lends a
+haze of enchantment and veil of perfection. I mean a “crown of steps,”
+or “shelf of steps,” or “china steps,” as they were variously called.
+One is here shown, but as they are so rare nowadays perhaps the term
+needs some explanation. On top of a high chest of drawers, a “high-boy,”
+was placed in olden times a three-tiered, graduated platform of “steps”
+to hold and display china. The lower tier of the platform was about
+eight or ten inches shorter and five inches shallower than the top of
+the “high-boy.” This left free a shelf of about five inches wide upon
+the sides and front of the top; the tier was four or five inches high.
+The second tier, or step, was made shorter and narrower in the same
+proportion, thus leaving a second ridge or shelf. The top tier, or
+platform, was smaller still. Thus when the china was arranged around the
+three sides of the “crown of steps” it made a pretty pyramid of pitchers
+and teapots and jars, and each piece could be plainly seen. Rather high
+up in the air they were, perhaps, for purposes of close examination or
+for freeing from dust, but safe from danger of breaking. Very rarely an
+old “high-boy” will now be seen with a fixed or permanent “crown of
+steps,” but usually this set of china shelves was separate, and
+frequently was only made of stained wood. Such were probably the “Steps
+for China Ware” of Abraham Blish, of Boston, in 1735, which were worth
+only two shillings. Such also were “the steps & some small China
+thereon” of John Proctor in 1756, since they were worth only five
+shillings and fourpence. Another inventory has this item: “1 Japan Chest
+Draws and Steps for China.”
+
+On such a “shelf of steps” the china is “out of the way;” and for the
+same virtue I like to hang china on the wall—pitcher, jugs, cups, as
+well as plates—they are so safe and yet so plainly visible in that
+position. Then you can do away with “the dozen little teetery tables”
+that litter and obstruct our rooms and make man’s life a burden. There
+is a certain restfulness in the spacious parlors of some old houses that
+I know, a sense of room in which to move, of liberal elegance, of
+substantial good taste, that is owing largely to the absence of small
+littering chairs and tables. Everything is upon the walls that can be
+hung or placed there; decoration is profuse, but not in the way. I would
+rather keep china anywhere than upon a table. Perhaps the upsetting of a
+tea-table, with its burden of eighteen teapots, and the utter
+annihilation of teapots and depression of spirits that resulted, may
+have conduced to this feeling. For the purpose of hanging plates upon
+the wall come various little wire frames or holders; but when you have
+fifty or one hundred plates in your dining-room, even these cheap
+holders are quite an expense. Mr. Prime gives in his book an
+illustration and the details of the manner of making a wire frame or
+holder by which to hang plates on the wall. This invention of his is
+very ingenious and very good; many a one have I in my home; but it
+requires for its manufacture a wire-workman or a tinker, either amateur
+or professional, and tools of various kinds, and a neatly made spiral
+cylinder of wire. This places the possibility of manufacturing Mr.
+Prime’s holder quite out of the reach of the average woman. I, too, have
+invented a holder, and it can be made by any woman, since she need
+employ but one tool—her own distinctive instrument—a pair of scissors.
+The materials, too, are peculiarly feminine—picture-wire or strong
+twine, and dress-hooks. I will say for the benefit of the masculine
+china hunter who may read these pages that both white and black
+dress-hooks can be purchased for a few cents a dozen, and of various
+sizes, from the heavy cloak hooks, which are strong enough to hold a
+thick Delft plaque, to the tiny hooks that are sufficient to sustain a
+fragile saucer. And the process of manufacture of my plate-holder is so
+simple! You use your tool but once—to cut off the length of wire. Then
+place four of the dress-hooks at equal distances around the rim of the
+plate, slipping them firmly over the edge. String your wire on the back
+of the plate through the two loops at the end of each of the four hooks
+and draw it tight. Twist the ends of the wire firmly and neatly
+together, make a little wire loop by which to hang it, and your
+plate-holder is done. A man may use a pair of “cut-nippers” to cut the
+wire, and a pair of pincers to twist it if he so will; but a pair of
+scissors is all that is really necessary, and will answer every purpose,
+though the usage is not thoroughly conducive to the welfare of the
+scissors. I will not say that this holder is better than Mr. Prime’s,
+though I point with pride to the facility and simplicity of its
+construction; but I think I can boast that it is cheaper.
+
+The dark blue Staffordshire plates especially should be thus hung on the
+wall, where they form so rich a point of color that they put to shame
+all the thin water-colors and pale French china in their vicinity, and
+make us fully appreciate Oscar Wilde’s sigh of “trying to live up to his
+blue and white china.”
+
+But let me no longer dwell on the charms of our widely gathered
+possessions, lest it be said of me as was of Horace Walpole—
+
+                  “China’s the passion of his soul,
+                  A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl
+                  Can kindle wishes in his breast,
+                  Inflame with joy or break his rest;”
+
+but end with the assurance that I fully concur in the words of a
+well-known English collector: “China-collecting is not a mere fancy—it
+is a complete education.”
+
+
+
+
+                                 INDEX
+
+
+ Acrelius, Parson, 217
+
+ Adams, President, china of, 251, 301
+
+ Alchymy spoons, 43
+
+ Annely, Edward, 80
+
+ Anti-slavery plate, 333
+
+ Apotheosis of Washington, pitcher, 265
+
+ Arnold, Governor Benedict, 45
+
+ Auction, country, in New England, 33
+
+
+ “Baby,” Milliner’s, 58
+
+ Bache, Mrs., 65
+
+ Bainbridge portrait on mug, 310
+
+ _Baltimore Advertiser_, announcement in, of sale of china, 235
+
+ Baltimore plate, 334
+
+ Baltimore and Ohio plates, 334
+
+ Barlow, S. L. M., sale of china of, 176
+
+ Bat-printing, 156
+
+ Beach ware, 26
+
+ Bennington ware, 97
+
+ Binney & Ronaldson, 93
+
+ Bonaparte, Lucien, cup and saucer of, 29
+
+ Bonaparte mugs, 152
+
+ Bonnin, Gousse, 89
+
+ Boston plates, 337
+
+ Bostonian Society, the, 305, 311, 411
+
+ Bow china, 54, 119, 120, 122
+
+ Bowen, Samuel, 86
+
+ Bradford, Governor, china of, 45
+
+ Bristol porcelain, 123;
+   teapot, 208
+
+ Broseley blue dragon pieces, 131
+
+ Buchanan, President, china of, 253
+
+ Bugbee, Thomas, 83
+
+ Burlington, old pottery at, 79
+
+ Burnet, Governor, 60
+
+
+ Cadogan teapot, 204
+
+ Calumet, the, 75;
+   of the Cherokees, 76
+
+ Cambridge plates, 321
+
+ Canton china, blue, 183;
+   sale of, direct from the vessel, 186
+
+ Castleford pottery, 117
+
+ Centennial china, 343
+
+ Champion, Richard, 85, 89, 123, 280
+
+ China collector, a professional, 13;
+   a Yankee, 18
+
+ China in America, earliest mentions of, 56;
+   advertisements of, in the early Boston papers, 66;
+   old American, 70;
+   inexhaustible materials for manufacture of, in America, 90;
+   with American scenes, etc., 137
+
+ China steps, 418
+
+ Chinese ewer, 190
+
+ Cincinnati punch-bowl, 223;
+   of General Washington, 230 _et seq._, 239
+
+ City Hall pitcher, 360
+
+ Clews, Mr. James, 327
+
+ Congressional punch-bowl, 216
+
+ Cookworthy, William, 84
+
+ Copper-lustre pitcher, 387
+
+ Crouch-ware, 109
+
+ Crown Derby plate, 380
+
+
+ Danvers pottery, song of, 78
+
+ Davis, Mrs. James M., Bristol porcelain urn of, 124
+
+ Decatur portrait, 310
+
+ Deerfield Memorial Hall, 412
+
+ Delft ware, early, 53;
+   early sale of, 57;
+   in New York, 102;
+   on Long Island, 103;
+   price of, 103;
+   tea-caddies, 104;
+   apothecary jars of, 105, 382;
+   in the Trumbull-Prime collection, 106;
+   tiles, 106, 158
+
+ Derby, Elias Haskett, 180
+
+ De Witt Clinton, portrait of, 313
+
+ Dextra, Zachary, 104
+
+ Drinks, colonial American, 217
+
+ Dwight, John, 197
+
+
+ East India Marine Company’s Museum, 409
+
+ Elder Brewster teapot, 202
+
+ Erie Canal plates, 345
+
+ Essex Institute, the, 313, 411
+
+
+ Faneuil, Andrew, 57
+
+ Faneuil, Peter, 60
+
+ Farmer pitchers, 154
+
+ Franklin, Benjamin, sends china to his wife, 64, 91, 157
+
+ Franklin pottery, list of, 274 _et seq._
+
+ Franklin, William, medallion, 302
+
+ Frog mugs, 144
+
+ Fulham jugs, 107
+
+ Funeral-punches, 211
+
+
+ “Guglet,” 237
+
+ Ginger-jars of Canton china, 188
+
+ Glazing, Indian method of, 72
+
+ Glider, to, 214
+
+ Goat cream jugs, 120
+
+ Grant, General, china of, 254
+
+ Gray, Billy, 180
+
+
+ Haig, Thomas, 93
+
+ Hall’s, R., wares, 330
+
+ Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, china of, 243
+
+ Hancock, John, portrait, 304
+
+ Hanover, First Church of, pewter service of, 45
+
+ Harrison pitcher, 314
+
+ Hartington house, the, 396
+
+ Hayes, President, china of, 255
+
+ Henrietta Maria, Queen, recipe book of, 212
+
+ Hews, A. H., & Co., 81
+
+ Historical Society of Pennsylvania, collection, 411
+
+ Hodges, Dr. Caspar Wister, 280
+
+ Hound-handled pitcher, 99
+
+ Holder for hanging china, 422
+
+ Hull pitchers, 143
+
+ Hull portrait, 310
+
+ Huntington collection, 160;
+   Franklin pottery in, 287
+
+ Hylton pottery, 215
+
+
+ Indian bowls, 39
+
+ Indiana Pottery Co., 98
+
+ Inscriptions on pitchers, 143
+
+
+ Jackfield teapots, 208
+
+ Jackson, President, china of, 252
+
+ Japanese teapots, 205
+
+ Jefferson, Thomas, Wedgwood cameos of, 115;
+   hospitality of, 249;
+   china of, 250;
+   portraits, 303
+
+ Jones, Cadwallader, vases given to, by Lafayette, 174
+
+ Johnson. Dr., teapot of, 198
+
+ Jug, hot water, of pewter, 50
+
+
+ Keen, Joseph, 93
+
+
+ Lafayette, 241
+
+ Lafayette pottery, 288;
+   list of, 289
+
+ Lafayette Landing platter, 294
+
+ Lamb, Charles, 1, 378
+
+ Lawrence portrait, 310
+
+ Lay, Benjamin, 63
+
+ Lefferts, John, 103
+
+ Lincoln, President, china of, 253
+
+ Liverpool ware, 135
+
+ Liverpool pitchers, 162
+
+ Lowestoft ware, 165;
+   vase, 174;
+   value of, 175;
+   in New England seaport towns, 179;
+   in the south, 194;
+   of John Hancock, 195;
+   teapot, 208
+
+ Lowestoft town, 175
+
+ Lustre sets, 132
+
+ Lyman & Fenton, 96
+
+ Lyon, Dr. Irving, 112
+
+ Lyon, Miss Henrietta D., 129, 254
+
+ Lyon, Governor, sale of china of, 175, 178, 203
+
+
+ Macdonough’s victory plate, 351
+
+ Macdonough portrait, 312
+
+ Madison, china of, 251
+
+ “Map” pitcher, 268
+
+ Mayer, Thomas, 324
+
+ Metropolitan Museum, 160, 173, 245, 257, 270, 271, 277, 279, 283, 284,
+    286, 296, 297
+
+ Millennium plate, 24 353
+
+ Milliners, Boston, sell “chayney,” 58
+
+ Miranda, General, 231
+
+ Mirror-knobs, 159
+
+ Monroe, President, china of, 252
+
+ Montgomery pitcher, 304
+
+ Morris, George Anthony, 90
+
+ Morristown, pewter utensils in the Washington House at, 49
+
+ Morse collection, 205
+
+ Mottoes on teapots, 207
+
+ Mount Vernon plates, 353
+
+ Museum of Practical Geology, 110, 112, 122, 140, 154, 168
+
+
+ Nahant plate, 354
+
+ Naval pitchers, 141, 309
+
+ Neptune, the, voyage of, 181
+
+ Newbery’s “Dives Pragmaticus,” 38
+
+ New Jersey, early china not plentiful in, 62
+
+ New York plates 356
+
+ Niederweiler china of Washington, 244
+
+ “Noggins,” wooden, 39
+
+ Norton, John and William, 96
+
+
+ Osborne, William, 77
+
+
+ “Packing Penny,” the, 57
+
+ Pain’s Hill plates, 330
+
+ Park Theatre plate, 361
+
+ Patch-boxes, 161
+
+ Pepys’ tea-drinking, 199
+
+ Perry pitchers, 142
+
+ Perry portraits, 309
+
+ Persian vase, 192
+
+ Peters, Miss, 94
+
+ Pewter plates and platters, 47
+
+ Pewterers, English, 41
+
+ Philadelphia, colonial drinks of, 216
+
+ Philadelphia, early china in, 63;
+   plates, 363
+
+ Philadelphia Library plate, 319
+
+ Pierce, President, china of, 252
+
+ Pike portrait, 311
+
+ Pilgrim plate, 366
+
+ Pitcher, historical, of the war of 1812, 299
+
+ Pitcher portrait of Washington, 260
+
+ Pitchers, patriotic, etc., list of, 301 _et seq._
+
+ Plymouth coffee-pot, 122
+
+ Poore, Ben Perley, collection of pewter of, 49
+
+ Porcelain ware, early in America, 52
+
+ Porringers, pewter, 44
+
+ Posset-pot, the, 212
+
+ Posnets, 44
+
+ “Posy-holders,” 191
+
+ Pottery of the North American Indians, 70;
+   in burial mounds, 73;
+   in Louisiana, 74;
+   of the Iroquois, 75
+
+ Preble, portrait of, 311
+
+ Prentiss, A. M., presentation pitcher of, 158
+
+ Presidential china, auction sales of, 255
+
+ Pride, John, 77
+
+ Province House pitcher, 65
+
+ Punch, 213;
+   varieties of, 217 _et seq._;
+   bare-legged, 218
+
+ Punch-bowl, the, 210;
+   of lustre ware, 215;
+   of Liverpool Delft, 215;
+   Henry Weatherbourne’s, 219;
+   of Washington, 221 _et seq._;
+   of the good old times, 226
+
+ Puzzle jugs, 145
+
+
+ Quilted china plates, 59
+
+
+ Randolph, Edmund, punch-bowl of, 219
+
+ Reed, Joseph, 77
+
+ Remmey, 80
+
+ Richards, Horace Jones, 300
+
+ Richmond, A. G., his collection of Indian pottery, 75
+
+ Ridgway, J. & W., china, 318, 328
+
+ Rose, Thomas, 172
+
+
+ Sadler, John, 155
+
+ Sadler’s ware, 137
+
+ Sailor pitchers, 148
+
+ Salt-glazed ware, 108
+
+ “Savealls,” 43
+
+ Sewall, Judge, 200
+
+ Seixas, David G., 93
+
+ Shrewsbury, old house in, 46
+
+ “Slaw bank,” a, 46
+
+ Smith, James R., 258
+
+ “Sneaker,” 237
+
+ Sack-posset, recipe for, 212
+
+ “Sourings,” 225
+
+ South Amboy, 80
+
+ Staffordshire crockery, 316;
+   marks on, 324
+
+ Standish, Miles, 45
+
+ Steamboat plate, 350
+
+ Stienwerck, Cornelius, 61
+
+ Syntax, Dr., designs on china, 321
+
+
+ Tea, in Boston, 200;
+   price of, 201;
+   drinking of, 199
+
+ Tea-sets, Staffordshire, not uniform. 317
+
+ Teapot friezes, 206
+
+ Teapots, mottoes on, 207;
+   Lowestoft, 208
+
+ Temperance plate, 371
+
+ Thomas, Gabriel, 79
+
+ Timberlake, Lieutenant, 72, 76
+
+ “Tobys,” 323
+
+ Toddy strainer, 189
+
+ Transfer-printing, 155
+
+ Trenchers, wooden, 40
+
+ Trumbull-Prime collection, 96, 99, 123, 178, 261, 268, 279, 291, 304,
+    413
+
+ Truxton, Commodore, 142
+
+ Tucker, William Ellis, 94
+
+
+ Van Braam, Mr., china given by, to Martha Washington, 233, 242
+
+ Voiders, china, 69
+
+
+ Wales, George M., 145
+
+ Ward, J., poem of, on the Potter’s art, 42
+
+ Warren pitcher, 304
+
+ Washington, George, china, 177, 229;
+   value of, 248;
+   letter of, to Colonel Tilghman, 234;
+   portraits of, on china, 257, 265
+
+ Washington, Martha, plate, 8;
+   china, 240
+
+ Washington pitchers, 138
+
+ Washington Association, 174, 203, 216, 223, 243
+
+ Washington pottery, list of, 262
+
+ Washington toddy-jugs, 261
+
+ Washington, D. C., plates, 374
+
+ Wedgwood, Josiah, his alarm at the progress of china manufacture in
+    America, 87
+
+ Wedgwood, Thomas, pewter plates of, 42
+
+ Wedgwood ware, in America, 114, 116;
+   teapots, 209
+
+ Welsteed, William, 57
+
+ Willow-pattern ware, 130
+
+ Winthrop jug, 54
+
+ Worcester ware in “Japan taste,” 29;
+   porcelain, old, in America, 133
+
+
+ Yendell, S., presentation pitcher of 155
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to
+     individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like
+     1^{st}).
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77000 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77000 ***</div>
+
+<div class='tnotes covernote'>
+
+<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class='c000'>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='titlepage'>
+
+<div>
+  <h1 class='c001'>❦ CHINA COLLECTING<br> IN AMERICA ❦ ❦ ❦<br> ❦ ❦ <span class='xlarge'>BY ALICE MORSE EARLE</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/i_title.jpg' alt='[Tea Pot]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+    <div><i>ILLUSTRATED</i></div>
+    <div class='c003'>CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS</div>
+    <div>NEW YORK          MCMVI</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div><span class='small'><i>Copyright, 1892, by</i></span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'><i>Charles Scribner’s Sons</i></span></div>
+    <div class='c002'><span class='small'>TROW DIRECTORY</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>NEW YORK</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div>TO</div>
+    <div class='c003'>THE COMPANION OF MY CHINA HUNTS</div>
+    <div class='c003'>MY SISTER</div>
+    <div class='c003'>FRANCES CLARY MORSE</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_v'>v</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>I.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c007'></th>
+    <th class='c008'>PAGE</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>China Hunting</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>II.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Trencher Treen and Pewter Bright</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_38'>38</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>III.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Early Use and Importation of China in America</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_52'>52</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>IV.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Early Fictile Art in America</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_70'>70</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>V.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Earliest Pottery Wares</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_102'>102</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>VI.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>English Porcelains in America</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_119'>119</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_vi'>vi</span>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>VII.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Liverpool and other Printed Ware</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_135'>135</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>VIII.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Oriental China</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_165'>165</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>IX.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>The Cosey Teapot</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_196'>196</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>X.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Punch-bowls and Punches</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_210'>210</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XI.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>George and Martha Washington’s China</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_229'>229</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XII.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Presidential China</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_249'>249</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XIII.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Designs Relating to Washington</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_257'>257</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XIV.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Designs Relating to Franklin</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_274'>274</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_vii'>vii</span>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XV.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Designs Relating to Lafayette</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_288'>288</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XVI.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Patriotic and Political Designs</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_299'>299</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XVII.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Staffordshire Wares</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_316'>316</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XVIII.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>China Memories</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_376'>376</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><td class='c006' colspan='2'>XIX.</td></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>China Collections</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_409'>409</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><i>Index</i>,</td>
+    <td class='c008'><i><a href='#Page_425'>425</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+<table class='table0'>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c007'></th>
+    <th class='c009'>PAGE</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Wedgwood Pieces</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>The Plate we Hoped to Find and the Plate we Found</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_9'>9</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Millennium Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_24'>24</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>“<span class='sc'>Beach Ware</span>,”</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_27'>27</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Old Worcester in “Japan Taste,”</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_29'>29</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>“<span class='sc'>The Porringers that in a Row Hung High and Made a Glittering Show</span>,”</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Winthrop Jug</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Province House Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Bennington Ware</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_97'>97</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Hound-handled Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_100'>100</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Delft Tea-caddy</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Delft Vase</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_106'>106</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Fulham G. R. Jug</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_108'>108</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Sportive Innocence Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_111'>111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Farmer Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_111'>111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Castleford Teapot</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_117'>117</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Plymouth Salt-cellar.</span> <span class='sc'>Bow “Goat Cream-jug,”</span></td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_121'>121</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Plymouth Coffee-pot</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_123'>123</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Bristol Memorial Figure</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span><span class='sc'>Crown Derby Covered Dish</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_129'>129</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>An English Notion of Washington</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_139'>139</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Masonic Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_147'>147</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Lowestoft Vase</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_174'>174</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Helmet Creamer</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_176'>176</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Washington Coffee-pot</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_178'>178</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Chinese Ewer</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_190'>190</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Persian Vase</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_192'>192</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Lowestoft Teapot</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_208'>208</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Bristol Pottery Teapot</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_208'>208</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Bowl Given to Mrs. Allen Jones</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_221'>221</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Cincinnati Bowl</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Cincinnati China</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_231'>231</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Washington’s Niederweiler China</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_245'>245</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Lincoln China</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_253'>253</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Grant China</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_254'>254</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Pitcher Portrait</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_259'>259</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Washington Monument Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_262'>262</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Apotheosis Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_265'>265</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>“Map” Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_268'>268</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Niederweiler Statuette</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_275'>275</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Tomb of Franklin Teapot</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_285'>285</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>La Grange Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_290'>290</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Cadmus Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_292'>292</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Lafayette Landing Platter</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Proscribed Patriots Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_302'>302</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Naval Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_309'>309</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span><span class='sc'>Pickle Leaf</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_317'>317</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Philadelphia Library Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_319'>319</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Anti-slavery Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_333'>333</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Baltimore &#38; Ohio Railroad Plates</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_336'>336</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>State-House Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_338'>338</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>John Hancock’s House</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_341'>341</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Harvard College Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_348'>348</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Steamboat Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_350'>350</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>MacDonough’s Victory Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_351'>351</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Nahant Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_354'>354</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>City Hall Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_359'>359</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Park Theatre Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_361'>361</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Fairmount Park Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_364'>364</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Pilgrim Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_366'>366</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Capitol Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_374'>374</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Crown Derby Plate</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_379'>379</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Delft Apothecary Jars</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_382'>382</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>Copper-Lustre Pitcher</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_387'>387</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>A Beaufet</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_415'>415</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'><span class='sc'>China Steps</span>,</td>
+    <td class='c009'><a href='#Page_419'>419</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
+<img src='images/i_015.jpg' alt='[Wedgwood Pieces]' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <h2 class='c005'>I.<br> CHINA HUNTING</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='c010'>
+  <img class='drop-capi' src='images/di_015.jpg' width='100' alt=''>
+</div><p class='drop-capi_8'>
+My dearly loved friend, Charles Lamb,
+wrote, in his “Essays of Elia,” “I have
+an almost feminine partiality for old
+china. When I go to see any great
+house, I inquire first for the china-closet,
+and next for the picture-gallery. I have no repugnance
+for those little lawless azure-tinted grotesques that, under
+the notion of men and women, float about uncircumscribed
+by any element, in that world before perspective—a
+china teacup.” In that partiality for old china I
+humbly join, and it is of the search through New England
+for such dear old china loves, and of the gathered
+treasures of those happy china hunts, that I write.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>China hunting is a true “midsummer madness.”
+When grass grows green and “daffodils begin to peer”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>my fancy lightly turns to thoughts of china. Hot
+waxes the fever as crawls up the summer sun; fierce
+and fiercer rages the passion and the hunt, till autumn
+touches with her cold though glorious hand the trees
+and fields. Then doth my madness wane, and chase
+grow dull, and icy winter finds me sane and calm, till
+charming spring returns to witch me to “mine old
+lunes” once again. Thus is every china captive of that
+mad summer chase aglow to me with summer suns and
+beauty—not a dull lifeless clod of moulded painted clay,
+but a glorious idealized token of long warm halcyon
+days too quickly passed, of “yesterdays that look backward
+with a smile.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Were the possession of old or valuable specimens of
+porcelain and pottery, or even of happy memories of
+“days of joyance,” the only good things which came
+from the long hours of country ranging and farm-house
+searching spent in our china quests, Philistines might
+perhaps scoff at the waste of time and energy; but much
+else that is good have I found. Insight into human
+nature, love of my native country, knowledge of her
+natural beauties, acquaintance with her old landmarks
+and historical localities, familiarity with her history,
+admiration of her noble military and naval heroes, and
+study of the ancient manners, customs, and traditions of
+her early inhabitants have all been fostered, strengthened,
+and indeed almost brought into existence by the
+search after and study of old china. How vague and
+dull were my school-day history-lesson memories of
+Perry, of Lawrence, of Decatur, until I saw their likenesses
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>on some hideous Liverpool pitchers! then I read
+eagerly every word of history, every old song and ballad
+about them. How small was my knowledge of old “table
+manners” and table furnishings until I discovered,
+through my china studies, how our ancestors ate and
+served their daily meals! How little I knew of the shy
+romance and the deep-lying though sombre sentiment
+in New England country life, until it was revealed to me
+in the tradition of many a piece of old china. How entirely
+powerless was I to discover the story of human
+nature as told in the countenance until my inquiries after
+old china made me a second Lavater in regarding the
+possibilities of successful purchase in case the questioned
+one chanced to own any old porcelain heirlooms! How
+few of our noble wood and valley roads had I seen until
+I drove through them searching for old farm-houses that
+might contain some salvage of teacups or teapots! And
+not only do we learn of America through our china
+hunts, but of England as well; for nearly all of our old
+table-ware was English, and the history of the production
+of English china can be traced as easily in New
+England as in old England. Few of the more costly
+pieces came here, but humbler specimens show equally
+well the general progress of the manufacture.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let me be just and honest in my tale; though all is
+ideal happiness in the hours of the china chase, the
+counting of the spoils is sometimes vastly disappointing.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“As high as we have mounted in delight</div>
+      <div class='line'>In our dejection do we sink as low.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>There is no hobby of so uncertain gait, none other
+fancy in the pursuit of which one meets with so many
+rebuffs as in china collecting. I mean in real china collecting
+by individual search and pursuit, not in china
+buying at high prices at a fashionable china-shop. For
+such Crœsus buyers, who know not the sweet nor the
+bitter of true china hunting, these pages are not written.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sad, sad failures does your china hunter often make,
+but there is a blessed delight and pride when a long
+search is at last successful which rewards him and makes
+him, or rather her, forget the cruel blows of the past,
+and makes hope spring eternal in her breast, undying,
+and undimmed. Disappointments were few in early
+china-collecting days in America; friendly farm-wives
+then gladly brought out their precious and plentiful
+stores, and eagerly sold them for silver to buy a new
+cotton gown or a shell-comb, and attics and pantries
+were ransacked and depleted with delight. Now can
+the china hunter drive for days through the country,
+asking for old crockery at every house which is surmounted
+by a gambrel roof, has a great square chimney,
+or an old well-sweep, without even hearing of one old
+teapot; and yet such is the power of china-love, she
+will start out again the next week, cheerful, hopeful,
+and undaunted, “to fresh woods and pastures new.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Nor will it always prove clear sailing should she discover
+the home of the sought-for treasure. She may
+learn from friendly and loquacious neighbors that “old
+Miss Halsey” or “John Slade’s widder” has stores of
+old crockery in barrels in the attic, or on the top shelf of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>the pantry, or even “up over the wood-shed,” but she
+cannot obtain one glimpse of the hidden hoards—far less
+can she purchase them.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We have visited again and again one gray old farm-house
+in Massachusetts, a farm-house with moss-covered
+“lean-to,” which we know contains enough old English
+pottery and porcelain to found a museum; but cajoleries,
+flatteries, persuasions, open demands, elaborate explanations,
+and assumptions of indignant and hurt astonishment
+at refusals—one and all are in vain; not even
+one old plate have we ever seen. The farmer’s wife
+greets us most cordially, gives us doughnuts and milk in
+summer, and apples and cider in the winter, maple-sugar
+in the spring, and hickory-nuts and butter-nuts in the
+fall, but in aggressively modern pitchers and dishes; and
+when we leave she urges us hospitably and warmly to
+“come again.” We know well where her precious china
+is hidden. High up on either side of the great mantelpieces
+in “living-room” and “best room” are cupboards,
+so high that one would have to climb upon a chair to
+see into them; and from the good wife’s frequent and
+furtive glances—speaking though silent—at her locked
+cupboard doors, we know well what treasures are stored
+therein.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At that china-hiding abode we often have concocted
+for us an old-time country drink, composed of water
+flavored with molasses and ginger, which was in Revolutionary
+times called “beveridge.” Gallons of that vile
+fluid have I drunk with the hostess, hoping that the
+joys of the flowing bowl might loosen her tongue and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>unlock her cupboard doors, but I have risked my digestion
+in vain. Still I sit “smiling with millions of mischief
+in the heart,” for life is short, and I am waiting,
+wickedly waiting; the farmer and his wife are old, very
+old, and when they depart from this life they cannot
+take their keys and crockery with them.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>More complete and mortifying routs sometimes,
+though rarely, have befallen us. We were driving quietly
+along one day on the outskirts of the town, when
+we saw at the door of a shabby modern house, a vinegar
+faced woman, who sat energetically mixing chicken-dough
+in one of the most beautiful old blue and white
+Nankin bowls that ever was seen. As each blow of the
+heavy iron spoon came down on the precious antique, it
+struck an echoing and keener blow to our china-loving
+hearts, and we hastened to ask the owner of the bowl to
+sell it ere it was broken. Sell it? not she. She didn’t
+know where it came from, nor who had owned it—and
+she didn’t care, but she wouldn’t sell it for any money;
+and if a tin pan was just as good to mix the meal in, she
+would use this “old crockery thing” if she wanted to;
+and she walked into the shabby house, and “slammed”
+the door before our abashed and sad faces. The thought
+of that bowl at the mercy of that fierce iron spoon has
+made us very unhappy; scores of times have we driven
+past the house glancing furtively in, at the wood-shed,
+the hen-house, the kitchen door, ready almost to steal
+the poor prisoner if we found it unguarded; but we do
+not dare attempt an honest rescue lest we suffer a still
+more ignominious and mortifying defeat.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>Strange answers are sometimes made to our inquiries
+and requests; strange objects presented to our china-searching
+eyes. In farm-houses, presided over by deaf
+old housewives we have had shown to us crackers for
+crockery, pitchforks for teapots, tubs for cups, and once,
+by some strange and incomprehensible twist of the poor
+deaf ears, or our own dull tongues, were cheerfully offered
+buckwheat flour when we asked to see a Washington
+pitcher. We also drove several miles at the sea-shore,
+in high spirits and with great expectations, to see some
+very old teapots, “all kinder basket-work,” and were
+confronted by a strange machine of seafaring appearance,
+which proved to be an eel-pot, and was truly an ancient
+one. Other kindly country souls, knowing well what
+we want, offer us as far more desirable and artistic treasures,
+faded samplers, worsted flowers, crocheted tidies,
+preserved wreaths, wax fruit, hair jewelry, and Parian
+busts, and look at us with commiseration when we
+cling to our strange idiosyncrasy—our preference for old
+china. Sometimes the kindly intention to guide and
+help us to our goal is evident and powerful enough, the
+desire to inform us is rampant, but power of expression
+is lacking, or even a modicum of memory; the narrow
+limits of country vocabulary are painful to witness and
+the expressions of its poverty are painful to hear, and
+suggestions only lead the speaker farther astray in his
+attempted descriptions. He is also color-blind, and has
+vague remembrance of size and nomenclature. He can’t
+describe the china, he can’t date it, he can’t name it,
+sometimes—though he vaguely remembers that he has
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>seen it—he can’t place it, he simply knows that somewhere
+he has seen something that he fancies may be
+somewhat like what we want; and too often when we
+try to follow his vague and jejune clue, we go upon a
+“thankless arrant.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We once addressed to an old Yankee farmer, who had
+brought a load of apples into town, the stereotyped inquiry
+which we have asked, ah! how many hundred
+times, and received this drawling answer, “No-o I donow
+as I know anyone as has got any old furnitoor or chayner
+she wants ter part with. My wife haint got any anyway.
+My Aunt Rebecca’s got one curous old plate
+and I guess she’d sell it—she’d sell her teeth if any-body’d
+buy ’em an’ pay enough ter suit her.” We finally
+extracted from him (after much parrying of our direct
+questions) that, “she got it in Washington more’n
+fifty year ago,” that “the folks set great store by it,
+and said it came from Mount Vernon and belonged to
+Marthy Washington,” that it had the names of the States
+around it, “it was blue and perhaps green too, and it
+had stars sure and he guessed they were gilt.” Now we
+had seen pieces of the Martha Washington tea-set, and
+we knew that it was decorated in blue and green with
+the names of the States in the links of a chain, and the
+initials M. W. in the centre in a great gilt star. We
+knew at once that Aunt Rebecca’s plate must be one of
+that set. What a discovery!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>
+<img src='images/i_023.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>The Plate we Hoped to Find and the Plate we Found.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>To the benighted and narrow-lived souls who have
+never hunted for old china it may seem strange that we
+knew at once that it was one of those rare plates; but I
+am sure every china hunter, whose path is always illumined
+by the brilliant possibilities which form such an
+encouragement in the pleasures of the china chase, will
+fully comprehend our confidence and anticipation. We
+figured our plate in all the loan collections, marked
+with our names in large letters as joint owners; we
+planned a velvet silver-bound box to safely hold our
+“heavenly jewel” after we had caught it; we even
+hesitatingly thought that we might make our joint will
+and leave it to the Mount
+Vernon Association—and
+then we drove
+eighteen miles to
+secure it. I shall never forget the sickening disappointment
+I felt when I saw the Martha Washington plate.
+There were the names of the States; and stars there
+were, but not a gilt one. And where were the touches
+of verdant color? All was blue—deeply, darkly, vilely
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>blue. At any other time we should have hailed the fine
+“States” plate which was shown us with keen delight,
+but now we could hardly speak or bear to look at it. At
+last, in sullen disparagement, we offered a dollar for it,
+had our offer accepted, carelessly took it, threw it on the
+carriage-seat and drove away. I reviled the farmer and
+his villainous memory and vocabulary, and would not
+look at the deep-dyed “States” impostor for a month,
+but when I heard that a collector had paid twenty dollars
+for a similar plate in New York, I unwrapped it and
+hung it on my dining-room wall, where it now shines a
+glowing bit of dark color, a joy forever.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Warned by many such dreary mistakes I am very shy
+of having china sent to me through any interest awakened
+by its description, and am equally shy of buying by
+proxy.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Let every eye negotiate for itself,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And trust no agent.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have learned also to listen with attention, not placing
+the slightest confidence in what I hear, and yet always to
+investigate with cheerfulness and alacrity. It is not, however,
+from elaborately detailed and willingly told stories
+that I have had knowledge of my richest “finds.” I
+have learned to “take a hint”—a maxim which should
+be eternally impressed on every china hunter. Learn to
+“grasp the skirt of happy chance;” let your motto be,
+“Semper paratus.” Let no suggestion of old people or
+old house-furnishings, no glimpse of blue color or sprigged
+surface, even on a broken sherd of crockery by the wayside,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>no hint of distant and out-of-the-way farms, no
+prospect of country sales, of “New England dinners,” no
+news of refurnishing old houses, no accounts of the death
+of old inhabitants fall on unheeding eye or ear. For
+myself, I never hear the words “old china” but my
+heart is moved, more than “with sound of a trumpet.”
+I breathe the battle afar and hurry to the fray, to return
+at times victorious with dainty trophies of war, and
+sometimes, alas, empty-handed, with the hanging head
+of sore disappointment and defeat. Sometimes the
+scent is poor and broken and you must ferret out the
+way to the lair; even with much trouble and diligence
+you cannot always learn at once and definitely
+the lurking-place of the porcelain treasures; you meet
+with reserve and a disinclination to reveal. Then comes
+stratagem to the fore. Learn to wheedle, to hint, to interrogate
+slyly, to blandly let the conversation drift—“muster
+all wiles with blandished parleys, feminine assaults,
+tongue batteries”—in short, vulg. dict., to “pump”—and
+work that pump with judgment, with craft, and
+with thoroughness. Moments of quickly repented expansiveness
+come to all mortals in country and in town,
+and in those rare moments of telling all they know, even
+reticent and secretive country people will give you many
+a china clue to follow.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have not found, as did the members of the China
+Hunters’ Club, that country housekeepers would, as a
+rule, rather have money than china; my country people
+will not sell their china willingly—they prefer china
+to silver. Times have changed since 1876; a fancied
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>knowledge, an exaggerated estimate of the value of old
+“crockery” now fills many a country soul, and a high
+monetary value is also placed on family relics, on
+“storied urns” and on the power of association. I will
+confess that, as a last resort in times of direst stress,
+when you really cannot go without that Pilgrim plate,
+when you positively need it—if you take your money
+out and lay it on the table in full sight of the plate-owner,
+you wield a powerful lever to work the transfer;
+nor do I consider such a statement at all derogatory to
+the character of my New England neighbors, nor is the
+trait peculiar to them.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But do not make too aggressively prominent the
+money part of the transaction. Be courteous and careful
+even to extremes in addressing your country people
+for purposes of china purchase. Never ask them to sell
+their china—<i>sell</i> is a most offensive and brutal word—ask
+them if they are “willing to part with it.” Never hint, by
+word or deed, that you fancy they really need the money.
+Never disparage the desired articles, the shrewd country
+wives would see through your pretence at once—“Why,
+if it be so commonplace, do you wish it?” A base and
+deceitful, though clever, china hunter of my acquaintance
+declares that she has found it invariably to her
+advantage to say that the coveted article matched exactly,
+either in shape or decoration, something which she
+had at home. The staid country mind, liking to see
+things in “sets,” always appeared to be most immoderately
+and unaccountably influenced to sell by this disingenuous
+assertion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>We have many times during the past five years crossed
+the trail of a collector who appears to have wholly depleted
+of china the old farm-houses of the Connecticut
+Valley. We have found, through comparing the accounts
+of his visits, that he has a little slyness too. He always
+desires to purchase his particular bit of china simply to
+form a link in a chain. He either has a specimen of the
+entire succession of production of a factory except the
+very piece the farm-wife has, or he has a perfect list of
+historical plates except the very plate she owns, or he
+has a choice bit of every known color of lustre except
+her special pitcher. The satisfaction of supplying the
+long missing link, and the value that link will give to a
+history the purchaser is going to write of such china,
+seem to prove a powerful lever to effect the transfer to
+his catenulate collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The men are, as a rule, always willing to sell china—when
+did man ever reverence the vessels of his household
+gods? I always delight to ask a Yankee farmer, in
+field or road, whether he has any old crockery that he
+would be willing to part with. How he will skurry
+home “cross-lots,” over the ploughed fields, or through
+the rows of growing corn, eager to pull out and sell his
+wife’s pantry treasures! Not that he can sell them if
+“Mother” isn’t willing—in her realm she reigns supreme.
+Even in the midst of my sore disappointment I have
+thrilled with malicious satisfaction and delight to see
+the calm and authoritative way in which “Father” is
+turned out of the “butt’ry” when he tries to pull down
+from the shelf an old blue bowl or plate to sell. “Mother”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>has kept her cinnamon-sticks and nutmegs for her
+apple-pies in that “Blue Dragon” bowl for forty years,
+and she isn’t going to sell it now to please anyone. To
+hail the farmer in advance with china questions is not,
+therefore, so underhanded and despicable a proceeding as
+might be thought, nor so dangerous to the family peace;
+he really is a poor, uninfluential, unpowered vassal in
+kitchen and pantry, his advice is not asked, his word is
+not heeded, nor if he attempt to be at all bumptious will
+his presence be tolerated. I have found it to be an unvarying
+rule that the farmer is always willing and eager to sell
+his wife’s mother’s china, while the wife is always openly
+disparaging, and cares little for his mother’s china; and
+when once the source of inheritance is discovered, the
+rule of action and plan of attack are plainly defined.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It may be argued that it is neither very courteous nor
+very kind to walk into a stranger’s house and ask him to
+sell you his household goods and chattels. To such argument
+may be offered the reply that one can hardly
+judge a farm home by the same rule as one does a city
+home. The visit of a stranger is regarded with widely
+different eyes; it is a pleasure, a treat, to most farm-wives
+to receive such a visit, and the farmer will come plodding
+home from the distant fields, in order not to lose the
+chat with the stranger and the pleasant diversion. Who
+would attempt to enter and to lodge over night in a
+stranger’s house in the city? A police-station or a lunatic
+asylum would probably quickly shelter your intruding
+head. There is hardly a farm-house where such
+a suggestion would be unwelcome or resented, provided
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>you look not like a bandit or horse-thief. Then, too,
+farmers and even farm-wives do not generally regard
+their old furniture and furnishings with quite the same
+feeling that we do ours. The old blue Staffordshire
+ware they consider almost worthless, and are often glad
+to sell it for ready cash; but their lilac-sprigged china,
+a wedding gift or a purchase with their few hard-earned
+dollars, they often value and cherish as we do Sèvres. A
+farmer handles very little money—his wife still less, and
+ofttimes the money paid by china hunters is a godsend
+in country homes. Much good is done, much comfort
+conferred by exchanging money for crockery. Carpers
+say: “But you do not pay city prices.” Sometimes,
+alas, we do, fired by our china mania, “the insane root
+that takes the reason prisoner,” though we never should.
+The farmer does not pay city rents, he has not the risk
+and expense of transfer to the city, he pays no salesman.
+If he could sell all his farm products as easily, profitably,
+and safely as he sells his china, lucky would he be.
+Sometimes the discovery that the “old blue pie-plates”
+are of any value is a delight and a surprise to him, but
+he sees at once that when they are worth so much he
+cannot afford to keep them. Hence he is far from being
+offended at the easy means of sale offered to him.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One piece of advice I give to china hunters—advice,
+the wisdom and advantage of which I have learned at
+the cost of much unpleasant and disappointing experience.
+Do not hurry prospective china sellers: bustling
+city ways annoy them, fluster them, and worry them, and
+in sheer bewilderment they say “No” to get rid of you.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>Be tentative and gentle in your approach. Do not—as
+we did—rush in upon a deaf and timid old lady and
+frighten her, by the bouncing and bustling inquiries we
+made, into vehement denials of china-possession and
+simultaneous refusals to sell anything. This dear old
+“Aunt Dolly” lived in the sole new house in a village
+of old colonial dwellings, and we rather contemptuously
+thought to pass by the brand-new French roofed intruder,
+but decided “just to ask”—and “just to ask”
+and receive a frightened negative answer was all we
+did do, and we left with self-important assurance, to
+hunt elsewhere. A tin-peddler (a “china runner” perhaps
+in disguise), with quieter voice and more truly
+well-bred manners, carried off her rare treasures about a
+week later—a canopy-topped mirror with Washington
+and Franklin mirror-knobs, a “Boston State-House”
+pitcher, four “Valentine” plates having Wilkie’s design,
+half a dozen Staffordshire plates with the “cottage” pattern,
+and two Wedgwood teapots; and Aunt Dolly took
+as payment two shining new tin milk-pans and a cheap
+wringing-machine that wouldn’t wring. We knew her
+well in after years when it was too late, and she confessed
+to us that at our first meeting we talked so fast,
+and talked together, and “hollered so she couldn’t
+hear,” and that she did not understand what we meant
+or what we wanted, and said “No” to obtain peace.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And oh! what an enviable advantage the ubiquitous
+tin-peddler, that “licensed vagrom,” has over every convention-trammelled
+china hunter! What a delight,
+what a dream it would be to go a-china hunting with a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>tin-peddler’s cart; what lonely out-of-the-way roads and
+by-lanes I would take, careless where I went, since
+wherever I wandered I should be welcome. How I
+would sit on my lofty seat and view the lovely country
+o’er, in the “sessions of sweet, silent thought,” with my
+strong and willing and safe horse to pull me up hill and
+down dale; with my stock of shining tin-ware, my
+brooms and notions and gaily painted pails, all ready
+for advantageous exchange; with my big, red, roomy
+wagon, in whose mysterious cavernous interior I could
+store in safety unwieldy china treasures, such as tureens
+and bowls and pitchers; with my air of ready assurance,
+of intimate familiarity with the family, my jovial
+raillery, my opportunities of kitchen and pantry investigation,
+my anxious health inquiries and profound medical
+advice, backed up by bottles of patent medicines
+which I should sell at half-price to curry favor and
+china; or, better still, exchange, giving a bottle of liniment
+for a “Landing of Lafayette,” or a box of pills
+for a Pilgrim plate—oh! next to being a gipsy living
+under the greenwood tree, who would not be a Yankee
+tin-peddler a-china hunting? But perhaps the
+farm-wife might wish me to take in exchange for my
+wares, eggs, or butter, or rolls of wool—what should
+I do with a pail of butter in summer-time on a tin-peddler’s
+cart? Or, worse still, old rags—just fancy it—instead
+of old china! I should then answer her with
+an air of deep and sombre mystery: “Madam, I would
+gladly take your readily exchangeable merchandise an’
+I could; the old rags are particularly desirable and attractive,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>but I have sworn a vow—I have a secret which
+I cannot now divulge—it must be crockery or naught,
+especially dark blue crockery with American designs,
+else I and my glittering and uncommonly cheap wares
+must pass wearily on, homeless, chinaless, a wanderer on
+the face of the earth.” Alack-a-day! such happy peaceful
+joys are forbidden to me, not because of lack of
+inclination or capacity, but—thrice bitter thought—because
+I am a woman. Tin-peddlering is not for me, it
+is not “woman’s sphere.” Perhaps when I am old, too
+old to clamber up and proudly sit on that exalted
+driver’s seat (though never too old to go china hunting),
+perhaps when women have crowded into every other
+profession, calling, and business in the land, some happy,
+bold feminine soul will taste the pleasures of “advanced
+life for women,” the pleasures forbidden to me, and dare
+to go tin-peddlering, though there will then be no old
+china left in the country to buy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though I have never been china hunting with a tin-peddler
+I have been on the trail with a Yankee china
+dealer, and his unique method of management was delightful.
+He worked upon the most secretive, the most
+furtive plan. He never would have shared with us his
+coverts nor taken us to his haunts, save for this reason:
+he had run down a noble prey, an entire set of fine old
+English ware, and to his dismay the owner refused to let
+him enter the house. Again and again had he essayed
+to come to some terms, even to see the china, but without
+success. He felt sure, however, that if any woman
+asked she would not plead in vain, hence his divulgement
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>as a favor to us. We made several stops at farm-houses
+on the road to our goal, and his way of carrying
+on his business of china buying deserves to be told as
+a matter of interest and instruction to amateur china
+hunters, for he was a professional, a star. He never, by
+any chance, told the truth about himself, and above all
+never gave his correct name and place of residence, nor
+drove away from the house in the way he really intended
+to go. He represented himself as an adopted son, this
+seeming to be more mysterious than ordinary family conditions;
+never gave twice alike the name of his adopted
+father, but had a series of noble parents, the most prominent
+and influential men in the country around. The
+reasons he assigned for wishing to buy the china were so
+ingenious and so novel that we listened to him in delight
+and amazement, and with keen anticipation as to
+what he would next invent; the glamour of romance was
+added to the delightful madness of china hunting. He
+was at one farm-house a tender-hearted, indulgent husband,
+whose delicate invalid of a wife had expressed a
+wish for a set of old china and he was willing to spend
+days of search in order to satisfy her whim. It is needless
+to add that he was a bachelor. At another time his
+adopted father was losing his mind and would eat off
+nothing but old-fashioned china; hence he was hunting
+to find a set to carry dutifully home. Again he was fitting
+out a missionary-box for the Western wilds, and
+wanted to buy a little old-fashioned crockery to send out
+to the minister to remind him of his New England home.
+At the next door he assumed an air of solemnity and dignity
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>and announced that he was founding a museum, and
+was forming a collection of old New England house-furnishings
+as a nucleus. At another place he swelled with
+paternal kindliness, and wanted to get a few plates to
+give to his three little children to show them the kind of
+crockery he used to eat from at his grandfather’s. Once
+he boldly announced that he was a china-manufacturer
+and was dissatisfied with the quality of his ware and
+wanted some old china to grind up and thus learn the
+correct ingredients. Then he was collecting china for the
+Columbian Exhibition. At another door his wife turned
+into an accomplished china-painter who wanted these
+plates for patterns. He curried warm favor and won
+much china at one house by stating that his mother’s
+china set had been badly broken by her daughter-in-law
+and he wished to replace the broken pieces. An aged
+couple who were living with their son and his wife were
+easy victims to this specious invention. He bargained
+for hay, for potatoes, for a whole farm; we seemed at
+one time in imminent danger of being forced to buy a
+cow and to depart leading her behind the wagon. Let
+me be just to this inventive soul; his dishonesty lay in
+words only. He paid good prices for all the china he
+bought, neither undervalued nor disparaged it; and
+showed a thoughtful kindliness toward the dwellers in
+every house he visited. After a prolonged stay within
+one shabby kitchen he appeared with two little copper-lustre
+saucers which he rather shamefacedly acknowledged
+having paid two dollars for. We extracted from
+him that he had found a bed-ridden old woman alone,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>shivering, thirsty; that he had built a fire for her,
+pumped water, and paid for her only pieces of old china
+double their value because he pitied her so.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We suggested at one house that he should say plainly
+that he was a dealer and wanted to buy the china
+to sell. He scorned our dull, commonplace suggestion,
+and said it wouldn’t be any fun, and that they wouldn’t
+let him within their doors. “Half the places I go to
+anyway they look out the window afore they answer
+me to see if I aint got a sewing-machine in the wagon,
+and if they don’t see any, then they think I must have
+a cyclopedy.” China hunting was to him the romance
+of his life, his tournament, his battle-field. He told
+us of several narrow escapes he had had from detection,
+and exposure of his fables. In addition to vending
+old china, he sold old junk and farming tools; and
+thrice farmers of whom he had bought china recognized
+him within his own doors. But with the active imagination
+of a Dumas, he had an instant explanation. He
+had either just gone into the business, or else they were
+mistaken: he had a twin brother who had been adopted,
+etc. He developed to us a plan of action which we
+were to pursue at the special farm-house that contained
+the set of china. He would stop at the foot of the hill
+and lurk out of sight while we climbed to the door.
+Then we were to represent ourselves as relatives of the
+Republican candidate for Governor, as it was within a
+week of election and the farmer was a Republican. We
+were to tell little anecdotes of the candidate’s private
+life, to hint that it was to please the Governor-elect that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>we wished this china, and that it would be used in the
+gubernatorial mansion in Boston. He told us exactly
+how we were to work up the conversation and lead up
+to the purchase, what to pay and what to offer at first.
+All was well and carefully arranged when a dire suspicion
+seized him that Farmer Rice was a Democrat after
+all. This depressed him much, and he decided to sound
+a neighbor on this important point ere we committed
+ourselves within doors. His conversation with the guileless
+neighbor held us spellbound, he represented himself
+as a political census taker and hinted darkly that we
+were to be the candidates for high offices on the Woman’s
+Rights ticket at the next election. He found that
+farmer Rice was a bitter Democrat. This was a sharp
+blow, for neither he nor we knew one thing about the
+private life of the Democratic candidate—not even where
+he lived, nor indeed on our part one thing about politics
+anyway. Nothing daunted, he searched a newspaper
+which he chanced to have, and invented an imaginary
+home for the Democratic Governor, which would doubtless
+have answered every purpose, with the strong points
+on Free Trade and Protection which he drilled into us.
+We very prosaically, however, preferred our old honest
+plan, and whether because of our suspicious appearance
+on foot at such a great distance from any village, or
+because we made an extremely inauspicious entrance,
+awakening a very deaf old lady from a very sound nap,
+we could not buy the china either, but we saw it, a
+whole chest full, and the sight was well worth the long
+journey.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>Thus it maybe seen that china hunting, like many another
+hobby, is not a wholly ennobling pursuit. Strange
+and petty meannesses develop in you, envious longings,
+you have “an itching palm,” you learn to be secretive
+and dissembling, “to smile and smile and be a villain.”
+You learn to hide your trail, to refuse to give information
+to other sportsmen, to conceal the location of your
+hunting-grounds, to employ any wile to gain attention
+and entrance. Two worthy young men, without a fault,
+save an overweening and idolatrous love for old china,
+can attribute their fall from the paths of honesty and
+truthfulness to china hunting. Searching one day in a
+country town, one of these china hunters descended from
+the carriage and pounded the knocker of a fine but somewhat
+dilapidated country mansion. A pompous and repelling
+old gentleman of extreme deafness and reticence
+opened the door. What was the amazement and mortification
+of the waiting friend in the carriage to hear the
+bold intruder roar in his loudest and most persuasive
+voice, “I have come to see whether you have any old
+china, or know of anyone who has old china to sell,” and
+as the door was about to be slammed, he added, “My
+friend, the late Judge V——, of Worcester, told me that
+if anyone in the country knew of old china and relics it
+was you.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>
+<img src='images/i_040.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Millennium Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The way that proud and shy old man rose to that
+transparent bait was wonderful to behold. He ushered
+in the young deceiver, with Chesterfieldian bows of welcome.
+The “late Judge V——” had been a man well
+known and honored throughout the county, though he
+knew so little and thought so little of china that he
+might have dined off pewter and never known it—but
+he was dead, and could never be brought up as a refuting
+witness, which was a great point. The lonely watcher
+in the carriage sat shamefacedly waiting, cringing at the
+thought of his companion’s wickedness. He listened to
+the loud roars into the deaf old ears as the twain walked
+from room to room
+while “glozed the
+tempter,” and the
+specious sounds
+were wafted out on
+the summer air; he
+thought of possible
+treasures within, he
+listened and wondered
+and yielded—such
+is the contamination
+of
+wicked example—walked
+into the
+house, and added to the lie tenfold. As a result of their
+duplicity, and since the flattered one was a widower with
+no woman to say nay, they captured and brought away
+four Millennium plates, two Wedgwood pickle leaves, a
+silver-lustre teapot, and a glorious great flip-mug. But
+“things ill-got had ever bad success;” as they lifted the
+large and knobby newspaper parcel from the carriage, it
+slipped from their contaminating grasp, and all the pieces
+were broken save the flip-mug, which, being specially protected,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>escaped. Though warned by this plain rebuke,
+they persevere; and so hardened are they now become
+in their base habits of deception, that they have worked
+that “late Judge V——” scheme, with some slight
+variations, in a score of country homes. They always
+tell that abominable falsehood whenever they have a
+man to deal with, not only adding deception to deceit,
+but showing a most despicable lack of originality—a
+“most damnable iteration.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>They cringingly allege their intention to change the
+name of the imaginary recommender as soon as any one
+of sufficient note and widespread fame in the county
+dies, and thus through his death becomes eligible to the
+position in the fable. I only wish the wraith of the late
+Judge V——, a man of portentous ugliness in real life,
+such abnormal ugliness that the thought of the sight of
+his dematerialized ghost is really appalling—I only wish
+his indignant wraith would appear before them at the
+lintel of the door, at the portal of some china-besieged
+house, and demand, in the loud roars which characterized
+him in his lifetime, the meaning of this unwarrantable
+and presumptuous use of his name.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the meantime, unchecked and undiscovered, this
+simple and transparent scheme invariably works to a
+charm—how proud the man always is to learn that the
+late Judge V—— recommended him as a connoisseur of
+anything! he hastens to sell his china, if his wife be willing
+and have any to sell, and he manages to think of
+someone else who will probably sell, should he chance to
+have none himself. The flip-mug has been filled many a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>time to the old-time toast, “Success to Trade”—and
+yet the base china hunters are really honest fellows
+enough in every-day life. Alas! that greed for things
+so beautiful should so deform the soul!</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Such duplicity is, however, rare. I tell of it only to
+express my abhorrence, my condemnation. Dissimulation
+is seldom necessary. You are sometimes falsely
+accused of it when your motives are as open as the
+light of day. After telling with exact truth precisely
+what I intended to do with some pieces of china, I was
+answered, with an angry toss of the head, “Why didn’t
+ye tell me first-off ye didn’t want me to know.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We are sometimes, in our china hunts, brought into
+close contact with baser crimes than falsehood and duplicity.
+We have a number of daintily-shaped pieces
+of sprigged china, with a graceful ribbon border, which
+are known to us by the name of “Beach ware,” but
+which would be generally and more correctly called
+“cottage china.” These six-legged teapots and creamjugs
+of “Beach ware” received their descriptive and
+pretty title from the simple folk of whom they were
+bought, not from the name of their maker nor from
+their place of manufacture. “Beach ware” was found
+in crates or boxes along the beach on the shores of
+Barnegat Bay at the beginning of this century. It was
+part of the cargo of a great English ship laden with
+china, which was lured to destruction and robbed by
+a notorious family of Barnegat “wreckers,” one of whose
+members died not many years ago at the age of ninety
+years, having served in his youth a well-deserved term
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>of twenty years’ imprisonment in State Prison, the sentence
+received at his trial for cruel robbery and murder
+through “wrecking.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_043.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>“Beach Ware.”</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>At that time, though vessels and their cargoes were insured,
+the underwriters frequently did not make their appearance
+down the coast at the scene of the wreck for
+many days and even weeks after the ship broke up or
+came ashore. And when the tardy officials did arrive,
+Barnegat natives, even from far inland—honest men and
+knavish rogues alike—had always managed to capture
+everything of value that came ashore or could be taken
+from the vessel. In order to conceal their stolen salvage,
+indestructible merchandise or articles that were not
+affected by the action of the soil and water were frequently
+buried until after the baffled insurance company
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_28'>28</span>and the ship’s owners had left the scene. The arrest and
+sentence of the leader of this gang of wreckers caused
+much apprehension and excitement in every Barnegat
+home, and much fine china was pounded up or thrown
+into the water, as well as buried, lest its presence seem
+proof of complicity in the convict’s guilt. Our pieces of
+“Beach ware” remained under ground for years—it is said
+until the wicked old convict served out his term in prison,
+since he alone could find the spot where he had buried
+it. The green-ribboned and pink-sprigged teapots and
+teacups look too innocent to have known aught of such
+wickedness and violence, but bear no more guileless face
+than did the patriarchal old wrecker in the peaceful prosperous
+days of his later years when he unblushingly and
+unwincingly sold to us this “Beach ware,” of which his
+gossiping neighbors had told to us the tale.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Shall I have the dire name of “fence” applied to
+me when it is told that I am the receiver of stolen
+goods?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The best piece of Wedgwood jasper ware that I own
+was bought from an old Englishman of mild appearance
+and junk proclivities. A second visit to his den found
+it closed. A friendly plumber in the adjacent shop explained
+with effusion that the junk-man was a wretched
+old thief, and no one but thieves sold to him or bought
+of him (I winced at the accusation); that “he broke
+into a museyum in England and stole a lot of china and
+brought it over here to sell, and had kep’ stealin’ ever
+sense,” and he (the plumber) was “glad the perlice had
+chased him out, for he was a disgrace to the neighborhood.”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>Was not my pretty Flaxman-designed piece of
+Wedgwood stolen from that English collection?</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_045.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Old Worcester in “Japan Taste.”</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A beautiful cup and saucer of old Worcester in the
+“Japan taste,” rich without and within in red and gold
+and blue, has long been regarded by me with intense
+suspicion of my honest and legal right to its possession.
+It was sold to me with the assurance that it had belonged
+to Lucien Bonaparte; I did not doubt that part of the
+story, for I had seen its sister in the possession of a
+family who I knew inherited it through a gift of that
+Bonaparte. But how should my cup and saucer have
+been offered for sale to anyone? By a curious chain of
+circumstances, too tedious to repeat, I discovered that
+the pretty cup and saucer had been stolen by a servant,
+and sold long ago to an old merchant in New York, who
+should have and doubtless did know better, but who
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>loved old china. Shall I tell his name? Shall I hunt
+up the lawful heir and owner of my Worcester teacup?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Only one possibility mars the pleasure of a day’s
+china hunt—the necessity of obtaining a midday meal
+“upon the road,” in any chance farm-house you may be
+within at high noon. The old hunter fights shy of such
+repasts by carrying her lunch with her, but when a drive
+of several days is taken this course is not very attractive
+or possible. She must then succumb to fate, accept the
+hospitality which is invariably and cordially offered to
+her, and eat, or, at least, try to eat. I think June is the
+most trying month for such ventures. Spring vegetables
+are unknown in the land of their supposed birth.
+Fruits and berries are not ripe. You are given a mysterious
+repast, flavored throughout with sour milk and
+smelling of sour milk, which reaches its highest and
+sourest point in the bread. I always plead dyspepsia
+and cling to a milk diet, thus eliciting much sympathy,
+and hygienic and medical advice. Doubtless in late
+fall or in winter, country fare might be more endurable,
+but, with keen and most vivid fancy, I cannot imagine
+going china hunting in the country in the winter time.
+Even glorious sleighing or the promise of vast treasure
+trove could not englamour it with an enticing charm.
+Think of shivering over snow-blocked roads under leaden
+skies, through dreary, wind-wailing, naked woods, struggling
+up icy, snow-swept, and blast-beaten hills to that
+lonely hill-top home, a New England farm-house!
+Hope would perish on the road. Think of entering
+that drear abode; of sitting, while you unfolded your
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>wishes and went through the stereotyped china questions
+with the stereotyped china smile, with bursting
+veins and flushed face, in a stuffy, torrid, unaired room,
+in front of a red-hot, air-tight stove, for there are no
+glorious open wood fires nowadays in the great chimneys
+of country houses in New England. Think of
+going from that super-heated, stifling atmosphere to a
+frigid pantry or icy best room to look at china! How
+the congealed plates would clatter in your trembling
+stiffened fingers; how you would hurry through the repelling
+ordeal; never, as in summer, climbing upon
+chairs to peer on upper shelves, never exploring in old
+window-seats, never lingering to examine separately
+and lovingly each plate in a great pile. Above all,
+think of ransacking a farm-house garret, “in cobwebbed
+corners, dusty and dim,” with the thermometer below
+zero—it is beyond my power of fancy to fathom such
+a scene. A fellow china hunter tells me a tale of a
+lonely drive and Arctic exploration, and of riding gayly
+home therefrom in the winter twilight, warming the
+cockles of her heart with four Baltimore &#38; Ohio plates
+pressed closely to her side, with two Lafayette pepper-boxes
+and half a dozen Lowestoft custard-cups packed
+snugly in her muff, and with a Pennsylvania Hospital
+platter in the fur robe at her feet. I never believed her;
+it could not be true. China does not grow in winter,
+’tis a fair summer flower, and must be gathered under
+summer suns.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But to what out-of-the-way, simple, rustic scenes has
+our china hunting led us through the long summer days,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>scenes to be painted by Miss Wilkins or Mrs. Slosson.
+To country auctions—not the ill-ventilated, Hebrew-jostled,
+bawling arenas of city life, but auctions in country
+villages, on old farms, where the auctioneer, if the day
+be warm, stands outside the house on a door taken from
+its hinges and laid across two barrels on the green, or
+among the beds of flowering phlox and marigolds; where
+the lots for sale, unnumbered, uncatalogued, and unclassified
+are handed out, a heterogeneous company, to the
+presiding seller through the open windows behind him;
+where every small parcel of value is neatly tied up and
+labelled with the names of past owners—Aunt Hepsy,
+Mrs. Catey Doten, Old Job Greening; where every
+queer-gowned and queer-coated neighbor for miles around
+has driven over in every kind of vehicle to look at, if not
+to buy, the scattering house treasures. At these country
+auctions, china and ancient underclothes, or pewter porringers
+with feather pillows, may form a single “lot,” and
+you must buy all or none. If you purchase you pay your
+money at once to the auctioneer, with much friendly
+change-making by hard-fisted old farmers on either hand;
+the china is delivered to your eager hands, the underclothes
+are thrown to you or at you by the auctioneer
+over the heads of the audience; the hay-rakes, or churns,
+or quilting-frames, or whatever addenda may have been
+tacked to your porcelain, are brought around and piled
+in a little heap by the side of your chair, or if you have
+“backed up” your country wagon, are placed therein.
+I once bought six large bundles of neatly labelled pieces
+of woollen cloth, pieces of all the old petticoats and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>breeches and greatcoats that had been worn in that house
+for forty years, just to get one India china plate. A rugmaking—or
+I should say, “mat-braiding”—dame at my
+left, seeing my dismay at my unsought treasures and
+noting my love of china, offered to give me a modern
+match-box for the tidy bundle of pieces, which kindly
+exchange I gladly accepted as being less cumbersome, if
+not more beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Surely the summer sunlight never flickered down on a
+more typical New England scene than a country auction.
+Sad are the faces around, quiet reigns; no one smiles, no
+one jests as the hoarse-voiced auctioneer holds up, explains,
+and extols some very mirth-provoking “lots.”
+This breaking up and disbanding of a home has no droll
+side to country minds. The last country auction I attended
+was at an old house in Rutland. At it were sold
+the effects of an ancient lady of ninety years, who had just
+died. Her nephew, a lively lad of eighty, carried away
+by the excitement of the sale, or by the sight of so much
+ready money, recklessly handed out to the auctioneer, as
+he stood under the dusty lilac bushes, a large number of
+articles of furniture and table-ware which had been temporarily
+stored in the house by the old lady’s housekeeper,
+an equally ancient matron. The unconscious
+theft was discovered late in the afternoon, just as we were
+about to drive off, and the old man, overcome with horror
+at his unwitting crime, or dread of the results of its
+discovery, tearfully forced us to disgorge half a dozen
+McDonough’s Victory plates and several mugs and pitchers
+which we had eagerly purchased and gleefully packed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>away. He “comforted us with apples,” however, pressing
+upon us a peck of red-streaked, spicy Sapsons to console
+us for our evident disappointment—and our sorrow that
+we had not sensibly and cannily departed at an earlier hour.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But do not fancy that every gathering of country
+wagons in country door-yards, every row of patient
+horses hitched at barn doors and along the fence, denotes
+an auction within the doors of the farm-house. Draw
+no such rash conclusion, and make no hasty and unheralded
+entrance within, else you may find yourself, with
+china smiles on your lips and china inquiries on your
+tongue, an impetuous and mortified intruder at the saddest
+of all sad scenes, a country funeral. I cannot resist
+telling that, after one such impertinent intrusion on that
+solemn function, we returned in a few hours, when on
+our way home, to apologize and explain our infelicitous
+and uninvited entrance at so unfitting a time. When
+we stated that we were hunting for old-fashioned china,
+a gleam of comprehension entered the faces of the two
+elderly women who sat rocking by the fireside in the
+lonely kitchen, and as a result a china-closet was raided,
+and we bought a number of pieces of unusually fine
+Canton and Lowestoft china. At the time of purchase,
+we innocently fancied that we gained this treasure honestly
+from the new-made heirs, but have since then had
+harassing suspicions that the china was sold to us by
+temporary care-takers who remained to “redd the house,”
+while the mourning relatives had driven to the country
+graveyard, and who thus snatched from the jaws of
+death a most dishonest penny.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>Nor can you be over-confident that all auctions held
+in the country are true country auctions. The ways of
+“antique men” are past finding out. A sale of the
+household furnishings of an old farm-house in the heart
+of the White Mountains, attracted a vast number of summer
+travellers, and brought forth purchase sums that bewildered
+the farm residents for miles around. Ere the
+sun went down on the day of the sale, a thrifty dealer
+who happened to be present had had a conference with
+the farm-wife, and as a result it was announced that she
+had a reserve stock of furniture and china in her garret,
+which would be sold the following week. Back to town
+sped the dealer, packed up a vast collection of unsalable
+débris which he chanced to have on hand, and an “assorted
+lot” of modern willow-pattern ware, freshly imported
+Canton china, new copper-lustre and painted tea-sets,
+with a sparse sprinkling of old pieces. He sent the
+entire lot by rail to the New Hampshire town; conveyed
+it by dead of night to the farm-house; placed the crockery
+in the cupboards, the brand-new brass candlesticks
+on the mantels, and the flimsy new andirons in the old
+fireplaces, arranged all the furniture in judicious shadow,
+and had a successful auction of “rare old colonial furniture
+and family china.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A famous starting-point, or rather rallying-point, on a
+china hunt is the district school. Driving along the
+quiet country road, you chance, in some barren and unlovely
+spot, often at some lonely cross-roads, upon a
+small unshaded, single-storied building, whose general
+ugliness and the beaten earth of whose door-yard tell to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span>you its purpose and character without the proof of the
+high-pitched and precise chorus of monotonous three-syllabled
+words that vibrates shrilly out through the
+open window. Hitch your steed to a tree, a fence, by
+the roadside, and enter one of the twin portals of the
+abode of learning, passing by the low-hanging rows of
+ragged straw hats, gingham sun-bonnets, and chip “Shakers,”
+over the “warping floor,” in front of the “battered
+seats, with jack-knife’s carved initial.” “Teacher”
+is glad to see you, the children are gladder still. She
+sends a grinning barefooted boy out to draw a pail of
+fresh well-water. You are asked, as a distinguished visitor,
+to address the scholars. If you are a man, and
+thus of course an orator, you do so with fluent tongue.
+If you are a woman, and thus tongue-tied in public,
+you can ask for “recess” to be given, and make your
+address informally to each little freckled face. You
+are, of course, anxious to refurnish a house like the one
+in which you lived when you attended the village school
+in the days of your youth. Do the children know of
+any old blue china plates with trees and houses on
+them? Have their mothers or grandmothers any pitchers
+with pictures of soldiers, or sailors, or ships? Of
+course the children know; they know everything—far
+more than grown people. You soon have an exact
+ceramic report from every house in town whose little
+sons and daughters are in the school, and of the homes
+of all their neighbors too. You have extracted an unbiassed
+account from a set of little ready-tongued and
+keen-eyed spies, whose penetration is acute, and whose
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>memory is active. If you can draw you can quickly
+show the children with chalk and blackboard the kind of
+china you wish, and can depart with a long list of houses
+which will repay you to visit.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But why do I longer tell the story of the chase, or
+vainly try to give advice and rules for china-finding? I
+can only “pay you my penny of observation,” knowing
+well that “<span lang="la">Gutta fortunæ præ dolio sapientiæ</span>.” Nor
+can I fitly paint the pleasures, nor tell the pains of
+the search, more than I could mould and shape the
+treasures it has brought to my home. Nor can I hope
+to fire in other veins the fever that burns in mine; I
+must be content to say with Olivia, “’Tis a most <i>extracting</i>
+frenzy of mine own.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>II.<br> TRENCHER TREEN AND PEWTER BRIGHT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>The history of the use of china as table-ware in
+America would be incomplete and ill-comprehended,
+without some reference to the preceding
+forms of table furnishings used by the earliest colonists,
+the dishes of wood and pewter, which so long influenced
+the form and even the decoration of their china successors.
+As in the “Life of Josiah Wedgwood” we are given
+an account of the pottery and porcelain of all times, so in
+my story of china in America I tell of the humble predecessors
+that graced the frugal boards of our ancestors.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In a curious book, Newbery’s “Dives Pragmaticus,”
+written in 1563, a catalogue of English cooking utensils
+and table-ware is thus given by a chapman:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“I have basins, ewers of tin, pewter, and glass,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Great vessels of copper, fine latten, and brass,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Both pots, pans, and kettles such as never was.</div>
+      <div class='line'>I have platters, dishes, saucers, and candlesticks,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Chafers, lavers, towels, and fine tricks;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Posnets, frying pans, and fine pudding pricks;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Fine pans for milk, trim tubs for souse.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>These were practically the table and kitchen furnishings
+brought by the Pilgrims to New England, and for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>similar furnishings they sent to old England for many
+years.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The time when America was settled was the era when
+pewter ware had begun to take the place of wooden ware
+for table use, just as the time of the Revolutionary War
+marked the victory of porcelain over pewter. Governor
+Bradford found the Indians using “wooden bowls, trays,
+and dishes,” and “hand baskets made of crab shells
+wrought together.” Both colonists and Indians used
+clam-shells for plates, and smaller shells set in split
+sticks as spoons and ladles.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Indians made in great quantities for their white
+neighbors, even in the earliest days, bowls from the knots
+of maple-trees that went by the name of “Indian bowls,”
+and were much sought after and used. One large
+bowl taken from the wigwam of King Philip is now in
+the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
+The settlers also established factories for dish-turning.
+One thrifty New England parson eked out his scanty and
+ill-paid salary by making wooden bowls and plates for his
+parishioners. Wooden “noggins,” low bowls with handles,
+are often mentioned in early inventories, and Mary
+Ring, of Plymouth, thought in 1633 that a “wodden
+cupp” was quite valuable enough to leave “as a token of
+friendship.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In Vermont bowls and plates of poplar wood were
+used until Revolutionary times, and fair white dishes
+did that clean hard wood make. Sometimes the wooden
+plates used by the poor planters were only square blocks
+slightly hollowed out by hand—whittled, without doubt.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>Wooden trenchers, also made by hand, were used on the
+table by the colonists for more than a century. I find
+them advertised for sale with pewter and china in the
+<cite>Connecticut Courant</cite> of May, 1775. These trenchers
+were either square or oblong. From an oblong trencher
+two persons, relatives or intimate friends, sometimes ate
+in common, just as they had done in old England. Two
+children frequently ate from the same trencher, thus
+economizing table furnishings. In earlier times man and
+wife ate from a single trencher or plate. Walpole relates
+that the aged Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, in
+the middle of the last century, sat upon a dais together
+at the head of their table and ate from the same plate—a
+tender tribute to unreturnable youth, a clinging regard
+for past customs, and a token of present affection and
+unity in old age.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A story is told of a Connecticut planter, that having
+settled in a quickly-growing town and having proved
+himself to be a pious God-fearing man, his name was offered
+to his church for election or ordination as a deacon.
+Objection was made to him, on the ground that he had
+shown undue pride and luxury of living in allowing his
+children each to use and eat from a single plate at the
+table, instead of doing as his neighbors did—have two
+children eat from one trencher. He apologized for his
+seemingly vain manner of living, and gave in excuse the
+fact that previous to his settlement near New Haven he
+had been a dish-turner, so it had not then been extravagant
+for the members of his family to have a dish apiece;
+and having grown accustomed to that manner of “feeding,”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>he found it more peaceable and comfortable; but he
+was willing to change his ways if they considered it desirable
+and proper, as he did not wish to put on more
+airs than his neighbors.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But wooden trenchers, even in the first half of the
+first New England century, gave place to pewter, and
+the great number of pieces of pewter table-ware still
+found in New England country homes would alone
+prove to how recent a date pewter utensils were universally
+used. The number would doubtless be much
+larger if it were not deemed by metal-workers that
+new pewter is of much better substance if the metals
+composing it are combined with a certain amount of old
+pewter. Hence old pewter always has commanded a
+good price, and many fine old specimens have been
+melted up to mould over again for the more modern uses
+for which pewter is employed by printers and lapidaries.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The trade of pewterer was for two centuries a very respectable
+and influential one. The Guild of Pewterers
+in London was a very large and powerful body, and
+English pewterers, men of worth, came with other tradesmen
+at once to the Colonies. Richard Graves was a
+pewterer of Salem in 1639, and Henry Shrimpton, an
+influential merchant who died in Boston in 1666, made
+large quantities of pewter ware for the Massachusetts
+colonists. The pewterers rapidly increased in numbers
+in America, until the War of Independence, when, of
+course, the increasing importation of Oriental and English
+china and stone-ware, and the beauty and interest of
+the new table-ware, destroyed forever the pewterer’s
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>trade. Advertisements of pewter table furnishings appear
+frequently, however, in American newspapers until
+well into this century.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Nor was it different in England at the same date.
+Englishmen and Englishwomen clung long to pewter.
+In a poem written in 1828 by J. Ward, of Stoke-upon-Trent,
+upon the Potter’s Art, he says:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The housewife, prim in days we know ourselves,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Display’d her polished pewter on her shelves;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Reserv’d to honour most the annual feast,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Where ev’ry kinsman proved a welcome guest.</div>
+      <div class='line'>No earthen plates or dishes then were known,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Save at the humble board as coarse as stone,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And there the trencher commonly was seen,</div>
+      <div class='line'>With its attendant ample platter treen.” (Wooden.)</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is a curious fact that in the inventory of the household
+possessions of Thomas Wedgwood, the potter, made
+at Burslem in 1775, we find that he had forty-four pewter
+plates worth seven pence half penny each, and
+twenty-four pewter dishes worth two shillings each,
+though the inventory of the goods at his factory at that
+time included two hundred and ninety-five dozen table
+plates of best white ware.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At a very early date all well-to-do colonists had plenty
+of “latten ware,” which was brass, as well as pewter.
+All kinds of household utensils were made, however, of
+the latter metal; even “pewter bottles, pints, and
+quarts,” were upon a list of goods to be sent from England
+to the Massachusetts Colony in 1629. I have
+never seen an old pewter bottle, even in a collection or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>museum, and they must soon have been superseded by
+glass.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the Boston <cite>Evening Post</cite> of July 26, 1756, appeared
+this advertisement: “London pewter dishes, plates,
+basons, porringers, breakfast bowls, table spoons, pint and
+quart pots, cans, tankards, butter cups, newest fashion
+teapots, table salts, sucking bottles, plates &#38; dish
+covers, cullenders, soop kettles, new fashion roased
+plates, communion beakers and flagons, &#38; measures.”
+A vast number of names of other articles might be added
+from other lists of sales of pewter at that time—“quart
+&#38; pint jacks,” “bottle crains,” “ink pots,” “ink chests,”
+“ink horns,” “ink standishes,” and “ink jugs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pewter “cans for beer, cyder, and metheglin,” were in
+every household; pewter mugs and pewter “dram-cups
+with funnels,” pewter “basons,” cisterns, and ewers
+graced the “parlour,” which contained also the best
+state bed, with its “harrateen” or “cheney” curtains.
+Pewter candlesticks held the home-made, pale-green candles
+of tallow and spicy bayberry wax. “Savealls,” too,
+were of pewter and iron. “Savealls” were the little
+round frames with wire points which held up the last
+short ends of dying candles for our frugal ancestors.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Salt-cellars and spoons were of pewter, while extremely
+elegant people had spoons of alchymy, or
+occonny, alcaney, alcamy, occomy, ackamy, and accamy,
+as I have seen it spelt, a metal composed of pan brass
+and arsenicum. Forks were almost unknown, and fingers
+played an important part in serving and eating at
+the table. A lady traveller, in 1704, spoke with much
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>scorn of Connecticut people, because they allowed their
+negro slaves to sit and eat at the same table with themselves,
+saying that
+“into the great dish
+goes the black hoof
+as freely as the
+white hand.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_060.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic005'>
+<p>“The porringers that in a row<br>  Hung high and made a glittering show.”</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pewter porringers,
+or “pottingers,”
+of every size were
+much prized. One
+family, in 1660, had
+seven porringers,
+while another
+housewife was
+proud of owning
+nine, and one silver
+queen porringer.
+The smaller porringers
+were called
+posnets, a word now
+obsolete. Posnet
+was derived from a
+Welsh word, <i>posned</i>,
+a little round dish.
+In these posnets
+posset was served,
+and they were also
+used as pap-bowls for infants. Posnets and porringers,
+when not in use, were hung by their handles on the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>edge of the dresser shelf. The porringers with flat
+pierced handles are of English or American make, while
+the “fish-tail” handles are seldom found in New England,
+being distinctly Dutch.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plates and platters were much valued. Governor
+Bradford, of Massachusetts, left to his heirs fourteen
+pewter dishes and thirteen platters, three large plates
+and three small ones, one pewter candlestick and one
+pewter bottle—a most luxurious and elaborate household
+outfit. Governor Benedict Arnold, of Jamestown,
+R. I., and Mr. Pyncheon, of Springfield, Mass., bequeathed
+their pewter plates and dishes in the same list,
+and with as much minuteness of description, as the silver
+tankards and bowls, and the humble pewter was as
+elaborately lettered and marked with armorial devices
+as was the silver. Miles Standish left to his heirs sixteen
+pewter dishes and twelve wooden trenchers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pewter was not thought to be too base a metal to use
+for communion services. In 1729, the First Church of
+Hanover, Mass., bought and used for years a full communion
+service and christening basin of pewter; and
+the bill of purchase and the old pieces are still preserved
+by the church as relics. The pewter communion service
+of the Marblehead Church is now in the rooms of the
+Essex Institute, and until this century advertisements of
+“Pewter Communion Flagons” appeared in New England
+newspapers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These pewter dishes and plates were a source of great
+pride to every colonial housekeeper, and much time and
+labor was devoted to polishing them with “horsetails”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>(<i>equisetum</i>), or “scouring rush,” till they shone like fine
+silver; and dingy pewter was fairly counted a disgrace.
+The most accomplished gentleman in Virginia, of his
+time, gave it as a positive rule, in 1728, that “pewter
+bright” was the sign of a good housewife.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In some old country homes, either lack of money,
+the power of habit, or the strong love of ancient articles
+and associations, caused the preservation of the old
+pewter utensils, and they now form the cherished ornaments
+of the kitchen and dining-room. In the lovely
+old town of Shrewsbury, which stands so high on Massachusetts
+hills that the railroad has never approached its
+lonely beauty, there stands on the edge of the “Common”
+a house, in which everything that is good and
+old has been preserved, and appears as when the house
+was built, in the year 1779.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The old fireplaces have cranes and iron “dogs,” are
+festooned with ears of yellow seed-corn, and are surmounted
+by the old fire-arms, while by the chimney
+sides are hung old-fashioned brooms of peeled birch.
+These brooms are made of birch splints, carefully split
+and peeled, and tied in place with hempen twine on the
+strong handle; and many a farmer’s boy, years ago,
+earned his first spending-money by making them, for six
+cents apiece, for the country stores. Old settles, chairs,
+and tables stand on the white-scoured floors; and in the
+“living-room” is a piece of furniture seldom seen in New
+England, though common enough in Pennsylvania, New
+York, and New Jersey in olden times—a “slaw bank.”
+The word is a corruption of <i>sloap bancke</i>, or sleeping
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>bench, and the slaw bank was the great-grandfather of
+our modern cabinet folding-bed. At one end of the
+room are doors apparently belonging to cupboards,
+which, upon being swung wide open, disclose the oblong
+frame of a bed with a network of ropes to serve as
+springs. This bed-frame is fastened at one end to the
+wall with heavy hinges, and was hooked up against the
+wall in the day-time, and at night was lowered to a
+horizontal position and supported on heavy wooden
+turned legs, which fitted into sockets in the frame;
+and it was thus ready for use. This bed is still kept
+made up as of old, with hand-spun linen sheets, hand-woven
+“flannel sheets,” a “rising-sun” patchwork quilt,
+and blue and white woollen bedspread.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But in the dining-room and kitchen of this old Shrewsbury
+homestead are the greatest treasures—corner cupboards
+and shallow dressers full of pewter dishes, which
+greet their owner with “shining morning faces” at
+breakfast, and reflect in a hundred silvery disks the
+goodly cheer on his table at midday and night. Round
+plates and platters are there of every size, up to the
+great round shield on which was placed of old the
+enormous Thanksgiving turkey. All are round, for oval
+platters seem to have been then unknown.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The deep bowls, in which vegetables were served,
+stand there in “nests” of various sizes. Teapots, too,
+and cream-pitchers and sugar-bowls, or sugar-boxes,
+but no pewter teacups. I believe the little handleless
+teacups were among the earliest pieces of porcelain imported
+from China, and were often used when the rest
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>of the “tea equipage” was of pewter. Pewter salt-cellars,
+mustard-pots, flip-mugs, and syrup-cups are interspersed
+among the larger pieces on the dresser.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some of these articles are marked with initials and
+dates, not engraved, but stamped, as with a die, J. S.
+and B. K., 1769. Doubtless these were wedding gifts,
+and I doubt not that a set of shining pewter plates and
+platters was as graceful and welcome a gift to Betsey
+Sumner in 1769, as is a set of Royal Worcester porcelain
+to her great-granddaughter Bessie, in 1892.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some of the teapots are really beautiful in shape, and
+are decorated with a quaint engraved design of leaves
+and round flowers. These were undoubtedly of Dutch
+manufacture, and are identical in shape and ornamentation
+with teapots authentically known to have been imported
+from Holland. These teapots were probably
+used for company “tea drinkings” and such state occasions,
+and thus the engraving on the soft metal was
+not worn by daily use.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pewter spoons, too, are there in every size, though
+Betsey Sumner surely had silver teaspoons, for were
+they not inherited from her by her son, the old parson?
+As these pewter spoons were liable to be quickly bent,
+worn, or broken, every thrifty household had its various
+sized spoon moulds of heavy metal, into which the
+melted pewter was poured and came out as good as new,
+or, according to the apparent law of pewter, better than
+new. Button moulds, too, were common enough, containing
+deep holes to form half a dozen buttons at once.
+And perhaps Betsey Sumner turned her old spoons into
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>buttons to adorn John’s coat, and polished them till
+they shone like the silver and cut-steel buttons of the
+French Court.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many of the pewter articles in this homestead have
+had recently engraved upon the underside various commemorative
+dates, and the names of past owners, and
+the outlines of any eventful story connected with the
+dish, if story there fortunately be remembered to tell.
+And every owner of pewter plate or porringer, who
+knows by tradition the story of his old relic, should
+have the statement engraved now upon the back of
+the piece, for even in one generation these facts are
+forgotten, and the article is rendered valueless as an
+historic record.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the kitchen of the great colonial house at Morristown,
+N. J., now owned and occupied by the Washington
+Association of New Jersey, may be seen a
+fine collection of old pewter table and cooking utensils;
+while at Indian Hill, at Newburyport, still is shining in
+cupboard and dresser the rare pewter collected by Ben
+Perley Poore.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>To a day well within the remembrance of many now
+living, round pewter meat platters were used in farm-houses,
+long after the other pewter dishes had vanished;
+for it does not dull a carving-knife to cut upon pewter
+as it does upon porcelain or crockery, and old farmers
+cling stubbornly to usages and articles that they are acquainted
+with; and no “boiled dinner” ever could
+taste quite the same to them unless all heaped together
+on a great shining pewter platter.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>Another pewter piece often found, and often still used,
+is the hot-water jug with its wicker-covered handle.
+This was brought every night, in colonial and Revolutionary
+times, well filled with boiling water, to the master
+of the house, for him to mix the hot apple-toddy or sangaree
+for the members of his household, who drank their
+share out of pewter cups or heavy greenish glasses. I
+know of two of these pewter jugs which have been in
+daily use for certainly forty years (though in the more
+temperate vocation of hot-water jugs to carry shaving-water
+to the bedrooms), and still retain, sound and
+firm, the old wicker coverings on the handles, which
+may have been woven upon them a hundred years ago.
+Truly, our grandfathers made things for use, not for sale.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Strange hiding-places have these old forsaken and
+forgotten pewter dishes. They lurk in tall and narrow
+cupboards by the side of old chimneys, or in short and
+deep cupboards over the mantel. They lie in disused
+fireplaces, hidden from view by gaudy modern fireboards.
+They are at the bottom of deep boxes under
+wide window-seats, and are shoved under the dusty
+eaves of dark attic-lofts. On the highest pantry shelves,
+under cellar stairs, in old painted sea-chests, in the
+woodhouse, are they found. From the floor of henhouses
+have they been rescued, where they have been
+long ignominiously trodden under foot by high-stepping
+and imperious fowl.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let us take them from these obscure corners, and preserve
+them with care, for though they have no intrinsic
+value like silver, no brilliancy like glass, no beauty of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>color or design like china, they are still worth our interest
+and attention, for they were the first table-ware
+used by our ancestors. We are a young nation of few
+years and few relics, let us then reverently preserve the
+old pewter plates and platters, remembering that these
+simple dishes of inexpensive metal illustrate the frugal
+home-life of the men and women who were the founders
+of the Republic.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>III.<br> EARLY USE AND IMPORTATION OF CHINA IN AMERICA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>The knowledge and use of porcelain in England did
+not long antedate the departure of the Pilgrims
+for the New World. As early as 1506, one exceptional
+importation of Chinese porcelain bowls is spoken
+of; but even in 1567—half a century later—one of
+Queen Elizabeth’s valued gifts was a “poringer of white
+porselyn and a cup of green porselyn,” and the notice
+paid such intrinsically valueless and small articles by
+their mention proves their rarity. Great ignorance of
+the processes of porcelain manufacture existed; even that
+learned, that marvellously well-informed man, Lord Bacon,
+wrote of “mines of porcelain,” and had the queer
+idea that china was developed in the earth, out of the
+common clay, by some strange and mysterious process of
+purification. Another universal belief was, that porcelain
+was a sovereign detector of poison, that it instantly
+showed the presence of poison in any draught that came
+in contact with it. Shakespeare speaks once of china, in
+his “Measure for Measure,” “a dish of some three-pence,
+your honors have seen such dishes, they are not china
+dishes, but very good dishes.” Ben Jonson refers more
+frequently to porcelain.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>“<cite>Broker.</cite>&#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196; &#8196;’Tis but earth</div>
+      <div class='line in14'>Fit to make bricks and tiles of.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><cite>Shunfield.</cite>&#8196; ’Tis but for pots or pipkins at the best</div>
+      <div class='line in10'>If it would keep us in good tobacco pipes—</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><cite>Titus.</cite>&#8196; &#8196; &#8196; Or in porc’lane dishes.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Again he says:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The earth of my bottles which I dig</div>
+      <div class='line'>Turn up and steep, and work, and neal, myself,</div>
+      <div class='line'>To a degree of porc’lane.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>By the time of Pope and Dryden, china had become
+more widely known in England, and these writers and
+their contemporaries frequently refer to it. It is not
+probable that much china came to England until 1650,
+when the English East India Trading Company was
+established, though the Dutch had even then a large
+trade with China. Doubtless tea and china became
+plentiful in Europe together.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Addison wrote in 1713, “China vessels are playthings
+for women of all ages.... I myself remember
+when there were few china vessels to be seen that held
+more than a dish of tea; but their size is so greatly enlarged
+that there are many capable of holding half a
+hogshead.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is asserted that pieces of Delft ware were brought to
+America by the first English and Dutch settlers. It
+had been manufactured since the fifteenth century; but
+when our Pilgrim Fathers made their night-trip through
+Delft, no plebeian persons had Delft ware on their tables;
+hence the Pilgrims could have brought few pieces to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>New England on the Mayflower. Nor is it probable
+that those frugal souls owned any India china. The
+earliest Dutch settlers of New Netherlands were not
+likely either to have brought to the new land any pieces
+of the aristocratic Delft ware, though I have seen many
+Delft plates and teapots that bore the reputation of
+such ownership.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Blew &#38; white ware” is however not an infrequent
+item on early inventories of the last half of the century.
+John Betts, of Cambridge, Mass., had before his death,
+in 1662, “Som duth earthen platters &#38; Som other
+Earthen ware,” valued at 6s. 8d. A citizen of Salem
+had in 1664 “17 pieces of blew &#38; white earthen ware”
+worth 8s. 6d. John Cross, of Ipswich, left behind him in
+1650 his “Holland jugs.” All these were doubtless
+Delft or the early imitations of Delft.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The oldest and most authentic piece of stone-ware in
+the country is the fine jug preserved in the collection
+of the American Antiquarian Society, at Worcester. It
+was the property of Governor Winthrop, who died in
+1649, and was given to the Society by a descendant,
+Adam Winthrop. It stands eight inches in height
+and is apparently of German Gres-ware, and is richly
+mounted in silver. The lid is engraved with a quaint
+design of Adam and Eve with the tempting serpent
+in the apple-tree. Estienne Perlin, writing in Paris in
+1558, says, “The English drink beer not out of glass
+but from earthen pots, the cover and handles being
+made of silver for the rich. The middle classes mount
+them with tin.” Another writer, in 1579, spoke of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>English custom of drinking from “pots of earth of sundry
+colors and moulds, whereof many are garnished with
+silver or at leastwise with pewter.” Such is this “beer
+mug” or tankard of
+Governor Winthrop’s,
+which is certainly
+three hundred
+years old. Other
+Massachusetts colonists
+had similar beer-mugs.
+Jacob Leager,
+of Boston, left in 1662
+a “stone judg tipt
+with silver;” Henry
+Dunster had a “tipt
+jugg” in 1655; and
+Thomas Rix had in
+1678 “3 fflanders
+jugs.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_071.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Winthrop Jug.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Lisbon ware, which
+was earthen ware, was
+left by will in Massachusetts
+in 1650; and
+Spanish platters and
+painted platters are mentioned in an inventory in 1656.
+Peter Bulkeley, of Concord, Mass., had in 1659 “ten
+paynted earthen dishes” valued at ten shillings. In the
+lists and inventories of the town of Stamford, from 1650
+to 1676, only two shillings worth of earthen ware is entered,
+and Stamford planters were far from poor. In
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>the <cite>Boston News Letter</cite> of February 9, 1712, six hogsheads
+of earthen ware, including teapots, were advertised
+for sale. These early teapots are said to have been of
+black earthen ware.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One of the earliest mentions of china in America is
+in the inventory made in 1641, of the property of
+Thomas Knocker, of Boston, “1 Chaynie Dish.” In 1648,
+in the estate of President Davenport, of Harvard College,
+was, “Cheyney, £4.” This was doubtless India china.
+Governor Theophilus Eaton had a “cheny basen.” In
+the list made in 1647, of the possessions of Martha Coteymore,
+a rich widow (who afterward married Governor
+Winthrop), is seen this item, “One parcel cheyney
+plates and saucers, £1.” Katherine Coteymore had “3
+boxes East India dishes,” valued at £3. As early as
+October, 1699, John Higginson wrote to his brother with
+regard to importations from India, that “china and
+lacker-ware will sell if in small quantity,” and without
+doubt some small importations from India were
+made.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>After the first decade of the century many rich Bostonians,
+such as Elizur Holyoke, had china. Isaac Caillowell’s
+estate in 1718 contained “Five China Dishes, One
+Doz. China Plates, Two China Muggs, a China Teapott,
+Two China Slopp Basons, Six China Saucers, Four
+China Cupps, and One China Spoon Dish.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The earliest mention of the sale of china table-ware
+which I have seen is not in 1732, as given by Mr. Felt
+in his “New England Customs.” There are several
+notices of sales of china of earlier dates. In the <cite>New
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>England Weekly Journal</cite> of April 15th of the year 1728,
+were advertised for sale, at the Sun Tavern in Boston,
+“Chainey Bowles Dishes Cups Saucers and Teapots;”
+and “china cups &#38; saucers” on June 17th. This “chainey”
+was probably all India china. In 1729, William
+Welsteed, a Boston merchant, had a large number of
+plates and “pickle caucers” for sale. In 1731, Andrew
+Faneuil announced that he had for sale at his warehouse
+“All sorts of Dutch Stone and Delf ware just imported
+from Holland.” In 1730 John Buining and Mrs. Hannah
+Wilson both advertised in the <cite>Boston News Letter</cite>,
+that they had “several sorts of china for sale;” and another
+Boston shopkeeper announced at the same time
+that he was going to sell out everything he owned, including
+china ware, and that his fellow-townsmen had
+better flock to his shop, for “buyers have reason to Expect
+good Bargains for this will be the Packing Penny,”
+which I suppose was the colonial slang expression for
+“bottom price.” At a later date the “Packing Penny”
+became “to buy the pennyworth.” It was not till 1737
+that china ware was sold by “Publick Vandoo or Outcry,”
+or by “Inch of Candle,” in Boston, thus showing
+that it was being imported in larger quantities. In September
+of that year there was sold on Scarlett’s Wharf,
+with spices and silks and negro slaves,</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>“A Rich Sortment of China Ware. A Parcel of fine large
+Enamel’d Dishes. Ditto of divers Sizes of Bowles burnt &#38;
+Enamel’d. Ditto of all Sorts of Plates. Sundry Complete Setts
+of Furniture for the Tea-Table. Blue &#38; White Bowles; Blue
+&#38; White Cups &#38; Sawcers. Several sorts of small Baskets, &#38;c.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>By this time Boston milliners and mantua makers, and
+fan mounters, and lace menders, had all begun to announce
+the sale of “chayney” in their show-rooms and
+shops. Fair Boston dames picked their way along the
+narrow streets, or were carried in stately sedan chairs, to
+“Mistress Alise Quick’s, over against the Old Brick Meeting
+House on Cornhill, at the sign of the Three Kings,”
+or to “Widow Mehetable Kneeland’s,” to see her “London
+baby drest in the latest fashioned Hooped Coat
+and lac’d Petty Coat with ppetuna hood;” or to “Mrs.
+Hannah Teatts, Mantua Maker, at the head of Summer
+Street, Boston,” who charged five shillings for showing
+her “Baby drest after the Newest Fashion of Mantues
+and Night Gowns and everything belonging to a Dress,
+latilly brought over on Captain White’s ship from London”—these
+bedizened doll-babies being the quaint colonial
+substitutes for fashion plates. These modish New-English
+dames first pulled over and tried on the “rayls
+and roquilos and cardinals,” and admired the ivory and
+cocoa paddle stick-fans; and peeped at their own patched
+faces and powdered hair in the lacquered looking-glasses;
+and then, perhaps, selected some flower seeds for their
+prim little gardens—their pleasaunces, “blew and yellow
+lewpin, double larkin-spur, sweet feabus, Love lies bleeding,
+Queen Margrets, Brompton flock, and sweet-scented
+pease;” and then they turned, unwearied and unsated,
+to the “Choise Sortment of Delph, Stone, Glassware,
+and China, viz., Bowles of Divers Sizes, Plates of all
+Sorts, and Dishes, Teapots, Cups &#38; Saucers, Strayners,
+Mugs of Divers Sorts and Colors, Creampots pearl’d &#38;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>plain, Bird Fountains, Tankards,” and they held up the
+tiny china teacups to the light and examined the painting,
+and perhaps sipped a little of the mantua maker’s
+Orange Pekoe or Bohea. And I doubt not many a china
+teapot or teacup stood cheek by jowl with quoyfs and
+ciffers on colonial milliners’ bills, and many a feathered
+“Kitty Fisher Bonnet,” or silver shape, or peaked Ranelagh
+cap was sent home to the daughters of the Puritans,
+packed with “catgut,” and “robins,” and “none-so-prettys,”
+in an India china punch-bowl.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of the prices paid for these colonial ceramic luxuries
+we know but little. The enterprising outcrier, who cried
+out and vandooed at the “Blew Boar, at the South End
+of Boston,” announced in February, 1749, in the <cite>Boston
+Independent Advertiser</cite>, that he had “Fine blue &#38; white
+and Quilted China Plates at Eleven Pounds the Dozen,
+or Six Pounds the Half Dozen.” So the shades of our
+ancestors can hardly cry out to us for extravagance.
+These quilted china plates were, I think, from subsequent
+references to them, plates impressed in the paste
+with a basket design, as we often see now on Chinese
+porcelain; or possibly with a larger, a truly quilted design,
+such as I have seen on rare old Oriental porcelain.
+In the inventory of the estate of John Jekyll, of Boston
+(made in 1732), we learn that “2 Burnt China Bowls
+were worth £2, 6 Chocolate Bowls £2, 1 Pr China
+Candlesticks Tipt with Silver £4, 12 Coffe cups with
+handles £1 7s.” In many inventories such a number of
+pieces are “crackt” or “mendid,” and so little hint of
+quality or decoration is given, that it is impossible to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>compare justly the values assigned with those of the
+present day. John Jekyll also had a “sett of burnt
+china.” The first mentioned sale of a “set” of china is
+in the <cite>New England Weekly Journal</cite> of April 19, 1737—“A
+Fine Double Sett of Burnt China for sale, Enquire
+of the Printer.” Until then the precious porcelain had
+been sold only in single pieces, or in small numbers.
+The wills and inventories of the times speak of no sets
+of china, though the lists of the possessions of all persons
+of wealth, the advertisements of sales of estates,
+contain many items of china ware. Governor Burnet,
+who died in 1729, owned much china—three hundred
+pieces—as became a man who had £1,100 spent on his
+funeral; and his friend and neighbor, Peter Faneuil, had
+a bountiful supply of china and glass, as he had of other
+luxuries.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are far more frequent mentions and advertisements
+of china in old New England newspapers than in
+other American papers of the same years. The southern
+publications of colonial times that I have seen contained
+no announcements of the sale of china. None
+appeared bearing date until after the Revolutionary War.
+And it is plain, from the evidence of inventories, “enroulments,”
+wills, and newspapers of the eighteenth century,
+that porcelain was far more plentiful in New England
+than elsewhere in America at the same date. Mr.
+Prime says, “Few of the people of Revolutionary times
+had seen porcelain;” but when it had been advertised
+in every New England newspaper; had been sold in
+grocers’, milliners’, chemists’, dry-goods, saddlers’, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>hardware shops; had been displayed at the printers’ and
+book-shops and writing-schools in every town of any size
+throughout New England; and sold in considerable quantities
+by all the little Boston shopkeepers—the Amorys,
+Waldos, Brimmers, Adamses, Sheaffes, and Boylstons,
+I fancy all New England good wives must have owned
+a few pretty pieces.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Doubtless the wealthiest Virginians of colonial times
+also had some china. It is not, however, named in Baltimore
+inventories until after the year 1700. Nor was it
+plentiful in New York; one of the earliest mentions of
+china in New York is in the list of the possessions of
+wealthy Cornelius Stienwerck, “Ten pieces of china
+dishes or porcelain £4.” In August, 1748, the <cite>New
+York Weekly Journal</cite> contained its first announcement
+of the sale of china—“A choice parcel of China Ware
+just imported to be sold at Wholesale. Enquire of the
+Printer.” Now, the “Printer” at that date was a woman,
+the Widow Zenger, wife of the former owner of the
+newspaper, and with her assumption of the printing and
+editing business came various feminine advertisements
+such as this of china ware, others of mantuas and hair-powder,
+and of “bonnet-papers,” which she cut and
+made and sold in large numbers; but this china sale was
+certainly exceptional in New York at that date.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>China did not abound in New York, either in Dutch or
+English families, until after the Revolutionary War. Nor
+did advertisements of it frequently appear in ante-Revolutionary
+New York newspapers. In an inventory made
+at that time of the contents of a house on the Neutral
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>Ground in Westchester County, there were such wealth-evincing
+items as twenty-six horses, thirty-six table-cloths,
+rich and abundant furniture, bed-linen, and clothing, large
+quantities of fine silver; and of pewter, “1 Coffee Kettle,
+1 Teapot, 27 Dishes, 12 Plates, 12 Soup-Plates, 6 Butter
+Plates, 3 Mugs, 2 salons, 5 basons, 6 Spoons, 3 Measures;”
+and not one piece of china. This list of household
+belongings is not exceptional. China is seldom
+mentioned. But few pieces of porcelain or pottery are
+named in the inventories of the possessions of the New
+Jersey farmers whose houses were burned, and whose
+household goods were either destroyed or stolen by the
+soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and who expected to
+receive indemnity from the Government for their losses.
+We discover therein that each family seldom owned
+more than three or four china cups and saucers. These
+records are extremely valuable for reference, as they are
+true and faithful lists of the entire household belongings
+of well-to-do people at that time; they indicate that
+china was far from plentiful in New Jersey at that date.
+Watson says in his “Annals,” “When china was first introduced
+into America, it was in the form of tea-sets; it
+was quite a business to take in broken china to mend. It
+was done by cement in most cases, but generally large
+pieces, like punch-bowls, were done with silver rivets or
+wire.” An advertisement in the <cite>Boston Evening Post</cite> in
+1755 reads: “This is to give Notice to all Them that have
+any Broken China, at the Lion and Bell on Marlboro
+Street, Boston, they may have it mended by Riveting it
+together with a Silver &#38; Brass Rivets it is first put together
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>with a Cement that will stand boiling Water and
+then Riveted.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>China appears to have been more plentiful in Philadelphia
+than in New York. Benjamin Lay, the “Singular
+Pythagorean Cynical Christian Philosopher,” to show his
+hatred of the use of tea, brought in 1742 all his wife’s
+china into the market-place at Philadelphia, and began
+to break it piece by piece with a hammer; “but the populace,
+unwilling to lose what might profit them, overset
+him, scrambled for the china, and bore it off whole.”
+As the “Singular Pythagorean Philosopher’s” wife was
+dead, this wanton destruction of her dear china was not
+so cruel as at first appears. An old lady wrote in 1830,
+about things as they were before the War of Independence—“Pewter
+plates and dishes were in general
+use. China on dinner tables was a great rarity. Glass
+tumblers were scarcely seen. Punch, the most common
+beverage, was drunk from a silver tankard. China teacups
+and saucers were half their present size, and china
+teapots and coffee-pots with silver nozzles were a mark
+of superior finery. Where we now use earthen ware they
+then used Delft ware imported from England, and instead
+of queen’s ware (then unknown) pewter platters
+and porringers made to shine along a dresser were universal.
+Some, especially country people, ate their meals
+from wooden trenchers.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>That frugal and plain-living man, Benjamin Franklin,
+though he constantly impressed upon his wife, as well as
+upon the public, the wisdom and necessity of great
+economy, and the propriety and good taste of simplicity
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>in all modes of living, still could find time and money to
+pick out for her, when he was in England, and to send to
+her many a piece of china for her beaufet in Philadelphia.
+He writes thus from London, in February, 1758,
+to his Deborah: “I send you by Captain Budden a large
+case and a small box containing some English china, viz:
+melons and leaves for a dessert of fruit and cream or the
+like; a bowl remarkable for the neatness of the figures,
+made at Bow, near this city; some coffee-cups of the
+same; and a Worcester bowl, ordinary. To show the
+difference of workmanship, there is something from all
+the china workers in England; and one old true china
+basin mended; of an odd color.... I also forgot
+among the china to mention a large, fine jug for beer, to
+stand in the cooler. I fell in love with it at first sight,
+for I thought it looked like a fat, jolly dame, clean and
+tidy, with a neat blue and white gown on, good-natured
+and lovely, and put me in mind of—somebody.
+Look at the figures on the china bowl and coffee-cups
+with your spectacles on, they will bear examining.”
+This was certainly a very tender attention on the part
+of Franklin, and one particularly grateful, doubtless, to
+his good dame, if she loved china as do others of her
+sex. In 1765 she wrote to her “dear child” (of over
+three score years) while he was in France, and thus describes
+a room that she had been furnishing: “The blue
+room has a set of tea china I bought since you went from
+home, a very handsome mahogany stand for the teakettle
+to stand on, and the ornamental china.” This latter
+clause refers doubtless to the fine English pieces which
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>he had sent her eight years previously. In spite of all
+this fine array, Mrs. Bache wrote thus to her father, on
+October 30, 1773: “We have no plates or dishes fit
+to set before your friends, and the queen’s ware is
+thought very elegant here, particularly the spriged. I
+just mention this, as it would be much cheaper for you
+to bring them than to get them here.” Let us hope her
+father took this broad hint and brought the “spriged”
+dishes to his daughter; and as there still exist among
+her descendants, pieces of
+a set of china bearing little
+sprigs, I choose to
+think that they are parts
+of this very set.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_081.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Province House Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very interesting pitcher
+of English ware of yellowish
+paste, with a raised
+design of vine leaves in
+vari-colored lustres, is
+known to us by the name of the Province House Pitcher,
+because it was found, with two tall pewter drinking-cups,
+hidden behind a panel in the wainscoting of the historic
+old Province House in Boston. I fear it is not old
+enough to have been held by the fair hands of gentle
+Agnes Surriage, but I doubt not some romance attended
+its imprisonment.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>By Revolutionary times a change appeared in the
+character and quality of the china that was imported to
+America. In the <cite>Connecticut Courant</cite> of September,
+1773, we read in the advertisement of the “Staffordshire
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>and Liverpool Warehouse,” on King Street, Boston, that
+they have “for little more than sterling cost, a fine sortment
+of Crockery Ware, consisting of almost every kind
+of China, Glass &#38; Delph: Cream color, white, blue &#38;
+white, black, brown, agot, tortoise, melon, pineapple fruit
+pattern, enaml’d, and many other kinds of Stoneware.
+A few complete table services of very elegant printed and
+painted and guilt ware;” and at a later date “Cream
+Color Pyramids, Candlesticks, Inkstands, &#38; Chamber
+Lamps.” The advertisements of this importing house are
+found in the files of New England papers for many years.
+Every notice of “English goods” arrived from England
+for Jolley Allen, for Hopestill Capen, for Cotton
+Barrell, three thrifty Boston shopkeepers, contained items
+of English and of India china. “Large &#38; Neat Sortment
+of India China Dishes of Various forms &#38; sizes,
+viz: Pudding, Soup, Mackrel, round, oval, Octagon,
+ribb’d, scallop’d. Also a variety of table &#38; Butter Plates;
+Patty Pans, Bowls &#38; Sauceboats.” Even in war times
+there still was china in many shops outside of poor besieged,
+war-swept Boston, though often only “a few crates
+well Sortid considering the Scarsity.” By 1778 china
+began to pour into other ports than Boston. In New
+Haven were sold in August of that year (and strange to
+tell, were advertised to be sold at the very highest price)
+“Oval Dishes of Several Different Sizes, small Cream
+coloured Plates, Punchbowles, cream colour’d Teapots,
+Red ditto, Blue ditto, Colliflower ditto, Cream colour’d
+coffee-cups &#38; sausers, Tortoise-shell bowles, enamel’d flat
+bottom cups.” The cream-colored wares of Wedgwood
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>and of Liverpool make, were evidently just beginning to
+be fashionable, though the latter had been named in
+the <cite>Boston Gazette</cite> as early as 1749. In 1780 we first
+see the advertisement of Queen’s ware in the <cite>Providence
+Gazette</cite>, the <cite>Connecticut Courant</cite>, the Boston newspapers.
+In October, 1783, “An Assortment of Yellow
+ware such as cups, saucers, mugs,” was advertised in the
+<cite>Providence Gazette</cite>, and again “Yellow ware both flat
+and hollow,” meaning plates and pitchers. Yellow ware
+was Liverpool ware, and is still so called by country people
+on the sea-coast. In 1783 there came into Baltimore,
+on the ship Brothers, from Liverpool, “Queen’s ware &#38;
+Liverpool ware,” and on the ship Yungfrau Magretha,
+from Copenhagen, more Queen’s ware; and on the ship
+Pacifique, from France, “boxes and barrels of china
+ware;” and on the ship Candidus, from Amsterdam,
+“Delph ware”—and these vessels with their cargoes were
+all advertised at the same date, bewildering Baltimore
+housewives with the array of “richness.” Then came
+announcements of “burnt china”—as if it were not all
+burnt! In May, 1785, “Beautiful Pencil Chinney Tile,”
+and then frequent announcements of “Pencil China,”
+“Pencil ware,” “Pensil’d Yellow ware,” all of which were
+one and the same—Liverpool ware printed with engraved
+designs. “Enameled ware” doubtless meant glazed ware,
+and was so called to distinguish it from the unglazed
+wares of Wedgwood. The “Amiled Milk Pots” in the
+<cite>Boston Evening Post</cite> of 1749 were doubtless also enamelled.
+In 1784 and 1785, in all American newspapers of
+note appeared announcements of sales of Nottingham
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>ware, a favorite importation before the war. Soon, with
+the growth of ship-building and Oriental trade, came the
+vast influx of Oriental porcelain direct from China, and
+advertisements of Canton china crowded the columns
+of every American newspaper.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is interesting to note the various shapes of china and
+the names of the pieces that were imported in colonial
+and Revolutionary times, as well as the variety of wares.
+In the <cite>Boston News Letter</cite> of 1742 I find “china boats
+for spoons.” In the <cite>Boston Evening Post</cite> in 1749, “china
+mugs, pitchers, and Turk caps,” which latter mysterious
+articles were, I am sure, china also. What are “Mint
+Stands in delph,” or rather what were they in 1751? In
+1753 they had “custard-dishes” for sale; and did they
+have “terines” or “terreens” before 1760? I do not find
+them named at an earlier date. A year later came “sallade
+bowls” and the first “china handle coffee-cups,”
+though John Jekyll had had handles on his cups in 1732.
+Not until 1772 do I find “Enamel’d Tea cups &#38; Saucers,
+with handles to the cups.” In 1763 china patch-boxes
+and china sweetmeat boxes came to New England.
+China stoves were advertised, but I think they were rare.
+“China tumblers, with covers,” seem strange to us.
+What were the “yellow klinckers and Red glaz’d pantils”
+advertised in the <cite>South Carolina State Gazette</cite> in 1787?
+China “sweetmeat and pickle saucers” came in 1773, and
+“half pint blue &#38; white enameled Basons with Sawsers.”
+China milk-jugs, milk-pots, milk-cups, milk-ewers, and
+creamers, all antedated the milk-pitcher. We had sugar-boxes,
+sugar-basons, sugar-pots, and sugar-dishes before
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>we had sugar-bowls. “Twifflers” were of porcelain also—pudding-dishes
+we call them now.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“China voiders” also are advertised for sale. These
+colonial ceramic articles of nomenclature most unpleasing
+in sound to modern ears, were really only an ancient type
+of what are known to dealers nowadays as “crumb-trays.”
+Into a voider fragments of food remaining on the table—bones
+and the like—were gathered after a meal by a voiding-knife.
+Pewter voiders abounded, and “china baskets
+and voiders” appear in newspaper lists in 1740.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Doubtless many of these voiders and Turk caps,
+twifflers, and mint stands have descended to us, but are
+known now by the uniform and uninteresting name of
+dishes.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>IV.<br> EARLY FICTILE ART IN AMERICA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>In all our wanderings and searchings we have never
+found any specimens of old American china, for one
+author says that, like the snakes in Iceland, there
+are none. The history of the early manufacture of porcelain
+in this country is so meagre that it is quickly
+written, and records of early pottery works are not plentiful,
+and specimens are comparatively unobtainable, and
+frequently far from beautiful or instructive. Still I believe
+that America deserves a fuller ceramic history, and
+has had a larger manufacture of pottery and porcelain
+than is generally known.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One class of pottery relics should not be neglected by
+collectors—those of the North American Indians. When
+our Pilgrim Fathers landed on the bleak shores of New
+England they found the red man using rough bowls and
+pans of coarse earthen ware as cooking utensils. Gookin
+wrote of them thus: “The pots they seethe their food
+in are made of clay and earth almost in the form of an
+egg with the top broken off.” Bradford wrote that the
+colonists also found great pottery vessels buried in the
+earth, containing stores of maize. Perfect specimens of
+the work of New England savages are rare, and are usually
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>in a simple bowl shape. In the fragments found in
+the Connecticut Valley mica is mingled with the clay, as
+in the old Celtic wares of Ireland. Wherever the white
+man landed, to whatever spot he penetrated, he found
+Indians, and he also found the Indians using coarse pottery
+vessels, “akeeks,” of their own manufacture. The
+early accounts of the country—Spanish, Portuguese,
+French, and English—all tell of the use and manufacture
+of pottery among the Indians. In the “Brevis Narratio”
+of Le Moyne de Morgues, written in the sixteenth
+century, we are given illustrations purporting to be of
+some forms of pottery used by the Florida Indians at
+that time. Father Hennepin, writing about 1680, asserts
+that before the arrival of Europeans in North America,
+“both the Northern and Southern Salvages made use
+of, and do to this day use, Earthen Pots, especially such
+as have no Commerce with the Europeans from whom
+they may procure Kettels and other Moveables.” It is
+the fashion among antiquaries to place no confidence in
+Father Hennepin, but I think we may believe this statement
+of his, since we have so much additional evidence,
+both through past writers and present discoveries.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In Hariot’s “Virginia,” of the date 1590, we learn
+that the Virginian Indians “cooked their meate in
+earthen pottes. Thier women know how to make
+earthen vessels with special Cunninge, and that so large
+and fine that our potters with thoye wheles can make no
+better; and they Remoue them from place to place as
+easeleye as we can doe our brassen kettles.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Cherokee Indians, having fine clays of various
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>colors to work with, made a good class of pottery, far
+better than any made by northern Indians, some of the
+vessels being of large size. Lieutenant Timberlake, who
+visited them in 1765, says he saw one at a “physic-dance”
+that would hold twenty gallons. Adair, writing in 1775,
+says that they made “earthen pots of very different
+sizes, so as to contain from two to ten gallons, large
+pitchers to carry water, bowls, platters, dishes, basons,
+and a prodigious number of other vessels of such antiquated
+forms as would be tedious to describe and impossible
+to name. Their method of glazing them is, they
+place them over a large pit of smoky pitch pine which
+makes them smooth, black, and firm. Their lands
+abound with proper clay and even with porcelain, as has
+been proved by experiment.” A description of the vessels
+of “antiquated forms” would, of course, have made
+his account of far more use and interest to us nowadays.
+William Bartram, that intelligent observer, writing
+in 1773, confirms the accounts of other travellers
+among the Indians in South Carolina and Georgia, and
+tells of the discovery of a very interesting earthen
+pot found in an Indian mound on Colonel’s Island, in
+Liberty County, Ga. He says “it was wrought all
+over the outside representing basket-work, and was undoubtedly
+esteemed a very ingenious performance by
+the people at the age of its construction.” This burial
+urn (for such the pot proved to be) was indeed a very
+good piece of work for an Indian potter, and is still preserved.
+It is about fifteen inches in height and ten in
+its greatest diameter, of graceful outline, and is covered
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>with an impressed design of fine basket-work. It was
+made with an admixture of gravel and powdered shell,
+which rendered it strong enough to resist the disintegrating
+influences of the soil by which it was surrounded. It
+was enclosed in two outer vessels of ruder workmanship,
+which crumbled into fragments upon exposure to the air.
+Within the inner vessel were the bones of a young child.
+Too young to own any earthly possessions to be buried
+with him, this little Indian baby was interred in the tumulus
+of shell and clay, in his earthen coffin alone.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the burial mounds of grown persons vast amounts
+of broken vessels and ashes of other burnt property
+are discovered. All peoples have at some period of
+their history had the custom of burying articles of use
+or value with their dead, or of burning these possessions
+at the time of the burial of the dead owner. To
+this custom, which existed among the North American
+Indians, we owe the preservation of nearly all the specimens
+of their poorly baked, fragile cooking utensils and
+burial urns that we now possess. Many filled with food
+and drink were whole when placed in the mound, but
+were quickly destroyed and crushed by the sinking
+earth, or disintegrated by the moisture. Many also remain,
+and sherds of Indian pottery are constantly being
+brought to light by our civilized ploughshares. It has
+been erroneously thought by some students that Indian
+pottery was only sun-dried; had it been so, no specimens
+would have withstood for so many years the action of
+the soil and elements, but would have returned ere this
+to their old clayey consistency.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>In examining this Indian pottery it is easy to see
+the natural way in which the earliest forms were developed.
+The gourd, the shell, the basket, the square
+box of bark—all these primitive shapes of vessels were
+copied in the pottery. The ornamentation, too, was
+compassed in a simple fashion; the vessel was sometimes
+modelled within a rush basket or frame of reeds—thus
+the impressed design remained upon it. Rude dyes
+were applied. One indented design is said to have been
+formed by the finger-nail of the Indian potter; other
+designs have been impressed by twisted thongs. All
+these methods and forms of ornamentation were also
+used by the Celtic potters. Little pieces of mica or shell
+were inserted in the wet clay pot, and were fired in as a
+further ornament.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The earthen vessel was either baked in a rude kiln or
+inverted over coals of burning wood. We have several
+very good descriptions of the methods of manufacturing
+and firing of Indian potters at a later date. Dumont
+writes in 1848, of the Louisiana Indians: “After having
+amassed the proper kind of clay and carefully cleaned it,
+the Indian women take shells which they pound and
+reduce to a fine powder; they mix this powder with the
+clay, and having poured some water on the mass, they
+knead it with their hands and feet and make it into a
+paste of which they form rolls six or seven feet long, and
+of a thickness suitable to their purpose. If they intend
+to fashion a plate or a vase, they take hold of one of
+these rolls by the end, and fixing here with the thumb
+of the left hand the centre of the vessel they are about
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>to make, they turn the roll with astonishing quickness
+around this centre, describing a spiral line; now and
+then they dip their fingers into water and smooth with
+the right hand the inner and outer surface of the vase
+they intend to fashion, which would become ruffled or
+undulated without that manipulation. In this manner
+they make all sorts of earthen vessels, plates, dishes,
+bowls, pots, and jars, some of which hold from forty to
+fifty pints.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a prettier and more domestic picture of the
+Indian wife than many we have of the draggled, overworked
+squaw digging in the fields, or carrying the tent-poles
+on her back like a pack-horse. The whirling coil
+of clay, the growing earthen jar, the deftly-shaping
+hand, are certainly picturesque and homely. The Indian
+women were potters in all the tribes, it being deemed
+unmanly work for a lordly brave.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Indians of the Mohawk Valley, the Iroquois,
+made much and varied pottery. In the fine collection
+of Indian relics owned by A. G. Richmond, Esq., of
+Canajoharie, N. Y., are some very interesting pieces of
+pottery which have been taken from Indian mounds—among
+them two jars of so delicate and friable a character
+that one wonders how they have ever escaped disintegration
+and destruction; also a rare fragment wrought
+with a representation of the human figure.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another form of Indian pottery must not be forgotten,
+for the significance of the pipe in the early history of our
+country cannot be over-rated. The calumet was a moral,
+religious, and political influence; on its manufacture and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>ornamentation the Indian expended all his skill and his
+best labor; and to its suited and significant use he gave
+his deepest thought. The use of the pipe was a devotional
+service—the Great Spirit smoked His pipe, and his followers
+did likewise in His honor; it was a political signal—no
+war was declared, no treaty of peace was signed
+without the accompaniment and symbolical use of the
+pipe. Lieutenant Timberlake says that the Cherokees
+made pipes “of the same earth they made their pots with,
+but beautifully diversified,” and he pathetically records
+that he was forced to smoke so many pipes of peace with
+them that he was made very unpleasantly sick thereby.
+This special tribe of Indians had such fine blue clay, and
+knew so well how to mix and prepare it, that they made
+better pipes than their neighbors, and thus pipes became
+a medium of exchange—Indian money. The strong clay
+pipes of the English settlers were, as soon as imported,
+eagerly sought for and quickly purchased by the Indians.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Fine and varied specimens of the pottery vessels and
+pipes of the various Indian nations may be found in the
+cabinets of the Smithsonian Institution, in the rooms of
+the various State historical societies, in the buildings of
+our colleges and natural history associations, and may be
+studied to advantage by the student of ceramics. A full
+or worthy history of the fictile art of the North American
+Indians has yet to be written.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I doubt if the colonists ever used the Indian pottery,
+for at an early date they began to manufacture bricks and
+earthen ware, and having wheels to help them in shaping
+their pots, could far outdo the Indians. They made
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>laws to protect such manufacture. The General Court
+of Massachusetts ordered, as early as 1646, that “tyle
+earth to make sale ware shall be digged before the first
+of 9 mo and turned over in the last or first before it be
+wrought.” John Pride, of Salem, was registered as a
+potter in 1641. He may have helped to establish a
+pottery in Danvers, then a suburb of Salem, for the
+manufacture of earthen ware in that town was coeval
+with the existence of the settlement; and the Danvers
+pot-works were, I believe, the first to be established in
+America by any of the colonies. Higginson, writing
+from Salem in 1629, said, “It is thought here is good
+clay to make bricks &#38; tyles and earthen pot as may
+be. At this instant we are setting a bricke kill to worke
+to make brickes and tyles for the building of our houses.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>William Osborne was the first Danvers potter, and his
+descendants carried on the business in that immediate
+vicinity for about two centuries. Mr. Joseph Reed then
+took charge as the successor of the house of Osborne.
+At the end of the eighteenth century the production of
+“Danvers ware” was extensive. Morse’s <cite>Gazetteer</cite> of
+1797 says, “Large quantities of brick and coarse earthen
+ware are manufactured here.” A resident of the town
+wrote thus in 1848, “Table-ware of Danvers China
+brought a high price during the late war.” To call the
+common red pottery “china” is certainly flattering, but
+may be pardoned on account of the local pride of the
+writer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At the “time of the late war”—the war of 1812—there
+were no less than twenty-six of these pottery
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>works where now there is only one. The situation of
+the residence and pot-works of William Osborne is still
+known, and the manufacture of earthen ware has gone
+on in the same place without interruption ever since.
+Simple forms only have been made—often lead-glazed—bean-pots,
+jugs, pitchers, milk-pans, jars, etc. We must
+except, of course, the table-ware of war times. This
+Osborne kiln is situated in what is called Peabody, but
+in the town of North Danvers there was discovered
+a few years ago the foundation of an old forgotten kiln,
+which had been owned by a potter named Porter.
+There is no finer quality of clay than is still found in
+large quantities within a quarter of a mile of this old
+Porter kiln. This clay is, however, carried to Boston
+and elsewhere instead of being manufactured where it is
+dug. Potters make good citizens. Staffordshire men say,
+“working in earth makes men easy-minded,” and a community
+of potters is always orderly, law-abiding, thrifty,
+and industrious. A larger and constantly increasing manufacture
+of Danvers ware should have been encouraged.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An enthusiastic local minstrel sings thus of Danvers
+pottery and patriots:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Here plastic clay the potter turned</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To pitcher, dish, jug, pot, or pan,</div>
+      <div class='line'>As in his kiln the ware was burned,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>So burned the patriot in the man,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Into persistent shape, which no</div>
+      <div class='line'>Turning could change back to dough.</div>
+      <div class='line'>It might be broken, ground to dust,</div>
+      <div class='line'>But ne’er made ductile as at first.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>The Quakers kept up with the Puritans in the attempt
+to establish home manufactures and home industries.
+Father Pastorius wrote in 1684, “Of brick kilns and tile
+ovens, we have the necessary number.” Gabriel Thomas
+found in Pennsylvania, in 1696, both brick kilns and pot-works.
+He writes thus to encourage emigration from
+England, and to show the high wages in the new land.
+“Brick-makers have twenty shillings per thousand for
+their bricks at the kilns, and potters have sixteenpence
+for an earthenware pot that may be bought in England
+for fourpence.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In New Jersey, at Burlington, Governor Coxe, of
+“West Jersey,” established in 1690 a pottery of considerable
+size and pretension. The Virginians kept pace
+with the Quakers and Puritans. As early as 1649 there
+were several pot-works in Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Potteries were also established on Long Island in the
+eighteenth century. On March 31, 1735, “The widow
+of Thomas Parmynter offers for sale her farm at Whitestone,
+opposite Frogs Point. It has twenty acres of clay
+ground fit for making tobacco pipes. For sale also two
+negroes, with utensils and other conveniences for carrying
+on that business.” On July 3, 1738, the same farm,
+with its “beds of pipe-making clay,” was again sold.
+On May 13, 1751, this advertisement appeared: “Any
+persons desirous may be supplied with vases, urns, flower-pots
+to adorn gardens and tops of houses, or any other
+ornament made of clay, by Edward Annely at Whitestone,
+he having set up the potter’s business by means of
+a German family that he bought (?), who are supposed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>by their work to be the most ingenious that arrived in
+America. He has clay capable of making eight different
+kinds of ware.” This was evidently quite a pretentious
+start in the pottery manufacture, and with the assistance
+of the ingenious family of German potters, and the advantages
+of convenient beds of clay, Edward Annely
+should have succeeded; but no record remains to indicate
+either his success or failure.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Upon the old farm of John Lefferts, in Flatbush, Long
+Island, there exists a large pond called by the apparently
+incongruous name of Steenbakkery. This pond was
+formed by the removal of clay for use in a steenbakkery
+or pottery upon the place, and from the size of the excavation
+vast numbers of bricks and coarse stone-ware
+must have been made. The ruins of the racks for the
+bricks remained standing within the memory of persons
+now living. This pond having, of course, no outlet
+through its clay bottom, has in our present age of sanitary
+drainage been ordered to be filled in. In New
+York City, near “Fresh Water Pond,” back of the City
+Hall, a German potter named Remmey established
+works, but his descendants were crowded out by the
+growing city, and removed to South Amboy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1748 the State of Massachusetts offered bounties to
+encourage the manufacture of earthen ware, and many
+new pot-works were established. “Mangness” for the
+use of potters was offered for sale in the newspapers, and
+the would-be purchaser was to inquire of the printer,
+who in colonial days seemed literally to have a finger in
+every pie. One of the oldest of these colonial potteries
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>was started previous to the year 1765, by a man whose
+descendants of the same name still conduct the pottery
+works known as the factory of A. H. Hews &#38; Co., in
+North Cambridge, Mass. The record of this family
+firm is so remarkable for America that it should be told
+at some length. Not only has the company continued
+in the same business in an uninterrupted line of the
+same firm name, but it possesses a record of a century
+and a third of unspotted integrity in business dealings.
+It has passed through times of foreign and civil wars,
+through business crises and depressions, in an even
+career of honor and fair-dealing, and now has earned a
+deserved and independent position, having the largest
+manufactory of flower-pots in the world—making many
+millions yearly—as well as a large and varied line of art
+pottery. When Abraham Hews was pottering around
+in his little pottery in Weston, in 1765, making milk-pans
+and bean-pots, and jugs and teapots, and exchanging
+them for general merchandise, in which New
+England rum and molasses took no inferior part, he
+little foresaw the vast business enterprise that would
+be carried out by his great-grandson in 1891. The clay
+used by him in Weston was brought from Watertown,
+and later from Cambridge, and the firm did not move
+their works to Cambridge until 1870. Abraham Hews,
+second, lived to be eighty-eight years old (being postmaster
+for fifty-one years), and his son lived to be
+eighty-one years old, dying in 1891—the good old Puritan
+stock showing in long life as well as in honest life.
+Thus does a chain of only three lives reach to ante-Revolutionary
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>times, and an ante-Revolutionary pottery.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the <cite>Norwich Gazette</cite> of September 15, 1796, we
+find this advertisement of a pottery: “C. Potts &#38; Son
+inform the Public that they have lately established a
+Manufactory of Earthen ware at the shop formerly improved
+by Mr. Charles Lathrop, where all kinds of said
+Ware is made and sold either in large or small quantities,
+and warranted good.” This pottery was on Bean Hill.
+It is referred to in Miss Caulkin’s “History of Norwich,”
+Dr. Peters’s “History of Connecticut,” and in Morse’s
+<cite>Gazetteer</cite>.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At the commencement of the Revolutionary war a
+man named Upton came from Nantucket to East Greenwich,
+R. I., and there manufactured earthen ware.
+The pottery when made was baked in a kiln which
+stood at the corner of King and Marlboro Streets. He
+made pans, bowls, plates, cups, and saucers of common
+red clay, a little finer than that now used in the manufacture
+of flower-pots. As little porcelain was imported
+from Europe during the War, people used willingly,
+and even eagerly, the coarse plates, and drank their
+“Liberty Tea” from the coarse cups and saucers. The
+clay came from Goold’s Mount, now owned by Mr.
+Henry Waterman, of Quidneset. After the war was
+ended Potter Upton went back to his safety-assured
+home on Nantucket, and the Greenwich pottery was
+closed.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1793 there was a flourishing pottery in Quasset,
+Windham County, Conn., and the pottery carts of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>Thomas Bugbee, the proprietor, were well known
+throughout the county. He made inkstands, bean-pots,
+jugs, jars, and many other common shapes, and the demand
+for milk-pans alone always kept his kiln running
+all summer. There was at this time another similar
+pottery in Stonington, owned by Adam States, who
+made gray jugs and pots and jars with salt-glaze. Another
+firm at Norwalk manufactured red ware with a
+lead glaze. There is a specimen in the Trumbull-Prime
+collection. Mr. Prime says they manufactured mugs,
+teapots, jars, and milk-pans at this Norwalk pottery. In
+1794 a Mr. Fenton, of New Haven, set up in Lynn Street,
+Boston, a pottery where “all manner of stone vessels
+were made after the manner of imported Liverpool ware
+and sold at a lower rate.” The clay for this manufacture
+was brought from Perth Amboy, N. J.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An article in the <cite>American Museum</cite> in 1791, on the
+existing state of American manufactures, said, “Coarse
+tiles and bricks of an excellent quality, potters’ wares,
+all in quantities beyond the home consumption, a few
+ordinary vessels of stone mixed with clay, some mustard
+and snuff bottles, a few flasks or flagons, a small quantity
+of sheet glass, and of vessels for family use, generally of
+inferior kinds, are now made.” Dr. Dwight, in 1822, gave
+among his list of Connecticut factories and manufactures,
+“potteries twelve,” “value of earthen and stone-ware
+$30,940;” and for Massachusetts, “earthen ware, $18,700.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though nothing but coarse earthen ware was made in
+America in these colonial days, the new land played no
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>unimportant part in the first steps toward porcelain
+manufacture in England in the middle of the eighteenth
+century. It was the custom, when English vessels had
+discharged their freights in southern American ports, for
+them to take samples of the alluvial deposits of North
+and South Carolina, of Georgia and Florida, to carry
+back to England for English potters and chemists to experiment
+upon. The Bow china-works began to manufacture
+porcelain about the year 1744. In that year a
+sample of china-clay being brought from America, a
+patent was taken out by Thomas Frye, of West Ham,
+Essex, and Edward Heylyn, of Bow, for the production
+of porcelain, of which one of the ingredients was “an
+earth, the product of the Cherokee nation in America,
+called by the natives ‘<i>unaker</i>.’” When this patent was
+renewed in 1794, no mention was made of “unaker.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In Plymouth a shrewd old Quaker, William Cookworthy,
+also had his eye upon the American china-clay.
+He wrote to Mr. Hingston on May 30, 1745, saying
+that kaolin and petuntse had been discovered in America,
+and that he had seen specimens said to have been
+manufactured from the American materials. One letter
+of his on the subject runs thus: “I had lately with me
+the person who hath discovered the china-earth. He
+had with him several samples of the china ware of their
+making which I think were equal to the Asiatic. ’Twas
+found on the back of Virginia, where he was in quest of
+mines, and having read Du Halde, he discovered both
+the petuntse and the kaolin. ’Twas this latter earth
+which he says is essential to the success of the manufacture.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>He is going for a cargo of it, having bought from
+the Indians the whole country where it rises. They can
+import it for £13 per ton, and by that means afford their
+china as cheap as common stone-ware. The man is a
+Quaker by profession, but seems to be as thorough a
+Deist as I ever met with.” In 1768 Cookworthy established
+the Plymouth china-works, but no further mention
+is made of the deistical Quaker and his promised
+cargo of china-earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1655 a box of “porcelain-earth from the internal
+parts of the Cherokee nation, four hundred miles from
+hence (Charleston) on mountains scarcely accessible,”
+was consigned to another English potter, Richard Champion,
+who founded the Bristol china-works. This box
+of clay was sent by Champion’s brother-in-law, Mr.
+Caleb Lloyd, of Charleston, to be forwarded to the Worcester
+china-works to be used there in experiments.
+At the same time another box was sent to Champion
+for a relative of his, the Earl of Hyndford, who desired
+Champion to open it and make experiments with
+it, or to give it to Mr. Goldney, “who is a very curious
+gentleman.” The curious Mr. Goldney declined using
+the clay, and Champion experimented unsuccessfully
+“on the principle of Chinese porcelain,” and then decided
+to use clay from Cornwall, which was “not so fine
+as the Cherokee; however, there can be no chance of introducing
+the latter as a manufacture when it can be so
+easily procured from Cornwall.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1766 the English Society for the Encouragement of
+Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce gave a gold medal
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>to Mr. Samuel Bowen, with the inscription that it was
+given to him “for his useful observations in china and
+industrious application of them in Georgia.” It was
+doubtless the industrious Mr. Bowen’s china that was referred
+to in Felix Farley’s <cite>Bristol Journal</cite>, in the issue
+of November 24, 1764. “This week some pieces of porcelain
+manufactured in Georgia was imported; the materials
+appear to be good, but the workmanship is far
+from being admired.” Though this china venture was of
+enough importance to be-medal its projector, all traces
+of its location, progress, and fate have been lost.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Other and more pretentious pot-works were brought
+into life by the Massachusetts bounties. In the <cite>Boston
+Evening Post</cite> of October 30, 1769, we read, “Wanted
+immediately at the new Factory in New Boston, four
+Boys for Apprentices to learn the Art of making Tortoise-shell
+Cream and Green Colour Plates, Dishes, Coffee
+and Tea Pots, Cups and Saucers and other Articles in
+the Potter’s Business, equal to any imported from England.
+Any Persons inclined to Bind out such Lads to
+the aforesaid Business is desired to apply immediately at
+the said Factory or at Leigh’s Intelligence Office.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is very evident, from many advertisements at about
+this date, that a strenuous and well-directed effort was
+made to establish and maintain pot-works in Boston.
+Thus on May 12, 1769, there appeared in the <cite>Boston
+Evening Post</cite> this notice: “Wanted Samples of different
+clays and fine White Sand. Any Person or Persons
+that will send about 5 lbs. of Clay and a Pint of fine
+white Sand to Leigh’s Intelligence Office, in Merchants’
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>Row, Boston, if it is the sort wanted the Proprietors
+will have advantage of Proposals made to them to supply
+a quantity.” Good wages, too, for the times, were
+offered to workmen, practised potters. “Twenty Dollars
+per Month with Victuals Drink Washing and Lodging
+given to any persons Skill’d in Making Glazing and
+Burning common Earthen ware who can be well recommended.
+Enquire of the Printer.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>All this applying and experimenting and establishing,
+and the fact that a Quaker named Bartlam, an unsuccessful
+English master-potter, had started a pottery in
+Camden, S. C., in the very heart of the clay supply—all
+this seriously alarmed that far-seeing and shrewd
+business man, Josiah Wedgwood. He had once before
+lost his foreman, Mr. Podmore, who left him with the
+intention of establishing pot-works in America. Mr.
+Chaffers, a Liverpool manufacturer, had caught the intending
+emigrant during his pre-embarking stay in Liverpool,
+and finding that Podmore showed so much intelligence
+and practical knowledge of the business, had made
+him sufficiently liberal offers to induce him to remain in
+England. English potters had also emigrated in large
+numbers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Wedgwood wrote thus at that time to his patron, Sir
+W. Meredith: “Permit me, Sir, to mention a circumstance
+of a more public nature, which greatly alarms us
+in this neighborhood. The bulk of our particular manufactures
+are, you know, exported to foreign markets, for
+our home consumption is very trifling in comparison to
+what is sent abroad; and the principal of these markets
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>are the Continent and Islands of North America. To
+the continent we send an amazing quantity of white
+stone-ware and some of the finer kinds, but for the islands
+we cannot make anything too rich and costly.
+This trade to our colonies we are apprehensive of losing
+in a few years, as they set on foot some pot-works there
+already, and are at this time amongst us hiring a number
+of our hands for establishing new pot-works in South
+Carolina, having got one of our insolvent master-potters
+there to conduct them. They have every material there,
+equal if not superior to our own, for carrying on that
+manufacture; and as the necessaries of life and consequently
+the prices of labour amongst us are daily advancing,
+it is highly probable that more will follow them
+and join their brother artists and manufacturers of all
+classes who are from all quarters taking a rapid flight indeed
+the same way.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Wedgwood did not intend to be left out or left behind
+in the “flight” into the benefits and resources of the New
+World; Pensacola clay was brought to him in 1766; and
+in 1767, from Ayoree (or Hyoree as he spelt it), other
+clays were fetched, and the canny potter at once attempted
+to secure a patent right to the exclusive use of
+them. A man named Griffiths, who had owned in South
+Carolina a one-third share in three thousand acres of land,
+where he had “attempted the manufacture of maple-sugar
+after the manner of the Indians,” now became Wedgwood’s
+agent in America, under heavy bonds. Griffiths,
+the owner of the ill-situated maple grove and sugar factory,
+went to the Cherokee country and sent home clay to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>Wedgwood to experiment upon. The growing and free
+use of the Cornish clays, however, rendered the importation
+of American clays as superfluous as it was expensive
+and inconvenient; and the interference of the Revolutionary
+war destroyed all fear of American competition
+in the manufacture of pottery. The vicinity near
+Camden, S. C. (where the Bartlam pottery had been
+established), was particularly devastated, many fierce
+battles being fought around it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1784, Richard Champion, who was always an enthusiastic
+lover of America, and who had unsuccessfully
+experimented in England with the Cherokee clays, left
+Bristol and came to live on a plantation named Rockybranch,
+near Camden. Wedgwood must have felt many
+apprehensions and fears when Champion took this step,
+for he knew well the energy and determination of the
+emigrant to America, who had in previous years completely
+routed him in a long-contested and bitter lawsuit
+over the use of certain English clays in the manufacture
+of china. Wedgwood knew, too, Champion’s
+ability and capacity as a potter, and without doubt
+dreaded lest the man who had done such good work at
+Bristol should do more and better still when in the land
+of the Cherokee clay, at Camden. His fears (if they existed)
+were destined never to be realized, for Champion
+became a planter, filled several public offices in the State,
+died in 1793, on the seventh anniversary of the day he
+left England, and was buried near Camden.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the year 1770 china-works were in operation in
+Philadelphia. They were established by Gousse Bonnin
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>and George Anthony Morris. On December 20, 1769, an
+advertisement was printed in a Philadelphia newspaper,
+which read thus: “New China Works. Notwithstanding
+the various difficulties and disadvantages which usually
+attend the introduction of any important manufacture
+into a new country, the proprietors of the China
+Works now erecting in Southwark have the pleasure to
+acquaint the public that they have proved to a certainty
+that the clays of America are as productive of good Porcelain
+as any heretofore manufactured at the famous
+factory in Bow, near London.” Later Messrs. Bonnin
+and Morris advertised for “broken flint-glass and whole
+flint-stone,” and also for “shank-bones” to be delivered
+at the china factory in Southwark. In April, 1772,
+they advertised for “several apprentices to the painting
+branch,” and encouragement was offered to “china painters
+either in blue or enamel,” which latter notice shows
+that their china products were decorated. They also
+offered a reward for the production of <i>zaffre</i>, a compound
+of cobalt.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This china venture failed, the real estate of the company
+was sold, and the proprietors returned to England
+asking public attention and charity for their poor workmen.
+Thus forlornly ended the first porcelain factory
+in America; and thus tamely subsided the rivalry between
+English and American china materials. When
+we consider the vast natural resources in America for
+the china-maker to draw from—the inexhaustible supply
+of raw materials—the unlimited beds of rich kaolin, the
+vast stores of pipe, potter’s, ball, and fire clay—the endless
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>mines of quartz and felspar, the tinted earths of Alabama,
+the colored kaolin of Illinois, the mines of lithomarge
+in Tennessee—to say nothing of the boundless
+wealth of supplies in the far West—it seems to us that
+America was very slow—indeed is still very slow in taking
+advantage of the hints given by Cookworthy, by
+Champion, and by Wedgwood in the eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This quickly-ended china factory of Bonnin and Morris
+is the one referred to in the <cite>Edinburgh Weekly Magazine</cite>
+of January, 1771, which says: “By a letter from
+Philadelphia we are informed that a large china manufactory
+is established there, and that better china cups
+and saucers are made there than at Bow or Stratford.”
+Benjamin Franklin, writing to his wife from London in
+January, 1772, after thanking her for the cranberries and
+apples and various American home reminders that she
+had sent to him, adds, “I thank you for the sauce-boats,
+and am pleased to see so good a progress made in the
+china manufactory. I wish it success most heartily.”
+But writing to an English potter in November, 1773, he
+says, “I understand the china-works in Philadelphia is
+declined by the first owners; whether any others will
+take it up and continue it, I know not.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Prime, in his book, gives the information that
+there were “some undoubted specimens of the work
+deposited in the Franklin Institute on exhibition.” I do
+not know where those specimens now are. A pair of
+vases at the H. L. D. Lewis sale in Philadelphia, in
+December, 1890, were catalogued as having been made at
+this first porcelain manufactory. There is no existing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>record of the fact that they were produced there, and no
+stamp or mark to prove it, and I do not know why
+they were thus assigned. They were purchased by the
+Mount Vernon Association for eighteen dollars each,
+and can now be seen in Washington’s old home. They
+stand ten inches in height, are flat in shape, about six
+inches in diameter, have gilded griffin handles and polished
+gilt faces, and are decorated with highly colored
+views of naval battles. They have an interest to all collectors
+as being specimens of the first china factory in
+America, as well as from the fact that they were early
+ornaments of Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Philadelphia seems to have taken and kept the lead in
+the manufacture of porcelain in America, or else we are
+more fortunate in having the records of Philadelphia pot-works
+preserved for us. The Pennsylvania Society for
+the Encouragement of Manufactures offered in 1787, a
+“plate of gold to the value of twenty dollars,” as a prize
+for the “best specimen of Pennsylvania-made earthen
+ware approaching the nearest in quality to the delft
+white stone or queen’s ware,” and an equal prize for the
+best salt-glazed ware; and in 1792 a prize of $50 for
+similar ware. In 1808 Alexander Trotter exhibited at
+Peale’s Museum, in Philadelphia, some of the articles
+manufactured at his Columbian Pottery, which was situated
+on South Street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth
+Streets, in that city, while the warehouse was at No. 66
+North Second Street. This business continued until
+1813. The proprietor advertised “tea and coffee-pots,
+pitchers, jugs, wine-coolers, basins, ewers, and baking
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>dishes;” and it was also stated that an “elegant jug and
+goblets from the queen’s ware manufactory” were used
+at the Republican dinner on July 4, 1808, at Philadelphia.
+This ware was similar to the Staffordshire stone
+wares. In the same year a firm named Binney &#38; Ronaldson
+made in South Street, in Philadelphia, red and
+yellow teapots, coffee-pots, and sugar-boxes. At the beginning
+of the century D. Freytag advertised that, at
+192 South 5th Street, Philadelphia, he would decorate
+piece china with gold and silver; hence he must have
+had a kiln for firing. In the year 1800 a pottery, called
+the “Washington Pottery,” was established by John
+Mullawney on the north side of Market Street, near
+Schuylkill South, in the same city. The productions
+were called “Washington ware,” and consisted of
+pitchers, coffee-pots, teapots, cream-pots, sugar-boxes,
+wash-basins, bowls, etc. It was carried on by the same
+proprietor until 1816, and was in operation for many
+years after. In 1813 the Northern Liberty Pottery was
+founded by Thomas Haig on the corner of Front and
+Market Streets, and the manufacture of earthen ware
+is still continued by one of his descendants. David G.
+Seixas had a similar manufactory at about the same time,
+from 1817 to 1822, at Market Street near Schuylkill 6th.
+In 1817 George Bruorton announced through the Philadelphia
+press, that he would enamel and gild arms,
+crests, ciphers, borders, or any device on china, or
+queen’s ware as good as any imported. Also “china
+mended by burning in and warranted as sound for use as
+ever.” In 1826 Joseph Keen also decorated china in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>Market Street, near Eleventh Street. So we can plainly
+see how much the question of china decoration and
+china-works was thought of in that town.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the year 1828, William Ellis Tucker had a china
+store at 86 Arcade, in Philadelphia. He thus advertised:
+“American china of a quality equal in strength and
+beauty to any that can be imported, and upon the most
+reasonable terms. Initials or fancy work to suit the
+taste of individuals will be executed agreeably to order
+in the neatest style.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the year 1868 Miss Peters presented to the Historical
+Society of Pennsylvania a porcelain pitcher
+which had been made at the establishment of Messrs.
+Tucker &#38; Hemphill. At the request of the Society,
+Mr. Thomas Tucker prepared the following paper on
+the manufacture of porcelain in the United States.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Philadelphia</span>, May 13, 1868.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>To the Historical Society of Pennsylvania</span>:</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c015'><span class='sc'>Gentlemen</span>: Herewith please find a small account of the
+manufacture of porcelain in the United States.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>William Ellis Tucker, my brother, was the first to make porcelain
+in the United States. My father, Benjamin Tucker, had a
+china store in Market Street, in the city of Philadelphia, in the
+year 1816. He built a kiln for William in the back-yard of the
+store, where he painted in the white china and burned it on in
+the kiln, which gave him a taste for that kind of work. After that
+he commenced experimenting with the different kinds of clays, to
+see if he could not make the ware. He succeeded in making a
+very good kind of ware called queen’s ware. He then commenced
+experimenting with felspar and kaolin to make porcelain, and,
+after much labor he succeeded in making a few small articles of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>very good porcelain. He then obtained the old water-works at
+the northwest corner of Schuylkill, Front, and Chestnut, where
+he erected a large glazing kiln, enamelling kiln, mills, etc. He
+burned kiln after kiln with very poor success. The glazing would
+crack and the body would blister; and, besides, we discovered
+that we had a man who placed the ware in the kiln who was employed
+by some interested parties in England to impede our
+success.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>Most of the handles were found in the seggars after the kiln
+was burned. We could not account for it until a deaf and dumb
+man in our employment detected him running his knife around
+each handle as he placed them in the kiln.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>At another time every piece of china had to be broken before
+it could be taken out of the seggar. We always washed the round
+Os, the article in which the china was placed in the kiln, with
+silex; but this man had washed them with felspar, which of
+course melted, and fastened with every article to the bottom.
+But William discharged him, and we soon got over that difficulty.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>In the year 1827 my brother received a silver medal from the
+Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania, and in 1831 received one from
+the Institute in New York. In 1828 I commenced to learn the
+different branches of the business. On August 22, 1832, my
+brother William died. Some time before he connected himself
+with the late Judge Hemphill. They purchased the property at
+the southwest corner of Schuylkill, Sixth, and Chestnut Streets,
+where they built a large store-house or factory, which they filled
+with porcelain. After the death of my brother, Judge Hemphill
+and myself continued the making of porcelain for some years, until
+he sold out his interest to a company of Eastern gentlemen;
+but being unfortunate in their other operations, they were not
+able to give the porcelain attention. In the year 1837 I undertook
+to carry it alone, and did so for about one year, making a
+large quantity of very fine porcelain, many pieces of which I still
+have. The gilding and painting is now as perfect as when first
+done.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'><span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>I herewith present you with a pitcher which I made thirty-one
+years ago. You will notice the glazing and transparency of this
+specimen is equal to the best imported china; but the gilding,
+having been in use so many years, is somewhat injured. I would
+like to give you a larger article, but I have but few pieces left.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>Very respectfully yours, etc.,</div>
+      <div class='line in20'><span class='sc'>Thomas Tucker</span>.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>I cannot understand why Thomas Tucker should have
+fancied that his brother was the first to make porcelain
+in the United States. Could he not have known of the
+ante-Revolutionary china-works of Bonnin &#38; Morris?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are in the Trumbull-Prime Collection several
+specimens of Tucker’s “natural porcelain.” The paste
+and glaze are excellent, but the forms are commonplace,
+and the decorations indicate want of experience and
+taste, gold being profusely used.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At an early date, certainly in the eighteenth century,
+pot-works were established in Allentown, Pa., and in
+Pittsburg, where decorated pottery was made which
+resembled German manufactures, and which was often
+ornamented with mottoes and legends in slip decoration.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>From 1793 to 1800 John and William Norton made
+red ware in Bennington, Vt.; since then stone-ware has
+been made in the same works. In 1847 Messrs. Lyman
+&#38; Fenton started a pottery in Bennington, in which
+they made both pottery and soft-paste porcelain. These
+works continued for about twelve years. Specimens of
+their tortoise-shell wares are in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection. One in the shape of a lion is here shown.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>They also made figures of men and animals in Parian
+wares, the first, doubtless, produced in America. The
+impressed circular mark on some of the enamelled pottery
+was “Lyman Fenton &#38; Co. Fenton’s Enamel,
+patented 1849, Bennington, Vt.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_113.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Bennington Ware.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the year 1837 by far the most important enterprise
+in the manufacture of pottery and porcelain that
+had ever been organized in America was started under the
+supervision of Mr. James Clews, who had been a potter
+in Cobridge, England, from the years 1819 to 1829, and
+who was the largest manufacturer of dark blue Staffordshire
+wares at that date. An account of many pieces of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>his production in his English pottery, and of the stamps
+and marks used by him, is given in Chapter XVII.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>He emigrated to America, and went to what was then
+the Far West—to Indiana; and with capitalists from
+Louisville, Ky.—Reuben Bates, Samuel Cassiday, William
+Bell, James Anderson, Jr., Edward Bainbridge,
+Perly Chamberlin, William Gerwin, John B. Bland,
+Willis Ranney, and James Lewis—incorporated a company,
+under the name of The Indiana Pottery Company,
+with a capital of $100,000 and power to increase to
+$200,000. A special act of January 7, 1837 (see Indiana
+Local Laws, Twenty-first Session, p. 7), states that
+these parties had “heretofore associated themselves together
+for the purpose of manufacturing earthenware and
+china in the State of Indiana, under the name and style
+of The Lewis Pottery Company.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Indiana Pottery Company built its works in
+Troy, Perry County, thus having means of easy transportation
+by the Ohio River to New Orleans and other
+important points.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Clews had amassed much wealth in his Cobridge
+works, but he quickly lost it in this new enterprise in
+the new land, which proved far from successful. The
+chief difficulty lay in the hiring of proper workmen.
+The English potters proved wholly unreliable in this
+country, and the expense of importing fresh relays of
+workmen was too great to be endured. Nearly three
+hundred potters were brought over from England.
+The founders also found it impossible to make white
+ware with the clay in the vicinity of Troy, and of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>vast beds of fine kaolin which exist in Indiana they were
+doubtless ignorant. The dark blue ware which they
+manufactured proved far from satisfactory, and though
+so brilliantly started by practical and wealthy men, this
+pottery was quickly closed, after making a considerable
+quantity of yellow and Rockingham ware. In 1851 a
+firm named Sanders &#38; Wilson leased the buildings,
+which were burned in 1854, but were rebuilt. There
+are now two potteries in Troy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the early part of this century, probably in 1827, a
+china factory was established in Jersey City, N. J., which
+made hard-paste porcelain. Specimens of pure white
+with gilded vines are in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+In 1829 the works became known as the American Pottery
+Company, and pieces of their manufacture at that
+date bear that mark. This pottery is still in existence,
+though known by another name. They made from the
+year 1830 the embossed brown pottery pitcher with
+“hound handle,” which was also such a favorite with
+English potters from the time it was manufactured at Fulham.
+The design for these American hound-handled
+pitchers was made by Daniel Greatbach, a prominent English
+modeller, who came to this country many years ago.
+A specimen which I possess is of mottled tortoise-shell,
+green, brown, and yellow, and bears the design of a hunt
+around the body and grape-leaves on the top, but more
+frequently the pitchers are simply colored brown. Some
+have a mask of Bacchus on and under the nose, and one
+I own has the nose formed by an American “spread
+eagle.” They were a favorite hot-water jug in the early
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>years of their manufacture, their size, strength, and shape
+making them particularly suitable for such a purpose.
+They were sometimes
+fitted with
+metal covers fastened
+to holes
+drilled through
+the pottery. I
+have seen them
+twenty inches in
+height, and at
+least three feet in
+circumference.
+In some parts of
+the country they
+are known as
+“tavern pitchers,”
+perhaps from
+power of association.
+Such is the one herewith shown, now owned by
+Robert T. Van Deusen, esq., of Albany. Some were
+doubtless from English potteries, but many are American.
+Glazed brown “tobys” with the circular impressed
+mark “D. &#38; J. Henderson, Jersey City,” were also
+made, but the exact age of such pieces is unknown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_116.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Hound-handled Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of the later porcelain factories which have been established
+in America I will not speak—the factories of
+Trenton, Baltimore, East Liverpool, Long Island City—which
+now number over five hundred. Their story will
+doubtless be written ere long by some historian of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>ceramic art in America, but hardly comes within the
+bounds of this work. Specimens of their manufacture,
+especially of the truly artistic productions of the Baltimore
+China Works, should, however, be secured by every
+china collector, though they do not appeal so strongly
+to the china hunter, to whom the pleasures of the chase
+often exceed the delight in the spoils, and to whom old
+china, like old wine, is better than new.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>V.<br> EARLIEST POTTERY WARES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>The first rare pieces of porcelain owned by the
+American colonists were India china; but Delft
+ware, salt-glazed ware, and the tortoise-shell or
+“combed” wares were the earliest forms of pottery that
+were imported to any great extent.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many pieces of heavy blue and white Delft have been
+found in New England, some being Dutch, some English.
+The shapes, decorations, and pastes are so similar
+that it is impossible for even the most careful observer
+definitely to judge of the place of manufacture, and there
+are seldom guiding and aiding marks. In Connecticut
+much Delft is found, sometimes with Dutch words
+and inscriptions. Doubtless the Connecticut planters
+bargained and traded with the New York Dutch, who
+perhaps took onions and notions from the canny Connecticut
+men in exchange for Delft. In New York,
+along the Hudson River to Albany, much fine Delft is
+still preserved in old Dutch families, especially in the
+old Dutch farm-houses and manor-houses. At the
+Albany Bi-centennial Loan Collection, in 1886, a fine
+showing was made of old Delft by representatives of the
+families of the old patroons—of the Ten Eycks, Ten
+Broecks, Bleeckers, and Van Rensselaers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few stray Delft wanderers may be found in Massachusetts
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>and New Hampshire—meat dishes and plates,
+pale and ugly, as if the journey inland had faded them
+out. On Long Island, Delft is still kept and used in
+Dutch families—it is not the oldest Delft, however, nor
+is it much prized. The typical Delft vases, decorated in
+blue, yellow, and white, once graced the high mantel or
+beaufet of many a low, comfortable Dutch farm-house
+in Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Gravesend, and occasionally
+one can still be found. A fine set is in the old
+“pirates’ house” at Flatlands. The Dutch made many
+teapots, we are told, but I have never found an old Delft
+one in America. I have seen a few dull blue and white
+Delft flower-pots—possibly one hundred years old—clumsy,
+ugly things, whether old or new. I wish I
+could drive through the old Dutch settlements on Long
+Island—New Utrecht, and Flatlands, and New Lots, and
+Gravesend—and ransack the great, spacious garret of
+every concave-roofed story and a half farm-house I
+passed. I know I could bring many a piece of Delft to
+light—forgotten and unheeded by its stolid owners.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>That Delft was not very highly prized by the Dutch
+settlers, nor by their descendants, may be proved by
+many inventories and lists, such as this, of the estate of
+John Lefferts, of Flatbush, made in 1792:</p>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c017'></th>
+    <th class='c007'>&#160;</th>
+    <th class='c018'>£</th>
+    <th class='c019'>s.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c017'>25</td>
+    <td class='c007'>Pewter plates (1s. each)</td>
+    <td class='c017'>1</td>
+    <td class='c008'>5</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c017'>37</td>
+    <td class='c007'>Earthen plates</td>
+    <td class='c017'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>10</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c017'>9</td>
+    <td class='c007'>Pewter dishes</td>
+    <td class='c017'>1</td>
+    <td class='c008'>15</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c017'>8</td>
+    <td class='c007'>Earthen dishes</td>
+    <td class='c017'>1</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c017'>6</td>
+    <td class='c007'>Sets china cups and saucers</td>
+    <td class='c017'>3</td>
+    <td class='c008'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c017'>27</td>
+    <td class='c007'>Delft plates</td>
+    <td class='c017'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'>13</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>Pewter was plainly much more valued than Delft, and
+India china was still more highly prized.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_120.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Delft Tea-caddy.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Old Delft tea-caddies are both curious and pretty.
+Here is one shown, marked with the names “Aalta
+Evert and Gerrit Egben” and the date, 1793. It was
+doubtless a wedding
+or betrothal
+gift. In this
+piece the dark blue
+decoration
+is under the
+glaze, and the
+red and black
+quaint Dutch-dressed
+figures
+and the inscription
+are over the
+glaze, and were
+doubtless painted
+to order and
+fired when the piece was purchased for a gift or token.
+This labor-saving device was brought to perfection by
+a Dutch potter named Zachary Dextra, though the cunning
+Chinese and Japanese had employed it when they
+held supremacy over the Dutch market. If a skilled
+painter painted under the glaze, an inferior workman
+could easily do the finishing touches over the glaze.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Delft apothecary jars are the rarest and most
+curious pieces seen, and form a charming posy-holder.
+They are eight or ten inches in height, and are lettered
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>with the abbreviated names of drugs. “Succ: E. Spin:
+C.,” “U. Althae,” and “C: Rosar: E.” are on three of
+my jars. They frequently have a spout on one side,
+and are then usually globose in shape, with a spreading
+base. Some have handles. When the Dutch used
+these jars, a century or more ago, they covered the open
+top with tightly-tied oil-skin and poured the medicinal
+or chemical contents from the spout, which, at other
+times, was kept carefully corked. These jars are identical
+in shape with the old “sirroop-pots” of Dutch
+museums; for instance, the one made by Haarles, the
+eminent <i>plateelbakker</i>, in 1795, as a “proof of his skill,”
+and now preserved in the archives at Delft.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most familiar and universal decoration on Delft
+plates and meat dishes is the conventionalized “peacock”
+design. It sometimes takes rather a ludicrous
+appearance, often forming a comical caricature of a ballet-dancer.
+A coarsely-drawn basket of flowers is also
+common. I have also seen in America specimens of the
+“musical plates” of Delft. These bear designs of musical
+instruments, scores of song or dance music, or simply
+a staff with a few notes, a motif, accompanied usually
+by inscriptions, mottoes, or couplets, sometimes in
+Dutch, sometimes in French, the latter showing usually
+so decided a touch of extreme opera-bouffe <i>équivoque</i> that
+such “musical plates” would scarcely be in demand for
+family use, and make us turn to the Dutch-lettered
+pieces as being more desirable simply because the language
+of their decoration is less widely known and
+comprehended. Even these cannot be positively classed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>as Dutch, for the early English potters copied servilely
+the Dutch designs. The vases often have figures of men
+and animals and Dutch landscapes.
+A fine collection of Delft
+plates and placques and vases may
+be seen in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_122.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Delft Vase.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Fine Holland Tile” was advertised
+in the <cite>Boston News Letter</cite>
+of June 11, 1716—the first announcement
+of the sale of Delft
+in America, though not in the
+form of table-ware—and in the
+same paper, under date of August
+10, 1719, we find a notice of
+“Dutch Tile for Chimney.” From
+that date, all through the century,
+in the various newspapers, we find
+constantly recurring advertisements
+of Delft chimney tiles on the arrival of every
+foreign ship. They must have been imported in vast
+numbers, and were not expensive; “9 dozen Dutch tiles,
+£1 10s., 10 dozen Dutch tiles, £2 10s.,” were the values
+assigned. In spite of these facts I have found them very
+rare in New England—they have wholly disappeared. In
+historical rooms, in museums, they may be seen, but
+seldom in old houses. The Robinson House in old Narraganset
+has a fine set; in a few old houses in the Connecticut
+valley I have seen sets of the coarsely painted
+“scripture tiles” so disparaged by Benjamin Franklin,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>but they are rare. Even on Long Island and on the
+banks of the Hudson they are now seldom found. Storytellers
+of New England life usually place blue and white
+tiles around their Yankee fireplaces, but they are more
+plentiful in the imagination of such narrators than in reality.
+With the various changes in the manner of heating
+New England dwellings, the chimney tiles have all
+vanished, even when the houses still stand, and nearly
+all the old city houses have been entirely removed to
+make way for more modern business structures. English
+potters made tiles in such close imitation of the
+Dutch that it is impossible to distinguish between them.
+Doubtless many of the “blue and white chimney tile”
+so largely advertised were English manufactures imported
+under the name of Dutch tiles, while still others
+were not chimney, but roof tiles.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There have been found in New England, in numbers
+which seem rather surprising when we consider their age,
+ale-jugs of gray and blue stone-ware which are universally
+known as Fulham jugs. They resemble in quality
+and coloring the German stone-ware or our common
+crocks, being of the same gray ware with a lead glaze.
+They are decorated with rich blue like the German
+wares, and have an incised design of leaves and scrolls,
+circles or simple flowers. I have seen a number which
+bore in the front an oval medallion with the incised initials
+G. R., sometimes also a crown. These are said to
+refer to Georgius Rex, the first of the English Georges.
+I know of one G. R. mug which has an additional interest
+in the form of a bullet of the Revolution imbedded
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>in its tough and uncracked side. Some of these Fulham
+jugs have apparently had silver or pewter lids attached
+to them. They are what are known as bottle-shaped,
+round and protuberant,
+narrowing
+to a small neck
+and base; others
+are more slender,
+almost cylindrical.
+There are no
+marks to prove
+them to be Fulham
+jugs, but as such
+they are known.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Other Fulham
+jugs are found of
+brownish mottled
+stone-ware with
+hound handle and
+raised decoration in the body of figures of the chase, and
+with mask of Bacchus forming the nose. These have
+been frequently reproduced in American potteries and
+when unmarked, it is difficult to determine which are
+English.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_124.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Fulham G. R. Jug.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pieces of salt-glazed ware have been found in country
+homes by many china hunters, and are among the most
+pleasing articles to be obtained. The date of their
+manufacture was from 1680 to 1780. An interesting
+story is told of the discovery of the process of glazing
+this ware. A servant maid having, in the year 1680,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>allowed a pot of brine to boil over, the dull earthen pot
+containing the brine became red hot, and when cold was
+covered with a bright glaze. A sharp potter perceiving
+it, at once utilized the hint. The story is pretty, but
+it can scarcely be true, for such a glaze could not be
+formed in an open place. But salt-glaze there is, and
+in America too, of the very earliest manufacture—Crouch-ware,
+or, as it is incorrectly and inappropriately
+called, Elizabethan-ware. Crouch is the name neither
+of a person nor of a place, but of the white Derbyshire
+clay. The paste made from this clay is very dense, and
+is of a greenish tint. The Elers-ware of buff ground
+with simple raised scrolls and rosettes of white are also
+of early date.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some of the salt-glazed pieces were shaped by pressing
+the moist paste into metal moulds, other pieces were
+“cast” in moulds of plaster of Paris, the slip or liquid
+paste being introduced to line the mould, and allowed
+to set, and this operation being repeated until the piece
+was of required thickness. As the taste for light delicate
+wares increased, some were made as light and thin
+as paper. If the piece were “cast” the handles, nose,
+and feet (if it possessed any) were moulded and placed
+on separately. The moulds used were frequently the
+worn-out moulds that had been used for casting silverware;
+hence pieces of salt-glazed ware usually resemble
+in shape the pieces of silver of the same date.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The characteristic feature of salt-glazed ware—the
+quality from which it derives its name—is its glaze.
+This is easily recognized. It does not run and spread
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>like other glazes, but seems to form into minute coagulated
+drops or granulations resembling somewhat the
+surface of orange-peel. The glaze is often unequal, being
+higher on some portions of the piece than others, the
+vapor of soda (through which the glaze was made) not
+penetrating with equal power to every point. Thus one
+side of a piece may be dull and the other highly glazed.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The largest and finest example of salt-glazed ware
+which I have seen in America is the exact duplicate of
+the best specimen in the Museum of Practical Geology,
+in Jermyn Street, London, numbered G. 111. It
+is thus described in the catalogue of that museum:
+“Large oval soup-tureen, cover, and stand. Height, ten
+inches; greatest diameter, fourteen and one-half inches.
+Body decorated with pressed ornaments, including scroll-work
+and diaper and basket pattern; the tureen mounted
+on three lion’s claws with masks.” This tureen is dated
+1763. The beautiful and delicate specimen found in
+America is absolutely perfect. It bore the difficult process
+of making and firing (specially difficult in so large
+a piece), crossed the water to the new land of Virginia,
+passed through generations of use and the devastations
+of the Revolutionary and civil wars, was gathered in
+by a travelling dealer, brought in safety by rail to New
+York, and ignominiously sold for a dollar and a half to
+its present proud possessor. It was doubtless cast in
+the same mould as the one in the museum. Another
+similar piece is in the well-known English collection of
+Lady Charlotte Schreiber.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A large number of smaller pieces of salt-glazed ware
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>have been found, including salt-boxes, creamers, and one
+beautiful teapot which is so graceful and unique in design
+that it has been
+honored by being borrowed
+by a prominent
+china-manufacturer in
+England to reproduce
+in his modern ware.
+Thus this frail waif
+from the middle of the
+last century has thrice
+crossed the ocean in
+safety.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_127a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Sportive Innocence Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_127b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Farmer Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The pitchers shown are of salt-glazed ware and may
+be Crouch-ware, though they are apparently of rather
+later date. The first bears
+in a heart-shaped medallion
+a design of high-colored
+children at awkward play,
+and is labelled “Sportive
+Innocence.” Similar ones
+are frequently found in
+America. I know of at
+least a dozen. Some bear
+on the reverse side a different
+design with the same
+children entitled “Mischievous
+Sport.” In this
+the boy is frightening the little girl with an ugly mask.
+Other pitchers of precisely the same shape and borderdecorations
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>in orange, green, and blue have different designs
+in the medallion, a peacock being frequently seen.
+The farmer’s pitcher has the motto “Success to Trade,”
+and is surely older as well as gayer in color than the
+“Sportive Innocence” pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There were imported to America in great quantities, as
+is shown by many eighteenth-century advertisements,
+“tortoise-shell” and “combed pattern” wares, also the
+pretty cauliflower, melon, and pineapple wares that have
+been reproduced in our own day. These were manufactured
+chiefly at Little Fenton by Thomas Whieldon,
+a man who influenced much the potters’ art in England
+from the year 1740 to 1780, during five of which years
+he was a partner with Wedgwood. There are only two
+specimens of these wares in the Museum of Practical
+Geology, and Mr. Jewitt wrote in 1873: “These wares are
+now very scarce and are highly and deservedly prized by
+collectors.” At the time he wrote he could have gathered
+in America scores, even hundreds, of pieces of the
+Whieldon wares for English collections. Dr. Irving
+Lyon, of Hartford, has a fine collection of them which
+he picked up in the cottages of the Connecticut Valley—a
+collection which any English china-lover would envy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Whieldon was a man of great energy, with a practical
+knowledge of his art, and he spent much time in his
+works perfecting his patterns and processes. He compounded
+the bright green glaze so admirable in his ware,
+shown so beautifully in the cauliflower and melon patterns,
+through the contrast with the cream color. He
+also was a modeller, and from the imitation of leaves,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>and fruits, and vegetables derived his best-known and
+most successful patterns, and the novelty and ingenuity
+of many of them charm us even in the present day. The
+bird and animal shapes being grotesque rather than useful,
+seldom came to America. I have seen here, however,
+several tortoise-shell cows and one combed bird.
+The tail of the cow forms the handle of the pitcher, the
+liquid being poured from the nose. Reproductions of
+these are now made at Jeffords Pottery in Philadelphia.
+Little cradles and posy-holders, too, are found, sometimes
+with dates. Whieldon’s two-handled “parting-cups,”
+ornamented with raised grapes, leaves, and tendrils and a
+head of Bacchus, are much more scarce than the melon
+and cauliflower teapots, mugs, and dishes; and his perforated
+ware I have never seen in America. Some of the
+pieces of his manufacture are stamped and afterward
+shaped somewhat by hand, others are cast, others pressed
+in moulds. The “cast” pieces are considered to be of
+earlier date, and may be known by their being thinner
+and more delicate than the moulded ones. The mottled
+browns, greens, and yellows of the tortoise-shell and
+combed wares, like all of Whieldon’s decorations, are
+under the glaze, and are very rich in tone, forming a delightful
+bit of color in cupboard or cabinet. Occasionally
+a purple mottle is seen. The colors were sponged,
+floured, or blown on, painting and printing on pottery
+being then unknown. These pieces of Whieldon’s are all
+unmarked, and doubtless many specimens in America
+came from the Wedgwood factory, for similar wares were
+made there.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>I hardly know how to account for the fact that I have
+found so few, comparatively few, pieces of undoubted
+Wedgwood ware in old houses in New England. That
+vast quantities came to America we cannot doubt.
+Wedgwood says so himself in his letter quoted on page
+<a href='#Page_88'>88</a>. In other letters he refers again and again to consignments
+made to the American market, “the green and
+white wares,” “the Queen’s wares,” “the cream wares,”
+etc. That these consignments were sent largely to the
+various points supplied from the Charleston and Philadelphia
+markets is known, and in those regions the
+black basalts-ware, at least, is more plentiful than in
+New England. Much Wedgwood ware must have come
+also to the ports of Boston, Newport, and New Haven.
+These wares may have been plentiful in the Connecticut
+Valley, but I have seen little in other parts of New England.
+A good opportunity of studying the various productions
+of the Wedgwood factory is given through the
+specimens in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. There
+are at least one hundred “lots” of Wedgwood there
+shown, and the cameos and intaglios, the jasper-wares,
+the basalts, the queensware, the painted wares are all
+illustrated by choice and varied pieces.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The story of Wedgwood’s life I will not even give
+briefly, though the beauty and lesson of it make one
+long to tell it till every American china-manufacturer
+learns to read between the lines the story of personal
+supervision, patient trial, unwearied labor, honest ambition,
+and liberal broadness that made his life a success
+and his productions a delight. Miss Meteyard and Mr.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>Jewitt have given it in careful detail, and every word is
+of keenest interest and importance to the china collector.
+From these books, and from the beautiful volumes of
+engravings and photographs of Wedgwood ware preserved
+in English collections, the American china hunter
+can learn, if not from the specimens themselves.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few of the Wedgwood cameo medallions are found in
+America. Wedgwood sent as a gift to Thomas Jefferson
+three exquisite medallions; two were oval and one oblong
+in shape. They were in blue and white jasper, with
+mythological designs. The largest was twelve inches
+long and six inches wide, and bore the lovely design
+of Cupid and Psyche with troops of attending loves.
+Jefferson had them set in the front of a mantel in a room
+at Monticello, and one of them dropped out and was destroyed
+before the family sold the house. The others
+were picked or cut out and stolen. Mrs. Ellen Harrison,
+the oldest living descendant of Jefferson, tells me that
+during a visit to Monticello, some years before the present
+owner took possession, she found on the floor a tiny
+bit of blue jasper showing the foot and leg of one of the
+loves. Thus did this English cherub cast from his feet
+the dust of an inartistic and relic-hunting nation of vandals.
+Oh, the pity that things so beautiful could be so
+wantonly destroyed! Would that everything that Wedgwood
+made had been endowed with qualities of immortality
+and indestructibility to live forever as lessons and
+examples for future generations of potters.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Occasionally a jasper medallion is found here with
+Wedgwood’s famous anti-slavery design, a kneeling
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>slave with fetters falling from his hands, and the motto,
+“Am I not a Man and a Brother?” Dr. Darwin says
+that “Wedgwood distributed many hundreds of these to
+excite the humane to attend to and assist in the abolition
+of the detestable traffic in human creatures.”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Whether, O friend of art, the gem you mould</div>
+      <div class='line'>Rich with new taste, with ancient virtue bold,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Or the poor tortur’d slave on bended knee,</div>
+      <div class='line'>From Britain’s sons imploring to be free.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many found their way to America and a few are still
+preserved.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Occasionally also a rich dessert-service of old Wedgwood
+ware is seen. Two superb ones were brought across
+the water by a sea-captain at the beginning of this
+century and landed at Hudson, N. Y. A fair young
+bride saw and coveted one of these china treasures, but
+stern and frugal parents were horrified at the thought of
+spending seventy dollars for such an unnecessary luxury.
+The bridegroom, Silas E. Burraws, at a later date the
+starter of the monument to the mother of Washington,
+more extravagant and more indulgent, bought it as a
+wedding gift. It is “queen’s ware” of the rich blue, red,
+and gold design which is known among American dealers
+as “Queen Charlotte’s pattern.” The fruit dishes and
+comports are of the unique and perfect shapes often found
+in Wedgwood ware. I have seen a single plate of this
+pattern in a shop labelled with the price “thirty dollars.”
+The price given for a similar one in the South Kensington
+Museum was four pounds. I know also of one or two
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>dinner services of yellow Wedgwood ware, with the vine
+and grape border in white, early works of Wedgwood,
+clear and firm in outline and beautiful in quality.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The frail fluted bowl, the graceful pitcher with twisted
+handle, and the fragile creamer of queen’s ware shown
+on page <a href='#Page_1'>1</a> are all Wedgwood of lovely shape and so
+thin and delicate a paste, that it is wonderful that they
+have been safely preserved for a hundred years outside
+a collector’s cabinet, and stranger still, have been used
+upon the tea-table of a country home.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_133.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Castleford Teapot.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pottery was founded at Castleford in 1770, and
+black basalt ware, much like Wedgwood’s, was made,
+and white stone-ware which must have been imported
+to this country in vast quantity, for specimens are not
+rare. A teapot commonly seen is here shown. It is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>found both in black basalt, a curious brown ware, and
+salt-glazed cream ware. Special raised work designs of
+the figure of Liberty and the American eagle were used,
+and the sugar-bowls, creamers, and teapots bearing such
+designs were doubtless made entirely for this market.
+The white surface of Castleford ware was frequently divided
+into compartments by raised lines which were
+colored blue or green. Teapots were made with lids
+hinged on metal pins, or with sliding lids, and were exceedingly
+pretty and convenient. They are often called
+Wedgwood, as are also pieces of Castleford black ware.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>VI.<br> ENGLISH PORCELAINS IN AMERICA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>As soon as porcelain was manufactured to any extent
+in England it was exported to America. The
+<cite>Boston Evening Post</cite> of November, 1754, advertised “a
+variety of Bow China Cups and Saucers and Bowls,”
+and other sales of Bow china were made, and special
+pieces also brought across the ocean to wealthy Americans.
+Specimens of Plymouth and Bow china may still
+be occasionally found in America, but any such that
+have been preserved and gathered into private collections
+can be positively identified only by comparison with authenticated
+and marked pieces in public collections. It
+would be impossible to give any definite Bow marks.
+The stamp or design of the anchor and dagger is popularly
+considered proof that the piece thus marked is
+Bow. The triangle, formerly regarded as a positive Bow
+mark, now appears to have a rather shaky reputation, and
+is as frequently assigned to Chelsea. The character and
+shape of the ware, and the style of the decoration are
+better grounds to base identification upon than any
+marks. Excavations made upon the site of the old Bow
+china-works revealed much débris of broken pieces of
+china, and these specimens afford the most positive means
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>of identifying the paste and ornamentation. An account
+of these discoveries was given in the <cite>Art Journal</cite> of 1869.
+All the fragments found were of porcelain, milky-white
+in color, and relatively heavy for the thickness; some
+were ornamented in relief, with the May flower or hawthorn;
+with a little sprig of two roses and a leaf on a
+stalk; with the basket pattern; or with vertical bands
+overlaid with scrolls. Some were painted in blue under
+the glaze with Chinese landscapes, flowers, and figures.
+All were hand-painted, none were printed. These hints
+may serve as guides in the detection and identification
+of Bow china.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have seen in America cups and saucers painted with
+the partridge pattern, which I believe are Bow, though
+the same pattern is found on Worcester and Plymouth
+china. The well-known and exceedingly valuable goat
+milk-jugs that, after forming for years the immovable
+standard from which streamed defiantly the flag of Bow,
+are now calmly turned over to Chelsea. These creamjugs
+are ornamented with two white goats in relief at
+the base, and a bee is modelled on the front under the
+nose. The handle is rustic with raised flowers. These
+jugs often have the triangle mark. Some are painted
+with flowers, others are plain white porcelain. Mr.
+Jewitt says they were sometimes made without the
+raised bee, but I have never seen such an one. Two of
+these Bow jugs were in the Strawberry Hill collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very excitable young woman came rushing home
+one cold winter day, in New York, with a demand
+for the “china books.” She had seen in an antique
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>shop, such a funny and pretty little pitcher, with a raised
+bee on it, and she was sure that there was a picture of it
+somewhere in the books—and she found it in Mr. Prime’s
+book on pottery and porcelain—a Bow goat cream-jug.
+Well, it snowed, and was cold, and was late in the afternoon,
+and the confident young collector deferred a purchasing
+visit till the following morning. Alas! such a
+sickening disappointment—some miserable despoiler had
+chanced to “drop in” on his way up-town and had carried
+off the treasure. Worse still, the small boy who
+had sold it did not know the purchaser’s name.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_137.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Plymouth Salt-cellar. Bow “Goat Cream-Jug.”</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Deeply did she mourn her ignorance, her indecision,
+her indolence, her carelessness. The opportunity of a
+lifetime had thus been lost, to have a goat cream-jug such
+as was sold at the Cother sale in London, in 1876, for
+twenty-five pounds, to have such a jug offered for the
+paltry sum of one dollar, and to refuse it—not to know
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>enough to grasp such a treasure. The bitterness of regret
+and of self-reproach nerved her to action, and with
+the friendly and actively interested aid of the antique-shop-boy,
+the jug-buyer was waylaid within a month’s
+time and cajoled into reselling his purchase, which he
+did willingly enough. He had bought it to keep his
+shaving brush in, because his father used to keep his
+shaving brush in a similar one in England. With flecks
+of dried shaving soap clinging to the goat’s horns, and
+mottling the bee’s wings, she triumphantly brought her
+treasure home. It varies slightly in height and by the
+turn of a leaf and twig from my Bow goat cream-jug,
+which came from the Cavendish-Bentinck sale in London.
+The porcelain of the New York captive of the chase is not
+so pure and clear and it may be of Chelsea manufacture.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another dainty piece of Bow found by a friend is a
+creamer or sauce-boat of the overlapping leaf pattern.
+The handle is formed by a leaf stem; raised flowers are
+at the base of the handle, and on the leaves flowers are
+delicately painted. This is like Number “H. 12” in the
+Museum of Practical Geology.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The beautiful tall coffee-pot here shown is Plymouth
+with embossed surface and Chinese style of decoration
+in blue. Its cover was destroyed, alas! by
+some careless Newburyport housewife. The salt-cellar
+of pure unpainted porcelain on page <a href='#Page_121'>121</a> is undoubtedly
+Plymouth also, being clearly marked. The design of
+vine leaves and grapes is very delicate and perfect. The
+piece came from an old home in Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though Bristol china was manufactured only from the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>year 1768 to 1781, and though pieces are rare and high-priced
+in England, it is possible to obtain specimens in
+America. Perhaps some invoices of the ware of the
+short-lived factory were sent to the new land by Richard
+Champion, the founder of the Bristol Works, for he was
+an enthusiastic lover and admirer of America. In the
+Trumbull-Prime Collection are a large number of pieces
+classed as Bristol because they have the Bristol cross,
+but not assigned definitely to that factory.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<img src='images/i_139.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Plymouth Coffee-pot.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The few Bristol pieces I have seen in American homes
+are portions of tea-services, teapots being more plentiful
+than other forms. Some have an imperfect or blistered
+glaze, but occasionally fine specimens are found. It is
+impossible to state the value of Bristol china. In the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>Governor Lyon sale there were two lovely Bristol cups
+and saucers decorated with a heavy gold rim and oriental
+landscape in dark blue, that sold for four dollars
+each. A plate with the same decoration brought only a
+dollar and a half.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most beautiful and interesting piece of Bristol
+porcelain in existence is in America. It is owned by
+Mrs. James M. Davis, of Camden, South Carolina. She
+is a great-granddaughter of Richard Champion and inherited
+it from him. This lovely piece is a funerary
+design—a mourning female figure leaning against a pedestal
+bearing a funeral urn. In one hand she holds a
+wreath. The beauty of the figure, the grace of the
+attitude, and the elegance of the drapery combine to
+make this statue exceedingly exquisite. It was made
+by the English potter as a memorial for his daughter,
+Eliza Champion, who died in early youth—a memorial
+such as was tenderly though crudely suggested by the
+carefully made burial urn of the Indian mother. The
+inscription is so simple and so touching, and is couched
+in such quaint old-time diction that I copy it in full.</p>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>ELIZA CHAMPION</div>
+    <div>Ob. XIII Octob. MDCCLXIX</div>
+    <div>AEtat XIV</div>
+    <div>Nat. XXI Mart. MDCCLXVI</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the cornice of the pedestal are the words:</p>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>“<span class='sc'>Ostendent Terris Hanc Tantvm Fata Nec Vltra esse Sinent.</span>”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>
+<img src='images/i_141.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Bristol Memorial Figure.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>On the dado this inscription:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“We loved you, my dear Eliza, whilst you were with us. We lament
+you now you are departed. The Almighty God is just
+and merciful, and we must submit to His will with the Resignation
+and Reverence becoming human frailty. He has removed
+you, Eliza, from the trouble which has been our Lot,
+and does not suffer you to behold the Scenes of horror and
+distress in which these devoted Kingdoms must be involved.
+It is difficult to part with our beloved Child, though but for a
+season. Yet our Interest shall not be put into competition with
+her felicity, and we will even bear her Loss with Chearfulness.
+Happy in each other, we were happy in you, Eliza, and will
+with contented minds cherish your memory till the period
+arrives, when we shall all again meet and Pain and Sorrow
+shall be thought of no more. R.C.—I.C.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the plinth lines altered from Book I., Ode XXIV.,
+of Horace are printed thus:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="la">(<span class='sc'>Qvis desiderio sit pvdor avt modvs</span></span></div>
+      <div class='line in4'><span lang="la"><span class='sc'>Tam chari capitis?—</span></span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="la"><span class='sc'>—Cvi pvdor, et jvstitiae soror</span></span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="la"><span class='sc'>Incorrvpta fides, nvdaqve veritas</span></span></div>
+      <div class='line in2'><span lang="la"><span class='sc'>Qvando vllam invenient parem?</span></span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="la"><span class='sc'>Dvrvm! sed laevius fit patientia,</span></span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="la"><span class='sc'>Qvicqvid corrigere est nefas.</span>)</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the base:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“<span class='sc'>This tribute to the memory of an amiable girl was
+inscribed on her coffin the 16th of October, 1779,
+by a Father who loved her.</span>”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Who could read, even after a century’s time, this beautiful
+and tender tribute to the gentle young girl, who
+died so many years ago, without feeling deep sympathy
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>with the bereaved father, “who loved her?” The unsuccessful
+worker and the patriot speak plainly also in
+the lines:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“He has removed you from the trouble which has been our Lot
+and does not suffer you to behold the scenes of horror and
+distress in which these devoted Kingdoms must be involved.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mrs. Davis also possessed some of the beautiful
+Bristol figures of Spring, Summer, and Winter, and she
+patriotically sent them for exhibition at the Centennial
+Exposition in Philadelphia, in 1876. Like many another
+rare and beautiful article sent confidingly there
+at that time, they were never returned to their owner.
+This loss must have been hard to endure with patience,
+not only from the historical and hereditary value and
+interest of the pieces, but also because the previous year
+duplicate pieces of Bristol were sold in London for £54
+each.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One of the most beautiful of Richard Champion’s
+productions in England or America is the medallion
+plaque of Franklin, described in Chapter XIV.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Owen’s description of Bristol china is very clear
+and concise. “The pieces are graceful in form and well
+moulded, the flowers brilliant in colour and skilfully
+painted; and the gilding, bright though unburnished, is
+of that particularly rich and solid character that always
+distinguished the manufacture. Though it often bears
+Dresden marks, and is moulded in Dresden shapes, the
+quality of the paste is so different that it is easily distinguished
+from the Dresden. The glaze is rich and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>creamy white, while the Dresden has a cold, glassy surface.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<img src='images/i_145.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Crown Derby Covered Dish.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Crown Derby is seldom picked up by the china hunter—never
+I believe in country homes in New
+England. Near New York a few rare pieces have been
+found. Miss Henrietta D. Lyon, of Staten Island, has
+part of an exceedingly rich and elegant Crown Derby
+dinner service painted in delicate colors and gold, one
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>covered dish of which is here shown. The gilding and
+painting upon these pieces is in the highest style of artistic
+beauty and dexterity. They bear the mark used
+at the Derby factory from 1784 to 1796.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most common piece offered to the china hunter
+in New England is what is known as the willow-pattern
+ware. It was made first by Thomas Turner, at Caughley,
+in 1780. He manufactured both pottery and porcelain.
+I often have wished that he had never invented
+that willow-pattern. I have had it thrust in my face
+for purchase until I could scarcely bear to look at it. I
+have had visions of dainty Bow, Bristol, and Plymouth
+china brought before me through vivid but uncertain
+description, only to come face to face with more
+printed willow-pattern. I should imagine that a large
+proportion of all that ever was made was sent to America.
+And it has been made in vast quantities, too, for
+it has been certainly the most popular pattern ever
+printed anywhere on stone-ware or porcelain. Mr. Jewitt
+says: “Early examples bearing the Caughley mark—the
+cups without handles and ribbed and finished precisely
+like the Oriental, are rare.” Of course they are,
+in England, but not in America; as the prices prove
+at the Governor Lyon sale. Old willow-pattern plates
+sold there for one dollar each.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pieces of willow-pattern ware are often of astounding
+age and fabulous value. Forty dollars is the favorite
+price that knowing country owners assert they can get
+in the city for their willow-pattern platters. I have a
+favorite formula which I always use in answer to these
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>aspiring traders—my “willow-pattern answer.” I reply,
+gravely, “Yes, that pattern is priceless.” It does
+not mean anything and it pleases them, and if you
+told them that the platter was worth about two or three
+dollars they would look upon you as a swindler. Modern
+willow-pattern ware is also offered at fancy valuations.
+I have never been able to decide whether an old
+farmer who brought two willow-ware plates about a year
+old to sell to me, assuring me (though they bore the visible
+mark and stamp of modern production) that “this
+old crockery had been in his fam’ly more’n a hundred
+year”—I have never decided whether that ingenuous
+bucolic were a deep-dyed swindler or the innocent tool
+of some crafty sharper. I answered him soberly with
+my patent “willow-pattern answer”—“That pattern is
+priceless,” and he went away hugging his antiques with
+delight. I have seen within a year at a well-known
+dealer’s in New York, a modern willow-pattern platter
+upon which was pasted this printed inscription: “This
+platter belonged to Miles Standish, and was often used
+by him, and is therefore very rare and of great historical
+value.” This was an auction label cut from the catalogue
+of a sale, and the dealer let it remain as a joke
+for the knowing ones, and possibly as a bait for the unsophisticated.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“The Broseley Blue Dragon” and the “Broseley
+Blue Canton” pieces and their imitations are frequently
+found. These patterns were also made at the Caughley
+or Salopian Works. The “cabbage leaf jugs” came
+from that manufactory.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>I have never been able to understand why the willow-pattern
+should have been so much more popular than
+the Blue Dragon. The latter is certainly very handsome
+and consistent, or rather congruous throughout,
+while the willow-pattern is neither “fish nor fowl nor
+good red herring”—it is not English, and it is certainly
+not wholly Oriental. The color is good, as was all blue
+at that time.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At a later date than the reign of Lowestoft on “company”
+dinner tables in New England, the fine “best tea
+china” of well-to-do people was English porcelain of copper-lustre
+and pink and green decoration. Many of
+these pretty lustre sets are still preserved and can be
+bought of country owners. A terrible blow has been
+dealt, however, to the desire to purchase such wares by
+the fact that modern reproductions showing equal beauty
+of color and similar designs have appeared in large
+numbers within the past two years. Pitchers of pottery,
+“prankt in faded antique dress” of light brown or pinkish
+purple lustres are now manufactured. They bear no
+marks and cannot be distinguished from the old ones—and
+are just as good, perhaps, for every one but a china
+hunter. The solid lustre teapots, sugar-boxes, and
+pitchers—copper-colored, brownish lustre or silver on a
+pottery ground, have not, so far as I know, been reproduced.
+On many pieces the lustre is diversified by a
+pretty design in white, sometimes in relief or by painted
+flowers. The finest old pitcher of this ware that I have
+ever seen bore a graceful embossed design which was
+decorated upon the highest reliefs in pink, green, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>gold lustre. This was positively affirmed to be part
+of the Mayflower cargo. Most of these lustre pieces
+are unmarked, hence it is impossible to assign them
+to any factory. A few of them, the clearest and purest
+in paste, and most delicate in decoration are New Hall,
+for I have plates so marked. The stamp is a cursive
+New Hall not enclosed in a ring. This stamp is not
+given in English books of stamps and marks. Mr. Jewitt
+says such pieces are rare in England. They certainly
+have not been rare in New England. Some of the lustre
+pieces may be assigned to Newcastle. The Woods also
+manufactured them, while at Shelton were made pieces
+with lustre borders and black printed designs signed
+“Bentley, Weare and Bourne, Engravers and Printers,
+Shelton, Staffordshire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have never seen a dinner set of lustre ware—only tea-sets,
+comprising usually a teapot, sugar-box, creamer,
+bowl, a dozen tea-plates (often of different design and
+paste), two cake-plates, a dozen cups and saucers, and
+sometimes a dozen little cup-plates. Salt-cellars, pepper-boxes,
+and mustard-pots of similar lustre are seen, and
+sometimes wine-glasses, or rather wine-cups—but never
+any of the pieces of dinner services. Pitchers appear in
+various sizes. The china is usually clear and fine in
+quality, but the design is often confused. A few punch-bowls
+of copper-lustre on coarse pottery have also been
+found in New England, but are curious rather than
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have never been able to add to my collection,
+through china hunting, but one piece of Worcester porcelain,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>the one shown on page <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>, nor have I ever
+seen in a country home a piece of Chelsea, Coalport,
+Pinxton, or Nantgawr porcelain, and but one set of
+Spode, which was seized from an English vessel by a
+Yankee privateersman in the war of 1812, and brought
+triumphantly into Salem Harbor. Nor, may I add, have
+I ever seen a piece of pottery or porcelain of Continental
+manufacture, save Delft. For any porcelain save
+that made in China and England, American collectors
+must turn to china dealers.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>VII.<br> LIVERPOOL AND OTHER PRINTED WARE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>At the end of the past and beginning of the present
+century, great numbers of cream-colored pottery
+pitchers and mugs were printed in England with
+various designs and were sent to the United States for
+sale. These pieces were advertised in early Federal
+days, and are known as “yellow ware” and Liverpool
+ware, and are found in seaport towns on the Atlantic
+coast, especially in New England. Many bore mottoes,
+inscriptions, likenesses, and views relating to America
+and the celebrated Americans of the time, and thus
+form interesting mementos of the wars of the Revolution
+and of 1812. I have never seen a Liverpool pitcher
+in an inland country home, nor have I ever had one offered
+to me for sale in an inland town, either in a private
+home or an antique shop. The reasons for this are
+very simple: many of them were brought to America
+by Yankee sailors and sailing-masters who lived, as a
+rule, in seaport towns, and importations of these pitchers
+were not transported inland in ante-railroad days with
+the facility and safety that we find possible nowadays;
+and, best reason of all, nine-tenths of them with their
+ornamentation of ships and brigs and ropes and anchors
+were made to tickle the fancy of a seafaring man, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>did not appeal to the sentiment of a land-lubber of a
+farmer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is always a great delight to the inland-dwelling
+and novelty-seeking china hunter when she enters a
+low, single-storied seaside home, and spies on the mantelpiece
+a creamy Naval or Sailor pitcher flanked by
+a carved Indian idol and an elaborate model of the
+“Nimble Nine-pence,” the “Belisarius,” or the “Three
+Wives” (named by one stanch old widower after he
+was married to wife number four). Her joy is, as a rule,
+quickly turned to lamentation, for the housewife who
+values her Liverpool pitcher enough to place it on her
+parlor mantel, will never be “willing to part with it.”
+And here let me render my thanks to the American
+merchant service. Blessings on those dead and gone
+old seafaring Yankees who risked their lives on the
+stormy seas and brought home “behind their wooden
+walls” the variety and wealth of china and crockery
+that have descended to us, a pathetic reminder of the
+weary watch on deck and the homesick hours in cabin
+or forecastle.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few Liverpool plates with Masonic designs are
+found, and some teapots, but the majority of Liverpool
+ware that was imported to this country was in the form
+of mugs and what are known as “watermelon” pitchers.
+I know of one great yellow ware cheese-dish in Newport—a
+curious stand or frame in which a whole cheese two
+feet in diameter could be placed upright on its edge and
+thus served and cut on the table; but such pieces are
+exceptional.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>I am impressed when looking over the lists of sales
+and the catalogues of existing collections in England,
+that china collectors find in America more, cheaper, and
+more varied specimens of Liverpool wares, especially
+those bearing transfer prints, than can be found in England.
+They abound in American antique shops. Even
+the rarest and most interesting of all—prints on tiles,
+pitchers, and teapots bearing the mark of Sadler—are
+often discovered here. A whole set of Sadler’s tiles was
+taken from an old colonial house in Newport.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Previous to the Revolutionary War no porcelain or
+pottery was made specially for America, or, at any rate,
+none with special designs; but after we became a separate
+nation the English potters made much china and
+crockery for the American market, and made patterns
+for individual purchasers as well. Washington and
+Franklin were the American names best known in England
+previous to the year 1800; and I have never seen
+Liverpool pieces that could be assigned to an earlier
+date of manufacture than 1800 that bore the names even
+of any other Revolutionary heroes or statesmen, except,
+possibly, two pitchers decorated with battle-scenes,
+which are entitled respectively, “Death of Warren” and
+“Death of Montgomery;” a pitcher with a portrait of
+Adams, and one mug printed with the name and portrait
+of John Hancock. Englishmen had vague ideas of
+the names of our States as well, for Boston and “Tenasee”
+often appear on these wares in the list of the thirteen
+States.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The number of stars depicted upon the American
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>flag or shield on these and Staffordshire pieces is often
+held up as ample testimony to the date of the piece.
+Such reasoning is, of course, absurd. English engravers
+and potters were as ignorant about the number of States
+as they were about the names of the States, and might
+easily have given fifteen stars when there were only
+thirteen States, or clung to the number thirteen long
+after we had twenty States. I have seen several designs
+with the United States flag bearing twelve and even
+nine stars.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many of these pitchers are decorated with designs relating
+to the character, life, and death of Washington,
+and such are known as Washington pitchers. A list
+of the prints upon these pitchers is given in Chapter
+XIII., devoted to the china commemorative of Washington.
+These pitchers bear portraits and sentiments,
+verses or inscriptions eulogizing the virtues and bravery
+of the “glorious American,” or indicative of our national
+loss, and grief at his death. The lines, “Deafness to the
+ear that will patiently hear, and dumbness to the tongue
+that will utter a calumny against the immortal Washington,”
+were much favored and printed by English potters,
+and were placed on pitchers and mugs of many sizes and
+shapes. The legend fails to tell, however, the awful fate
+which should fall on the hand which limned the senile,
+feeble, forlorn caricatures of the face of Washington
+which usually appear in company with the lines, and
+make us suspect intentional malice in the British artist.
+These absurd likenesses vary as much as did the canvas
+portraits of the Father of His Country at the recent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>Centennial Loan Collection at the Metropolitan Opera
+House in New York, and in some cases bear no resemblance
+whatever to the well-known benign countenance,
+and are evidently a portrait of some English general
+falsely labelled Washington.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<img src='images/i_155.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>An English Notion of Washington.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is a print found on cream-colored teapots and
+plates and jugs that look like Liverpool ware, which is
+sometimes called “Washington and Martha Drinking
+Tea,” by American dealers who assert that the two figures
+in the out-of-doors tea-party are intended for the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>General and his “lady,” as he called her. The man in
+this print certainly bears a marked though somewhat
+mincing likeness to our first President, while the fact
+that the servant who approaches with a teakettle is a
+negro, is offered as conclusive proof that the scene is
+laid in America; and indeed, I have seen one teapot
+upon which was pasted a paper label with the words,
+“Scene at Mount Vernon, George and Martha Washington
+Drinking Tea.” Of course every china student,
+and indeed every person of art education, knows that
+the figures of negro servants appear in many English
+tea-party prints of that date, in such, for instance, as the
+watch-back of Battersea enamel engraved by Richard
+Hancock, of the Worcester China Works, and in the
+transfer prints by the same artist, shown on page <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>,
+Vol. I., of Jewitt’s “Ceramic Art in Great Britain.” The
+pieces bearing this “George Washington” print that I
+have seen, bore no stamp to show the place of manufacture;
+but there is a tea-canister numbered G 252 in
+the Museum of Practical Geology, printed with this
+scene, which has the impressed mark “Wedgwood.”
+It also has on the other side of the canister the same
+group of shepherds and sheep that I have seen on
+many pieces in America. I am afraid we cannot claim
+this as a Washington print. It was engraved when
+Washington was a struggling surveyor, when no Englishmen,
+and few Americans, even knew his name. Miss
+Meteyard says that this group is from one of Jenssen’s
+printed enamels, and she gives an illustration of
+it on page <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, Vol. II., of her “Life of Wedgwood.”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>I only mention this among the Liverpool prints, and
+as possibly eligible to the Washington list, in order to
+prove (to make an Irish bull) that it is certainly not
+the one and probably not the other. It is quite as interesting,
+however, to the china collector (if not to the
+historical student or the relic hunter) as an example of
+Hancock’s designs for transfer-printing; and when one
+of these teapots is offered for $1.50 (as I have had one
+in a New York shop within a year), it is well for any
+collector to buy it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I will say here that these cream-ware pitchers are not
+from Liverpool factories alone, they are from various Staffordshire
+potteries, but all cream-colored printed pitchers
+are generally known in America by the name of Liverpool
+ware. Some, of course, are unmistakably so, for
+they bear the various marks of the Herculaneum Pottery,
+or the figure of the bird which was the crest of the
+arms of Liverpool—the liver or lever. A special design
+or mark of the American eagle with the words “Herculaneum
+Pottery, Liverpool,” seems to have been made
+for pieces intended for the American market, and often
+appears upon them.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The heroes and victories of the American navy form
+frequent decorations of the specimens of this printed
+pottery that are found in America. The first Naval
+pitchers bore the design of a ship or a frigate under
+full sail, with the American flag and the words, “Success
+to the Infant Navy of America.” These were
+printed to commemorate Truxton’s capture of the
+French frigates Insurgente and La Vengeance while
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>he was commander of the Constellation during our little
+marine war with France in 1799. This capture was
+honored in a popular song called “Truxton’s Victory,”
+and was as great a source of delight to Englishmen as
+to Americans. Truxton received from England many
+tokens of esteem, including a service of silver plate
+worth over $3,000. Long and bitterly during the constant
+naval defeats of the English in the War of 1812
+must those British merchants have regretted that silver
+token of encouragement to the American Navy. A gold
+medal was ordered by Congress to be struck in honor of
+this victory, as was also done in honor of each of the
+naval heroes of the war of 1812. And many pitchers
+and mugs were decorated with their portraits and names
+in order to commemorate their victories.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It seems odd that English potters should have made
+so many pitchers bearing testimony to the victories of
+their late enemies, unless they were ordered by American
+dealers specially for the American market; but I
+have never seen anything to prove that such orders were
+given.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many pieces bear the portrait of Perry and the words
+of his famous dispatch, “We have met the enemy and
+they are ours.” I never look at a Perry pitcher without
+thinking with interest and pleasure of this brave young
+captain, who was only twenty-seven years old when he
+achieved his famous victory. He fought the fierce
+naval battle clad in his sailor’s suit, but changed at
+the last to his full-dress uniform in order to receive the
+surrendering English officer with full dignity. Nor do I
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>ever see the jolly round face of Hull on pitcher or mug
+without thinking of his comical appearance during the
+naval battle between the Constitution and the Guerrière,
+in which he won such deserved honors. Hull was very
+fat, and being somewhat dandified wore very tight
+breeches. When, in that fierce contest, he gave his first
+roar of command to the gunners, “Now, boys, pour into
+them—Free Trade and Seamen’s Rights!” he bent over
+twice in his intense excitement and split his tight
+breeches from waistband to knee. He was more of a
+soldier than a dandy, however, for he finished the battle
+and captured the English ship in that “undress uniform.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of course the pitchers decorated with American subjects
+are most interesting to Americans, but there are
+many other Liverpool pitchers found in New England,
+which bear, instead of American heroes and battles, such
+lines as these:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Dear Tom this brown jug</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Which now foams with new ale,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Out of which I will drink</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>To sweet Nan of the Vale.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another has the jovial inscription, “One Pot more—and
+then—why then—Another Pot of course.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And this sharp warning is given to those who would
+wish to drink and not to pay:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Customers came and I did trust ’em,</div>
+      <div class='line'>So I lost my money and my custom,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And to lose both it grieves me sore,</div>
+      <div class='line'>So I am resolved to trust no more.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>A few pieces bear less decorous and elegant verses, such
+as the mug deriding the Established Church, labelled,
+“Tythe in Kind or the Sow’s Revenge.” A clergyman
+bent on collecting tithes is being attacked by a sow in a
+pigsty. The farmer’s family are laughing while the
+parson is crying out:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The fattest pig it is my due;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Oh! save me from the wicked sow.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another pitcher has a fling at the Romish Church, for
+it bears a likeness of his Satanic Majesty and of a priest,
+with the words,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“When Pope absolves</div>
+      <div class='line'>The Devil smiles.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have seen in America a number of drinking-mugs of
+cream-colored ware, which may properly be spoken of
+here, though it is doubtful whether many of them were
+made in Liverpool. They have the raised figure of a
+toad or frog placed inside, with the pleasingly jocose intention
+of surprising and scaring the drinker, who would
+fancy as the ugly head rose out of the decreasing liquor
+that it was a real batrachian climbing up the side to
+jump down his throat. One of these mugs had the
+frog tinted a dull green and brown, entirely too natural
+and life-like in color to prove pleasant or appetizing.
+Another two-handled Frog mug was of coarse white
+ware, unpainted, and had an exceedingly modern look.
+This was probably Newcastle ware. The price asked
+for these in “antique shops” is usually three or four dollars
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>apiece. I have seen none with mottoes as has the
+one numbered S 17, in the Museum of Practical Geology.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Though malt and venom</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Seem united,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Don’t break my pot</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Nor be affrighted.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>These Frog mugs are usually large in diameter, and
+are sometimes decorated externally with designs of
+ships or naval heroes. The frog’s appearance in sight
+would then prove more effectually terrifying than if the
+drinker were warned by an instructive motto of the
+figured reptile within.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another agreeable old English practical joke is in the
+shape of puzzle jugs, specimens of which exist in England,
+but have been rarely found in America. They
+were made in Liverpool and Staffordshire in the seventeenth
+and eighteenth century, and in salt-glazed stone-ware
+at Nottingham in the eighteenth and nineteenth
+centuries. They were so constructed that when lifted
+to the lips they emptied by secret passages their liquid
+contents over the face and breast of the drinker. Sometimes
+there were three spouts from the rim. If the
+drinker covered two of the spouts with his fingers, he
+could drink from the third. This motto is on a puzzle
+jug of earthenware, of Liverpool make, in the collection
+of George M. Wales, Esq., of Boston:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Here, gentlemen, come try y<sup>r</sup> skill;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Ill hold a wager, if you will,</div>
+      <div class='line'>That you don’t drink this liq<sup>r</sup> all</div>
+      <div class='line'>Without you spill or let some fall.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>Another rhyming inscription reads:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“From mother earth I took my birth,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Then form’d a Jug by Man,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And now I stand here filled with good cheer—</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Taste of me if you can.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another short invitation reads:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“This ale is good, taste.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And when you tasted, in good faith, you received a beery
+shower-bath, which was no doubt considered very funny
+by eighteenth-century Englishmen.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On another is written:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Mathew the V 16.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>—not a very appropriate text-reference.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Still another rhyming challenge reads thus:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“A Crown Ile bet</div>
+      <div class='line'>That None can get</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>The ale that’s in this Jug,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Nor drink his fill</div>
+      <div class='line'>Without he spill</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And shall not use a plug.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A puzzle jug in the possession of the Vintners’ Company
+is in the shape of a milkmaid bearing a pail. The
+pail is set on a swivel, and when the drinker tries to
+swallow the liquor, the pail sends its contents over his
+chest.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>
+<img src='images/i_163.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Masonic Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Cream-ware pitchers bearing Masonic emblems are frequently
+found, usually having also the name of the person
+by whom they were ordered, or for whom they were
+made. These rather egotistical lines were prime favorites
+among these pitcher-buying Masons:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The world is in pain</div>
+      <div class='line'>Our Secret to gain,</div>
+      <div class='line'>But still let them wonder &#38; gaze on,</div>
+      <div class='line'>For they ne’er can divine</div>
+      <div class='line'>The word nor the sign</div>
+      <div class='line'>Of a Free and Accepted Mason.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another much-used set of Masonic verses runs thus:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“We help the poor in time of need</div>
+      <div class='line'>The naked cloath, the Hungry feed;</div>
+      <div class='line in2'><span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>’Tis our Foundation stone.</div>
+      <div class='line'>We build upon the noblest plan,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Where Friendship rivets man to man</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And makes us all as one.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>And a third:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“To judge with candour and to speak no wrong,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The feeble to support against the strong,</div>
+      <div class='line'>To soothe the wretched and the poor to feed,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Will cover many an idle, foolish deed.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some of these Masonic pitchers are of enormous size,
+as if the buyers wished as much of a pitcher as possible
+for their money. Many of them were printed at the
+Worcester factory. I have also seen some fine designs
+that had been drawn with a pen by hand in mineral
+colors and then fired in. Pitchers and mugs of Chinese
+porcelain are also seen with decorations of Masonic emblems
+and mottoes.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sailor pitchers are found in comparatively large numbers,
+with touching prints of a sailor bidding an affectionate
+farewell to his lass, under a flag and over an anchor,
+accompanied by such appropriate verses as the following:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“When this you see</div>
+      <div class='line'>Pray think of me</div>
+      <div class='line'>And keep me in your mind;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Let all the world</div>
+      <div class='line'>Say what they will,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Think of me as you find.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Or this legend, a misquotation from Charles Dibdin’s
+song:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“D’ye see a cherub sits smiling aloft</div>
+      <div class='line'>To keep watch o’er the life of poor Jack.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>This is often accompanied by the figure of a fat little
+cherub perched in the rigging of a ship. These Sailor
+pitchers were brought home frequently at the end of a
+voyage as gifts for a sweetheart or a wife, as is plainly
+seen by these verses printed with a picture called “The
+Sailor’s Return”:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“I now the joys of Life renew</div>
+      <div class='line'>From care and trouble free,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And find a wife who’s kind and true</div>
+      <div class='line'>To drive life’s cares away.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>And also this tender sentiment:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The troubled main, the wind &#38; rain,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>My ardent passion prove</div>
+      <div class='line'>Lashed to the helm, should seas o’erwhelm</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>I’ll think on thee, my love.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Or these lines:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Kindly take this gift of mine,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The gift and giver I hope is thine,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And tho’ the value is but small</div>
+      <div class='line'>A loving heart is worth it all.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is a curious fact that feminine owners are exceptionally
+unwilling “to part with” these Sailor pitchers.
+A halo of past romance, of sentimental fancy,
+surrounds the yellow ware love token that “Uncle Eben
+brought from Injy to Aunt Hannah,” or “my grandpa
+got painted in Chiny for my grandma when he was
+courtin’ her” (for even these staidly sombre English
+pitchers are gloriously Oriental in country owners’ eyes).
+This latent longing for sentiment, this tender sympathy
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>with youthful love and affection, lies hidden deep in
+every woman’s heart, no matter what her age; and, in
+the dull, repressed life of many New England homes,
+finds expression in a stolid clinging to the only visible
+token of a love and lovers long since dead. One stout
+old woman, with calm face but suspiciously shaky voice
+and hands, brought out for our admiring view, in company
+with a crimson silk crêpe shawl, a pair of small
+Liverpool pitchers printed with a spirited marine view
+of a full-rigged ship, the names John Daggett and Eliza
+Maxom, and this doggerel rhyme:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“No more I’ll roam,</div>
+      <div class='line'>I’ll stay at home,</div>
+      <div class='line'>To sail no more</div>
+      <div class='line'>From shore to shore,</div>
+      <div class='line'>But with my wife</div>
+      <div class='line'>Lead a happy, peaceful life.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Who gave you them pretty picture pitchers, Grandma?”
+said the little child who was clinging to her skirts.
+“John Daggett ordered ’em painted for him an’ me in
+Liverpool on the last trip he ever went on. He was the
+han’somest man ye ever see! He died on the v’yage
+home, an’ yer Granpa, he was a-seafarin’ then, he stopped
+an’ got ’em on the way back, an’ brought ’em home ter
+me.” Alas! poor John Daggett! your thoughtful gifts
+of love furnished forth another wedding-feast with the
+considerate sailor-companion as groom and comforter.
+But though passed to “a happy, peaceful life” on a far-distant
+shore, you are not forgotten, but through the
+reminiscent power of your last gift, live a tender idealized
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>memory, a dream of eternal unchanging youth and
+beauty, in your dear lass’s thoughts. Your two Liverpool
+pitchers have never been thoughtlessly or carelessly
+used in your shipmate’s, in “Grandpa’s,” home; they
+have lain for half a century unscratched, unnicked, unbroken,
+true cinerary urns of vanished hopes and promises,
+wrapped in the crimson crêpe shawl in the deep
+drawer of a high chest in your old sweetheart’s “spare-room.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In this case we encountered a sentiment which we
+have met more than once—a willingness on the part of
+the owner, when she found we admired the piece, to let
+us have it, since we would cherish it safe and unharmed,
+rather than to give it or leave it to relatives who had
+openly derided it or called it a worthless old thing. As
+this New England sentimentalist expressed it, while she
+slowly folded the shawl around the beloved pitchers,
+“I’d almost ruther let ye have ’em, ye seem to set such
+store by ’em, than ter leave ’em ter Asa’s wife, she aint
+brought up the children extry careful, an’ I know they’d
+smash ’em in no time, or put ’em in hot water or knock
+the nose off. Come again next year an’ I’ll think it
+over, I hate ter part with ’em just yet after I’ve kep’ ’em
+fer fifty-two year an’ three months, but I’ll see.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Various prints that are of more interest to Englishmen
+than to Americans are seen on these Liverpool pitchers;
+such is the view on the large mug owned by an old
+Newport resident, which bears the inscription, “An East
+View of Liverpool Lighthouse and Signals on Bilston
+Hill, 1788.” In the centre of the design is a lighthouse
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>with forty-four signals around it. Each signal is numbered,
+and below is a key with the names of the vessels
+and their owners. This print also occurs on plates. In
+the days before the telegraph Liverpool merchants were
+wont to go down to the riverside, about two or three
+hours before high tide, to see whether there were any
+flags hoisted on the lighthouse poles, as was always
+done when a vessel came in sight. Thus were owners
+notified a few hours in advance of the approach of their
+craft to port.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another mug owned by the same gentleman has a
+map with a caricature of Napoleon Bonaparte standing
+with one foot on Germany. The other foot, having
+been placed on England, has been cut off by John Bull,
+who says, “I ax pardon, Master Boney, but, as we say,
+Pares of Pompey, we keep this spot to ourselves. You
+must not dance here, Master Boney.” Napoleon is saying,
+“You tam John Bull, you have spoil my dance,
+you have ruin my projects.” A second Bonaparte
+mug has a red print of John Bull sitting upon a pedestal,
+inscribed “The British Constitution.” He looks
+across the Channel at Napoleon, who is weeping and
+crying out, “O! my poor Crazy Gun Boats, why did I
+venture so far from home,” while John Bull says, “I
+told you they would all be swamp’d, but you would be
+so Damned Obstinate.” The inscription is “Patience
+on a Monument smiling at Grief,” with this distich:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The Mighty Chief with fifty thousand Men</div>
+      <div class='line'>Marched to the Coast and March’d back again.</div>
+      <div class='line in10'>Ha! Ha! Ha!”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>A third Bonaparte mug is thus described in <cite>Notes
+and Queries</cite>:</p>
+
+<p class='c020'>“Under a trophy of arms are figures of John Bull and Napoleon.
+John Bull is in the act of striking his opponent with his right
+fist a severe blow on the nose; the nether end of Napoleon is
+at the same time in collision with sturdy John Bull’s left boot.
+Inscription, ‘See here John Bull drubbing Bonaparte!’ On
+either side of the picture we have,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c021'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>‘What! to conquer all England how dares he pretend,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>This ambitious but vain undertaker,</div>
+      <div class='line'>When he knows to his cost that where Britons defend,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>He’s unable to conquer one Acre!’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c020'>‘If your beggarly soldiers come among us, they’ll soon have
+enough of it; and, damn me, if any ten of you shall have
+my person or property—so be off!’ ‘Damn ye! you black-hearted,
+treacherous Corsican! if you were not such a little
+bit of a fellow in spite of your large cocked hat, I’d crack
+your skull in an instant with my fist.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>Another bears these short and pointed lines:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“May England’s oak</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Produce the bark</div>
+      <div class='line'>To tan the hide</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Of Bonaparte,”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>which, though shaky in rhyme, are certainly more effective
+than the illiterate, profane, and overlong inscriptions
+on other Bonaparte mugs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A well-engraved and well-designed Liverpool print is
+that of “The Farmers’ Arms,” with armorial design ingeniously
+formed of hay-rakes, scythes, flails, ploughs,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>churns, sickles, etc., the mottoes being “In God we
+Trust,” and “Industry produceth Wealth.” On the
+other side are these verses:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line in4'>“May the mighty and great</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>Roll in splendor and state,</div>
+      <div class='line'>I envy them not, I declare it,</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>I eat my own Lamb,</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>My own chicken and ham,</div>
+      <div class='line'>I shear my own sheep and I wear it.</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>I have lawns, I have Bowers,</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>I have Fruits, I have Flowers,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The Lark is my morning Alarmer;</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>So you Jolly Dogs now,</div>
+      <div class='line in4'>Here’s God bless the plow—</div>
+      <div class='line'>Long life and content to the Farmer.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>One of these really artistic Farmer pitchers with this
+inscription and design sold at an auction in New York
+for only seven dollars and a half, in spite of the catalogue’s
+alluring description of its “having once belonged
+to Robert Burns.” A similar one, numbered S 32, is in
+the Museum of Practical Geology in London, and is
+also described in Mayer’s “Art of Pottery and History
+of its Progress in Liverpool.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Besides the design of the “Farmers’ Arms” is found
+that of the “Blacksmiths’ Arms,” with the motto “By
+Hammer and Hand all Arts do Stand;” the “Bucks’
+Arms,” with stag and huntsmen, and the motto “Freedom
+with Innocence;” the “Bakers’ Arms,” and the
+motto, “Praise God for All;” the “Hatters’ Arms,” with
+the motto, “We Assist Each Other in Time of Need.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>Many of these Liverpool pitchers have an individual
+interest connected with their original manufacture.
+They were the favorite expression of respect of ships
+crews to their commanders, of workmen to their employers.
+Such is the beautiful pitcher owned by A. M.
+Prentiss, Esq., bearing the motto, “Success to Henry
+Prentiss and his Employ, 1789.” Henry Prentiss was
+a Revolutionary hero, a member of the Tea Party, a
+wealthy Boston merchant, a large cotton manufacturer,
+a successful horticulturist, a man whose name brings to
+old residents of Boston and Cambridge the memory of
+many a story of his shrewdness and intelligence.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>S. Yendell, great-grandfather of the present Governor
+of Massachusetts, was similarly honored by a mammoth
+presentation pitcher, which is owned by Mrs. Russel, of
+Cambridge. It bears a print of the Columbia, on which
+ship Mr. Yendell sailed on the famous voyage when the
+Columbia River was discovered, in 1791. That does
+not seem very long ago! Mr. Yendell lived till 1867.
+To be sure, he was then the oldest man in Boston,
+ninety-seven years of age.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The art of transfer-printing on pottery and porcelain,
+by which all these pieces are decorated, has completely
+revolutionized the business of china decoration in England,
+and cheapened the price of decorated crockery, as
+did the invention of types and printing cheapen and
+multiply books. John Sadler, who invented the process
+of transfer-printing, was originally an engraver.
+He had his attention first called to the possibility and
+desirability of china-printing by a very trifling incident—by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>seeing some children when playing “doll’s house”
+paste on broken pieces of crockery, pictures cut from
+waste-paper prints which he had thrown away.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>For years he and his partner, Guy Green, managed to
+keep his invention enough of a secret, so that he printed
+not only for Liverpool works, but for many others.
+Much of the Wedgwood Queens-ware was stamped by
+him, being made at the Wedgwood factory, carried in
+wagons over bad roads to Liverpool, and, after being
+printed, returned in the same manner to Burslem to be
+fired. In spite of all this manipulation and transportation
+it could be sold cheaply, for Sadler’s tariff of prices
+for transfer-printing was very low. “For printing a
+table and tea-service of two hundred and fifty pieces for
+David Garrick, £8 6s. 1½d. Twenty-five dozen half-tiles
+printing and colouring, £1 5s.” These printed half-tiles
+were sold for 2s. 6d. a dozen, while the black printed
+whole tiles brought only 5s. a dozen.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sadler’s process was very simple. He printed on
+paper with an ordinary copper or steel plate, then laid
+the print while wet on the glazed piece of pottery.
+Then, upon pressing it, the ink was transferred to the
+pottery piece, and afterward burnt in. Nearly all these
+wares were printed in black, but some have the prints in
+blue, and some in vermilion. Others, printed in black
+outlines, are filled in by hand with various colors, sometimes
+with very good effect.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Hancock and Holdship followed quickly in Sadler’s
+wake, in printing on pottery and porcelain in Worcester,
+and there bat-printing was introduced at a later date.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>In this process linseed-oil was used instead of ink, and
+the oil design was printed on a “bat,” or sheet of prepared
+glue and treacle, which, being pliable, adapted
+itself readily to the shape of the pottery article to be
+printed, and transferred to it the oil lines of the design.
+Powdered color was dusted on these oil lines, the superfluous
+color being removed by cotton wool, and then
+fired in. Engravings for bat-printing were usually in
+stipple work, and the prints can readily be recognized
+and distinguished from those of transfer-printing.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is interesting to us to know that an American who
+seemed to have a hand in every invention of his day,
+had also his little share in the suggestion, if not in
+the discovery, of printing upon pottery and porcelain.
+Benjamin Franklin wrote thus from London, November
+3, 1773, to some unknown person:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“I was much pleased with the specimens you so
+kindly sent me of your new art of engraving. That on
+the china is admirable. No one would suppose it anything
+but painting. I hope you meet with all the encouragement
+you merit, and that the invention will be
+what inventions seldom are, profitable to the inventor.
+Now, we are speaking of inventions, I know not who pretends
+to that of copper-plate engraving for earthen ware,
+and I am not disposed to contest the honor with anybody,
+as the improvement in taking impressions not directly
+from the plate, but from printed paper, applicable
+by that means to other than flat forms, is far beyond my
+first idea. But I have reason to apprehend that I might
+have given the hint on which that improvement was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>made; for, more than twenty years since, I wrote to Dr.
+Mitchell from America proposing to him the printing of
+square tiles for ornamenting chimneys, from copper-plates,
+describing the manner in which I thought it
+might be done, and advising the borrowing from the
+booksellers the plates that had been used in a thin folio
+called ‘Moral Virtue Delineated,’ for that purpose.
+The Dutch Delft-ware tiles were much used in America,
+which are only or chiefly Scripture histories wretchedly
+scrawled. I wished to have those moral prints, which
+were originally taken from Horace’s poetical figures, introduced
+in tiles, which, being about our chimneys are
+constantly in the eyes of the children when by the fireside,
+might give parents an opportunity in explaining
+them to express moral sentiments, and I gave expectations
+of great demands for them if executed. Dr. Mitchell
+wrote me in answer that he had communicated my
+scheme to several of the artists in the earthen way about
+London, who rejected it as impracticable; and it was
+not till some years after that I first saw an enamelled
+snuff-box, which I was sure was from a copper-plate,
+though the curvature of the form made me wonder how
+the impression was taken.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sadly and deprecatingly must “Poor Richard” have
+examined the printed tiles of John Sadler, for no “moral
+virtues delineated” thereon are depicted. He found,
+instead, the representation of such trivial and unmoral
+pastimes as dancing, beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, fortune-telling—the
+latter design being of an astrologer
+seated at a table telling the fortunes of two young women.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>One fair maid smiles with delighted anticipation as
+she receives a paper of prophecy inscribed “A brisk
+husband and son,” while the other poor creature is departing,
+shedding bitter tears of disappointment, with a
+similar paper bearing the depressing words, “Never to
+be married.” American children doubtless lost much desirable
+and laudable parental instruction when Franklin’s
+worthy scheme failed in execution, but they were also
+spared many a fireside lecture and nagging. How they
+would have come to hate the sight of those moral lesson
+tiles!</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And while I am speaking of transfer-printing, let me
+call attention to some pretty little ceramic relics of a
+quaint old-time fashion, that are sometimes overlooked by
+collectors—“mirror-knobs”—“Lookeing Glasse Nobs”
+I find them called in ante-Revolutionary advertisements.
+These knobs consisted usually of a painted or printed
+medallion, frequently enamelled on the metal, or on little
+oval porcelain placques or discs, which were then fastened
+in brass, gilt or silvered frames, and mounted on a
+long and strong screw or spike. Two of these knobs
+were screwed into the wall about a foot apart, so that the
+oval-framed medallions stood out two or three inches
+from the wall. The lower edge of a mirror or picture
+frame was allowed to rest on the iron screws behind
+these two ornamental heads. These mirror-knobs were
+also used to fasten back window curtains. The head of
+the mirror-knob was usually decorated by the process of
+transfer-printing; sentimental views of shepherds and
+shepherdesses, mincing heads of powdered French dames,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>and unintentionally funny likenesses of many of our
+Revolutionary heroes and statesmen. The portrait of
+Washington which was employed was fairly good; of
+Franklin in the fur-cap, quite well drawn; but the others
+that I have seen vied with one another in comical ugliness,
+save that of John Jay, always too fine in feature to
+be caricatured. In the Huntington collection in the
+Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, may be
+seen a few of these mirror-knobs with portraits of Franklin,
+John Jay, C. Thompson, W. H. Drayton, John Dickinson,
+S. Huntington, Major-General Gaines, and an exceptionally
+ugly one of H. Laurens, with a phenomenally
+attenuated neck, a mere bone of a neck. Often
+these little printed miniatures are in black and white,
+but more frequently they are printed in outline, and
+faintly and delicately colored. I wish I knew where
+they were made, and who ordered them and imported
+and sold them, and who drew them. I think that they
+were made in Worcester, not in Liverpool. Aged country
+people tantalizingly tell me of mirror-knobs made
+of discs with white raised heads and figures on blue
+grounds—Wedgwood medallions, were they not? But
+they have all vanished from my ken, even the printed
+knobs are now seldom seen. I know one drawer of an
+old dressing-case in quiet Hadley town that holds fifteen
+beautiful mirror-knobs, all whole, uncracked, unscratched;
+but you will never see them nor buy them.
+You might steal them, perhaps, if you only knew which
+elm-shaded house contained them—you might steal the
+whole dressing-case, indeed, if you were only quiet about
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>it, and you might walk the entire mile and a half of the
+beautiful main street with the stolen furniture on your
+back and meet not a soul to question or wonder.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of the same class and decoration and of the same
+materials were many dainty snuff-boxes and patch-boxes
+that were made and used in England and imported to
+America. The latter pretty trinkets were tiny oval or
+round boxes about an inch and a half or two inches in
+diameter, frequently made of fine Battersea enamel, or
+of china medallions set in silver or gilt frames. Within
+the lid was always found a little mirror, usually of polished
+steel, in which the fair owner might peep to freshly
+set or rearrange her coquettish patches. One patch-box
+I have bears this motto on the top:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Have Communion with few,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Be familiar with one,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Deal Justly with all,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Speak evil of None.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another has a more frivolous verse:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Within this Beauty views her face</div>
+      <div class='line'>And with the patch gives added grace.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Still another:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Love and Beauty conquer all,</div>
+      <div class='line in6'>Love to Beauty.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sometimes, as with the mirror-knobs, a little painting
+of shepherds and shepherdesses is set in the lid, and,
+with the jewelled and enamelled border, form a trifle
+dainty enough to rival any modern bonbonnières. These
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>patch-boxes and “Gum Patches,” or “Patches for
+ladies,” or “Face Patches,” were advertised freely in
+American newspapers for many years previous to the
+Revolution—as early, surely, as 1750 in the <cite>Boston Evening
+Post</cite>; and patches were universally worn by American
+beauties, as Whitefield and other pious travellers
+sadly deplored. “China Snuff Boxes” were offered for
+sale in the <cite>Boston Evening Post</cite> of April 16, 1773, were
+bought and filled with Kippen’s snuff, were lost on Boston
+streets, were advertised for reward in Boston papers,
+and no doubt proudly and ostentatiously carried by Boston
+beaux, as well as by Charleston macaronis. A few
+snuff-boxes of Battersea enamel still remain to show
+us how lovely they were, but the frail china ones have
+nearly all been destroyed, and when still existing are
+usually sadly cracked and disfigured. China and Battersea
+enamel “tooth-pick cases” were also imported and
+carried by Boston beaux.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But we must leave these dainty quaint trinkets and
+go back to the far less beautiful Liverpool pitchers.
+Though they have no great charm of color, shape, or
+design, and are, in fact, the least graceful and beautiful
+of all the old English wares commonly found in America,
+all the historical pitchers must certainly be of great
+interest to students of American history, as records and
+relics of the early days of the United States. As new
+pieces bearing hitherto unknown designs are constantly
+being found, they will form, in fact do now form, with
+the old blue Staffordshire plates, a valuable and lasting
+ceramic record of the early days of our nation.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>Let us hope that they will be carefully preserved by all
+who are fortunate enough to own them; and, if they are
+not placed in the safe keeping of museums or cabinet
+collections, at least be kept from the debasing uses and
+positions in which I have seen them in country homes.
+My patriotic heart has thrilled with wounded indignation
+to see mugs and pitchers bearing such honored and
+venerated names and faces, battered, nicked, and handleless,
+despitefully used to hold herb-teas, soft-soap, horse-liniment,
+or tooth-brushes. I saw one Washington
+pitcher, noseless and fairly crenated with nicks, shamefully
+degraded to use as a jug to carry to the hen-house
+the hot water with which to prepare the chicken-food;
+while another contained a villainous-looking purple-black
+liquid compound which the owner explained was
+“Pa’s hair-restorer.” In spite of careless use, however,
+many specimens still exist, for “antique” dealers find
+them for their shops. In one Newport bric-a-brac shop
+I saw, in the summer of 1891, at least fifteen Liverpool
+pitchers varying in price from five dollars for a small
+Sailor pitcher to thirty-five dollars for a fine perfect
+Apotheosis Pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Fortunate is the household, and happy and proud
+should be its members, that possesses one of these historic
+relics. I know of no better way to impress upon a
+child, or to recall to a grown person, the lesson of bravery,
+courage, and love of country, than by showing him
+the likenesses of Perry, Decatur, and Lawrence on mug
+or pitcher, and telling to him their story, and reading or
+reciting the old ballads and songs written about them.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>Nor do I know of any more noble example of Christian
+piety than that of the brave Macdonough, whose name
+is so often seen on these pieces of old English ware.
+Before the battle of Lake Champlain, when the deck of
+the Saratoga was cleared for action, he knelt upon the
+deck with his officers and men around him, asked Almighty
+God for aid, and committed the issue of the
+contest into His hands. Let us echo the toast which
+was given to him at a large dinner in Plattsburg, shortly
+after his victory. “The pious and brave Macdonough,
+the professor of the religion of the Redeemer—preparing
+for action, he called on God, who forsook him not in the
+hour of danger. <cite>May he not be forgotten by his country.</cite>”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Let our respect and affection for our ancestors’ adored
+heroes save to our descendants the Liverpool pitchers
+bearing such honored historical names.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>VIII.<br> ORIENTAL CHINA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>In that delightful and much-quoted book, “The
+China Hunters’ Club,” the final chapter is devoted
+to a most humorous description of the disbandment
+and ignominious extinction of the club through a fierce
+quarrel over a disputed piece of china—whether it were
+Chinese or Lowestoft. Could I, as did Charlie Baker
+in that story, label both my china of like character and
+this chapter “Canton-Lowestoft,” it would fitly express
+my feelings when I attempt to judge and write upon
+the old pieces of hard-paste porcelain, so common in
+America, called Oriental, Canton, India, or Lowestoft,
+according to the belief or traditions of each individual
+owner. I cannot give any positive rules by which to
+classify this china, nor any by which to judge of independent
+specimens. If I followed my own convictions
+and my own researches on this puzzling subject, I should
+in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred firmly state the
+disputed piece of porcelain to be Chinese, and I could
+quote in support of my views such an authority as
+Franks, the great china collector, who says that,</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“India china (that is, china made for the East India
+Company for European trade—what Jacquemart calls
+<i><span lang="fr">porcelaine des Indes</span></i>) has on one hand been attributed to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>Japan, and on the other, by a still more singular hallucination
+been ascribed to Lowestoft.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>He also says, “There can be no doubt that there was
+a considerable manufactory of porcelain at Lowestoft,
+but this was of the usual English soft-paste. The evidence
+of hard-paste having been made there is of the
+most slender kind.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Owens, in his “Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in
+Bristol,” says, with decision:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“There cannot be any doubt that hard porcelain, vitrified
+and translucent, was never manufactured from the
+raw materials, native kaolin and petunste, at any other
+locality in England than Plymouth and Bristol. The
+tradition that such ware was made at Lowestoft in 1775
+rests upon evidence too slight to be worthy of argument.
+The East India Company imported into England large
+quantities of porcelain for sale; and in the provincial
+journals of the last century advertisements of sales by
+auction of East India china occur frequently. This particular
+ware, which is very plentiful, even at the present
+day, and which has of late acquired the reputation of
+having been made at Lowestoft, was simply, in form and
+ornamentation, only a reproduction by the Chinese of
+English earthenware models. The Chinese do not use
+saucers, butter-boats, and numbers of other articles after
+the European fashion, and the agents in China were
+compelled to furnish a model for every piece of ware ordered.
+These models the Asiatic workmen have copied
+only too faithfully. The ill-drawn roses, the coarsely painted
+baskets of flowers, the rude borders of lines and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>dots are literally copied from the inartistic painting on
+the English earthenware of by-gone days.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>He also says, “It is painful to see in public and private
+collections examples of Oriental ware labelled
+Lowestoft, simply because, though hard porcelain, they
+bear English armorial coats and initials. Many porcelain
+punch-bowls are to be found in seaport towns with
+names and portraits of ships and very early dates.
+Those bowls are often attributed to the works at Liverpool
+and Lowestoft. The officers of the East India
+Company’s ships were accustomed to take out English
+Delft bowls and get them reproduced in common porcelain
+in China for their merchant friends, and many a
+relic now prized as of home manufacture was procured in
+this manner.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Prime writes more cautiously, after describing the
+pieces:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“These are supposed to have been made on special
+patterns furnished to the Oriental factories by the East
+India Company. They resemble European work in the
+decoration, and many of the Lowestoft paintings seem
+to be imitations of these. It is, therefore, necessary
+to be very cautious in classifying wares as of Lowestoft
+fabric.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And again he says, “The presence of a single decoration
+like a flower or sprig of flowers in European style
+on porcelain is not a sufficient reason for classing the
+porcelain as European. Many such pieces were printed
+in Japan and in China. And others are possibly the
+work of decorators in Holland.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>Mr. Elliott says of Lowestoft in America:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“It seems certain that this kind of decoration was
+done at Lowestoft; it is equally certain that it was also
+done in China, from designs sent out there. I have myself
+seen pieces so decorated which were imported direct
+from China to New Haven about the end of the last
+century.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the other hand, that standard authority, Mr. Chaffers,
+author of “Marks and Monograms,” says that “the
+question about hard-paste porcelain having been made
+at Lowestoft is placed beyond dispute upon the best
+authority. It was introduced about 1773,” and he offers
+a mass of testimony to prove his statements.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Owens fancies that sailing-masters took out English
+Delft bowls to be reproduced in China; Mr. Marryatt
+and Mr. Franks, that Chinese porcelain was imported
+to Holland and painted in Delft; another
+collector believes that Chinese kaolin and clay were
+brought to Lowestoft, and there mixed, shaped, fired
+and painted; and still another, that Lowestoft porcelain
+was taken out to China to be decorated. The Catalogue
+of the Museum of Practical Geology in London
+very shrewdly and non-responsibly says of its Lowestoft
+specimens: “It should be understood that several of
+the following pieces are exhibited as ‘Lowestoft china’
+simply in deference to the opinions of certain collectors
+and not as authenticated specimens.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>To show the doubtful eyes with which the Lowestoft
+aspirants are regarded by authorities in England, I will
+state that in this last-mentioned catalogue but twelve
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>lots of Lowestoft porcelain and pottery are named—a
+small proportion—and a sharp lesson to American collectors
+with their reckless and sweeping Lowestoft classifications.
+None of the twelve bear any distinguishing
+Lowestoft marks or names. The descriptions of some
+of these are not at all like our American Lowestoft
+wares. One reads: “Two plates ornamented with borders
+in brown and gold, and with views of a Suffolk
+village and river painted in sepia in a circular panel in
+centre of each plate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>From these few extracts which I have taken from
+various authorities, it is plainly seen that no decision,
+no judgment can be given in this Lowestoft case, that
+each seeker after china and truth must judge for himself.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The history of the production of hard-paste china at
+Lowestoft is exceedingly curious as an example and
+proof of the suddenness with which recent facts and
+circumstances may be forgotten. It seems fairly incredible
+that the true particulars of the manufacture of this
+ware (which it is alleged was produced in such great
+quantities from the year 1775 to 1803) should be entirely
+lost and forgotten in half a century’s time. The descriptions
+and history of Lowestoft china in Mr. Llewellyn
+Jewitt’s article in the July number of the <cite>London
+Art Journal</cite> in 1863, were the first to call attention
+to Lowestoft china, and I still consider him the best and
+most trustworthy authority on the subject. Previous to
+that time, in the catalogues of English Loan Collections
+and Museums, the name even of Lowestoft does not appear,
+though the ware was seen everywhere labelled
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>vaguely “Foreign,” or “Oriental.” At a later date Mr.
+Chaffers’s book appeared with a warm endorsement and
+enthusiastic setting-forth of the Lowestoft factory and
+its wares, so warm and embracing in its description that
+Mr. Jewitt in his later book, “Ceramic Art in Great
+Britain,” fairly has to protest against such broad sweeping
+into the Lowestoft net; and he must feel that he
+“builded better than he knew” when he “wrote up”
+the Lowestoft factory. He says: “Let me utter a word
+or two of caution to collectors against placing too implicit
+a reliance upon what has been written concerning
+Lowestoft china, and against taking for granted that all
+which is nowadays called Lowestoft china is really the
+production of that manufactory. If all that is ascribed
+to Lowestoft was ever made there the works must have
+been the most extensive, and—if all the varieties of
+wares that are now said to have been produced there
+were made it is asserted simultaneously—the most extraordinary
+on record. The great bulk of the specimens
+now unblushingly ascribed to Lowestoft I believe never
+were in that town, much less ever made there.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>When Mr. Jewitt wrote thus he knew nothing about
+the vast additional stock of Lowestoft in America,
+enough additional weight to swamp forever the Lowestoft
+pretensions. Mr. Jewitt also resented with proper
+indignation some criticisms which Mr. Chaffers dared to
+make upon his <cite>Art Journal</cite> paper, saying, with truth,
+that he (Chaffers) was indebted to him for nearly every
+scrap of information about the Lowestoft factory that he
+has embodied in his work. He might say for every
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>scrap of any importance. The three accounts form a
+typical example of the controversies in private life, of
+the minor disputes that always arise among china collectors,
+not only over the claims of the Lowestoft factory,
+but over even a single piece of Lowestoft hard-paste
+porcelain.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The specimens of what are called Lowestoft ware
+that are most frequently seen in America, are parts of
+tea-services, punch-bowls and pitchers, coffee-pots and
+mugs. The pieces often bear crests, coats of arms, or
+initials. Shields supported with birds, and escutcheons
+in dark blue are also frequent. The initials are usually
+very gracefully interlaced. Sometimes the tea-caddy
+will bear the crest or coat of arms with the initials, while
+the remainder of the tea-service will have the initials
+only.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On many of the pieces the border is of clear cobalt
+blue (often in rich enamel), varied with gold stars or a
+meander pattern in gold. Some unreasoning collectors
+take their stand upon this blue and gold-starred border
+as being the only positive indication and proof to their
+minds that the piece thus decorated is truly Lowestoft;
+but I have seen many pieces that were positively imported
+directly from China to America that bore this
+Lowestoft border. A red trellis-border and a peculiar
+russet-brown or chocolate border also abound on these
+disputed pieces, and the scale pattern in purplish pink.
+A raised border of vine leaves, grapes, flowers and squirrels
+is seen on the beakers; I have found both this form
+and decoration rare in America.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>When a flower pattern appears on Lowestoft china
+the rose predominates. Chaffers says that the reason
+for this use of the rose is twofold; the arms of the
+English borough in which the china is said to have
+been manufactured or painted, is the Tudor, or full-blown
+rose surmounted by an open crown; and the
+cleverest painter of Lowestoft ware was Thomas Rose,
+and he thus commemorated his name. He was a French
+refugee, and it is to his French taste we owe the delicate
+style of whatever flower ornamentation appears on this
+china. It is sad to read that he became blind and spent
+the last days of his life as a water-vender, plying his
+trade with two donkeys that had been given him by the
+town. The pieces alleged to have been painted by him,
+and indeed all the Lowestoft pieces, were seldom profuse
+in decoration. Roses without foliage or stems, little
+bouquets, or narrow festoons of tiny roses with green
+leaves, were his favorite designs. Often a piece bore
+only a single rose.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The mugs and tea and coffee-pots usually have twisted
+or double handles crossed and fastened to the main
+body of the piece with raised leaves or flowers. The
+large pieces, such as punch-bowls and pitchers and the
+helmet creamers, sometimes have an irregular surface,
+as if, when in the paste, they had been patted into shape
+by the hands. I have often seen this appearance also
+on blue and white undoubted Chinese ware. The mugs
+are both cylindrical and barrel-shaped; the cups are
+handleless, as are usually the cups of all Oriental china
+manufactured at that date.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>Mr. Chaffers says that occasionally the smaller pieces
+of Lowestoft will be seen embossed with the rice-pattern
+or basket-work. I have never seen a piece thus embossed
+but was as plainly and unmistakably Oriental as
+a Chinaman’s pigtail and his almond eyes.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The oval teapot shown on page <a href='#Page_208'>208</a> is a typical
+Lowestoft piece, though not a choice one; and by many
+ignorant collectors all teapots of that particular shape,
+with twisted handles held to the body with embossed
+leaves, no matter with what other decoration, are firmly
+assigned to the Lowestoft factory. Many unmistakably
+Chinese pieces, however, are seen in this exact shape;
+for instance, a beautiful rice-pattern teapot in the Avery
+Collection, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This
+piece is rich in gold and blue, but has the knobs, twisted
+handles, and embossed leaves of the Lowestoft pattern.
+Perhaps, in spite of its Chinese rice-pattern, and the
+quality of the paste, Chaffers would class it as Lowestoft.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are found in America certain Oriental vases of
+typical Lowestoft decoration which are usually in one or
+the other of two shapes, cylindrical with suddenly flaring
+top (or rarely an ovoid cylinder with similar top), or a
+vase with small base, sharply bulging out at half its
+height, and as suddenly contracting to a small neck.
+These vases, in sets or garnitures of three or five pieces,
+the two end vases always alike, graced the mantel of
+many a “parlour” a century ago, and were frequently
+decorated with initials or coats of arms. Such are the
+beautifully-shaped vases with exquisite blue, brown, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>gold decoration, given by Lafayette to Cadwallader
+Jones of Petersburg, Va., one of which is here shown.
+These vases exhibit the impressed basket-work design;
+they are in perfect preservation,
+and have recently
+come by gift into the possession
+of the Washington
+Association of New Jersey.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_190.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Lowestoft Vase.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are in English collections
+a few specimens of
+the early soft-paste Lowestoft
+manufactures, which
+were always decorated in
+blue, which bear Lowestoft
+names or distinguishing
+dates. Indeed, these blue
+and white pieces are the
+only ones that do have designating
+Lowestoft marks, or bear dates, which seems to
+me a very significant fact. I have never found any of
+these blue and white Lowestoft pieces in America, either
+marked or unmarked, nor do I know of any marked Lowestoft
+pieces in any American collection. There are none
+in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. I have seen a few
+rather coarse blue and white Delft-ware pieces which I
+suspect might be classed as Lowestoft.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I fear that in this attempt to throw light, or rather
+borrow light, on the Lowestoft question, I have not succeeded
+very well, and have perhaps cast a deeper shadow.
+There is one other condition which has influenced and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>helped me to form my condition of mind about Lowestoft
+china, and that is the situation of the town. It is
+the absolute “Land’s end,” the extreme eastern point of
+England; the sand and some of the clay necessary to
+make all this porcelain would have had to be transported
+from the extreme western “Land’s end” of Cornwall,
+and the great supply of coal to burn in the kilns,
+from the extreme northern coast of Northumberland
+and Durham—two most inconvenient and expensive
+contingencies. It was, however, near to Holland, that
+great producer of Delft-ware, and had an extensive
+trade with that country, and Dutch vessels constantly
+entered the Lowestoft port. And the first productions—the
+only marked and dated ones—are all blue and
+white and resemble Delft-ware: none are of porcelain.
+The Dutch also were great importers of Oriental china.
+Of course we must believe that some china also came
+out of Lowestoft, but these are some of the very bewildering
+accompanying conditions that we cannot crowd
+out of our minds.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is difficult to assign prices or values to pieces of
+Lowestoft china, for, as in other wares, the quality of
+the decoration, of course, influences the price. Teapots
+similar to the one shown on page <a href='#Page_208'>208</a> are often
+offered for from four to eight dollars—one sold in the
+Governor Lyon sale in 1876 for $5. At that same sale
+Lowestoft plates of ordinary design, with single rose
+decoration, brought $1.50 each; cups and saucers of
+similar design, the same price. A pretty dish of gold
+and buff, with brownish bird in the centre, brought $3.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>A helmet creamer, with decoration of grapes and vines
+in gold and brown, brought $4; this is a decoration and
+shape frequently seen in America. One bearing the
+Morse coat of arms
+is here shown. One
+very curious piece, a
+custard-cup belonging
+to a “marriage
+set,” sold for $6.50.
+This cup was decorated
+with festoons
+and bunches of roses,
+and on one side was
+a hand holding two
+medallions, with initials,
+tied together
+with a lovers’ knot
+of ribbon, with the motto “Unit.” On the other side
+were two coats of arms held and supported in the same
+manner. It is said that this idea of a marriage set was
+in high fashion a hundred years ago. At the S. L.
+M. Barlow sale in New York, in February, 1890, the
+prices of Lowestoft pieces were higher—partly because
+the specimens were better. A sugar-box with blue and
+gold ribbon decoration sold for $5, teapots for $8 and $10.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_192.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Helmet Creamer.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A device found on Lowestoft pieces is very common
+in America—or at any rate, in New England—and is
+frequently and erroneously supposed to be an armorial
+bearing. It is a monogram or cipher written within an
+oval or an escutcheon, backed by an ermine mantle, surmounted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>by a wreath on which are perched a pair of
+doves. This device was doubtless sent to China to be
+painted on a service as a wedding gift, and proving popular
+was often repeated. I have seen it on many pieces
+in many families, in gold and various colors, the monogram
+or initial only being different. A letter is in existence,
+written by a gentleman in China in 1810, to a
+fair bride in Hartford, saying that he sends to her as a
+wedding gift a set of porcelain with this decoration.
+Portions of the set are still owned by the bride’s descendants.
+This of course proves the device to have
+been painted in China. Perhaps it was painted in England
+also, but I doubt it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is a very pretty Lowestoft design which I have
+seen upon dinner- and tea-sets belonging to several families
+in New England, which may have been made specially
+for the American market, or at any rate must have
+been sent here in large quantities. It consists of the
+American shield and eagle in shades of brown touched
+with gold, with a pretty delicate border of the same
+colors, and tiny dots of vermilion. I speak specially of
+this design because it is often offered for sale as “George
+Washington’s China,” on the slight foundation, I suppose,
+of having upon it an American shield and eagle;
+and not only offered but sold, and no doubt exhibited
+with pride by collectors of Washingtoniana. One
+lucky dog of a relic hunter recently secured in New
+York a “Washington” teapot with this design for the
+sum of $75—a paltry amount, as he considered it.
+There are a number of pieces bearing this decoration in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>the Trumbull-Prime Collection, a portion of a set belonging
+to a member of Mr. Prime’s family. A coffee-pot
+of the set is here shown. This service was purchased
+in England in
+1804. The gilt
+lettering on it, as
+on others that I
+have seen, is much
+worn, while the
+decoration is in
+perfect condition.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_194.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>“Washington” Coffee-pot.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>As an indication
+of the vast amount
+of Lowestoft wares
+to be found in
+America, let me
+state that in the
+Governor Lyon sale there were forty-nine lots labelled
+Lowestoft, and many more among the historical pieces,
+while there were only six of Delft, three of Bristol, five
+of Chelsea, etc. As Governor Lyon collected nearly all
+his pieces of English porcelain in America this might be
+thought to be a fair means of judging of the proportionate
+prevalence of china called Lowestoft, but I think
+the number is hardly high enough. In the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection are at least a hundred and fifty pieces
+of Lowestoft, to which, however, Mr. Prime does not
+definitely assign that title, but explains the doubts and
+questions as to the ware. There are no rice-pattern or
+basket-work pieces among them.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>In New England seaport towns, where there has been
+during past years a large direct trade with China, vast
+quantities of Lowestoft ware are found. It would, of
+course, be argued from this fact that such porcelain is
+Chinese, and in truth it is Chinese in nine cases out of
+ten. And I presume the reason that I am so incredulous
+about Lowestoft china, is that I have really seen so little,
+my Lowestoft studies having probably all been in
+Chinese porcelain. Then, too, the Lowestoft factory,
+had it sent all its wares direct to America, could never
+have furnished our vast supply, from which we still
+have plenty of specimens to dispute and quarrel over.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And is it not strange that we have no record of this
+vast trade in English porcelain? Who ever knew of a
+vessel arriving in an American port from Lowestoft?
+Who ever saw an advertisement of Lowestoft china in an
+old American newspaper? On the other hand, we know
+well how Chinese porcelain could have been brought—nay,
+was brought—in vast quantities to New England;
+for though New York took the lead in sending a
+single ship direct to Canton in 1784, the question of the
+China trade had been agitating Salem for a year previously,
+and in Connecticut, state aid had been asked
+to further direct commerce with the Orient. This aid
+had been at once refused by the prudent home-staying
+farmers in the Legislature. Providence, Newport, and
+Boston quickly awakened to the rich possibilities of the
+new commercial opening with the Orient, but Elias Haskett
+Derby, of Salem, known as the “Father of the East
+India Trade,” crowded his great vessels across the ocean
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>to Canton and brought home rich stores of Oriental
+products. His fine Grand Turk sailed from Salem
+in 1785, and the return cargo doubled the money invested;
+and in the rooms of the East India Marine
+Company at Salem is a great Lowestoft bowl bearing
+paintings of the Grand Turk and the date, Canton,
+1786, which proves that that piece positively was
+neither made at Lowestoft, painted at Lowestoft, brought
+to Lowestoft, nor exported from Lowestoft. From that
+year to 1799, of the hundred and seventy-five voyages
+made by Derby’s stanch ships, forty-five were to India
+and China. He had four ships at one time at Canton.
+In 1793 three Indiamen brought into New England
+ports $14,600 worth of “China-ware;” one of these
+ships, the Rising Sun, landed at Providence. And Billy
+Gray, of Salem, the largest ship-owner in the world at
+that date, sold many a hogshead of chinaware from the
+cargoes of his great ships, the Light Horse, the Three
+Friends, the Lotus, the Black Warrior.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though Connecticut farmers and law-givers looked
+with timid and unfavoring eyes on the possibilities and
+dangers of Oriental commerce, Connecticut merchants
+were not to be left behind in the race for the golden
+prizes of India. A great ship was fitted out in New
+Haven, and the story of her first voyage in 1799 and of
+its rich results reads like the wonder-tales of the East.
+The ship was manned by thirty-five Connecticut men,
+sons of respectable and well-to-do families; many of them
+were graduates of Yale. In its provisioning and furnishing
+merchants of New Haven, Hartford, Weathersfield,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>Farmington, Stamford, and other neighboring towns
+joined or “ventured.” The ship took no cargo. She
+sailed to the Falkland Islands. The crew killed 80,000
+seals, packed away the skins in the ship’s hold, and
+then sailed to Canton. The Neptune was the first New
+Haven ship that furrowed the waves of the Pacific. The
+sealskins were sold to Canton merchants for $3.75 each.
+With $280,000 of the profits the Connecticut boys laid
+in a rich store of Oriental goods, tea, silks, and 467 boxes
+of fine china. These goods were sold in New Haven at
+enormous profits. The ship paid to the Government, on
+the results of that single voyage, import duties which
+amounted to $20,000 more than the entire State tax for
+the year. Mr. Townsend, the builder of the ship,
+cleared $100,000 as his share of the profits; the super-cargo,
+that useful and obsolete officer, took $50,000,
+and the thirty-five Yankee sailors and the Yankee merchants
+all tasted the sweets of this phenomenal venture.
+Thirty-six other Connecticut merchants joined at
+once in a venture in another ship, and the Cowles Brothers,
+of Farmington, fitted out three vessels for Canton,
+and vast amounts of Lowestoft porcelain were brought
+back by them to New Haven.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is only recently, and even now only among china collectors
+and what a Newburyport dame called “city folks
+and Yorkers” (that is Bostonians and New
+Yorkers—or city people in general), that the pieces
+spoken of in the last few pages would be called Lowestoft.
+In country homes all are still Chinese or India
+porcelain. It is the favorite tradition told of nearly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>every piece, even of undisputed English wares of the
+last century, that “my grandfather brought that bowl
+to us from Hong Kong,” and even when you point out
+the Caughley or Staffordshire marks, the owners are unconvinced
+and openly indignant. Chinese porcelain
+evidently denoted much higher aristocracy than English
+ware in early Federal days, and the sentiment lingers
+still among simple folk. Crests, arms, and initials are
+very common, “put on for us in China,” and the
+“China” or “India” tradition, must in such cases never
+be openly doubted.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Much specially decorated porcelain did come to us
+from China; there is plenty of proof in old letters,
+bills, diaries, and shipping receipts, that persons in both
+America and England ordered services of porcelain such
+as we now call Lowestoft, to be made and decorated
+for them in China. These orders were sometimes filled
+in a manner which was vastly disappointing. Miss Leslie,
+the sister of the eminent painter, related that she ordered
+a dinner service to be made and painted for her in
+China. She directed that a coat of arms should be
+placed in the centre of each plate, and made a careful
+drawing of the desired coat of arms and pasted it in the
+centre of a specimen plate, and wrote under it, “Put this
+in the middle.” What was her dismay when, on the arrival
+of the china, she found on every piece not only the
+coat of arms, but the words, indelibly burnt in, “Put
+this in the middle.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another person ordering porcelain in China sent out
+a book-plate as a guide for outline in decoration, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>was much disgusted when the service arrived to find it
+painted by the literal-minded Chinese artist in lines of
+funereal black like the book-plate, instead of the gay
+colors the china-buyer had desired, and which were then
+so fashionable.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But I feel that in all this about the questionable Lowestoft
+I am neither quite fair nor quite liberal to the
+claims of the far Orient. We do not regard with doubt
+or with question of English co-operation all the contributions
+of China to our early table furnishings. About
+the pieces just described, many collectors are reckless in
+judging and naming, and too often unjust to our Asiatic
+ceramic purveyors; but much porcelain came to America
+which is known and acknowledged to be Chinese,
+and which has never for a moment had the shadow of
+suspicion of Occidental manipulation cast over it—I mean
+“blue Canton china.” A hand whose clear and perfect
+touch made beautiful, yet rendered truthfully everything
+she described, wrote thus of such porcelain:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“The china here, as in all genuine Salem cupboards,
+was chiefly of the honest old blue Canton ware. There
+were shining piles of these plates, which while they are
+rather heavy to handle, always surprise one by being so
+thin at the edges. There were generous teacups like small
+bowls, squat pitchers with big noses, and a tureen whose
+cover had the head of a boar for a handle. And in all
+this the blue was dull and deep in tint, with a certain ill-defined
+vaporous quality at the edges of the lines, and the
+white of the cool greenish tinge of a duck’s egg. You can
+buy blue Canton to-day, but it is not old blue Canton.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>The stanch ships of Elias Haskett Derby, of William
+Gray, of Joseph Peabody, brought to Salem hogsheads
+and boxes and crates of this old blue Canton china; it
+still lingers close-hidden and high-shelved in Salem cupboards;
+it has been crushed grievously under foot in
+Salem attics; has been sold ignominiously to Salem
+junkmen, and also proudly and eagerly bought by Salem
+collectors.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many a “venture” was sent out by New England
+dames to “far Cathay” in these East India trading-ships,
+and many a pretty blue Canton teapot and cups
+and saucers, or great ringing punch-bowl came home
+from China in return for the hoarded egg-money, the
+inherited Spanish dollars, or the proceeds of the year’s
+spinning and weaving. Do you know what a “venture”
+was a hundred years ago? It was a gentle commercial
+speculation in which all Puritan womankind longed to
+join, just as all New England ministers legally and
+soberly gambled and revelled in the hopes and disappointments
+of lottery tickets. An adventurer in those
+days was as different from an adventurer of to-day as
+was an undertaker of 1792 from an undertaker of 1892.
+When a ship sailed out to China in the years following
+the Revolutionary War, the ship’s owner did not own
+all the cargo (if cargo of ginseng it bore), nor send out all
+the contents of the bags of solid specie that were to be
+invested in the rich and luxurious products of the far
+land. There were no giant monopolies in those days.
+All his friends and neighbors were kindly and sociably
+allowed to join with the wealthy shipmaster in his risks
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>and profits, to put in a little money on speculation—in
+short, to send out a sum large or small on a “venture.”
+Sometimes orders were given that this “venture” should
+be invested in special forms of merchandise; sometimes
+it was only placed in the supercargo’s hands to share in
+its proportion the general profit. Complicated books
+must Elias Haskett Derby have had to keep through all
+these petty “ventures,” but good profits did that honest
+man render, though he left at his death the largest fortune
+of any American in that century. Women, fired
+by these alluring profits and assailed by a gambling obsession,
+sold their strings of gold beads, their spring
+lambs, their knitted stockings, and eagerly sent out the
+accumulated sum by the ship’s purser, and received in
+return tea, spices, rock-candy, crapes, china, anything
+they coveted for their own use or fancied they could sell
+at a profit. Men, too, sent out a “venture” as a gift to
+their new-born children, or to fill their own pockets; fair
+maids bought through a “venture” their bridal finery.
+From Bristol one young miss sent in to a ship-owner
+her gold earrings to “venture” for “a sprigged and bordered
+India muslin gown of best make,” and she got it
+too, thin and sheer, close-sprigged and deep bordered,
+just as well selected and carefully conveyed as if she had
+“ventured a hundred pound.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The newspapers of the times abounded in advertisements
+of blue Canton china, such as this from the <cite>Columbia
+Centinel</cite> of December 19, 1792:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Superfine Nankin blue enamelled landscape and
+fancy pattern China-ware direct from China: among
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>other articles are complete dinner setts, tea coffee &#38;
+breakfast do; Teacups &#38; saucers &#38; Teapots separately
+do; dinner breakfast &#38; dessert flat &#38; Deep Plates;
+Punchbowles Mugs &#38; Pitchers.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Frequently the china was sold direct from the vessel,
+or from the wharf alongside. How truly Oriental
+that old Canton china must have been to Boston and
+Providence and Salem dames when they had tiptoed
+down on the rough old wharf in wooden clogs or velvet-tipped
+golo-shoes, their fair faces covered with black
+velvet masks if the weather waxed cold or the wind
+blew east; when they had seen the great weather-beaten
+ship, with its stained sails and blackened ropes and
+cables—the ship that had brought the fragile porcelain
+cargo to port—the Lively Prudence, the Lively Peggy,
+the Lively Sally, the Lively Molly, or any of the dozen
+great ships named by Yankee shipmasters and ship-owners
+for the lively young women of their acquaintance.
+They had been on board the Indiaman, perhaps,
+and smelt its bilge-water and its travelled stale ship-smells;
+had watched the strange picturesque foreign
+sailors, barefooted and earringed, as they brought the
+packages and spread out the boxes on deck, or carried
+in their brawny arms the great crates on Scarlett’s or
+Rowe’s Wharf, and with their bronzed tattooed hands
+took out the precious porcelain from its rice-straw packing
+and rice-paper wrapping. How that old blue Canton
+must have savored forever to the fair buyers of the
+“bloom raisins,” the cinnamon, the ginger, palm-oil,
+gum-copal, and ivory, the tea, the otto-of-roses, that had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>been fellow-travellers for months in the good ship’s
+hold; and have spoken, too, of far-away lands and
+foreign sights, and of “the magic and mystery of the
+sea.” Truly, we of to-day have lost all the romance,
+the sentiment, that brightened and idealized colonial
+shopping, when we know not the ship, nor scarcely the
+country from whence come our stores.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In Newport, in Bristol, in Providence, in Boston—wherever
+ships could sail from port, and wherever favoring
+winds wafted them back again, vast stores of this
+old blue Canton ware have been and can now be found;
+“tall coffee-pots, with straight spouts, looking like lighthouses
+with bowsprits; short, clumsy teapots with
+twisted handles and lids that always fall off;” jugs, tureens,
+helmet pitchers, and sauce-boats. At the recent
+disbandment of the family and selling of the home of
+one of the old presidents of Brown University, a score
+of old Canton platters were found behind trunks and old
+furniture under the eaves in the garret. Too heavy,
+too cumbersome to be used on our modern tables, they
+were banished to the garret rafters, and there prisoned,
+were forgotten. In past years when roast-pig and giant
+turkeys were served on that hospitable board, these
+great platters proudly held their steaming trophies; but
+now we have changed all that—the turkey is cut up
+surreptitiously in some unseen corner, and the blue Canton
+platters, dusty and cobwebbed, lie forgotten in the
+garret.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These vast stores of blue Canton were doubtless part
+of the cargo of the Ann and Hope, the beautiful and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>stanch ship that in 1799 bore into Providence “one
+hundred and thirty boxes of chinaware in tea and dinner sets.”
+In 1800 she again brought into port three
+hundred and sixty-two boxes and one hundred and
+twenty-four rolls of chinaware, together with such other
+delightful Oriental importations as two bales of gauze
+ribbons, seven boxes of lacquered ware, five hundred
+Chinese umbrellas, sixty bundles of cassia and five boxes
+of sweetmeats, forty jars of rock-candy, and twenty tubs
+of sugar-candy. In 1802 came on the Ann and Hope
+one thousand and forty-eight boxes of chinaware, but,
+alas! no sugar-candy, or sweetmeats for Providence lads
+and lasses, but instead forty disappointing boxes of rhubarb.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Hot-water plates of Canton china did every well-regulated
+and substantial New England family own, deep
+hollow vessels, with their strong heavy bottoms and little
+open ears. Not very practical nor convenient of use
+were they—or, at least, so it seems to us nowadays.
+And another and common form of coarse blue and white
+Chinese ware which our grandmothers had by the score
+need not be despised by china collectors—the old, high-shouldered
+ginger-jars that fifty and seventy-five years
+ago were so good in color. Some are mammoth jars
+holding nearly a gallon, that are decorated with a chrysanthemum
+pattern in clear dark blue, and when set on
+the top of a corner cupboard need not fear even the proximity
+of a cabinet specimen of costly old hawthorn. A
+few members of the aristocracy of ginger-jars exist, not
+in common plebeian blue and white, but with a greenish
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>ground covered with red and yellow enamelled flowers.
+These were never sold in China, but were used as presentation
+jars, being usually given by some Chinese grandee
+or trader to some Yankee sea-captain, or sent to
+America as a token of respect to some American merchant
+or ship-owner. They sell readily for $5 each in
+an out-of-the-way antique shop, for thirty in a fashionable
+one. Six shockingly dirty specimens were found
+in a hen-house on an inland farm on Long Island, and
+after being pumped upon for a long season at the horse-pump,
+and swept off vigorously with a birch-broom, they
+revealed their original glories of color, and after a thorough
+cleansing and disinfecting now grace teak-wood
+cabinets in New York homes.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very dainty form of Oriental china was seen in
+many hospitable homes in the beginning of this century,
+a form now obsolete. I mean a “toddy strainer.” It
+was a shallow, circular saucer or disk of fine Oriental
+ware, blue Canton or Nankin, or white and gold Oriental
+porcelain, and was pierced with tiny holes. It was about
+four or five inches in diameter and bore two little projecting
+ears or handles, which were fastened to the body
+of the strainer by embossed leaves. On the edge of a
+flip-mug or a toddy glass the ears of the toddy strainer
+rested when used, and when the toddy was poured from
+the great punch pitcher into the glass, the strainer prevented
+the lemon- and orange-seeds from entering the
+glass below. These toddy strainers are no longer imported
+in our temperance-ruled and invention-filled days,
+and being of frail china, have seldom outlived the years
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>when they were in such constant, jovial, and hospitable
+use. Nor have I seen them elsewhere than in the seaport
+towns of Narraganset Bay. I fancy some luxury-loving,
+toddy-drinking, money-spending old Newport
+merchant invented, explained to the Chinese, and imported
+to America
+these pretty porcelain
+toddy strainers.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_206.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Chinese Ewer.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sometimes a single
+odd or beautiful piece
+of Oriental china was
+brought to America
+in the olden times by
+those far-roving and
+home-bringing old
+sea-captains, and the
+single specimen still
+exists—a stranger in
+a strange land. Such
+is the graceful little
+ewer here shown, a
+piece of Persian
+shape, but of pure Chinese paste, and “with antick
+shapes in China’s azure dyed.” This design, with its
+“little lawless azure-tinted grotesques,” forms a piece
+curious enough to be worthy a place in any cabinet.
+Such also is a dull green enamelled and crackled bowl
+which I own, and a Chinese dish of antique earthenware,
+which has been mended and riveted by some
+Oriental china-mender with gold wire. A great blue
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>and white tall jar with red lacquered cover is unique
+in size as it is in its contents—long strings of sugar-coated
+Chinese sweetmeats, sweetmeats so unpleasant
+and outlandish in flavor and so mysterious in appearance
+that they were regarded with keen disfavor by
+simple stay-at-home New Englanders, who invested
+the innocent sweets with alarming attributes, and laid
+them under suspicion of concealing within their sugary
+surfaces bits of all the heathenish edibles—sharks’ fins,
+birds’ nests, puppies’ tails, and other unchristian foods
+that had been seen and even tasted in foreign lands by
+bold travelled mariners. Hence there still lie at the
+bottom of the great jar a few silken strings of shrivelled,
+unwholesome-looking black knobs like some strange
+Oriental beads; despised by generations of sweet-toothed
+children of the Puritans, and now too adamantine in
+consistency to be tasted or nibbled even by the boldest
+gourmand or curiosity-seeker of to-day.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Posy-holders” are found of India china with a rich
+decoration of red, blue, and gold, with little flecks of
+green, the cover pierced with holes to keep the stems of
+the flowers in place; “bowpots” also of similar porcelain
+and ornamentation.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have not found in my china hunting any old blue
+hawthorn jars, nor any fragile pieces of “grains-of-rice”
+porcelain, nor sets of covered saki-cups in scarlet and
+gold, nor dainty translucent cups that seem naught but
+glaze, though I have been shown them in other collections
+as country treasure trove. I have seen a few tall
+green crackle vases and jars, of age and dignity enough
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>to chill unspoken within our lips any inquiry regarding
+or suggesting purchase.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_208.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Persian Vase.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few stray polychrome Chinese bowls of the description
+known as “real Indian” I have found, and I hear
+that whole dinner services
+of
+such wares were
+imported. General
+Gage had
+one in Boston,
+and a few of its
+beautiful plates
+escaped destruction
+at the “looting”
+of the Province
+House. But
+the old services
+of Oriental china
+that I have seen
+have all been
+blue Canton or
+Lowestoft. The
+graceful blue and
+white vase here
+shown I at first
+sight fancied to be Chinese, but now believe to be Persian.
+As the country owner of this oddly-shaped and
+rather curiously-decorated vase knew nothing of how
+it had been acquired by the members of her family, nor
+how long it had been possessed by them, nor whence it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>came, nor indeed anything, save that it had stood for
+many years on her grandmother’s best room mantel-shelf,
+it may be a comparatively modern piece of ware.
+I have woven about it and haloed around it an Arabian
+Nights romance of astonishing plot and fancy, in which
+a gallant Yankee sailor, a hideous Arabian merchant, and
+a black-eyed, gauze-robed houri fill the leading parts;
+and perhaps my imaginative story of the presence of the
+Persian outcast in a staid New England farm-house is
+just as satisfactory as many of the wondrous china tales
+we hear.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An everlasting interest rests in all Oriental china in
+attempting to translate the meaning of the Oriental
+stamps and marks. I have never deciphered any save a
+few of the hundred forms of <cite>Show</cite>—the Chinese greeting,
+“May you live forever,” and the marks on one old
+Chinese bowl, which signified <i>wan</i>, a symbol used only
+on articles made for talented literary persons; <i>Pŏ koo
+chin wan</i> “for the learned in antiquities and old curiosities,”
+and the mark of the instruments used by authors—the
+stone for grinding ink, the brushes for writing, and
+the roll of paper. I was highly delighted, and indeed
+very proud, when I discovered the meaning of these
+Chinese letters. I tried to fancy that it was a significant
+coincidence—a friendly message from the old world to
+the new—that pointed out that I too belonged to what
+is in China the ruling class, the literati. But the more
+closely I examined my literary tickets, the more depressed
+I became. I found, alas, that these flattering
+marks were never placed on my bowl by the Orientals;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>they were skilfully painted over the glaze in oil colors
+by the base, jesting Occidental who gave the piece of
+old porcelain to me.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The china called Lowestoft was, without doubt, the
+kind most desired and most fashionable in early Federal
+times throughout both North and South. Such was
+the dinner service of the Carrolls of Carrollton, with
+bands of rich brown and gold and a pretty letter C.
+Such was the family china of William Morris; of John
+Rutledge, with the initials J. R. and the shield and
+eagle; and the tea-service of John Dickinson, with blue
+and gold bands and his initials. Of Lowestoft china
+was one of the beautiful services of General Knox—his
+“best china” that was used on state occasions. It was
+banded with delicate lines of pale gray, black, and gold,
+and the rich coloring of red, blue, and gold was confined
+to the decoration in the centre of the plate. This was
+an eagle with extended wings, bearing on his breast the
+seal of the Society of the Cincinnati, a round shield with
+a group of appropriate figures surrounded by the motto,
+“Omnia relinquit servare rempublicam,” a motto certainly
+very significant of General Knox’s patriotism.
+The eagle was surmounted by a wreath of palm or laurel
+leaves tied with a knot of blue ribbon. Beneath the
+eagle were delicately formed initials about half an inch
+in height—L. F. and H. K.—the H. and K. intertwined
+just as General Knox always wrote them. This beautiful
+service was a gift to Mrs. Knox from her rich grandfather,
+General Waldo; a wedding gift, it is often asserted,
+though I had hardly supposed that her relatives,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>being so bitterly opposed to the <i>mésalliance</i> of the
+“belle of Massachusetts” with the young clerk in a bookshop,
+had given her any such rich tokens of approval.
+Then, too, the runaway match was made at the beginning
+of the Revolutionary War, and Mrs. Knox, following
+her husband from battle-field to battle-field, would
+hardly have needed or thought of such fine china. The
+fact that it bears the decoration of the seal of the Cincinnati,
+points to a date after the establishment of that society.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Lowestoft, too, was the china table-ware of John Hancock,
+the table-ware that he ordered to be thrust one side
+and replaced by old-fashioned pewter. And when he lay
+in his bedroom groaning with the gout and heard the rattle
+of a china plate on the table in the dining-room below,
+he ordered his servant to throw the precious but noise-making
+dish out of the window, and the thrifty black
+man saved the dainty Lowestoft by throwing it on the
+grass.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>But the every-day china, the common table-ware, of
+all these good American citizens and patriots—Knox,
+Hancock, Paul Revere, the Otises, Quincys, and a score
+that might be named—the plates and dishes of china
+from which they ate their daily bread, were not of Lowestoft,
+but of honest old blue Canton.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>IX.<br> THE COSEY TEAPOT</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>It is small wonder that the craze for the gathering together
+and hoarding of teapots has assailed many a
+feminine china hunter in many a land, and that
+many a noble collection has been made. Teapots are
+so friendly and appealing, one cannot resist them. No
+china-loving woman can pass them by, they are so domestic
+as well as beautiful; a steam of simple cheer and
+homeliness ascends forever (though invisible) from their
+upturned spouts, and a gentle genie of cosiness and welcome
+dwells therein.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And then their forms are so varied! Plates, from their
+nature, necessarily show a prosaic flatness and similarity
+of outline; cups and saucers are limited in their capabilities
+of diversification; but teapots! you may find a new
+shape for every day in the year.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In America we have an extra incentive and provoker
+of interest in the extraordinary great age assigned to
+teapots. You can hardly find one of any pretension to
+antiquity in America that is asserted to be less than two
+hundred years old; and two centuries and a half are as
+naught to teapot-owners. Sophisticated possessors are
+a little shy about assigning their old teapots to the Mayflower
+invoice, since we have heard so many incredulous
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>and bantering jibes about the size and tonnage of that
+capacious ship; but country owners are troubled by no
+such fears of ridicule, and boldly assert the familiar tradition;
+while the pages of our catalogues of loan collections
+containing entry after entry of “teapots brought
+over in 1620,” “teapots three hundred years old,” show
+the secret faith and belief of even more travelled and
+studied teapot-owners.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>1630—1640—1650! It would seem, could we trust tradition,
+that teapots just swarmed in America in those
+years. There were none then in England or Holland or
+China, and no tea even in England; but it is proudly
+boasted that we had teapots and, of course, tea also in
+America. I wonder we do not claim the teapot as a
+Yankee invention! The Chinese knew naught of any
+such “conveniencys” at that time; they stupidly
+steeped their tea in a cup or dish or bowl; indeed, they
+do so still in the great shops, and tea-gardens, and yaamens
+of China, and would doubtless have conservatively
+clung to the same simple and primitive fashion in all
+their houses to this day, had not the opened traffic with
+the western world shown them the restless craze for
+change common to nearly all Europeans and awakened
+in them a desire for novelty and improvement.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The first mention of English teapots which I have
+chanced to see is in the private memorandum book of
+John Dwight, of Fulham, potter. The date of the entry
+is previous to 1695. It is a receipt for “the fine
+white clay for Dishes or Teapots to endure boiling water.”
+Under date of November, 1695, he says: “The little furnace
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>where the last Red Teapots was burnt I take to be
+a convenient one for this vse.” An entry dated 1691
+tells of a “strong Hardy Clay fit for Teapots;” and
+again of a “dark colour’d Cley for marbled Dishes and
+teapots to endure boiling water.” In Houghton’s Collections
+of 1695 we read: “Of teapots in 1694 there
+came but ten, and those from Holland, but to our credit
+be it spoken, we have about Fauxhall made a great
+many, and I cannot gainsay but they are as good as any
+came from abroad.” The first successful experiment of
+Bottcher in the manufacture of porcelain took the form
+of a teapot; and potters of succeeding years have spent
+much time and thought in inventing new shapes and decorations
+for tea-drawing vessels. Would it not be interesting
+to have a cabinet with a chronological and also a
+cubical succession of teapots, from the tiny ones of Elers-ware
+used in the time of Queen Anne, when tea was sold
+in ounce packages at the apothecaries, down to the great
+three-quart teapot used by Dr. Johnson and sold at the
+sale of Mrs. Piozzi’s effects? There would I stop and
+never admit as a teapot the ugly great spouted earthen
+casks made in Japan, to satisfy abnormal-minded and
+craving collectors. Into one of these hideous monstrosities
+in the possession of a well-known collector, two
+men were able to crawl, seat themselves, and have the
+cover placed over them—a sight to make the judicious
+china-lover grieve.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In still another china-succession might we write the
+history of the teapot in America, from the simple plebeian
+undecorated earthenware pot in which was sparingly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>placed the precious pinch, through the gayly-colored and
+larger teapot, earthen still, through Wedgwood’s varied
+wares in which our patriotic grandmothers drank their
+wretched “Liberty Tea,” to the fine porcelain treasures
+of Worcester, Minton, Derby, Sèvres, and Dresden of
+to-day—a story of the growth of our nation in luxury
+and elegance.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The earliest known mention of the use of tea by Englishmen
+is in a letter written in 1615 by one wanderer
+in China to another fellow-soldier, asking for a “pot of
+the best sort of chaw” and also for “three silver porringers
+to drink chaw in.” By 1664 it appears to have
+been sold in England in some considerable quantity, in
+spite of Pepys’s oft-quoted entry in his diary in the year
+1665 about tasting “thea a China drink” that he never
+had drunk before. Pepys was far from rich at that time,
+and tea may have been in frequent use for some years
+among persons of wealth and quality without his ever
+having tasted it. It quickly grew in favor in the court,
+the first importations all coming from the Continent,
+from Holland, and soon was plentiful and comparatively
+cheap. Among the common people and conservative
+country folk, however, beer still held its own at breakfast
+and supper until Swift’s time.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>New England dames followed the fashions, fancies, and
+tastes of their sisters in Old England as soon as their
+growing prosperity allowed. When in 1666 the fragrant
+herb cost sixty shillings a pound in England, I hardly
+think our frugal Pilgrim Fathers imported much tea. The
+first mention of tea which I have found shows that in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>1690 Benjamin Harris and Daniel Vernon were licensed
+to sell “in publique,” in Boston, “Coffee Tee &#38; Chucaletto.”
+The following year two other tea-houses were
+licensed. Dr. Benjamin Orman had a “Tinn Teapott”
+in Boston previous to his death in 1695, an article of
+novelty and luxury that probably few of his neighbors
+possessed. Though Felt, in his “New England Customs,”
+and Weeden, in his “Social and Economic History
+of New England,” both say that green tea was first
+advertised for sale in Boston in 1714, I find in the <cite>Boston
+News Letter</cite> of March, 1712, “green and ordinary
+teas,” advertised for sale at “Zabdiel Boyltons (or Boylstons)
+Apothecary Shop,” and in the same year teapots
+and tea-tables were sold at the Swing Bridge by “Publick
+Outcry.” In 1713 Zabdiel Boylston had Bohea tea;
+in 1714 “very fine green tea, the best for color and
+taste,” was advertised; and in 1715 tea was sold at the
+Coffee House, thus showing that it was being imported
+in larger quantities. The taste quickly spread, and
+wherever there was tea there was also a teapot. Weeden
+says that it is strange that Judge Sewall, with all his
+fussing about wine, and “chokolet,” and “cyder,” and
+“pyes,” and cakes, and “almonds and reasons,” and
+oranges and figs, says naught of tea. He does speak of
+it; he drank at a “great and Thursday” lecture, at
+Madam Winthrop’s house in the year 1709, “Ale Tea &#38;
+Beer,” and he does not especially note it as a rarity. I
+do not believe, however, though he lived until 1730,
+when it was sold in every Boston dry-goods, grocers’,
+hardware, millinery, and apothecary shop, and advertised
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>in every Boston newspaper, that he often drank the
+“cup that cheers but not inebriates.” He may have regarded
+it as did Henry Saville, who wrote deploringly
+of tea-drinking in 1678 as a “base and unworthy Indian
+practice,” saying sadly, “the truth is, all nations are
+growing so wicked.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1719 Bohea tea was worth twenty-four shillings a
+pound in Philadelphia. In 1721 it had risen six shillings
+higher in price, while by 1757 it cost only seven shillings
+a pound. In 1725 they had both green and Bohea tea in
+Virginia and the Carolinas, as is shown by the writings
+of the times; while, though I have not found it advertised
+till 1728 in New York, the “tea-water pump” showed
+its large use in that town. When tea was first introduced
+into Salem it was boiled in an iron kettle, and
+after the liquor was strained off, it was then drank without
+milk or sugar, while the leaves of the herb were
+placed in a dish, buttered and salted and eaten.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A letter printed in “Holmes’s Annals,” and written in
+1740, thus complains: “Almost every little tradesman’s
+wife must sit sipping tea for an hour or more in the
+morning, and maybe again in the afternoon, if they can
+get it, and nothing will please them to sip it out of but
+chinaware. They talk of bestowing of thirty or forty
+shillings on a tea equipage, as they call it. There is
+the silver spoons, the silver tongs, and many other
+trinkets that I cannot name.” Bennett, in his Travels,
+told the same tale of Boston women. Each woman
+then carried her own tiny teapot when she made one of
+those much-deprecated tea-drinking visits, and often her
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>own teacup also, else she might have to drink from a
+pewter cup. And she frequently brought her own precious
+thimbleful of tea, especially if she chanced to have
+a decided fancy in the variety of the herb that she used.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the latter half of the eighteenth century tea and
+teapots were common enough in America, and the
+“China herb” played a part in our national history that
+would have immortalized it had it no other claims to
+our love and consideration. In December, 1773, Boston
+Harbor was made one great “tea-drawing,” and after that
+memorable event many American dames gave up from a
+sense of duty their favorite beverage, but they did not
+destroy their tea-sets. Here is the lament of one matron
+over her empty urn:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Farewell the tea-board with its gaudy equipage</div>
+      <div class='line'>Of cups and saucers, Cream-bucket, Sugar-tongs,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The pretty tea-chest, also lately stored</div>
+      <div class='line'>With Hyson, Congo and best Double Fine.</div>
+      <div class='line'>Full many a joyous moment have I sat by ye</div>
+      <div class='line'>Hearing the girls tattle, the old maids talk scandal</div>
+      <div class='line'>Though now detestable.</div>
+      <div class='line'>Because I am taught and I believe it true</div>
+      <div class='line'>Its use will fasten Slavish chains upon my Country</div>
+      <div class='line'>To reign triumphant in America.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is in New Bedford one very interesting old teapot
+which lays a very definite, decided, and special claim
+to having been brought over in the Mayflower. It is
+said to have been the property of Elder Brewster, and
+is known as the “Elder Brewster Teapot.” It is a
+pretty little cylindrical vessel with fluted bands, and is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>decorated with gilt lines and dark red flowers and border.
+Scoffers, of course, will bring up to you all the oft-enumerated
+points—that the Pilgrims had no china, that
+tea was not known in England, and probably not known
+in Holland in 1620; that teapots are a comparatively
+modern invention—but still we feel an interest in this
+“Elder Brewster Teapot.” It brought at the sale of
+Governor Lyon’s effects only $45, which low price was,
+I fear, an indication that the belief of the scoffers prevailed
+among the buyers there assembled. The firm of
+Richard Briggs &#38; Co., of Boston, caused to be manufactured
+in 1874 a number of reproductions of this teapot.
+Before taking the original to Messrs. Wedgwood,
+at Etruria, they were careful to obtain the opinion of a
+china expert, Mr. Townsend, of the South Kensington
+Museum, who pronounced the “Elder Brewster Teapot”
+old Delft, and showed to Mr. Briggs several specimens
+similarly decorated. Whatever it may be—old Delft,
+old Meissen, old Staffordshire, or even comparatively
+modern ware—the reproduction is certainly a pretty little
+teapot, even if the Mayflower episode in the career of
+the original be said to be fabulous. The story of the acquisition
+of this teapot by Governor Lyon is very interesting.
+He bought it from an old lady in Vermont, but
+only after repeated visits, much cajolery, many rebuffs,
+and a very stiff purchase sum.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is in Morristown, in the beautiful old colonial
+mansion known as Washington’s Headquarters, a tall
+teapot which is dissimilar in shape to the Elder Brewster
+teapot, but which is exactly like it in paste, in decoration
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>of dull vermilion and maroon, and as a further resemblance,
+it has the same rather curiously modelled flower
+as a knob on the cover. This teapot is labelled “Old
+English ware,” and old English Delft it apparently is.
+It certainly looks like a sister of the Elder Brewster teapot.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At this home of the Washington Association may be
+seen many other curious and interesting teapots—old
+Spode, Staffordshire, and Wedgwood. Black basalts
+and cream-ware specimens of good design are found in
+the well-kept and well-arranged cases. All have a story
+or a history of past owners to make them interesting,
+aside from the longing we feel for them as “specimens.”
+I would we could pour out from their spouts in old-time
+words the stream of Continental tattle that has been
+poured into them; we could write therefrom a social
+and economic history of our country that would excel
+in point of detail Boswell’s Johnson, Pepys’s Diary, and
+Horace Walpole’s Letters all rolled into one.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A famous and curious teapot was the shape known as
+the Cadogan. They were also used for coffee, and were
+formed from a model of Indian green-ware brought from
+abroad by the Marchioness of Rockingham, or the Hon.
+Mrs. Cadogan, and from her received the name. They
+were made at the Rockingham works; and George IV.,
+then Prince Regent, a connoisseur in tea, chancing to see
+one and to praise the tea that came from it, the Cadogan
+teapots sprang at once into high fashion. Mortlock, the
+dealer, ordered for one season’s supply, £900 worth.
+This teapot was all in one piece; it had no cover. It
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>was filled through a hole in the bottom. A slightly
+spiral tube ran up from this hole nearly to the top of
+the teapot. It can plainly be seen that when it was
+filled with an infusion of tea and inverted, that the liquid
+could only escape through the spout. The teapots
+were decorated on the outside with raised leaves and
+flowers. Some of these Cadogan teapots of course came
+to America, and are now found in collections. I have
+also seen Japanese “puzzle teapots” fashioned in the
+same manner, to be filled at the bottom. Another Japanese
+“puzzle-teapot” looks like a gray earthen doughnut
+with a handle and spout, the tea being poured into
+it through the hollow handle.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>George IV. was a connoisseur in teapots not only
+from a gastronomic point of view, but he was a collector
+of them as well, and had at the Pavilion at Brighton
+great pyramids formed of a vast variety of teapots.
+Many collections of them have been made in England.
+Mrs. Hawes left to her daughter three hundred choice
+teapots which were arranged in a room built specially
+for them. A number that had belonged to Queen Charlotte
+were in this gathering. Such a collection is interesting
+and instructive, the pieces being from various factories
+and lands. Even more instructive still, because
+gathered with a definite purpose and forming a serial
+guide to the perfect knowledge of the ceramic productions
+of a single country, is such a collection of teapots
+as that in the unrivalled Morse Collection in the Boston
+Museum of Art. But collections of modern Japanese
+teapots, gathered simply for the sake of seeing how many
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>different kinds and what grotesque shapes one can get,
+do not appeal to me. Such is said to be the modern
+“assorted lot” of Madame de Struve, the wife of the
+minister to Japan, who gathered together nine hundred
+and seventy-five Japanese teapots. Such a collection
+can be formed in a week by any person having money
+enough to pay for them and interest enough to order
+the cratefuls sent home; while a collection of good old
+teapots of Oriental, English, French, and German wares
+is a matter of a lifetime, especially if historical interest
+is a desideratum, and good taste as well.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have not seen in America, as may be found in boudoirs
+and dining-rooms in France and England, any
+friezes “three row deep” of teapots round the top of the
+room; but one fair New York china-maniac, who says
+with the vehement exaggeration so typical of American
+women, “I love my teapots and my tea as I love my
+life,” has a narrow shelf quite round the wall-top, about
+a foot below the ceiling, filled closely with a gay procession
+of vari-colored, vari-formed teapots. It is a
+unique and striking decoration—in good taste, since the
+frieze teapots are none of them gems, but simply gay and
+effective bits of Oriental color and grotesque shape. In
+a cabinet, glass-covered and screened, are all the old teapots
+which she owns, a rare and dainty company of ancients
+and honorables.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At Stockbridge, in the possession of Mrs. Plumb, may
+be seen, arranged on shallow shelves, a large and good
+collection of teapots, gathered chiefly from farm-houses
+in the country around. Over one hundred old English
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>pieces are among the number, some of them being very
+beautiful and rare.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mottoes, names, and inscriptions are often found on
+ancient teapots found in America. One of Leeds-ware
+bears on one side the words:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“May all loving friends</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Be happy and free</div>
+      <div class='line'>In drinking a Cup</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Of Harmless Tea.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another bears these verses:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“My Lad is far upon the Sea</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>His absence makes me mourn</div>
+      <div class='line'>The bark that bears him off from me</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>I hope will safe return</div>
+      <div class='line'>And from his earnings I’ll save up</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>If lucky he should be</div>
+      <div class='line'>And then when old with me he’ll stop</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And go no more to sea”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another friendly teapot has the lines:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Kindly take this gift of mine</div>
+      <div class='line'>Full of love for thee &#38; thine. 1769.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A fourth this good advice:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Drink only tea</div>
+      <div class='line'>&#38; Sober keep.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many of the sailor mottoes found on Liverpool pitchers
+are also seen on teapots of Liverpool ware, as if made to
+some sailor’s order for a gift.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>
+<img src='images/i_224a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Lowestoft Teapot.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Perhaps the
+teapots most
+commonly used
+by our grandmothers
+are
+the types here
+shown; one a
+cylindrical
+Canton china
+teapot known
+now as Lowestoft,
+and one a
+gayly painted
+Bristol pottery teapot. Specimens of the latter and
+Staffordshire pottery teapots differed much in shape, an
+hexagonal form being frequent, and the swan or dolphin
+knob being seen on many of the varied shapes. The
+black Jackfield
+teapots
+with raised
+designs, looking
+like black
+glass, are
+sometimes
+found, silver
+mounted and
+quaint.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_224b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Bristol Pottery Teapot.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>For the perfection,
+the
+idealization of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>the teapot we must turn to the productions of Josiah
+Wedgwood. Appropriate and convenient in shape, elegant
+in decoration, perfect in manufacture, they have
+handles adjusted in precisely the best possible balancing
+place, spouts shaped to empty the contents in the most
+perfect and thorough manner, covers that slide or fit with
+ease and yet with exactitude, bases that are perfectly
+proportioned and levelled—in a Wedgwood teapot we
+find elegance and fitness equally combined, it obeys and
+satisfies every artistic, economic, and mathematical rule;
+“built by that only law—that use be suggestive of
+beauty.” Our modern tastes do not run now to the
+black basalts, the blue jasper, the cream-ware of Wedgwood;
+we fancy a glazed, painted porcelain for every-day
+use, but the fact remains the same—the Wedgwood teapots
+are the best, the most perfect ever made; even in
+China and Japan, the acknowledged home of teapots,
+where the little vessels are not only used to hold tea,
+but as an omniparient cistern of every other liquid, even
+in those countries can be found no more perfect teapots
+than those of Wedgwood. They deserve the appellation
+of De Quincey, “an eternal teapot.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>X.<br> PUNCH-BOWLS AND PUNCHES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>There is no individual piece of china around which
+shines such a glowing halo of warm hospitality, of
+good-fellowship, of good cheer, as around the
+jolly punch-bowl. A plate, a mug, a pitcher, is absolutely
+devoid of any interest or sentiment save what may
+come from knowledge of past ownership, or from beauty
+or quaintness of decoration; a teapot conveys a sense
+of cosiness and homeliness; but a punch-bowl, even a
+common, ugly, cracked crockery punch-bowl—visions of
+good company and good companions rise at the very
+sight, even at the very name.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>What tales of colonial and continental times an old
+American punch-bowl could tell if it only could and
+would repeat half that it has heard; what gay drinking-songs,
+what stirring patriotic speeches, what sharp legal
+wit, what sober and circumspect clerical jokes, what
+kindly eleemosynary plans would echo cheerfully out of
+its great sounding bell could it, like the phonograph,
+give forth what has rung into it in the past! What
+scenes of rollicking mirth, of dancing feet and dicing-games
+have been photographed on its insensitive and
+unchanging glaze! In what scene of cheerfulness and of
+seriousness alike did not the colonial punch-bowl take
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>its part? It encouraged the soldier on eve of battle, it
+bade the sailor God-speed. The heavy Delft bowl stood
+filled and refilled to the brim at the husking-party, the
+apple-bee, the wood-spell, the timber-rolling, the muster,
+the house-raising, the lottery-drawing, the election;
+while the big India china bowl stood even on the church
+steps at an ordination or a church dedication. It held
+the water to christen the baby; it made cheerful the
+wedding-feast; and even in times of sadness it was not
+banished, but side by side with the funeral baked meats
+the omnipresent punch-bowl stood to greet and cheer
+every sad comer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Indeed, at a funeral the punch-bowl specially shone.
+Great pains were taken and no expense spared to properly
+concoct and serve the sombre funeral-punches. “Rum,
+lemons, a loaf of sugar, and spices,” sometimes also
+“Malligo raisins and rose-water,” were items on every
+reputable and <i>à la mode</i>, as they called it, undertakers’
+bills. A sober, responsible, and above all, an <i>experienced</i>
+committee was appointed to carefully mix and
+flavor the last libation that could ever be offered to the
+dead friend. Small wonder with such good cheer that
+even sober Judge Sewall openly called a funeral a “treat.”
+And we can understand why a very worthy old gentleman,
+a lover of the olden times, complained with much
+bitterness in the early part of this century that “temperance
+had done for funerals.” The gayly-flowered and
+gilded punch-bowl was not sadly draped in trappings of
+woe, nor set one side in seclusion, but standing cheerfully
+in a prominent position with its spicy welcome,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>made even sad mourners feel that life was still worth
+living.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The punch-bowl certainly flourished proudly in America
+through the eighteenth century, just as it reigned in
+honor in England at the same time. Previous to that
+date the English prototype of the punch-bowl had been
+the posset-pot, and that primitive form still exists, and
+indeed is made and used in Derbyshire and the neighboring
+English counties to the present day. A few posset-pots
+have made their way to America with Derbyshire
+emigrants and have been gathered in by rapacious
+collectors. On Christmas eve in olden times the great
+vessel, which sometimes held two gallons, was filled
+with the “good drink,” and a silver coin and a wedding-ring
+were dropped in when the guests assembled;
+each partaker in turn dipped out a great spoonful or
+ladleful of the drink, and whoever was lucky enough
+to fish up the coin was certain of good luck during the
+ensuing year, while the ring-finder would be happily
+and speedily married. Posset was a very good mixture—a
+“very pretty drink”—not so good as punch, of
+course, but to us invested with a reflected glory. Hath
+not Shakespeare oft spoke to us of posset? In my
+little “Queen’s Closet Opened,” a book of culinary,
+medical, and potatory recipes collected by and for
+Queen Henrietta Maria, I find half a dozen rules for the
+brewing of “sack-posset.” “To make a Sack-Posset
+without Milk or Cream: Take eighteen Egs, whites and
+all, taking out the Treads, let them be beaten very well,
+take a pint of Sack, and a quart of Ale boyl’d, and scum
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>it, then put in three-quarters of a pound of suger and a
+little Nutmeg, let it boyl a few wames together, then
+take it off the fire stirring the Egs still, put into them
+two or three Ladlefuls of drink, then mingle all together,
+and set it on the fire, and keep it stirring til you find it
+thick then serve it up”—and not drink it, but cut it up
+and eat it, one might fancy. There is no recipe for
+punch in my “Queen’s Closet.” I fear Queen Henrietta
+did not know about that new drink, punch, in 1676,
+when this quaint old book was published. Had she
+done so, she had not needed so many nostrums for insomnia.
+Englishmen in India knew of it; “spiced punch
+in bowls the Indians quaff,” wrote one in 1665, and in
+1697 Tryer spoke of it and basely libelled it as “an enervating
+liquor.” The punchless Queen knew, however,
+how to make hypocras, metheglin, mead, caudle, cordial-water,
+aqua-cœlestis, aqua-mirabilis, clary-water, gillyflower-wine,
+usquebarb, and, best and delectablest of all,
+she knew how to make a Damnable Hum, and I doubt
+not she served it in a punch-bowl as was befitting so
+noble a drink.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The posset-pot had some cousins in England—the
+goddard, the wassail-bowl, the gossip-bowl, the caudle-cup—poor
+relations, however, and feeble ancestors of
+the glorious punch-bowl. To the Orientals, not to the
+English, we owe our punch-bowls and our punches.
+Punch or “pauch” was an Indian drink, and the word
+meant five, and was named from the five ingredients
+used in its composition—arrack, tea, sugar, water, and
+lemon-juice. A “pauch” was also a conclave of five
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>men, a “pauch-pillav” a medicine of five ingredients,
+and so on.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The English people took very readily to the new
+Oriental drink and the new vessel to hold it, as it did
+to everything else in India. We read in the old ballad
+of “Jock-o’-the-Side,” “They hae gard fill up a punch-bowl,”
+and when a ballad adopts a word, then it is the
+people’s. As the potter’s art advanced in England, great
+bowls were made to hold punch at taverns and halls,
+often for the special use of the potters themselves.
+Cheerful mottoes did these potters’ punch-bowls sometimes
+bear. For simplicity and terseness this excels,
+“One Bowie more, and then”—does it not speak a
+never-ending welcome? A blue and white potter’s bowl
+ten inches in diameter has this descriptive motto:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“John Udy of Luxillion</div>
+      <div class='line'>his tin was so fine</div>
+      <div class='line'>it glidered this punch-bowl</div>
+      <div class='line'>and made it to shine,</div>
+      <div class='line'>pray fill it with punch</div>
+      <div class='line'>let the tinners sitt round</div>
+      <div class='line'>they never will budge</div>
+      <div class='line'>till the bottom they sound.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Glider meant to glaze, not to gild, and the verses refer
+to the stanniferous opaque white glaze formed by the
+use of Cornish tin.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another bowl has these sententious lines:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“What art can with the potter’s art compare?</div>
+      <div class='line'>For of what we are ourselves of such we make our wares.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>More serious rhymes still are found. At North Hylton,
+in England, were made many punch-bowls of lustre
+ware, and the proprietor, Mr. Phillips, must have been a
+very serious-minded and inconsequential man, or he never
+would have put these lines on so worldly a vessel:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The loss of gold is great,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The loss of health is more,</div>
+      <div class='line'>But losing Christ is such a loss</div>
+      <div class='line'>As no man can restore.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>This bowl may, however, have been for a parson. On
+another specimen of the Hylton pottery gayly decorated
+with a print of a ship, a public house, and a hat-and-feathered
+young woman with an umbrella and small dog,
+are these sober and comically incongruous verses:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“There is a land of peaceful rest</div>
+      <div class='line'>To mourning wanderers given,</div>
+      <div class='line'>There’s a tear for souls distrest,</div>
+      <div class='line'>A balm for every wounded breast,</div>
+      <div class='line'>’Tis found above in Heaven!”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Were it not for the public house, and the hat and
+feathers, we should know that this punch-bowl was
+surely made purposely to use at funerals.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One of the finest punch-bowls ever figulated is twenty
+inches and a half in diameter. It is of Liverpool Delft,
+painted in blue with ships and a landscape, and the inscription,
+“Success to the Africa Trade, George Dickinson.”
+When we remember of what the “Africa Trade”
+consisted—the slave-traffic—we wonder the punch did
+not poison the drinkers. I have often seen this bowl referred
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>to by authors as of extraordinary and unique size.
+It is not as large as the grand blue and white punch-bowl
+used by the first Continental Congress, a bowl which
+is now at Morristown, at Washington’s Headquarters. I
+do not know whether this mammoth Congressional bowl
+is Canton china or English delft, for, since it stands in a
+cupboard, one cannot examine it closely. The color and
+design are good, and the size impressive, and altogether
+it is a noble relic, for this courage-giver of those troubled
+and anxious Federal days may have played no unimportant
+part in the affairs and history of our nation; I
+regard it with grateful awe and veneration, and also
+with a rather unworthy pride and satisfaction in its great
+size.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There were hosts of punch-bowls at that date in
+America. Watson wrote in 1830, of old colonial Philadelphia:
+“A corner was occupied by a beaufet, which
+was a corner closet with a glass door, in which all the
+china and plate were intended to be displayed for ornament
+as well as for use. A conspicuous article was
+always a great china punch-bowl.” And they needed a
+punch-bowl, and a large one too, if we can trust the
+local annals of the time. William Black recorded in his
+diary in 1744, that he was given in Philadelphia cider
+and punch for lunch, rum and brandy before dinner,
+punch, Madeira, port, and sherry at dinner, bounce and
+liqueurs with the ladies, and wine and spirits and punch
+until bedtime. Well might he say that in Philadelphia
+“they were as liberal with wine as an apple-tree with its
+fruit on a windy day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>A clergyman named Acrelius gives us the most abundant
+proof why Philadelphians and their neighbors always
+should need a punch-bowl. In 1759 there was
+printed in Stockholm a detailed account of Pennsylvania
+or New Sweden, written by this Parson Acrelius. He
+fairly revels in his descriptions of the appetizing drinks
+to be had in the new land, and he unctuously explains
+how to concoct the “mixed drinks” in the most approved
+fashion. Here is the list of American drinks
+that he sent back to Sweden to encourage emigration.
+French Wine, Frontenac, Pontac, Port-a-port, Lisbon
+Wine, Phial Wine, Sherry, Madeira Wine, Sangaree,
+Mulled Wine, Currant Wine, Cherry Wine, Raspberry
+Wine, Apple Wine or Cider, Cider Royal, Mulled Cider,
+Rum “which is like French Brandy, only with no unpleasant
+odor,” Raw-dram, Egg-dram, Egg-nogg, Cherry-dram,
+Cherry Bounce, Billberry Bounce, Punch, Mamm,
+Manathann (made of small beer, rum and sugar), Hotchpot
+(also of beer, curd and rum), Sampson (of warm cider
+and rum). More familiar and modern names appear
+also: Tiff, Flip, Hot Rum, Mulled Rum, Grog, Sling;
+then come Long-sup, Mint-water, Egg-punch, Milk-punch,
+Sillabub, Still Liquor (which was peach brandy),
+Anise Cordial, Cinnamon Cordial—in all a list of fifty
+drinks with an added finish of liqueurs, “drops almost
+without end,” meads, metheglins, and beers. Now, do
+you wonder that they had great and many punch-bowls
+in Philadelphia? What a list to make a toper wish
+that he had lived in Pennsylvania in colonial days.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sober Boston was not one whit behind its Quaker
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>neighbor. As early as 1686 John Dunton had more
+than one “noble bowl of punch” in that Puritan town.
+Bennett, a visitor in Boston, in 1740, wrote, “As to
+drink they have no good beer. Madeira wines and rum-punch
+are the liquors they drink in common.” Boston
+people of fashion served a great punch-bowl of flip or
+punch before dinner. If the bowl were not too large
+it was passed from hand to hand, and all drank from
+it without the ceremony of intervening glasses. I doubt
+not it was a test of high fashion to handle well and
+gracefully the punch-bowl.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Various and strange were the names of the contents of
+these punch-bowls—names not on Parson Acrelius’s list.
+Madam Knights wrote in 1704, that “the Bare-legged
+Punch had so awfull or rather awkerd a name that we
+would not drink.” Berkeley wrote that the strong drink
+of Virginia in 1710 was “Mobby Punch, made either of
+rum from the Caribbee Islands, or Brandy distill’d from
+their Apples and Peaches.” Another Virginian traveller
+wrote in 1744, “Our liquor was sorry rum mixed with
+water and sugar, which bore the heathenish name of
+Gumbo punch.” “Pupello punch” was made from cider
+brandy. “Sangry punch” was probably an accented
+sangaree. “Rack punch” was made from arrack; while
+“Jincy punch” I leave to the philologists, antiquaries, or
+expert bartenders to define or analyze.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Where are all those great punch-bowls now that we
+read of in history? I wish I could see the punch-bowl
+used by the Newburyport ministers in their frequent
+social meetings, the punch-bowl in the picture painted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>over Parson Lowell’s mantel, the picture with its great
+bowl, the parsons all smoking, and the cheerful motto,
+“In Essentials, Unity; in Non-essentials, Liberty; in
+All Things, Charity.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I should like to see the bowl which played such an important
+part in the transfer of the four hundred acres of
+land which formed the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson.
+Old Peter Jefferson made a very canny trade when he
+acquired the deed of that large tract in exchange for
+“Henry Weatherbourne’s biggest punch-bowl full of
+arrack punch.” Golden should have been that bowl,
+and vast its size, to justify its purchase-power.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I would I could see the great punch-bowls used by
+the rollicking, hunting, drunken clergy of Virginia in
+ante-Revolutionary times, at their “Monthly Meetings,”
+the tale of whose disgraceful revelry has been told us by
+Mr. Parton in his “Life of Jefferson.” Where is the
+punch-bowl used at the Wolfes Head Tavern in Newburyport,
+on September 26, 1765, “at the greate uneasyness
+and Tumult on acasion of the Stamp Act;” the
+bowl from which the alarmed citizens of Newburytown
+drank fifty-seven pounds worth of “double and thribble
+bowles” of punch, and in company with which they had
+two pounds worth of supper and coffee. Well might
+we say, “O monstrous! But one penny worth of bread
+to this intolerable deal of Sack!” “Greate uneasyness,”
+no doubt, they felt.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One of the oldest punch-bowls—indeed, one of the
+oldest pieces of china in the country—is the beautiful
+India or Chinese bowl now owned by Edmund Randolph
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>Robinson, Esq., of New York. It is eighteen
+inches in diameter, of rich red and gold decoration, and
+is mounted upon a black wood stand upon which is a
+silver plate bearing the noble historical names of its past
+owners, so far back as known. It is supposed to have
+been brought to America by William Randolph, as his
+son, Sir John Randolph, is known to have long possessed
+it. This gentleman was one of the early Governors of
+Virginia, and Attorney-General in the first part of the
+eighteenth century. His son Peyton was president of
+the first Continental Congress in 1774, and Attorney-General
+of Virginia. From him it passed to Edmund
+Randolph—also Governor and Attorney-General of Virginia—aide-de-camp
+to Washington, and first Attorney-General
+and second Secretary of State of the United
+States. He was the great-grandfather of the present
+owner. This beautiful relic has passed through good
+service as a christening-bowl for many generations of
+Governors and Attorney-Generals, as well as enduring a
+vast amount of use on less solemn occasions.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>How many punch-bowls did George Washington own?
+The great India china bowl with a picture of a frigate;
+the “rose china” bowl now at Mount Vernon; the fine
+great bowl now in the National Museum; the china
+bowl given by him to William Fitzhugh. He gave a
+beautiful punch-bowl to his friend and aide-de-camp,
+Colonel Benjamin Eyre; another to Tobias Lear, and
+another to Mrs. Allen Jones, of Newberne, N. C. And
+still less can we number the punch-bowls out of which
+he once drank. We all have one in the possession of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>some member of our family—I wonder, with all his
+punch-drinking, that the father of his country was ever
+sober.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_237.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Bowl Given to Mrs. Allen Jones.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>This beautiful great bowl, eighteen inches in diameter,
+was given by Washington to Mrs. Allen Jones, and has
+had sad usage. It was buried in the ground to hide it
+from Tarleton’s men, and is grievously cracked and
+broken. It is of richest decoration of red, blue, and gold
+on an India china ground. It is now owned by the
+Washington Association of New Jersey.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington’s India china punch-bowl, which was at
+Arlington House in 1840, is thus described by Mr. Lossing.
+“The great porcelain punch-bowl has a deep blue
+border on the rim spangled with gilt dots. It was made
+expressly for Washington, but when, where, and by whom
+is not known. In the bottom is the picture of a frigate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>and on the side are the initials ‘G. W.’ in gold upon a
+shield, with ornamental surroundings. It is supposed to
+have been presented to Washington by the French naval
+officers.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And the “rose china” bowl at Mount Vernon! That
+was purchased by the Mount Vernon Association in
+1891 from the Lewis estate, for $250—and it is
+broken too. It is sixteen inches across and five and a
+half in depth. On the rim, both inside and outside
+the bowl, is an odd pink and yellow band. Scattered
+over it are flowers of various colors, in which pink predominates.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The beautiful Chinese bowl given to Colonel Benjamin
+Eyre, the Revolutionary patriot, by Washington,
+is now in the possession of Colonel Eyre’s great-grandson,
+Benjamin Eyre Valentine, Esq., of Brooklyn. It is
+about fifteen inches in diameter and five and a half
+inches high, of fine Canton china, and bears around
+the outside of the bowl a scene in a Chinese town, and
+at regular intervals flaunting flags of all the known nations
+which were then engaged in maritime pursuits, our
+new flag—the stars and stripes—being conspicuous
+among them. This bowl thus possesses an additional
+historical interest, in that it is the oldest known piece of
+Chinese porcelain bearing the decoration of the American
+flag. It is a counterpart in size and shape to the Washington
+bowl now in the Smithsonian Institution, but the
+latter is decorated with Chinese landscapes and figures.
+It came into the possession of the Government through
+the sale of Washington relics by the Lewis family.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>
+<img src='images/i_239.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Cincinnati Bowl.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most curious Continental punch-bowl that I have
+ever seen is the great bowl which is here shown. It is
+now owned by the Washington Association of New
+Jersey, and once belonged to Colonel Richard Varick,
+aide to Washington. It is a beautifully-proportioned
+vessel of Lowestoft or Canton china, about eighteen
+inches in diameter. It has a dark blue border with
+festoons of gilt, and bears on the side, in well-chosen
+colors, all the words and design of the full certificate of
+membership of the Society of the Cincinnati. The
+winged figure of Fame, and the other symbolical figures
+are carefully painted, and all the lettering, including
+the fine text of the Latin mottoes on seal and crest, is
+clear and exact. Doubtless a certificate of membership
+was sent to be copied when the bowl was ordered by
+Colonel Varick. It is in perfect condition, and is one
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>of the finest historical relics of early Federal times that
+I have ever seen. It plainly shows the pride and delight
+of Revolutionary heroes in their new country and
+new associations. There are in the same building—Washington’s
+Headquarters—half a dozen other punch-bowls,
+all of historical interest, and all large enough to
+show the vastly hospitable intent of the new-made citizens
+of the new Republic.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>How pleased good, plain American Republicans were
+with that Society of the Cincinnati, and how it tickled
+their pride to wear the Order! Adams and Franklin
+were seriously alarmed at the powerful hold and influence
+the decoration seemed to have, and used argument
+and ridicule against it. One patriotic and vain citizen
+had his portrait painted in the bottom of his punch-bowl,
+with the Order proudly displayed around his neck.
+Around him encircled that favorite emblem, the thirteen-linked
+chain; great black links these were, with the
+name of a State in each. On the side of the bowl the
+Order was again displayed in larger size.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is a gallant ten-gallon bowl in Upper Faneuil
+Hall, which belongs to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery
+of Boston. Captain Ephraim Prescott, when in
+China in 1795, procured this great bowl as a suitable
+present for his companions at arms. The generous captain
+died during the voyage home, and on its arrival in
+port the punch-bowl fell into strange hands. Thirty
+years later Hon. Jonathan Hunnewell heard of its existence,
+bought it for $15, and gave it to the military
+company for whom it was originally purchased. Curious
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>old orders and entries exist about the purchase
+of wine, rum, sugar, and “sourings” for the manufacture
+of the ancient and honorable punches. “But if sowrings
+be scarce &#38; dear, wine &#38; rum only.” You might
+make a punch without lemons, on a squeeze, but not
+without wine and rum.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Sourings” ought to have been cheap enough. Even
+as early as 1741 lemons were plentiful and not at all
+dear. In the <cite>Salem Gazette</cite> in 1741, is this notice:
+“Extraordinary good and very fresh Orange Juice,
+which some of the very best Punch Tasters prefer to
+Lemmons, at one dollar per gallon. Also very good
+Lime Juice and Shrub to put into Punch, at the Basket
+of Lemmons. J. Crosby.” So there was with all the
+punch-bowls, a regular profession of punch-tasting; just
+fancy it.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Occasionally there is some definite means of tracing
+the age of one of these pieces. Thus the fine, perfect
+punch-bowl owned by William C. Townsend, of Newport,
+is said to have been brought out by Captain Jacob Smith,
+of the Semiramis, a ship that, returning home in 1804
+after an absence of three years, was lost on Nantucket
+Shoals. Of her cargo, valued at three hundred thousand
+dollars, but little was saved; but, strange to say, this
+great punch-bowl, twenty-two inches in diameter, holding
+eight gallons, was brought off in safety. It has the
+typical Lowestoft border of blue enamel with gold stars,
+and on the sides are large medallions so European in appearance
+that at first they seem to stamp the bowl as
+English. Examination, however, shows that the figures
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>have the almond eyes of the Chinese, as well as other
+Oriental characteristics, and were undoubtedly copied
+from French or English prints sent to Canton.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A modern writer thus sadly deplores the “good old
+times:”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Fifty years ago the punch-bowl was no mere ornament
+for the side-board and the china-cabinet; it was a
+thing to be brought forth and filled with a fragrant mixture
+of rum, brandy and curacoa, lemon, hot water, sugar,
+grated nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon. The preparation of
+the bowl was as much a labor of love as that of a claret-cup,
+its degenerate successor. The ladles were beautiful
+works of art in silver—where are those ladles now, and
+what purpose do they serve?” Yes, it is true, the days
+of universal use for the punch-bowl are over—ornamental
+and curious they now are, and nothing more. Lucky it
+is for us china collectors, that dinners and everything else
+<i>à la russe</i> did not obtain with our hospitable ancestors.
+No great tureens, no generous pitchers, no vast platters,
+and no noble punch-bowls should we now have to admire
+and gloat over, and place in our cabinets as monuments
+of ceramic art. Had they lived as we do, not a single
+punch-bowl should we have to glory in and grow sentimental
+over. An ignorant butler would have carelessly
+and prosaically mixed the drink in his pantry in any kind
+of a pot or a pan, and then ignominiously bottled it, and
+brought it in when required in driblets, in stingy little
+glasses that say plainly: “Drink this, and no more.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Indeed, I doubt we ever would have had punch, for
+in the gustatory and potatory laws of cause and effect,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>I know the punch-bowl evoked or generated punch
+instead of being made to hold punch. I would not go
+back to the rollicking, roaring, drunken ways of the olden
+time, but on the whole I am glad our grandfathers had
+those ways and bequeathed to us the glorious, great,
+ringing punch-bowls, in which they brewed and mixed
+and concocted, and from which they drank that “most
+insinuating drink” with which so often they got sadly,
+hopelessly “lusky, bosky, buffy, boozy, cocky, fuddled,
+balmy, pickled, screwed, funny, foggy, hazy, groggy,
+slewed, ruddled, dagged, jagged, comed, elevated, muddled,
+tight, primed, mainbrace well spliced, gilded”—or
+whatever elegant, chaste, colonial appellation our synonym-lacking
+language afforded to express being drunk.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One worthy tribute to an old punch-bowl has been
+written by one of our best-loved poets. I would his
+bowl had been like my theme, china instead of silver—ah,
+no! I do not, for had it been of “tenderest porcelane”
+it might have been broken a century ago, and we
+should have known neither his punch-bowl nor his perfect
+poem. How true the opening verses!</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes;</div>
+      <div class='line'>They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true,</div>
+      <div class='line'>That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was new.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>And can I end better than with the concluding verses?</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“I tell you there was generous warmth in good old English cheer,</div>
+      <div class='line'>I tell you ’twas a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here;</div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>’Tis but the fool that loves excess—hast thou a drunken soul?</div>
+      <div class='line'>Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl!</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“I love the memory of the past, its pressed yet fragrant flowers,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The moss that clothes its broken walls, the ivy on its towers—</div>
+      <div class='line'>Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed—my eyes grow moist and dim,</div>
+      <div class='line'>To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Then fill a fair and honest cup and bear it straight to me,</div>
+      <div class='line'>The goblet hallows all it holds whate’er the liquid be,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And may the cherubs on its face protect me from the sin,</div>
+      <div class='line'>That dooms one to those dreadful words, ‘My dear, where have you been?’”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XI.<br> GEORGE AND MARTHA WASHINGTON’S CHINA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>In the long and apparently extravagant orders which
+George Washington sent to England previous to
+the Revolutionary War, for the purchase and exportation
+to him of dress goods and house and table
+furnishings of various descriptions, I find no mention of
+table china. In 1759 he wrote for “four Fashionable
+China Branches or Stands for Candles,” and for “Busts
+of Alexander the Great, Charles XII. of Sweden, Julius
+Cæsar, and King of Prussia, fifteen inches high and ten
+wide. Others smaller of Prince Eugene &#38; Duke of
+Marlborough. Two wild Beasts twelve inches high and
+eighteen inches long, and Sundry Small Ornaments for
+the chimney piece.” As these were to be “finished neat
+and bronzed with copper,” or to be gilt, they were
+doubtless all of plaster or some similar composition. A
+portion of the items in the order were sent to him, the
+wild beasts being “Two Lyons.” These two plaster
+“lyons,” shorn of their golden lustre and painted ignominiously
+black, stood for years over a doorway at
+Mount Vernon, were inherited by Lawrence Washington,
+and sold in Philadelphia on April 22, 1891, for thirty
+dollars.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_230'>230</span>I can find no hint of any china possessions of Washington
+until the War of the Revolution was gloriously
+ended. He had plenty of pewter—dinner dishes of that
+humble metal with his initials and crest are still preserved.
+His camp-service of forty pieces was entirely of
+pewter, and I doubt not the greater part also of his
+home table furnishings in his early married life.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In his directions for remodelling and refurnishing his
+house at Mount Vernon, after the expiration of his terms
+as President, he ordered that a small room be appropriated
+for “the Sèvres china and other things of that sort
+which are not in common use.” Mr. Lossing says:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“He undoubtedly referred to the sets of china which
+had been presented, one to himself, and the other to Mrs.
+Washington, by the officers of the French Army. The
+former was dull white in color, with heavy and confused
+scroll and leaf ornaments in bandeaux of deep blue, and
+having upon the sides of the cups and tureens, and in
+the bottoms of the plates, saucers, and meat dishes, the
+Order of the Cincinnati held by Fame personated by a
+winged woman with a trumpet. These designs were
+skilfully painted in delicate colors.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>
+<img src='images/i_247a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_247b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Cincinnati China.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>While this description of Mr. Lossing’s is accurate as
+to the decoration of the china, if not as to the quality
+of the decoration, a china collector would at once discover
+that the “Cincinnati set” was not Sèvres, but was
+plainly Chinese. It is the well-known dull white, hard
+paste of Canton manufacture, with a border of commonplace
+Oriental design in deep blue under the glaze. Some
+of the pieces have (all, perhaps, had originally) a narrow
+rim of gilt on the
+outer edge, and a
+narrow line of gilt
+within the border.
+The rather insignificant
+and undersized
+figure of
+Fame has bright
+brown wings and
+trumpet, a robe of
+light green, a scarf of bright pink, while the bow-knot
+sustaining the colored Order of the Cincinnati is light
+blue. This design is not painted at all skilfully but quite
+crudely over the glaze. Some of the covered dishes
+bear upon the
+cover the order
+without the figure
+of Fame.
+In a note made
+by Governor
+Lyon he states
+that this service
+was “made in
+Canton in 1784,
+the design being
+furnished by
+General Miranda.”
+Though
+the design be insignificant
+and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>the execution crude, much interest is added to the Cincinnati
+china to know that the “most gentlemanlike
+of filibusters” made the drawing for the decoration.
+That plausible and brilliant man who “talked so like
+an angel” that Americans, Russians, and Englishmen
+vied in endeavors to assist him in his visionary schemes;
+who helped to establish independence in America, to
+give freedom to France, to liberate his native land, Venezuela;
+who aided in freeing thousands of others, died
+himself in a Spanish dungeon a slave, a most miserable
+captive, in chains, with an iron collar around his
+neck.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>No one was apparently better fitted to give information
+on the subject of the Cincinnati china than Governor
+Lyon, for he was a frequent visitor at Mount Vernon
+and Arlington House in the middle of this century; he
+was also collecting facts and details with a view to writing
+a “History of the Ceramic Relics of the Revolution.”
+Unfortunately he relied much on his memory,
+and hence left few notes.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Much ignorance about this Cincinnati china is displayed,
+even by writers upon pottery and porcelain.
+The author of “The Ceramic Art” calls it Sèvres, and
+places the most Chinese-looking illustration of it alongside
+the print of equally Frenchy Sèvres vases. That
+careful observer and exact recorder, the author of “The
+China Hunters’ Club,” falls into no such error, and
+though unable to examine specimens closely, says “they
+looked like so-called Lowestoft, and may have been
+Chinese, English, or of some French factory.” Another
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>well-known writer says that this set was given to Washington
+in 1780. As neither the Society of the Cincinnati,
+nor its badge, existed until 1783, this statement is
+palpably false.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The authorities at the National Museum, and all the
+owners of pieces of the set, consider that it was presented
+to General Washington by the entire Society of the
+Cincinnati, and not by the French officers alone, as Mr.
+Lossing states. It would seem probable that had the
+French officers made the gift, it would have been of
+French china of some elegance, instead of such commonplace
+Chinese porcelain. Hon. Hamilton Fish, the
+President of the Society of the Cincinnati, tells me that
+the general society, and, as far as known, the individual
+State societies, have no records of the gift of this china
+to Washington; nor have I seen any letters, any entries,
+any notes of the time, to prove, or even hint, that this
+china was the gift of the Society of the Cincinnati.
+Though Martha Washington mentions the set in her
+will, she does not specify it as a gift, as she does the
+“set given me by Mr. Van Braam.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>While I have never seen any statements to prove that
+this set of china was the gift of the Society of the Cincinnati,
+there is in the possession of Ferdinand J. Dreer,
+Esq., of Philadelphia, a letter which would seem to indicate
+that Washington may have bought the china
+himself, or, at any rate, it proves that china with the
+decoration of the badge of the Cincinnati was ordered
+for the general American market. The letter, which
+is very characteristic of Washington’s thrift and prudence,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>is addressed to Colonel Tench Tilghman and runs
+thus:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Mt Vernon</span> 17th Augst 1785.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c015'><span class='sc'>Dear Sir</span>: The <cite>Baltimore Advertiser</cite> of the 12th inst announces
+the arrival of the ship at that Port immediately from China, and
+by an advertisement in the same paper I perceive that the Cargo
+is to be sold by public Vendue on the first of Octo. next.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>At what prices the enumerated articles will sell on the terms
+proposed can only be known from the experiment, but if the quantity
+at market is great, and they should sell as goods have sold at
+vendue bargains may be expected.—I therefore take the liberty
+of requesting the favor of you, in that case, to purchase the several
+things contained in the enclosed list.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>You will readily perceive my dear sir, my purchasing or not depends
+entirely upon the prices—If <i>great bargains</i> are to be had,
+I would supply myself agreeably to the list. If the prices do not
+fall <i>below</i> a cheap <i>retail</i> sale, I would decline them altogether or
+take such articles only (if cheaper than common) as are marked
+in the margin of the Invoice.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>Before October, if none of these goods are previously sold, and
+if they are, the matter will be ascertained thereby, you will be
+able to form a judgment of the prices they will command by Vendue—upon
+information of which, I will deposit the money in your
+hands to comply with the terms of the Sale.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>Since I began this letter I have been informed that good India
+Nankeens are selling at Dumfries (not far from me) at 7/6 a pc
+this Curr F——. But if my memory has not failed me, I used to import
+them before the war for about 5S sterl. If so, though 50 per
+cent is a small advance upon India Goods through a British channel
+(and the duties and accumulated charges thereon) yet quaere?
+would not 7/6 be a high price for Nankeens brought immediately
+from India, exempted from <i>such</i> duties and charges? If this is a
+conjecture founded in fairness, it will give my ideas of the prices
+of the articles from that country and be a government for your
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>conduct therein, at or before the day appointed for the public
+Vendue.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>With the highest esteem and regard</div>
+      <div class='line in6'>I am Dr Sir,</div>
+      <div class='line in12'>Yr affect friend and Obedt Serv’t</div>
+      <div class='line in32'><span class='sc'>G. Washington</span>.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c015'>Invoice of Goods to be purchased by Tench Tilghman Esqr on
+account of Geo Washington agreeable to the letter accompanying
+this of equal date.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>A sett of the best Nankin Table China</div>
+      <div class='line'>Ditto—best Evening Cups &#38; Saucers</div>
+      <div class='line'><a id='r1'></a><a href='#f1' class='c022'><sup>[1]</sup></a> A sett of <i>large</i> blue &#38; white China</div>
+      <div class='line'>Dishes say half a dozen more or less</div>
+      <div class='line'><a href='#f1' class='c022'><sup>[1]</sup></a> 1 Doz. <i>small</i> bowls blue &#38; white</div>
+      <div class='line'><a href='#f1' class='c022'><sup>[1]</sup></a> 6 Wash hand Guglets &#38; Basons</div>
+      <div class='line'>6 Large Mugs or 3 mugs &#38; 3 jugs</div>
+      <div class='line'>A Quart<sup>r</sup> Chest best Hyson Tea</div>
+      <div class='line'>A Leagure of Battavia Arrack if a Leagure is not large.</div>
+      <div class='line'>About 13 yards of good blu: Paduasoy</div>
+      <div class='line'>A ps of fine muslin plain</div>
+      <div class='line'><a href='#f1' class='c022'><sup>[1]</sup></a> 1 ps of Silk Handkerchiefs</div>
+      <div class='line'>12 ps of the Best Nankeens</div>
+      <div class='line'>18 ps of the second quality or coursest kind for servants.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='sc'>G. Washington.</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='lg-container-l c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>17th Augst 1785.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='footnote c016' id='f1'>
+<p class='c011'><a href='#r1'>1</a>. With the badge of the society of the Cincinnati if to be had.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The sentimental and high-flown announcement in the
+<cite>Baltimore Advertiser</cite> of the arrival of the vessel referred
+to by Washington reads thus:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“On Tuesday evening last arrived here, directly from
+China, the ship Pallas commanded by its owner Capt.
+O’Donnell. She has on board a most valuable Cargo
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>consisting of an extensive Variety of Teas, China, Silks,
+Satins, Nankeens, &#38;c., &#38;c. We are extremely happy to
+find the Commercial Reputation of this Town so far increased
+as to attract the attention of Gentlemen who are
+engaged in carrying on this distant but beneficial Trade.
+It is no unpleasing Sight to see the Crew of this Ship,
+Chinese, Malays, Japanese and Moors with a few Europeans,
+all habited according to the different Countries to
+which they belong, and employed together as Brethren;
+it is thus Commerce binds and unites all the Nations of
+the Globe with a golden Chain.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The advertisement of the auction sale is also given:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“To be sold at Public Vendue at Baltimore on the 1st
+of October next in Lots The Following Goods Just Imported
+in the Ship Pallas, direct from China: Hyson
+Teas, of the first Quality in Quarter-Chests and Canisters
+of about 2¼ lb each; Hyson Tea of the second sort
+in Chests; Singlo, Confee, Hyson-Skin, and Gunpowder
+Teas of the first Quality in Chests; and a large Quantity
+of excellent Bohea Tea; Table-Sets of the best Nankin
+blue and white Stone China; white stone and painted
+China of the second Quality in Sets; Dishes of blue and
+white Stone China 5 and 3 in a Set; Stone China flat
+and Soup-Plates; Breakfast Cups and Saucers of the
+best blue and white Stone China in Sets; Evening blue
+and white Stone China Cups and Saucers; Ditto
+painted; <cite>Ditto with the Arms of the Order of Cincinnati</cite>;
+Bowls—best blue and white Stone China in Sets;
+blue and white Stone China Pint Sneakers; Mugs—best
+Stone China in Sets; small Tureens with Covers;
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>Wash Hand Guglets and Basons; brown Nankeen of
+the first and second Quality; plain, flowered and spotted
+Lustrings of all Colours; Satins, the Greatest Part
+Black; Peelongs of different Colours, in whole and half
+Pieces; Sarsnet of different Colours; embroidered
+Waistcoat Pieces of Silks and Satins; Silk Handkerchiefs,
+very fine, and 20 in a piece; spotted and flowered
+Velvets; painted Gauzes; Bengal Piece-Goods and
+Muslins, plain flowered and corded; Silk Umbrellas of all
+Sizes; elegant Paper-Hangings; japanned Tea-Chests;
+Ditto Fish and Counter Boxes; Sago; Cinnamon and
+Cinnamon Flowers; Rhubarb; Opium; Gamboge;
+Borax; very old Battavia Arrack in Leagures; with
+Sundry other Articles; the enumeration of which would
+take up too much Room in a Public Paper.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Then follow the terms and methods of the sale.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though this inventory is of special interest to us on
+account of the specification of the china with the Arms
+of the Order of Cincinnati, the other items also merit
+attention as showing the goods and merchandise imported
+at that date to America. And the strange, obsolete
+names of the china articles excite our curiosity. A
+“guglet” is a juglet or little jug; and the word “sneaker”
+is not a low Baltimorean Americanism, but good
+old Addisonian English; for we read in <cite>The Freeholder</cite>,
+No. 22, these lines: “After supper he asked me if I
+was an admirer of punch, and immediately called for a
+sneaker.” A sneaker was originally a smaller drinking
+mug or beaker than was ordinarily used, and was drunk
+from by a “sneak-cup,” that contemptible creature who
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>wished to shrink from his convivial duties by “balking
+his drink,” or, to speak plainly, who wished to drink less
+than his companions fancied he ought to. It came gradually
+to be used as the name of a small mug, and as such
+frequently appears in the inventories of china made and
+sold at Worcester. Washington was no “sneak-cup,”
+he boldly and liberally ordered large mugs instead of pint
+sneakers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We can well imagine the pride of Washington as he
+read this announcement of the arrival of the ship direct
+from China with its load of rich goods, his pride in the
+prosperity and increasing commerce of the new Federal
+nation. The Pallas was the second ship only to arrive
+in the United States direct from Canton—for Canton
+was at that date the only Chinese port open to European
+and American vessels.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Watson, the author of the “Annals of Philadelphia,”
+states that the first ship to bring porcelain direct to
+America from China was commanded by Captain John
+Green, and sailed patriotically from New York on February
+22d, Washington’s birthday, 1784, and landed in
+return on May 11, 1785. He says: “I have now a plate of
+the china brought by him—the last remaining of a whole
+set.” This ship was the Empress of China, and one
+of her officers was Captain Samuel Shaw, a brave Revolutionary
+officer who had been one of the original and
+active founders of the Society of the Cincinnati; in fact,
+one of the framers of the constitution of the society.
+Thus it is easy to see the means and manner by which
+the pattern of the figure Fame bearing the Cincinnati
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>badge, which had been drawn by General Miranda, was
+conveyed to China. It is possible, of course, that Captain
+Shaw brought home with him in the Empress of
+China the “Cincinnati set,” as a gift for General Washington;
+but General Knox had a similar set. It remained
+in his great china-closet at his beautiful home
+in Thomaston, Me., until the year 1840. A two-handled
+cup of this set, bearing General Knox’s initials as well as
+the Order of the Cincinnati, sold for twenty-one dollars
+at the Governor Lyon sale in 1876. Two of the plates
+that had belonged to General Washington’s set sold at
+the same time for one hundred dollars each. Though I
+have had two of these Cincinnati plates offered to me by
+dealers, within a year, for a smaller sum, one with an authentic
+history cannot now be purchased for less than
+three hundred dollars. A plate and bowl were sold by
+Sypher in 1890 for six hundred dollars. At the Loan
+Collection held at the Metropolitan Opera House in
+New York, in 1889, on the occasion of the centennial
+celebration of the inauguration of George Washington
+as President of the United States, there were shown several
+pieces of the Cincinnati china that had belonged to
+Washington, one plate belonging to Luther Kountze,
+Esq., of New York; a plate and saucer belonging to
+Edmund Law Rogers, Esq., of Baltimore, who is a grandson
+of Eliza Parke Custis, the granddaughter of Martha
+Washington. Mrs. Caleb Lyon also exhibited two plates,
+a tray, and teapot. These pieces, with a pickle leaf and
+“small terreen,” are now in the possession of Miss Lyon,
+of Staten Island, and from them the illustrations on
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>page <a href='#Page_231'>231</a> were taken. There are no fewer than forty
+pieces of this set in the National Museum in Washington;
+most of these were purchased by the Government
+from the Lewis family in 1878.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are also in the National Museum several pieces
+of the china known as the Martha Washington set. The
+smaller of the plates shown on page <a href='#Page_9'>9</a> is one of this set.
+Of this china Lossing writes:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“The set of china presented at the same time by the
+French officers to Mrs. Washington was of similar material,
+but more delicate in color than the General’s. The
+ornamentation was also far more delicate, excepting the
+delineation of the figure and Cincinnati Order on the
+former. Around the outside of each tureen and the inside
+of each plate and saucer is painted in delicate colors
+a chain of thirteen large and thirteen small elliptical links.
+Within each large link is the name of one of the original
+thirteen States. On the sides of the cups and tureens,
+and in the bottom of each plate and saucer, is the interlaced
+monogram of Martha Washington—M. W.—enclosed
+in a beautiful green wreath composed of the leaves
+of the laurel and olive. Beneath this is a ribbon upon
+which is inscribed, in delicately-traced letters, ‘<cite>Decus et
+tutam enabillo.</cite>’ From the wreath are rays of gold which
+give a brilliant appearance to the pieces. There is also
+a delicately colored stripe around the edges of the cups
+and saucers and plates.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This description conveys an excellent idea of the set
+to a careless observer, but is not wholly correct. The
+“delicately colored stripe” is a blue and gold snake with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>his tail in his mouth—a significant emblem. There are
+fifteen long and fifteen short links instead of thirteen,
+Kentucky and Vermont having at that time been added
+to the thirteen original States. And the motto upon
+the pink ribbon scroll to me appears to be, “<cite>Decus et
+tutamen ab illo.</cite>” Mr. Lossing also says: “At that time
+the china like that presented by the French officers was
+only made at the Sèvres manufactory, the art of decorating
+porcelain or china ware with enamel colors and gold
+being then not generally known.” This, of course, is an
+incorrect statement, since it was at the time of the greatest
+splendor in the English factories. The decoration of
+china with gold was forbidden for some time in France
+except in the Sèvres factory, but this Martha Washington
+set is not Sèvres. It is apparently Chinese. Mr.
+Lossing wrote me a long letter on this subject. In
+it he says that the French officers would not have sent
+as a gift to Washington china from any factory save
+Sèvres; but it seems now to be very doubtful whether
+this set was the gift of the French officers. In the
+National Museum at the Smithsonian Institution are
+pieces labelled, “Presented to Martha Washington by
+LaFayette.” There is no authority for the ascription
+to Lafayette of the gift of this china. The only reason
+given at the National Museum for thus labelling it is a
+good one—that the ticket was on the china when it was
+in the Patent Office in 1871, and so it will still be kept
+on it until some good evidence is brought that such a
+label is incorrect. The pieces exhibited at the Loan
+Collection in 1889, by individual owners—Edmund Law
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>Rogers being one—were marked as the gift of Mr. Van
+Braam. Mrs. Beverly Kennon, of Washington, D. C.,
+is the niece of George Washington Parke Custis, and
+owns a cup and saucer of this set. She tells me that the
+“Martha Washington china was presented (so said my
+mother and uncle—both grandchildren of Mrs. Washington—who
+certainly ought to have known) by General
+Washington’s early friend, a Hollander named Van
+Braam. It was made in China and painted in England.”
+Mr. Custis thought that Mr. Van Braam was a merchant
+in China; the Dutch at that time had the closest business
+connections with that country. Miss Lyon also says
+that Mr. Custis told her that the set in question was the
+gift of Mr. Van Braam. In addition to all this testimony
+in favor of Mr. Van Braam, may be given the clause
+from Martha Washington’s will, referring to the “sett
+of china given me by Mr. Van Braam.” Captain Van
+Braam was a friend of Washington’s youth and taught
+the future President the art of fencing. The gay fencing-master
+cut but a sorry figure at a later date, being
+more than suspected of treason and unsoldierly behavior.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though neither of these sets were of Sèvres porcelain,
+Washington is said to have owned two sets of Sèvres.
+In the National Museum are twenty pieces of a service
+called Sèvres that belonged to him, and which he used
+both while he was President and at Mount Vernon. At
+the Governor Lyon sale a white Sèvres plate, catalogued
+as having belonged to Washington, brought twelve dollars.
+Miss Lyon still owns a custard-cup of the set. It
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>has a pretty gold “dontil” rim and a gilt cherry as a
+knob on the cover. It bears the Sèvres mark.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another white and gold breakfast service, marked
+“Nast”—a well-known French china-maker—also belonged
+to Washington. Miss Mary E. M. Powel, of
+Newport, has a coffee-cup and saucer of the set. It was
+presented to Colonel John Hare Powel, of Powelton,
+by Mrs. Custis, in 1812. The butter-dish of this service
+is illustrated in “Mount Vernon and its Associations.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another white and gold set of Canton china still has
+existing pieces to show its character. This was probably
+a dessert-service. A berry-dish and two dessert-plates
+were sold in Philadelphia, in 1890, for H. L. D. Lewis
+(one of the Washington heirs), for fifty dollars. They
+were purchased by the Washington Association of New
+Jersey (and can be seen at their building in Morristown),
+with a cup of white porcelain with maroon ribbon and
+wreath decoration, which also came from Mount Vernon.
+Still other pieces of Washington china were sold in Philadelphia
+in 1891, among them portions of a set of Crown
+Derby with tiny sprigs and flowered border. Pieces of
+this set were owned by the late William Henry Harrison,
+Esq., of New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very interesting plate is in the possession of Doctor
+Allan McLane Hamilton, of New York. It was given
+as a keepsake to Mrs. Alexander Hamilton by Mrs.
+George Washington. It descended from Mrs. Hamilton
+to Philip Hamilton, the father of the present owner. It
+is of French porcelain, twelve and a half inches in diameter,
+with slightly crenated edges. On the left rim it is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>decorated with a festoon of oak leaves with gold acorns;
+on the right with a border of laurel or myrtle. Above
+is a lyre with a garland—both in gold. In the centre of
+the plate is an eagle, perched upon a bundle of thunderbolts,
+while on his head are the thirteen stars, all in
+gold; beneath, in script, are the letters G. &#38; M. W., surrounded
+by a wreath of roses and forget-me-nots. This
+plate is unique, the remainder of the service being either
+lost or destroyed.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the diary of Baron Von Closen, under the date of
+July 19, 1792, this entry is found: “On my arrival Mrs.
+Washington requested me to invite Count de Custine—who
+was then at Colchester—with all the officers of his
+regiment, to dinner for the next day. The Count accepted
+the invitation with ten officers of the regiment,
+and sent Mr. Bellegarde before him with a very valuable
+present, a set of china coming from his own manufactory
+at Niederweiler, near Pfalzburg, in Lorraine. It was
+ornamented with a coat of arms and initials of General
+Washington, surmounted by a laurel wreath, and was received
+by Mrs. Washington with most hearty thanks.”
+I can well believe the latter statement, for this Niederweiler
+china was by far the most beautiful in quality,
+decoration, and shape that Washington ever possessed.
+The pieces were all slightly different, the only universal
+decoration being a beautiful cipher of Washington’s
+initials surrounded by a golden brown cloud background,
+and surmounted by a tiny rose-wreath. The
+other decorations were of festoons or interlaced wreaths.
+A saucer of this set, owned by J. Chester Lyman, Esq.,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was
+given to Timothy Dwight, Mr. Lyman’s ancestor, by
+Mrs. Custis. The design on this piece consists of festoons
+of very delicate leaves in various shades of gold.
+Another piece has
+wreaths of tiny
+roses around the
+edge. A sugar-box
+and bowl, owned by
+Mrs. Beverley Kennon,
+of Washington,
+bear still different
+designs. A
+covered jug of the
+set is here shown.
+The mark on this
+china was the interlaced
+Cs, the stamp
+used by Count Custine,
+and it also is
+numbered “No.
+29.” Martha Washington
+divided this set among her three granddaughters
+during her lifetime, which is the reason it is not mentioned
+in her will.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_261.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Washington’s Niederweiler China.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>At Mount Vernon are two beautiful dishes which were
+presented to the Association by Mr. Corcoran, and are
+said to have been George Washington’s. One is a salad
+or berry-dish, seven and a half inches square and an inch
+and a half deep; the edges are irregularly and gracefully
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>scalloped. There is a narrow rim of gold around the
+edge; within, a wide band of blue broken by a chain of
+circular rings in gold, each enclosing a gold dot; within
+this a narrow band of gold; and a delicate gold beading
+forms the inside edge of the border. Little bunches and
+sprigs of flowers are scattered over the centre, having gold
+stems and leaves and blue blossoms. The plate has the
+same decoration. Both have the small blue S of the
+Salopian or Caughley works on the base. Mrs. Russel,
+of Cambridge, Mass., has a plate of this set, which
+was given to her by Mr. Corcoran. These three pieces
+are evidently part of a dessert-service—but where are the
+other pieces?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The “blue and white china in common use,” referred
+to in Martha Washington’s will, was of a kind familiar to
+us all, “old blue Canton.” Several pieces of it are now
+in the National Museum. Miss Lyon has two dishes
+of rather better quality that came from Mount Vernon,
+Nankin china apparently. Others have recently been
+sold at auction in Philadelphia in 1891. Washington
+used this cheerful, substantial Canton china “for common
+use” on his every-day table, just as did every other
+good and wealthy American citizen of his day and time.
+Besides the pieces of blue and white Canton china which
+he ordered of Colonel Tilghman in 1785, Washington
+also wrote to General Robert Ridgway, on September
+12, 1783, a long and carefully expressed letter ordering
+wine and beer glasses, and decanters and china. “If a
+neat and complete set of Blue &#38; white Table China
+could be had upon easy terms, be pleased to inform me
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>of it, and the price—not less than six or eight doz.,
+however, and proportionable number of deep and other
+Plates, Butter-Boats, Dishes &#38; Tureens will suffice.
+These things sometimes come in complete Setts ready
+packed; should this be the case and the number of
+Pieces greater than what is here mentioned, I should
+have no objection to a case on that acc’t.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington had very decided opinions and tastes about
+table furnishings, as he had about dress. When wine was
+served to him and his visitors in some very ugly cups at
+Princeton, and he was told that the cups were made by
+a man who had since turned Quaker, he replied, with his
+cumbersome and rare humor, that it was a pity the man
+had not turned Quaker before he made the cups.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The china of Mary Washington did not go to her
+illustrious son. By her will, made in 1788, she left to
+her grandson, Fielding Lewis, “half my crockery ware,
+half my pewter, and my blue and white tea china,” and
+to her granddaughter, Betty Carter, the other half of the
+crockery and pewter, and “my red and white china.”
+Perhaps she fancied the General had enough china, as
+he apparently did.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington progressed in mantel decoration somewhat
+beyond the plaster “Lyons” and busts that decorated
+the home of his early married life. The mantel vases
+described by Mr. Lossing, and shown in an illustration in
+his book, were sold in Philadelphia, in February, 1891,
+for four hundred and fifty dollars each. They stood
+about eighteen inches high, were decorated with butterflies
+and flowers on a dark blue ground, and had covers
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>surmounted by the Dog Fo. Other vases which once
+graced the chimney-pieces of Mount Vernon are still
+owned by members of the Custis family. The profuse
+mantel decoration of to-day was, however, undreamt of
+by him.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are many other pieces of table china now in existence,
+and proudly shown, that are said to have belonged
+to Washington. Doubtless their owners consider
+that they have sufficient proof of the authenticity of their
+relics, but as I know not the value of their proofs I will
+not mention their china. I think, with the great number
+of punch-bowls that once belonged to Washington,
+and that are mentioned in another chapter, with the
+vast assortment of rich glass-ware that once was owned
+by Washington, and that is now in the National Museum,
+in other public and in many private collections,
+that the amount of china already named will quite swell
+up a value far beyond the item in the sworn inventory
+of the executors of George Washington’s will—“Glass &#38;
+China in the China Closet, &#38; that up-stairs, &#38; that in
+the cellar, $800.” What would be a relic-lover’s estimate
+of the value of that glass and china to-day?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XII.<br> PRESIDENTIAL CHINA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>The sets of china used by other Presidents than
+Washington, while their various owners were living
+in the Executive Mansion, deserve to be mentioned
+and described on account of historic interest, though not
+always for their value as ceramics, and because specimens
+of them are within the possibility of possession by
+a china collector. I think the true china-lover will, however,
+care little to own any piece of porcelain simply
+because it is said to have belonged to or was eaten from
+by some great man—if that be its only virtue; and I am
+sure will care little for much of the china that has graced
+the table at the White House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jefferson was, without doubt, as profusely hospitable
+a President as ever dwelt in the Executive Mansion of
+the United States. For this lavish hospitality he may
+have had a double reason—not only to gratify his well-known
+liberal disposition and his love of good company
+as well, but to prove his shrewd suspicion, or rather his
+firm conviction, that a well-cooked dinner was often a
+potent factor in accomplishing his desired end when his
+smooth and persuasive argument or his apparent candor
+would have failed. A good illustration of his crafty,
+worldly wisdom is shown in the result of the historically
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>renowned dinner given by him, when Secretary of State,
+in 1789, at Philadelphia, to President Washington and the
+prominent leaders of both parties of the House and Senate.
+A fierce dispute between the Northern and Southern
+members of Congress had risen over the location of
+the national capital. The Southerners insisted that the
+banks of either the Delaware or Potomac should be chosen
+as a site; the Northerners were equally determined
+upon the borders of the Susquehanna. An amicable and
+peaceful settlement followed this famous dinner, and
+shrewd Jefferson had his own way—the seat of government
+was placed at Washington, on the Potomac. This
+lavish hospitality, both in the Executive Mansion and in
+private life, doubtless had much to do with Jefferson’s
+subsequent financial embarrassments. Very few of the
+pieces of table-ware used and owned by Jefferson, either
+in public or private life, are now to be found. His married
+life was short, and his housekeeping, both when
+Secretary of State and President, was entirely in the
+hands of servants, a condition never favorable to the
+preservation of china. The dispersion of his household
+effects caused the disappearance from sight and knowledge
+of what few pieces remained. Though his silver is
+carefully preserved by his descendants, they own no
+china.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An octagonal plate of Rockingham ware, used by
+Jefferson when President, is now in Washington. It bears
+the stamp “<span class='fss'>BRAMELD</span>.” It is of the dark blue shade
+frequently used in the Chinese designs on that ware,
+a blue so rich and deep that it gives a character and tone
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>rarely found on pottery, and makes the plate as glorious
+in tint as a block of choicest lapis lazuli. The glaze
+is “crazed” on the entire surface of this particular plate,
+both glaze and color being splintered in places from the
+brownish pottery body. The plate has evidently been
+frequently and severely heated in an oven. I have seen
+other pieces of the same shape, bearing the same design,
+which had not, however, the honorable distinction of
+having been owned by Jefferson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An exceedingly beautiful plate was sold at auction in
+New York, about fifteen years ago, that was catalogued
+as having been the property of Jefferson and used on his
+dinner-table. It was apparently of Chinese manufacture
+of the type known as Lowestoft. The rim and inner
+border were diapered in dark blue, relieved by dainty
+lines of gold. In the centre was the letter “J,” in gold,
+enclosed in a shield outlined in blue enamel adorned
+with thirteen stars. Above the shield was a blue and
+gold helmet with closed visor. This plate brought $40,
+being of ceramic value as well as of historic interest.
+There was sold at the same time, for $2.50, a custard-cup
+of French porcelain painted with detached bachelor’s buttons,
+which was also said to have been Jefferson’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Of the china used by either President Adams I have
+no definite knowledge, though I have seen several pieces
+of Oriental china that bore the reputation of having
+been used by these Presidents during their terms of office.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The china used by Madison was a set of finely painted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>Lowestoft. Portions of it are owned by descendants in
+Virginia. He also owned a set of fine French china with
+his initials.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The next White House china-service of which I have
+seen authentic pieces is the one known as the Monroe
+set—Madison’s official china having been destroyed at
+the burning of the Executive Mansion by the British in
+1814. This Monroe set is of French china of good quality.
+It has around the edge a half-inch band of pale
+coffee color or brownish buff, edged with a burnished gilt
+line on either side. It has a small and pretty coffee-cup
+with extraordinarily flat saucer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Andrew Jackson set was of heavy and rather
+coarse bluish porcelain, apparently of Chinese manufacture,
+with bands of ugly dull blue and coarsely applied
+gold, and a conventional and clumsy shield in the centre.
+It was not very tasteful nor beautiful, any more than
+was its Presidential owner, and very fitly furnished forth
+his dining-table.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In Franklin Pierce’s time what is now known as “the
+red-edged set” was bought, the border being of dark red
+and gilt, with an inner circle of gilt. It was of French
+china of fair quality. The cups of this set were very
+large, while the saucers were exceedingly diminutive;
+though people of fashion, even at that date, had not
+wholly given up drinking tea from their saucers. A
+lady at whose home Judge Story and Daniel Webster
+were frequent visitors, tells me that those two representative
+men of their day always drank their cooled tea
+from their saucers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>The Buchanan set was of very commonplace ware,
+with a stiff, meagre, and ill-painted spray of flowers in the
+centre of each plate and on the side of each dish. Ugly
+as they are, the plates are now valued at forty dollars
+each. The saucers of this set were disproportionately
+large, holding much more than the cups. A few pieces
+of this Buchanan set still remain in Washington, though
+none are preserved at the White House.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_269.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Lincoln China.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very full set of Presidential china was bought in
+Abraham Lincoln’s time. It is of finest French porcelain,
+with a border of crimson purple or plum color, with
+delicate lines and dots of gold, and the plates, platters,
+and saucers have slightly scalloped edges. In the centre
+of the plates and on the sides of the dishes and small
+pieces is a very spirited version of the coat of arms of the
+United States, with the motto “E Pluribus Unum” upon
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>a clouded background of gold. A plate and cup of this
+set, now in the possession of Miss Henrietta D. Lyon,
+of Staten Island, is here shown. This design is very
+dignified and appropriate, and, with the substitution of
+a blue border with gilt ears of Indian corn, has been reproduced
+for the present mistress of the White House.
+Plates of this Abraham Lincoln set sold at the Governor
+Lyon sale for
+$4.25 each, and
+little covered custard-
+or egg-cups
+for $1.50 each. I
+have recently had
+some of these
+plates offered to
+me for $25 apiece.
+Portions
+of this set still
+remain and are
+used at the White
+House.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_270.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Grant China.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The General Grant set is well known, and is very
+handsome. The border is of buff and gold, broken once
+by a small United States shield in high colors. In the
+centre is a well-painted spray or bunch of flowers, many
+being the wild flowers of the United States. The coffee-cups
+of this set were ordered to use at the wedding of
+the President’s daughter, and were known as the “Nellie
+Grant cups.” A plate said to have been ordered for
+the White House in General Grant’s time is here shown.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>Of the beautiful and costly set ordered by Mrs. Hayes
+too much is known, and too many cheaper copies have
+been sold, and may be seen in any large china-shop, to
+make it worth while to give any detailed description
+here. It was made at Limoges by the Havilands, as
+was also the “Grant set.” It makes a fine room decoration
+when the various pieces are arranged in the beautiful
+buffet that President Arthur had made for it, and is
+more satisfactory in that position than when in use on
+the table.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It may be asked how all these pieces of Presidential
+china come to be found in private collections, and
+offered for sale, and so generally distributed over the
+country. A very reprehensible custom existed until recent
+years (and indeed may still be possible) of selling
+at auction at the end of each Presidential term, or in
+the middle if thought necessary, whatever household
+effects the house steward and house occupants chose
+to consider of no further use. These Presidential sales
+were, of course, eagerly attended by relic-hunters. At
+such a sale in President Grant’s day a lot of “old truck,”
+as it was irreverently called, valued at $500, brought
+$2,760. As there must be, of course, much breakage
+of china in the pantry and dining-room of the White
+House, and as it was considered for many years necessary
+to have full “sets” of china table-ware, enough
+to serve an entire dinner, the odd plates, cups and
+saucers, and dishes were ruthlessly “cleared out” whenever
+an appropriation was made by the Government, or
+the President desired to buy a new set. It seems a pity
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>that a few pieces of each of these “state sets” should
+not have been preserved in a cabinet at the White House
+to show us the kind of china from which our early rulers
+ate their daily meals and served their state dinners, as
+well as to show our varying and halting progress in
+luxury, refinement, and taste.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XIII.<br> DESIGNS RELATING TO WASHINGTON</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>One scarcely knows where to begin or end this list
+when one considers the vast number of pieces of
+pottery and porcelain that bear the name and
+ostensibly bear the portrait of Washington—more and
+more varied even than the Lord Nelson prints in England.
+Often Washington’s portrait is found with that
+of Franklin or Lafayette; in such cases I have given the
+subject of the most prominent or the named design the
+honor of determining the place on the list. The largest
+number of these Washington designs occur upon Liverpool
+mugs and pitchers in black prints. Some few are in
+blue upon Staffordshire earthenware. In the Huntington
+Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in
+New York, may be seen a vast number of ceramic likenesses
+of the great American. Many of these are single
+specimens painted by hand—both by artists and amateurs,
+apparently. One set of four plaques has copies
+of the Savage, Trumbull, Peale, and Stuart portraits of
+Washington. Such I have not attempted to describe or
+classify. One specially comical portrait plaque, painted
+in China, shows an almond-eyed Washington with his
+hair <i>à la chinoise</i>, with feminine hair ornaments, while
+on his republican shoulders rests the dark blue sack
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>garment familiar to us as the festival garb of our Chinese
+washermen. There are in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection a large number of Washington pitchers, from
+which some of the entries on this list are described.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One Liverpool print deserves special mention, for a
+very interesting story is attached to it, and is told in detail
+by Benson J. Lossing in his “Mount Vernon and
+Its Associations.” A dealer in Philadelphia imported a
+number of pitchers of various sizes, each bearing a portrait
+of Washington, the design for which had been
+taken from Gilbert Stuart’s picture painted for the Marquis
+of Lansdowne. Nutter had engraved this portrait
+for Hunter’s edition of Lavater, and a copy of the engraving
+was printed upon the pitchers. Mr. Dorsey, a
+sugar-dealer of Philadelphia, purchased several of these
+pitchers, and after a number of unsuccessful attempts to
+separate the part bearing the portrait from the rest of
+the pitcher, managed at last, by using the broad-faced
+hammer of a shoemaker, to break out the picture unharmed
+with a single sharp blow. The pottery fragment
+bearing the portrait was handsomely framed by Mr.
+James R. Smith, of Philadelphia, and sent to Judge
+Washington at Mount Vernon, where it was hung and
+was known as the pitcher portrait. A copy of it is here
+shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>
+<img src='images/i_275.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Pitcher Portrait.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mr. Smith owned a crayon portrait of Washington, a
+copy made by Sharpless himself of his original picture of
+Washington. On the back of this Sharpless portrait was
+a long eulogy of Washington, written by an English
+gentleman. Mr. Smith copied a portion of this eulogy
+on the back of the pitcher portrait—as much of the inscription,
+in fact, as there was room to write. It ran thus,
+as given in “Alden’s Collections of American Epitaphs
+and Inscriptions:” “Washington the Defender of his
+Country, the Founder of Liberty and the Friend of Man.
+History and Tradition are explored in vain for a parallel
+to his character. In the annals of modern greatness
+he stands alone, and the noblest names of antiquity lose
+their lustre in his presence. Born the Benefactor of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>Mankind he united all the qualities necessary to an illustrious
+career. Nature made him great, he made himself
+virtuous. Called by his country to the defense of
+her liberties, he triumphantly vindicated the rights of
+humanity and, on the pillars of National Independence,
+laid the foundations of a Great Republick. Twice invested
+with supreme magistracy, by the unanimous vote
+of a free people, he surpassed in the cabinet the glories
+of the field; and voluntarily resigning the sword and the
+sceptre, retired to the shades of private life. A spectacle
+so new and so sublime was contemplated with the profoundest
+admiration, and the name of Washington, adding
+new lustre to humanity, resounded to the remotest
+regions of the earth. Magnanimous in youth, glorious
+through life, great in death, his highest ambition the
+happiness of mankind, his noblest victory the conquest
+of himself. Bequeathing to posterity the inheritance
+of his fame, and building his monument in the hearts
+of his countrymen he lived—the ornament of the eighteenth
+century, he died—regretted by the mourning
+world.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The centre portion of this inscription has been within
+a few years cut out of the back of the frame by some
+vandal hands. The entire eulogy, as written on the back
+of the Sharpless portrait, can be seen in Lossing’s
+“Mount Vernon and Its Associations,” and in Sparks’s
+“Writings of Washington,” and as a masterpiece of flattery—and
+honest flattery, too—it knows no equal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This pitcher portrait descended to Lawrence Washington,
+Esq. It was exhibited at the Philadelphia State-House
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>in 1876, and was sold at auction April 22, 1891,
+at Philadelphia, for $75.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Liverpool pitchers bearing the design like that of the
+pitcher portrait are rare in America, but are found in a
+few private collections; and oval plaques are also found
+bearing the same portrait. These latter have a swelling
+surface, as if cut from the side of a pitcher. There are
+specimens with this print in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+Some years ago a framed pitcher portrait was
+found in the attic of an old house in Washington
+Street, Newport, and is now in the possession of Benjamin
+Smith, Esq., of Philadelphia.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some very interesting ceramic portraits of Washington
+were made in China, early in this century, on four porcelain
+toddy-jugs, by order of Mr. B. C. Willcocks, of Philadelphia.
+It is said that the portraits were copied from
+one of these pitcher portraits, but the head on the toddy-jugs
+is longer and narrower, and the neck is much longer.
+This elongating may have been done by the Chinese artist,
+but it looks more like the other Stuart portrait, the
+one with lawn ruffles; the pitcher portrait has a lace
+ruffle. One of this quartette of covered toddy-jugs was
+kept by Mr. Willcocks, and the other three he presented
+to three life-long friends who met frequently and regularly
+to play whist with him. One of these Washington
+toddy-jugs is now in a Washington collection in Newport.
+It is a foot in height and seven inches in diameter,
+of white Chinese hard porcelain. It has foliated
+handles, heavy rim, and “chimera” knob on the cover,
+all of gilt. On one side is the portrait of Washington,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>but by reason of the bluish shade of the hard porcelain
+it lacks the softness of the print on the Liverpool ware.
+The portrait is banded with a heavy gold edge, and in a
+similar gilt oval on the opposite side of the pitcher is a
+pretty cipher, B. C. W.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_278.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Washington Monument Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>To this pitcher-portrait design, since so much honor
+has been paid to
+it, I will assign
+the first place on
+my Washington
+list.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>1. Washington.
+Head from
+Stuart’s Portrait.
+Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On oval plaques
+and pitchers.
+Described on
+pages <a href='#Page_258'>258</a> <i>et
+seq.</i>, and shown
+on page <a href='#Page_259'>259</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>2. Washington. Head from Stuart’s portrait. Canton.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On Chinese toddy-jug. Described on preceding page.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>3. Washington. Medallion head on monument. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This oval design is printed on pitchers of three sizes. In the
+centre is a monument bearing a poor medallion portrait of
+Washington, surmounted by a laurel wreath and urn, and
+bearing the words “George Washington Born Feb 22, 1732
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>Died Decr. 17, 1799.” Below the coat of arms of the Washington
+family, a shield bearing five bars in chief three mullets.
+A weeping female figure leans against the monument,
+and a very sad eagle droops in the foreground, with two
+equally drooping willows on either side. Above the design
+are the words, “Washington in Glory,” below, “America
+in Tears.” A pitcher bearing this design is here shown.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>4. Washington. Medallion head. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Similar design to No. 3, but more coarsely engraved, while the
+inscriptions are within the oval line of the print.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>5. Washington. Medallion. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is printed in black on mugs and pitchers of various sizes.
+One is shown on page <a href='#Page_139'>139</a>. The portrait is mean and poor to
+the last degree. On the right stands America with the words,
+“Deafness to the ear that will patiently hear, and dumbness
+to the tongue that will utter a calumny against the immortal
+Washington.” On the left Liberty says, “My favorite Son.”
+Below, the inscription, “Long Live the President of the
+United States.” This, of course, was made previous to 1799,
+the date of Washington’s death.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>6. Washington. Portrait. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Printed in black. Marked F. Morris, Shelton. Liberty holds
+a wreath over the head of Washington. The inscription
+reads, “Washington Crowned with Laurels by Liberty.”
+This is surrounded by a chain with fifteen large links inclosing
+the names of fifteen States.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>7. Washington. Monument.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate of cream-colored ware printed in dull reddish brown.
+Within a ring dotted with fifteen stars is the figure of the
+Goddess of Liberty, with a shield and olive branch. Behind
+her stands a pyramidal monument bearing a portrait of
+Washington and inscribed, “Sacred to the Memory of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>Washington.” On one side is seen the ocean with a ship,
+and at the foot of Liberty is an eagle and a scroll with the
+words, “E Pluribus Unum.” Around the edge of the plate
+are long oval medallions of stripes and stars.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>8. Washington. Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Printed in black or red. A poor portrait of Washington, over
+which a cherub holds a wreath inclosing the word “Washington.”
+Justice and Liberty on either side of portrait, and
+Victory at base. A ribbon scroll has the names of fifteen
+States and incloses fifteen stars.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>9. Washington. Apotheosis. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Oval print, with a label at the base, the word Apotheosis. A
+tomb with seated figures of Liberty and an Indian in the foreground.
+Time is lifting Washington, clothed in a shroud,
+from the tomb, while an angel holds the patriot’s hand and
+points up to rays of glory. On the tomb the words, “Sacred
+to the memory of Washington ob 17 Dec. <span class='fss'>A.D.</span> 1799. Ae 68.”
+Outside the oval are winged cherub heads. Often under the
+nose of the pitcher is seen the motto, “A Man without Example,
+A Patriot without Reproach.” Pitchers bearing this
+specially hideous print seem to be eagerly sought after by
+all china collectors. It is a reduced copy of a large engraving
+three feet long and two wide, which was issued by Simon
+Chandron and John J. Barradet, in Philadelphia, in January,
+1802. This engraving is still frequently seen in old Philadelphia
+homes, and was common enough in the middle of the
+century. In the large engraving many funny details can be
+seen which are lost or blurred in the pitcher print. For instance,
+the various decorations owned by Washington, including
+the Order of the Cincinnati, are proudly displayed,
+hanging over the stone of the open tomb. Sometimes the
+print is seen without the word Apotheosis. One of these
+pitchers is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>
+<img src='images/i_281.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Apotheosis Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>10. Washington. Monument. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design is printed in a scalloped oval. In a landscape with
+water, ships, and a church, is a monument with a medallion
+portrait of Washington and the words: “First in War,
+First in Peace, First in Fame, First in Victory.” Fame
+stands on the right, and a naval officer on the left. In
+front is an American flag, cannon, swords, etc. Around the
+edge of the oval are the names of thirteen States. I have
+several times had a pitcher with this design offered to me for
+purchase for $8, $10, or $15, according to the size and
+condition; but I saw one in a jeweller’s shop in New
+York during the Centennial celebration in 1889, marked $150,
+and it was asserted that it was sold at that price. The revival
+of interest at that time in anything and everything
+that related to Washington, of course afforded the explanation
+of this enormous and absurd price.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>11. Washington. Medallion Portrait. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A poor full-face portrait, not resembling Washington, with same
+legend as No. 5. It is marked F. Morris, Shelton.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>12. Washington. Profile Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is printed in black on small pitchers. Over the portrait
+the legend, “He is in Glory, America in Tears.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>13. Washington. On Horseback. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design appears upon a gallon bowl in the collection of the
+Connecticut Historical Society, and also upon one in a collection
+in Newport. Pitchers also have been seen with it.
+Washington appears mounted, on a battle-field, with the
+accompanying inscription: “His Excellency General George
+Washington, Marshal of France, and Commander in Chief of
+the North American Continental Forces.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though this inscription dubs Washington a marshal of France,
+it seems uncertain whether the title was correctly applied.
+It is said that when Colonel Laurens was special ambassador
+to France, a discussion arose as to the command of the
+united armies in America. Of course Laurens insisted
+firmly that Washington must have absolute control; but
+Count de Rochambeau, an old lieutenant-general, could
+be commanded only by the king or a maréchal de France.
+Laurens with ready wit solved the difficulty by suggesting
+that Washington be made a maréchal. This suggestion was
+carried out, and the French at Yorktown addressed Washington
+as Monsieur le Maréchal. On the other hand, when
+Lamont, in his volume of poems, addressed Washington by
+his French title of maréchal, Washington wrote to him in
+1785, saying: “I am not a marshal of France, nor do I hold
+any commission or fill any office whatever under that government.”
+This letter would appear to be conclusive evidence.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The bowl also bears a fur-cap portrait of Franklin, the print
+of the soldier and the British lion described in No. 106,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>with the legend, “By virtue and valor we have freed our
+country,” and also the “spatch-cock” American eagle and
+shield.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>14. Washington. On Horseback. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is similar to No. 13, but is apparently of earlier
+manufacture.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The mounted figure has the right arm raised. One is upon an
+octagonal Liverpool plate in the Huntington Collection, and
+has the inscription, “His Excellency George Washington.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>15. Washington. Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Small portrait of Washington in black print on Liverpool pitcher,
+with a design of Liberty cap and flags, and the verses:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“As he tills your rich glebe your old peasant shall tell,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>While his bosom with Liberty glows,</div>
+      <div class='line'>How your Warren expired, how Montgomery fell,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And how Washington humbled your foes.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>16. Washington. Medallion. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A background of weeping willows. In the foreground a monument
+surmounted by an urn and bearing a medallion portrait
+of Washington. Beneath this the arms of the Washington
+family, and crossed swords with palm or laurel
+branches. Above the entire design the words, “Washington
+in Glory.” This design resembles No. 3, but is smaller. On
+the reverse of the pitcher, a design of Ceres and Pomona
+at either side of a cannon, and a spread eagle with the
+words, “Peace, Plenty, and Independence.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>17. Washington. Map of United States. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Printed in black on bowls, plates, and pitchers. It is thus wittily
+described by George Champlin Mason in his book on
+old Newport: “Washington and Franklin are inspecting a
+map of the United States, which shows thirteen States.
+Liberty and History look smilingly upon the pair, while
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>Fame blows a trumpet and flourishes her heels in dangerous
+proximity to Washington’s head, who is the more prominent
+of the two, Franklin being screened in part by the
+pine-tree flag.” On
+this map Louisiana
+is called the Country
+of Mines, and
+stretches up to Lake
+Superior. The
+pitcher is marked
+F. Morris, Shelton.
+There are three
+slightly varying
+prints of this design,
+one having
+reference numbers
+and a key with the
+names of the figures.
+A bowl twelve
+inches in diameter
+bearing this print
+can be seen in the
+Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
+There is also one in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. One in
+Newport bears the date 1796. A pitcher from the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection with this print is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_284.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>“Map” Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>18. Washington. Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A full-face portrait of Washington, with inscription “His Excellency
+Gen<sup>l</sup> Washington,” and the fur-cap portrait of
+Franklin, on the outside of a bowl which has on the inside a
+design of a full-rigged frigate, the Insurgente, and the same
+legend as No. 101. It also has the motto:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“My love is fixed,</div>
+      <div class='line'>I cannot range;</div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>I like my choice</div>
+      <div class='line'>Too well to change.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>19. Washington. Cameo. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Made in white on colored grounds and in pure white. Mentioned
+in Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>20. Washington. Intaglio. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In highly polished black ware for use as a seal. Though so
+small a head, the likeness is good. In Wedgwood’s Catalogue
+of 1787. A specimen may be seen in Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>21. Washington. Medallion. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Made both in black basalt and blue and white jasper. This
+head is very fine, and an excellent copy may be seen in the
+Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>22. Washington. Bust. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This bust is in black basalt. The height is thirteen inches. A
+fine engraving of it may be seen in Miss Meteyard’s “Wedgwood
+and his Works,” numbered Plate XVIII. One is
+owned by a collector in Chicago.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>23. Washington. Medallion. Neale &#38; Co.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An oval medallion in pottery with the head of Washington in
+high relief.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>24. Washington. Statuette. Enoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This statuette is fifteen inches high, and is identical in dress
+and figure with the statuette of Franklin, No. 46, save that
+the head of Washington is covered with white powdered hair
+or a white wig, instead of the dark natural locks that grace
+the Franklin statuette. The head and face only are colored,
+though the buttons, buckles, and coat ornaments or frogs are
+gilded. It seems rather unjust in Enoch Wood to put the
+head of Washington on Franklin’s extremely rotund body.
+In the right hand of the figure is a scroll with vague lettering,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>and under the left arm a cocked hat. I know of but
+one of these statuettes with the Washington head; it is in
+the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>25. Washington. Statuette. Badin Frères.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This French statuette is about ten inches in height. Washington
+is dressed in a yellow coat and blue waistcoat, and carries
+a scroll marked “Patria.” By his side is an American eagle
+crowing over a broken tablet painted with a picture of the
+British lion. On the pedestal in gilt letters, “Badin Frères,
+D’leurs, à Paris.” Specimen in the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>26. Washington. Statuette. Badin Frères.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Statuette of glazed pottery. Washington has his foot on a
+thoroughly subdued British lion and the British flag. He
+carries in his hand a scroll with word “Independence.”
+Specimen in the Huntington Collection. The face of this
+statuette (as well as that of the preceding one, No. 25) bears
+more of a likeness to the Rembrandt Peale portrait of Washington
+than to any other.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>27. Washington. Parian Pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An embossed full figure of Washington on a Parian pitcher in
+the Huntington Collection. Also designs of flags and spread
+eagles.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>28. Washington. Bust. Ralph Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Number G. 367, in the Catalogue of the Museum of Practical
+Geology in London. It is thus described:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Bust of Washington, 10 inches high, in plain cream-colored
+ware, with impressed mark Ra. Wood, Burslem.” Ralph
+Wood, whose name is stamped on this piece, was the father
+of Aaron Wood and grandfather of Enoch Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>29. Washington. Relief Portrait. Dresden.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Profile portrait of Washington in relief, gilded, on <i>bleu de roi</i>
+ground. On other side similar relief portrait of Franklin.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>In front an American eagle. Dresden mark. One may be
+seen in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>30. Washington. Medallion. Dresden.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dresden china cup and saucer, gilded without and within. On
+the cup a blue oval medallion with exquisite head in white
+relief of profile portrait of George Washington. This beautiful
+piece is owned by Mrs. Nealy, of Washington, D. C.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>31. Washington. Bust.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A bust of Washington in cream-colored oily pottery. It is about
+four inches in height and is one of a set comprising busts of
+Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Lafayette, Franklin, etc. I think
+the date of manufacture was about 1850. They are common
+in America. Specimens may be seen in the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>32. Washington. Mirror Knob.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A portrait of head of Washington, in a cocked hat, on a porcelain
+mirror-knob. A transfer print in black; sometimes
+being printed in outline and filled in with pale colors. For
+description of mirror-knobs see page <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'>33. Washington. Tomb. Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This dark blue design represents a bewigged man with knee-breeches
+at the tomb of Washington. In his hand he carries
+a scroll. This print is usually known as “Lafayette at the
+tomb of Washington.” The face does not resemble Lafayette,
+and when Lafayette visited Washington’s tomb he wore
+trousers, knee-breeches being out of date. It has been suggested
+that the solitary figure is intended for Jefferson. In
+the background is a view of a town and water, with shipping.
+The print is usually indistinct and poor, though the color is
+good. It is seen on all the pieces of tea and toilet services.
+Impressed mark, Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>34. Washington. Funeral Urn. Canton.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The pieces bearing this design are extremely beautiful in shape,
+quality, and decoration, every detail being perfect. The
+owner called it Lowestoft, but it is plainly Oriental in manufacture,
+being of very hard-paste, and the character of the
+design (showing that it was executed after the death of Washington)
+would hardly point to the Lowestoft manufactory as
+its place of birth. The platters and plates have an open-work
+basket-design border lined with delicate threads of golden
+brown and gold. At each intersection of the interlaced
+border is a tiny embossed rosette colored in gilt or bronze,
+with a darker centre. The delicacy and beauty of this dainty
+border can hardly be described. In the centre of each piece,
+in various shades of gold—both dull and polished gold being
+combined—is a design of a funeral mound and an urn bearing
+the word “Washington,” overhung by a weeping-willow. The
+leaves and branches of this tree are models of the gilder’s art.
+On each piece are in gold the gracefully intertwined initials
+J. R. L., probably the initials of the person for whom the set
+was made. For beauty of design and workmanship these
+pieces excel any others I have ever seen bearing any so-called
+Washington design.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>35. Washington Memorial.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate, with irregularly scalloped edge, is green in the centre,
+with red border. The decoration is a scene with a
+seated classical figure writing upon a tablet, and with a
+Greek temple in the background. The border contains four
+medallions of funeral urns and weeping willows. On the
+back is stamped in red a funeral urn with the word “Washington,”
+and the initials E. H. Y. S. The printing of this
+design is very clear and the lines very delicate, and the drawing
+is good.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>36. Washington. Medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A bowl of clear white china with plain band of gilt on the edge.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>On one side, in blue, a medallion of Washington between two
+flags, surmounted by a spread eagle. Unmarked.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>37. Washington. Funeral Urn.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate with pink flower border, centre in green. A statue of
+Washington and a cinerary urn with the word “Washington.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>38. Washington. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A portrait of Washington printed in black on a white stone-ware
+pitcher—apparently modern. Crossed flags painted in
+colors. This pitcher may have been made to use in a hotel
+or on a steamboat.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On “Emblem of America” Pitcher. See No. 98.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington. Views of Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 195 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington. Portrait. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 166.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington. Portrait. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 170.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington. Inscription. Proscribed Patriots.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 86.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington. Medallion. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 251.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XIV.<br> DESIGNS RELATING TO FRANKLIN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>The great popularity and long residence of Benjamin
+Franklin abroad would account for the many
+and varied ceramic relics relating to him that
+were manufactured in England and France during his
+lifetime, and that are still in existence, more varied in
+quality and shape even than those relating to Washington.
+Nor after his death did the production cease. I
+will place at the head of the list the most beautiful of
+them all.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>39. Group of Louis XVI. and Benjamin Franklin.
+Niderviller.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>
+<img src='images/i_291.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Neiderweiler Statuette.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>This lovely statuette is of purest white porcelain bisque, and is
+about twelve inches in height, and ten inches in length. The
+face of the figure of Franklin is exceedingly fine, and is, in a
+degree, unlike any other portrait of him that I have seen. It
+has all the benignancy and sweetness of expression with
+which we are familiar, and an added nobility and intelligence
+which is more marked and more impressive than in any
+other likeness. It is an ideal portrait of Franklin, which
+must be regarded with pleasure and interest by every historical
+student. The figure of the King is also extremely fine
+and imposing. The face is beautiful, the carriage manly,
+and the half suit of armor, with the long royal cloak of ermine,
+form an impressive contrast with the simple fur-trimmed
+garment of Franklin, whose figure is slightly bent, but still
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>impressive. The King holds in his hand a parchment book
+or scroll bearing on one leaf in golden letters the words,
+“Indépendance de l’Amérique,” and on another leaf, “Liberté
+des Mers.” This group was made to commemorate our
+treaty with France in 1788. It is beautifully modelled and of
+highest artistic merit, and must take rank as the most important
+relic of our country that has yet been figulated. It
+bears the stamp “Niderviller,” and was made at that factory
+while it was owned by Count Custine. He had fought with
+Lafayette in the war for American Independence, and doubtless
+knew Franklin. The statue was evidently modelled from
+life. Count Custine also gave to Washington the beautiful
+tea-service described on page <a href='#Page_244'>244</a> <i>et seq.</i> Three only of these
+portrait groups of Franklin and Louis XVI. are known to
+exist; the only perfect one is owned by William C. Prime,
+Esq., of New York, and will form part of the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection at Princeton; from it the illustration here given
+was taken. Another imperfect one is in the possession of
+William A. Hoppin, Esq., of Providence; and a third and
+mutilated specimen is in the Huntington Collection at the
+Metropolitan Museum of Art.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>40. Franklin. Medallions. Nini.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some very good medallions of Benjamin Franklin were manufactured
+by Jean Baptiste Nini, who in 1760 entered the employ
+of M. Leray, or M. de Chaumont, at Chaumont. Nini
+was a glass engraver of rare merit, and his work on these medallions
+was very beautiful. The fine copper moulds for his
+medallions that he employed were melted down into ingots in
+1820. His work may be known by the mark engraved in the
+soft-paste of “Nini,” or “J. B. Nini F.”—sometimes with the
+date. He made at least six different sizes of medallions of
+Franklin, some of which bear the date in relief.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Franklin, writing from Passy in 1779 to his daughter, Mrs.
+Sarah Bache, speaks thus of these Nini medallions: “The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>clay medallion of me you say you gave Mr. Hopkinson was
+the first of the kind made in France. A variety of others
+have been made since of various sizes; some to be set in the
+lids of snuff-boxes, and some so small as to be worn in rings;
+and the numbers sold are incredible. These, with the pictures
+and prints (of which copies upon copies are spread everywhere),
+have made your father’s face as well known as that
+of the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would
+oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover him whereever
+he should venture to show it. It is said by learned etymologists
+that the name of doll for the image children play
+with is derived from the word idol. From the number of dolls
+now made of him he may be truly said, in that sense, to be
+idolized in this country.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In several other published letters Franklin speaks of making
+gifts of these medallions to his friends, and states that they
+were made at Chaumont. Madame de Campan says that
+they were sold at the palace of Versailles, and bore this
+motto, “<cite>Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.</cite>”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are in the Huntington Collection several specimens of
+these Nini medallions, that collection containing in all eleven
+medallions of Franklin, many of which being unmarked it is
+futile to attempt to classify. A Nini medallion having a fine
+fur-cap portrait sold in the Governor Lyon sale for ten dollars.
+Mr. Huntington wrote thus to Hon. John Bigelow, of
+Nini and his medallions: “He must have had a certain
+vogue in his time, medallions of folks of the superior classes
+from his hand still turning up at sales and in curiosity shops.
+He did two Franklins—both at the Metropolitan Museum—dated
+and signed. The smaller one, with the cap, ‘1777 B.
+Franklin, Américain,’ was among the earliest of the Franklin
+idols made here, and has been numerously reproduced by
+French, English, and other engravers. The larger, which is
+of the more usual size of Nini’s work, is much rarer, has never
+been engraved from, as far as I know, and is to my notion
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>one of the most finely characterized of all the Franklin portraits—1799
+(and in some copies MDCCLXXIX.; you will find
+specimens of both in the museum), with Turgot’s lines for the
+legend. In his letter to his daughter, Passy, 3d of June, B.
+F. writes: ‘The clay medallion of me you say you gave Mr.
+Hopkinson was the first of the kind made in France.’ This
+must be the one with the cap. If the Ven. F. is correct in his
+statement, it would curiously seem that his friend Chaumont
+set Nini at him as soon as he caught the artist, to start (we
+should now say inaugurate) his furnace at Chaumont with the
+likeness of his friend.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>41. Franklin. Medallion. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This appears in Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787 under the head
+of “Illustrious Moderns.” It was made in black basalt and
+blue and white jasper. There appear to have been two of
+these portraits; for at the sale of the collection of Dr. Gibson,
+in London, March, 1877, a blue jasper medallion of Dr.
+Franklin, by Wedgwood &#38; Bentley, was sold for £12 12s.,
+while one with the fur-cap by Wedgwood sold for £11. Specimens
+can be seen in the Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan
+Museum of Art, and in the Trumbull-Prime Collection
+at Princeton.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>42. Franklin. Cameo. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787. Made in white on colored
+grounds, and in pure white.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>43. Franklin. Intaglio. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is named in Wedgwood’s Catalogue of 1787. It was
+smaller, to be used as a seal, and was of black ware highly
+polished. One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>44. Franklin. Oval Plaque. Bristol.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This medallion of Franklin is upon one of Richard Champion’s
+exquisite flower-plaques. This plaque is considered by
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Owen to be “the most important” of Champion’s work.
+Champion was an ardent admirer of America and Americans,
+and his special veneration for Franklin evidently impelled him
+to produce this elaborate work. It is eight and a half inches
+in length, and seven and a half in width, the portrait bust being
+surrounded immediately by a laurel wreath tied with a bow-knot,
+and outside the laurel wreath by a rich wreath of roses
+and lilies in highly raised and most delicate work. Another
+specimen of the same medallion is known to exist upon a plain
+ground plaque, and has often been attributed to the Sèvres
+manufactory. One of these flower-plaques with the bust of
+Franklin was exhibited at the Loan Collection in New York,
+in 1889, by Dr. Caspar Wister Hodge, of Princeton, N. J.
+Rev. Dr. Hodge was the grandson of William Bache, the
+grandson of Franklin. Dr. Hodge’s mother was born in
+Franklin’s house in Philadelphia, and her account of the
+flower-plaque was that it was made at the Sèvres manufactory
+and was the gift of Louis XVI. to Benjamin Franklin; that it
+had been sent to America by private hands, in connection
+with a similar one of George Washington, which was surmounted
+by a gilt crown; and that the messenger, in officious
+democratic zeal, picked off the crown with his penknife before
+delivering the medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dr. Hodge said it was a complete surprise to him, and it
+could not have been a very pleasant one, when he offered the
+plaque for exhibition in New York, to be told that it was
+Bristol china, and was not unique. Of course these latter
+facts might be so without destroying the other part of the family
+tradition—that it was a royal gift; but it is far more probable
+that Richard Champion presented this choice specimen
+of his work to Franklin, for in a letter to Champion, written
+from Paris, January 2, 1778, the unknown writer speaks of a
+visit to Franklin, and says: “He begs his compliments and
+is much obliged for your present, which arrived in perfect
+safety. He says that there is a good likeness with Wedgwood
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>&#38; Bentley’s, only with this difference, that he wears his hair,
+which is rather straight and long, instead of a wig, and is very
+high in his forehead.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the Lewis sale of Washington relics, held in Philadelphia, in
+December, 1890, there was sold an “oval porcelain plaque
+with a bust of Benjamin Franklin in a wreath of china roses
+and lilies, 8½ inches by 7½ inches.” This I believe to have
+been the one which tradition in the Hodge family says came
+over to Washington. Some of the Bristol flower-plaques had
+a crown above the medallion; one in Mr. Edkin’s Collection
+is illustrated in Owen’s “Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in
+Bristol.” The Franklin plaque sold in Philadelphia for
+ninety dollars—a price to make an English collector groan
+with envy—while the one in Mr. Edkin’s Collection (from
+which is taken the engraving in Mr. Owen’s book) sold in
+England in 1874 for £150. Dr. Hodge had an insurance of
+one thousand dollars offered to him on his Franklin plaque
+when it was in New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>45. Franklin. Medallion. Neale &#38; Co.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The head of Dr. Franklin in pottery, by Neale &#38; Co., Hanley.
+It is an oval medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Franklin. Relief Portrait. Dresden.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 29.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>46. Franklin. Statuette. Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This pottery statue is fifteen inches in height, and is neither
+very impressive nor well modelled. One in the Huntington
+Collection is colored, Poor Richard being gayly attired in gray
+coat, yellow waistcoat, and pink breeches. He carries his hat
+under his left arm, and a scroll in his left hand. Another in
+the same collection is precisely like it, save that the head
+only is colored. It is labelled, in gold letters, “General
+Washington.” This mistake easily arose, for the statuette of
+Washington, described in No. 24, is exactly like this Franklin
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>statuette except the head, which in the latter has flowing
+natural hair. A number of these Franklin statuettes
+bear the name of Washington, and it does not matter much,
+for they do not closely resemble either of the great Americans.
+This statuette is attributed to Ralph Wood or Enoch
+Wood, of Burslem. There are three of these figures in the
+Trumbull-Prime Collection, dressed in vari-colored garments,
+one being much smaller, about thirteen inches in height. But
+for the right arm being more extended, it would appear that
+the original mould had become worn and a new one cast,
+which in shrinking made this reduction in the size of this figure.
+One of these statuettes of Franklin in the S. L. M.
+Barlow Collection was sold in 1890 for forty-two dollars.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>47. Franklin. Statuette.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the Catalogue of the Museum of Practical Geology, Number
+G. 374, is described thus: “Statuette of Dr. Franklin painted
+in colors. Height, 13¼ inches. Mounted on square marbled
+pedestal with oval yellow medallions in relief; unmarked.
+This may be a Salopian figure.” One of these statuettes is in
+the Huntington Collection; the medallions being in blue and
+white. Dr. Franklin wears in this case white breeches, blue
+waistcoat, scarlet coat, a blue ribbon with an order, and a long
+ermine cloak. This statuette is rather funny, though at first
+glance it is quite impressive. The Doctor, comparatively devoid
+of pendulous chin, stands erect and beautiful, with his
+head thrown back with a most imperious and even imperial
+air, to which the ermine cloak gives added weight and zest.
+He is so erect and so slender that we hardly know him. But
+when we glance at his feet, the impression of youthfulness
+and beauty vanishes. With feet several sizes too large for his
+figure, and gaudy light green slippers several sizes too large
+even for those feet, we turn away to our familiar good old
+dewlapped man with the fur-cap, and like him better than
+this splay-footed, ermine-cloaked plantigrade.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>48. Franklin. Statuette.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Parian figure about seven inches in height. The likeness is
+good, though the feet are abnormally narrow and pointed;
+unmarked. A copy may be seen in the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>49. Franklin. Statuette.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pottery figure about seven inches in height, leaning on a pink
+pedestal decorated with raised white eagles. The coat is
+black, breeches yellow, and waistcoat pink. This gayly
+garbed slim young fellow does not at all resemble our own
+Franklin. The statuette is unmarked. A specimen may be
+seen in the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>50. Franklin. Statuette.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This pottery figure is fifteen inches in height, and is in feature
+and figure and dress like No. 46, and was evidently modelled
+by the same hand. It is a poor thing, and bears but little
+resemblance to Franklin. A dilapidated specimen is in the
+Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>51. Franklin. Mirror Knob.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print of Franklin in black on oval porcelain plaque in a mirror
+knob. For description of these knobs see page <a href='#Page_159'>159</a> <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'>52. Franklin. Fur-cap Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Round plate with fluted border, with splashes of purple and yellow
+like No. 81. In the centre a good rendering of the fur-cap
+portrait of Franklin. In the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>53. Franklin. Fur-cap Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate with pierced border like No. 82. Well-painted portrait
+in centre. In the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>54. Franklin. Portrait. Dresden.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Dresden plate with flower border and good portrait of Franklin.
+In Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_284'>284</span>55. Franklin. Bust.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Small bust of Franklin in bisque, mounted on a yellow and gold
+pedestal. Marked “Francklin.” In Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>56. Franklin. Bust.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A bust of Franklin in what appears to be modern majolica. In
+Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>57. Franklin. Bust.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>White pottery bust glazed, about ten inches in height. Around
+the base a wreath of laurel. In Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>58. Franklin. Bust.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>White porcelain bisque bust, five inches in height, mounted on
+dark blue and gold stand. In Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>59. Franklin. Portrait. Dresden.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A portrait of Franklin on a great cylindrical covered jar, twenty
+inches in height and eight inches in diameter. The portrait
+is good, though the mouth is exaggeratedly small and the chin
+exaggeratedly remultiplied. It is surrounded by a well-painted
+wreath of flowers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Franklin. Figure on Pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 17.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Franklin. Fur-cap Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 13.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Franklin. Emblem of America Pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 98.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>60. Franklin. Tomb.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design was printed in dark blue on dinner, breakfast, tea,
+and toilet services in vast numbers. In such large numbers,
+in fact, that the pieces with this design are cheaper than any
+others bearing the names of any historical personages. I
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>have bought a large teapot for a dollar, cups and saucers for
+a dollar, etc. This might be classed among the Lafayette
+prints, but as we are not sure that the seated figure is intended
+for Lafayette, and Franklin cannot escape the formal
+witness of his inscribed tomb, we place it in this place in the
+list. A teapot bearing this print is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_301.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Tomb of Franklin Teapot.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>61. Franklin. Print. Fur-cap Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is in black on pitchers and bowls. It is the fur-cap
+portrait with the glasses. The legend reads: “Benj<sup>n</sup> Franklin
+Esq. LL.D. and F.R.S., the brave defender of the country
+against the oppression of taxation without representation—author
+of the greatest discovery in Natural Philosophy since
+those of Sir Isaac Newton, viz.: that lightning is the same with
+the electric fire.” See No. 18.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>62. Franklin. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A full-length print of Franklin on mug, with various maxims of
+Poor Richard’s.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>63. Franklin. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A light blue print of Franklin found on toilet services. The
+philosopher is seen flying his famous kite.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>64. Dr. Franklin’s Maxims.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate of cream ware with relief border of scrolls and scallops
+intertwined, with words in ornamental capitals, “Fear God:
+Honour your Parents.” In the centre is a green print of a
+view of the inside and outside of a shop, with figures. Those
+within are working, those without are idle. Above, the words,
+“Dr. Franklin’s Maxims.” Below, the maxims, “Keep thy
+shop and thy shop will keep thee,” “If you would have your
+business done, go; if not, send.” This plate is in the possession
+of Mrs. Nealy, of Washington, D. C.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>65. Franklin’s Morals. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue plate with waving edge, and dainty border of fruit,
+shells, and flowers. In the centre a man carrying a large
+key. Houses and a bridge in the background. On the back
+of the plate the words, “Franklin’s Morals, ‘The used key
+is always bright.’”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>66. Franklin. House at Passy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Upon a beautiful Sèvres vase at the Executive Mansion in
+Washington is seen a view of Franklin’s house at Passy.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>67. Franklin. Portrait Plaque.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Oval plaque of Italian majolica marked with inscription, “Cortoni
+Fab Alari. Beniamino Franklin, C. Brunacci Depinse.”
+In the Huntington Collection. There are also three other
+majolica plates and plaques in this collection bearing portraits
+of Franklin.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>I may say, in conclusion, what I have already shown in
+detail, that there can be no better opportunity of studying
+the face of Franklin, as shown in pottery and porcelain,
+than in the Huntington Collection. There are
+eleven relief medallions, eleven enamels, nine busts, six
+statues, and a large number of plates and plaques.
+You can also compare these ceramic portraits with innumerable
+bronzes, engravings, art gems, cameos, gold and
+silver and pewter work bearing the same serene, benignant
+face, and with some very funny though unintentional
+caricatures of Franklin by Japanese and Chinese
+artists, in some of which the well-known fur-cap has
+been transformed into a close crop of short woolly curls.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XV.<br> DESIGNS RELATING TO LAFAYETTE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>I have never seen in America any pieces of English
+pottery or porcelain bearing the name, portrait of
+Lafayette, or any reference to him that could be assigned
+to an earlier date of manufacture than 1824, the
+time of Lafayette’s last visit to America. It is worthy of
+note, however, that the Lafayette pieces of crockery that
+were printed to commemorate and illustrate that memorable
+visit and that triumphal journey are, as a rule, in a
+much better state of preservation, freer from marks of
+fierce assaulting knives, barer of nicks and cracks, than
+other American historical pieces of the same date. The
+great veneration and affection felt by all Americans for
+the noble character of Lafayette, and their gratitude for
+his assistance in times of war, were doubtless the cause
+of the careful preservation of the pieces relating to him
+and printed in his honor. The fine platter shown on
+page <a href='#Page_294'>294</a>, which is the clearest, darkest, “Landing” print
+I have ever seen, was always kept carefully wrapped in
+an ancient hand-woven “flannel sheet,” and laid away in
+an upper drawer of a high chest, a “high-boy,” in a New England
+farm-house, until it was ruthlessly removed from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>its honored seclusion of half a century, and hung on the
+wall of my dining-room.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>During the triumphal journey of Lafayette through
+this country in 1824, ladies, in honor of him, wore sashes
+and belt-ribbons printed with his name and likeness,
+gloves with his portrait stamped upon the back, and medallions
+with laudatory inscriptions relating to him fastened
+upon their neck-ribbons and necklaces; while men
+and boys wore Lafayette medals, medallions, and buttons.
+Of all these tokens few now remain; but the various
+Lafayette plates and pitchers form lasting mementos of
+the visit of the “Nation’s Guest.” Few families in New
+England appear to have had more than two or three of
+the Lafayette pieces, but in the vicinity of New York
+persons purchased whole dinner services, especially of the
+“Landing” pattern. Mrs. Roebling owns the remains
+of an entire set purchased by her father, General Warren.
+Mr. William C. Prime also owns an entire service.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>La Grange, the home of Lafayette, was a familiar
+scene to Americans, for many transparencies and paintings
+of the château were exhibited during Lafayette’s
+tour in 1824, and two views of it appear on plates and
+platters. With these I continue the list of historical designs
+and subjects.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>68. Lafayette. La Grange. Enoch Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a dingy and poorly printed view of the gloomy entrance
+to the château, with its great fir-trees, an engraving of which
+is seen in Cloquet’s “Recollections of Lafayette.” The blue
+is good in tint, though the print is indistinct. It has a poor,
+confused shell border. On the back the stamp of Enoch
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>Wood &#38; Sons, and the mark “La Grange, the Home of
+Lafayette.” A plate with this design is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_306.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>La Grange Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>69. Lafayette. La
+Grange 2. Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The superb platters with
+this print bear on the
+back, in a wreath of laurel,
+the stamp “Southwest
+view of Lagrange,
+the residence of Marquis
+La Fayette,” also
+the impressed stamp of
+Wood. The color is of
+the richest dark blue
+tint, a true “lapis to
+delight the world.”
+Across the top of the
+platter the border is formed in a graceful design of grapes and
+vine leaves. On the left the border is composed of finely drawn
+stalks of hollyhocks. On the right a tree and foliage form the
+border. On the lower rim is a design of fleur-de-lis and roses.
+The view of the château is different from No. 68, the whole
+front of the house being shown. A broad expanse of lawn
+fills the foreground, across which two dogs are running. Up
+a path on the left walk a man, woman, and child. I have
+never seen but two pieces bearing this design, both large platters
+twenty-three inches long. I purchased one for $12,
+which large price was unwillingly paid; but as I had never
+seen nor heard of any pieces bearing such a design, I could
+not bear to lose it when I believed it to be unique. Within a
+week after this purchase I saw the second and better platter
+and bought it for $1.50, and now I expect to find many
+another piece with this “Southwest view of Lagrange.” I
+give these prices to show the impossibility of assigning a definite
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>value to those “old blue” Staffordshire pieces. One of
+these platters was obtained through the sale of the old dining-room
+furnishings of Barnum’s Hotel, in Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>70. Lafayette. Medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design is the head of Lafayette in blue on a white porcelain
+plate, with the surrounding words, “Welcome, Lafayette, the
+Nation’s Guest and our Country’s Glory.” The plate has an
+embossed border similar in design to that upon some New
+Hall plates in my possession. It is unmarked. The portrait
+is exceedingly ugly and mean.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>71. Lafayette. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher of stone-ware printed in blue, with a portrait of
+Lafayette on one side, with this legend, “In commemoration
+of the visit of Lafayette to the United States of America in
+1824,” and a wreath entwined with these words, “Lafayette,
+the Nation’s Guest.” On the other side a head of Washington.
+Beneath the nose of the pitcher a spread eagle, and the
+terse sentence, “Republicans are not always ungrateful.”
+One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. I have
+also seen several for sale in city “antique shops.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>72. Lafayette. Medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Medallion portrait of Lafayette and similar one of Washington
+on common white stone-ware mug. Some of these mugs also
+have the date 1824, not the year of manufacture apparently,
+but the date simply of Lafayette’s visit to America.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>73. Lafayette. Medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher ten inches in height, bearing on both sides a good
+portrait of Lafayette, with this legend, “General Lafayette
+was born at Auvergne, in France. At 19 he arrived in America
+in a war-ship furnished at his own cost in 1777, &#38; volunteered
+in our army as Major General. At Brandywine he was
+wounded but refused to quit the field; he assisted the army
+with £10,000 from his own purse, and kept in service until
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>our independence was sealed and country free; in 1784 he
+returned to France loaded with honors and the gratitude of
+the American people; in 1824 the Congress unanimously offered
+a ship for his return, he declined the honor, but landed
+from the Cadmus at New York, August 24th, 1824, amid the
+acclamations of 60,000 freemen.” In front of the pitcher is
+another portrait of Lafayette in vignette, with this legend
+above it, “General Lafayette, welcome to the land of Liberty,”
+and below, “He was born at Auvergne in France, 1757,
+joined the American struggle in 1777, and in 1824 returned to
+repose in the bosom of the land whose liberty he in part gave
+birth to.” This pitcher is globose in shape, is in a good shade
+of blue, and is unmarked.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_308.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Cadmus Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>74. Lafayette. Cadmus. Enoch Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This was the name of the ship which brought Lafayette to America
+in 1824. The stamp “Cadmus” appears on a few only
+of the plates, and the
+others must be classified
+by the knowledge of, and
+comparison with, the
+marked ones, or with the
+illustration here shown.
+This is an exceedingly
+beautiful plate; the graceful
+shell border is so rich
+and dark a blue, and the
+centre expanse of water
+and full-sailed ship and
+sloop are so distinct and
+bright, that it gives one
+the impression of looking
+out from a dark cave upon the sunny ocean. Every plate that
+I have seen bearing this design has been of the finest color,
+clearest print, most brilliant glaze, and in good preservation.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>They have the stamp “Enoch Wood &#38; Sons.” The Cadmus
+was built for Mr. William Whitlock, and belonged to the
+Havre line of packet-ships organized and managed by William
+Whitlock, Jr., &#38; Co., of 46 South Street. When this eminent
+shipping-house learned that Lafayette had declined the offer
+of a national vessel, the members at once put the Cadmus at
+his service, declining to receive any remuneration therefor.
+No other passengers were allowed on board save the General
+and his suite, and the ship took no cargo. Captain Allyn
+was the commander. Lafayette fully appreciated this initial
+act of American friendship and hospitality, and the first private
+house at which he dined after arriving was at Mr. Whitlock’s.
+The ship became in later years a whaling vessel.
+The Long Island Historical Society have a portion of the
+wood-work of the berths from the state-room occupied by Lafayette.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>75. Landing of Lafayette. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pieces bearing this print are perhaps more eagerly sought after
+by collectors, patriots, and historical students than are those
+bearing any other design. The prints are all in dark blue of
+good tint (except a few rare polychrome prints of which I shall
+speak), but vary in clearness and distinctness. It is said that
+whole dinner services and tea-services were printed with it,
+but I have never seen either teapots or creamers. I have
+found four sizes of plates, including the tiny cup-plates; large
+soup-plates, pitchers, platters, bowls, and vegetable-dishes,
+and lovely little pepper-pots and salt-cellars. And I have
+also seen an imposing toilet service proudly bearing in richest
+blue the “Landing of Lafayette.” The border is a handsome
+design of what I think is intended for laurel leaves (but which
+more resemble ash), clusters of flowers which are perhaps
+laurel blossoms, and larger flowers which may be wild roses,
+but look like jonquils. In the centre of the plates and on the
+sides of the larger dishes is a spirited design bearing at the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>base, in dark blue letters, the words, “Landing of Lafayette.
+At Castle Garden, New York, August 24th, 1824.” In the foreground
+of this view are marshals or sentinels on horseback,
+then comes a row of six smoking cannon, then the bay covered
+with beflagged shipping and small sail-boats, and two
+clumsy, strangely shaped steamers, the Robert Fulton and
+Chancellor Livingston, with their side-wheels quite up out of
+the water. At the right, a small bridge over the water leads
+to an inclosed fort, over which floats the flag of the United
+States. Over all is a sky of strongly defined clouds. On the
+back is the impressed stamp, “Warranted Clews Staffordshire.”
+A platter with this design is here shown. Plates of
+this pattern sell for from four to ten dollars, according to clearness,
+condition, and size. This design has been seen in polychrome.
+A few years ago there stood in a barroom in New
+York an enormous punch-bowl capable of holding many gallons.
+It bore printed or painted in high and varied colors
+the “Landing of Lafayette.” Plates and platters also have
+been offered for sale in New York with the design in many
+colors. Sometimes this design is found upon pitchers with a
+poor portrait of Lafayette.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_310.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Lafayette Landing Platter.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>Lafayette arrived in the Cadmus at Staten Island on Sunday,
+but postponed by request his entrance into New York until
+the following day. The landing at the Battery must have
+been a magnificent sight. The steamship Robert Fulton,
+manned by two hundred sailors from the Constitution, and
+her companion ship the Chancellor Livingston, “led in triumph
+rather than towed the Cadmus to the place of landing.”
+Two hundred thousand persons welcomed the General with
+shouts, cannon thundered from the shore, the forts, the vessels.
+Flags, triumphal arches, decorations of various kinds
+adorned the streets and buildings. For those who, when they
+glance at their “Landing” plates, wish to find the image of
+the General there present, I will add that he was then sixty-eight
+years of age, was conceded by all to be far from a beautiful
+or heroic figure, with his small head, staring eyes, retreating
+forehead, and bad complexion, and he wore on that occasion
+“nankeen pantaloons, buff vest, and plain blue coat with
+covered buttons.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>76. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate of coarse pottery, with border of blue and yellow
+leaves. At the top two blue and yellow flags, and in the centre
+of the plate this legend in hand-painted, irregular letters
+of blue:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">(“Cadet Rousette a des plats bleus</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Qui sont beaux, qui n’vont pas au feu;</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Si vous voulez en faire emplette,</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Adressez-vous à La Fayette.</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Ah! Ah! Ah! mais vraiment,</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Cadet Rousette est bon enfant.”</span></div>
+      <div class='line in16'><span lang="fr">1792.)</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>This is a good specimen of the “Faïences Patriotiques.”
+These revolutionary emblems were made at the Nevers Pottery,
+in France, in large numbers, at the time of the French
+Revolution. They were coarsely painted with patriotic,
+though frequently ill-spelled, designs and mottoes, and were
+designed to appeal to and influence the French peasantry.
+The great heat used in the firing prevented the potters from
+using red paint (since that color was destroyed by the high
+temperature), so in direct violation of all “rules of revolutionary
+iconology,” the liberty cap was rendered in blue or yellow.
+It was in honor of the “Fayence of Nevers” that the poem of
+Defraney was written that begins,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">(“Chantons, Fille du Ciel, l’honneur de la Fayence!</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Quel Art! dans l’Italie il reçut la naissance</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Et vint, passant les monts, s’établir dans Nevers.</span></div>
+      <div class='line'><span lang="fr">Ses ouvrages charmans vont au delà des mers.”)</span></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>This Nevers plate is in the Huntington Collection at the Metropolitan
+Museum of Art.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>77. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate of coarse Nevers pottery with hideous profile portrait of
+Lafayette in yellow and blue, and date 1794. Border of blue
+leaves. Also in the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>78. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate of coarse Nevers pottery with scroll border of green, yellow,
+and blue. A full-face portrait of Lafayette in bright yellow,
+with purple hair. In the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>79. Lafayette. Faïence Patriotique. Nevers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Large plate of Nevers pottery, fourteen inches in diameter, with
+slightly scalloped edge. In the centre a design of a long-legged
+bird with man’s head, saying, “La Fayette, Je tends
+mes filets.” The bird tramples under foot, or under claw, a
+head marked “le Roi Soliveau,” and is addressing his remarks
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>to a head on a pole with a flag marked “Loi Martiale.”
+There is also a network or fence inclosing frogs. Above all,
+the inscription, “Les grenouilles qui demandent un Roi, ou
+le Roi Soliveau.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>80. Lafayette. Portrait. Sèvres.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Sèvres plate with an exquisitely painted portrait of Lafayette
+in full uniform. A rich border of red, blue, and gold. In
+the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>81. Lafayette. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Square plate with fluted border, with splashes of purple and
+yellow, like No. 52. A spray of flowers in each corner. In
+the centre a fine profile portrait of Lafayette in full uniform.
+In the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>82. Lafayette. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate with pierced border like No. 53. In the centre the same
+portrait as in No. 81. In the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>83. Lafayette. Bust.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Bust four inches in height. One of same set described in No.
+31. One can be seen in Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>84. Lafayette. Medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>White porcelain profile medallion about two inches and a half
+in diameter. No mark.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Lafayette. At the Tomb of Franklin.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Were we sure that the figure in this design is Lafayette, it
+would properly be placed here, but it is very uncertain
+whether the seated mourner is Lafayette, or merely some
+sombre-minded, non-historical, though patriotic citizen; so a
+description and illustration of this design will be found among
+the Franklin Prints, No. 60.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>Lafayette. At the Tomb of Washington.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 33. The figure in this design may not be that of
+Lafayette.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Lafayette. Portrait. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 166. The presence of Lafayette at the formal opening
+of the Erie Canal was naturally felt to be a great honor,
+hence the appearance of his name on many of the plates;
+but as the other design is more prominent it is classed
+under that name.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are many modern Parian busts of poor likeness
+and indifferent artistic merit, and occasional hand-painted
+plaques of Lafayette, but they hardly come
+within the intentions and purpose of this list.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XVI.<br> PATRIOTIC AND POLITICAL DESIGNS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>The heroes and the naval battles of the War of 1812
+furnished manifold subjects for the designs printed
+on a vast number of mugs and pitchers. They
+were made and printed at the Liverpool and Staffordshire
+pot-works to supply the American trade, and were
+imported in great numbers to this country. English
+potters appeared to have none of that form of patriotic
+pride and independence that would prevent them from
+celebrating and perpetuating the virtues and victories
+of their late enemies, or hinder them from printing inscriptions
+and verses insulting to their native land and
+their fellow-countrymen; they were plainly and unsentimentally
+mercenary. These portraits, mottoes, and battle-scenes
+appear in various combinations of subjects,
+sometimes in juxtaposition with Washington designs.
+Occasionally a mammoth pitcher is found—a dozen
+pitchers rolled into one—decorated with a dozen different
+but generic prints. Such is the great heroic vessel
+known as the “Historical Pitcher of the War of 1812.”
+It was made by Enoch Wood &#38; Sons of Burslem,
+Staffordshire, England, about 1824, by the order of
+Horace Jones, Esq., of Troy, N. Y. It is now owned
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>by his grandson, Horace Jones Richards, Esq., of the
+same city. It stands twenty inches in height, and
+measures twenty inches from the end of the spout to
+the extreme point of the handle. The body is eighteen
+inches in diameter—a foot and a half, and it holds
+eleven and a half gallons. It has an embossed border
+around the top, and is decorated with a coarse design
+in copper-lustre and green. On the front of the pitcher
+is the name of the purchaser, Horace Jones, and around
+the body are various prints that are often seen singly
+on other and smaller pitchers. In front, about five
+inches above the base of the pitcher, is a small projection
+or knob. This served as a second handle by
+which to carry the pitcher (for it is a great weight
+when filled—if it ever is filled), and it formed also a
+support to rest on the edge of a smaller vessel when
+pouring from the pitcher. On either side of this small
+handle are portraits of Washington and Adams. There
+are on one side of the great pitcher-body portraits
+of Captain Jones, of the Macedonian, Major-General
+Brown, of the Niagara campaign, Commodore Bainbridge,
+of the Constitution. Below these portraits a
+circle of prints representing the Constitution escaping
+from the British fleet; Commodore Macdonough’s victory
+on Lake Champlain, and a large American eagle
+with the motto, “E Pluribus Unum.” On the other side
+of the pitcher are the portraits of Commodore Decatur,
+Commodore Perry, and Captain Hull, of the Constitution;
+below are the engagements between the Chesapeake
+and Shannon off Boston Harbor, June 1, 1813,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>and Commodore Perry’s victory on Lake Erie. Below
+the large handle on the right are two views of the manufactory
+and the names of the makers, and on the left a
+naval monument with flags and motto, “We have met
+the enemy and they are ours.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This pitcher arrived in Troy a short time before
+Lafayette made his visit to that city in 1824, and was
+first publicly used at the reception given to him September
+18, 1824. Since then it has been used on many
+notable occasions. A bill was introduced to the State
+Legislature in Albany, in the spring of 1891, for the purchase
+of this pitcher and its preservation in the State
+Library. The purchase sum required was three hundred
+and fifty dollars. The bill did not pass. It is a pity it
+cannot be in the possession of the National Museum at
+Washington, since the State of New York did not care
+to preserve it as a relic.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There are some designs of the American eagle and
+flag, and a few relating to men of Revolutionary times,
+which may be assigned, though without any positiveness,
+to the period between the War of the Revolution
+and the War of 1812. With these prints I resume the
+list of American subjects.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>85. John Adams. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher, eight inches in height, printed in black, with a very
+good, though coarse, portrait of Adams, and the inscription,
+“John Adams, President of the United States.” Underneath
+is a design of two fat cherubs tying up a parcel and bundles—possibly
+an idealization of emigration. The print is signed
+“F. Morris, Shelton, Staffordshire.” Strange to say, this
+pitcher was purchased in Chester, England.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>86. Proscribed Patriots. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A design printed in black on pitchers, and here shown. On
+the side a medallion with a willow-tree and monument. On
+the monument the
+inscription, “G. W.
+Sacred to the memory
+of G. Washington,
+who emancipated
+America from slavery
+and founded a republic
+upon such just and
+equitable principles
+that it will” (remainder
+illegible). Around
+this medallion the legend,
+“The Memory
+of Washington and
+the Proscribed Patriots
+of America. Liberty,
+Virtue, Peace,
+Justice, and Equity to
+all Mankind.” Under this, “Columbia’s Sons inspired by
+Freedom’s Flame Live in the Annals of Immortal Fame.”
+Under the monument are portraits of Samuel Adams and John
+Hancock, and the letters S. A. and J. H.; and under these a
+beehive and cornucopia. On the front of the pitcher is the
+American eagle and shield, with inscription, “Peace, Commerce,
+and Honest Friendship with all Nations, Entangling
+Alliances with none. Jefferson. Anno Domini 1804.” Under
+the handle, “Fame,” in clouds.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_318.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Proscribed Patriots Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>87. William Franklin. Medallion. Wedgwood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Two blue and white jasper medallions of the son of Benjamin
+Franklin. These medallions appear in Wedgwood’s “List of
+Illustrious Moderns.” William Temple Franklin was the last
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>Royalist governor of New Jersey, but his claim to fame rests
+only on his being the son of his father. Two of these medallions
+are in the Huntington Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Samuel Adams. Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On Proscribed Patriots Pitcher. See No. 86.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>88. Jefferson. Name in Inscription.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On a pitcher bearing a portrait of the American eagle, with
+motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” are these stanzas:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Sound, Sound the trump of Fame,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Let Jefferson’s great name</div>
+      <div class='line'>Ring through the world with loud applause</div>
+      <div class='line'>As the firm friend of Freedom’s cause.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Let every clime to freedom dear</div>
+      <div class='line'>Now listen with a joyfull ear.</div>
+      <div class='line'>With honest pride and manly grace</div>
+      <div class='line'>He fills the Presidential place.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“The Constitution for his guide,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And Truth and Justice by his side,</div>
+      <div class='line'>When hope was sinking in dismay,</div>
+      <div class='line'>When gloom obscured Columbia’s day,</div>
+      <div class='line'>He mourn’d his country’s threaten’d fate</div>
+      <div class='line'>And sav’d it ere it was too late.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jefferson. Quotation. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 127.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jefferson. At Tomb. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 33.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jefferson. Portrait. Staffordshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 166.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>89. John Hancock. Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A black print on a mug. On a ribbon scroll the inscription,
+“The Honorable John Hancock.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>John Hancock. Portrait. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On Proscribed Patriots Pitcher. See No. 86.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>John Hancock. House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 157.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>90. Montgomery. Battle-Scene. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Black print on a pitcher of a battle-scene entitled “The Death
+of Montgomery.” One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>91. Warren. Battle-Scene. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Black print on a Liverpool pitcher of a battle-scene, with name
+“The Death of Warren.” One may be seen in the Trumbull-Prime
+Collection.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>92. American Eagle. Sailor Pitcher. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with an American spread eagle over the
+words “Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool.” On one side
+waves and a full-rigged ship bearing American flag; sometimes
+printed in black, and often coarsely colored by hand.
+This print is often seen on sailor pitchers with other prints of
+different designs. On the other side, a sailor’s ballad surrounded
+by wreath of flowers, with engraver’s signature, “Jo<sup>h</sup>
+Johnson, Liverpool.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>93. American Eagle. Masonic Pitcher. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with American eagle and shield. On the
+other side, Masonic emblems. There were a vast number of
+these Masonic designs, one is shown on page <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, and as they
+were not specially American, though doubtless made largely
+for Americans, it is useless to specify them.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>94. Ship Alligator.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher with view of the ship Alligator on one side. On the
+reverse a spread eagle, with a scroll border in gilt containing
+the names of fifteen States.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>95. Mug. Union to the People.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A mug of Liverpool ware printed with a group of three men
+clasping hands. They are supposed to be Hamilton, Madison,
+and Jay, but may be any other American statesmen.
+Above the group, a liberty cap with the words “Union to
+the People.” Below are branches with leaves and the legend,
+“Civil and Religious Liberty to all Mankind.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>96. Salem Ship-building. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Two prints representing scenes of timber-rolling and ship-building,
+intended to commemorate the era of great prosperity in
+Salem ship-yards. They are accompanied with these verses:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Our mountains are covered with Imperial Oak</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Whose Roots like our Liberties Ages have Nourish’d;</div>
+      <div class='line'>But long e’er our Nation submits to the Yoke</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Not a Tree shall be left on the Field where it flourish’d.</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Should invasion impend, Every Tree would Descend</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>From the Hilltops they shaded Our Shores to defend;</div>
+      <div class='line'>For ne’er shall the Sons of Columbia be slaves</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>While the Earth bears a Plant, or the Sea rolls its waves.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The finest specimen of Liverpool ware bearing these prints and
+verses is a great punch-bowl, eighteen inches in diameter, in
+the rooms of the East India Marine Society in Salem. It also
+bears on the inside of the bowl, in large letters, the name of
+the Society and other inscriptions, and the date 1800. Pitchers
+also are found with these prints, and also with the spread
+eagle with the mark “Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool.”
+One may be seen in the rooms of the Bostonian Society in
+the old State-House, Boston. These prints are perhaps the
+most pretentious of any made for commercial interests in this
+country, and are usually very clear and good.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>97. Plan of City of Washington. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with black print of a map between two female
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>figures. Inscription, “Plan of the City of Washington.”
+On reverse is Washington design No. 13.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>98. Emblem of America. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with a coarse black print of a female figure
+holding the American flag, and facing two clumsily-drawn,
+stumpy Indians. In the background a group of oval portraits
+labelled Raleigh, Columbus, Franklin, Washington, etc. The
+legend “An Emblem of America.” On the reverse a Washington
+design.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>99. Crooked Town of Boston. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher printed in black, red, or green, with inscription,
+“Success to the Crooked but Interesting Town of
+Boston.” On the other side a long ballad, varying on different
+pitchers.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>100. Liberty. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with black print. Design, a seated figure
+of Liberty with the legend, “May Columbia Flourish.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>101. Infant Navy. Naval Pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design is found on Liverpool pitchers of at least four sizes.
+Under the nose of the pitcher is in large letters the inscription,
+“Success to the Infant Navy of the United States.” On
+the side of the pitcher sometimes was seen a black transfer
+print of a full-rigged ship, sometimes the American flag and
+eagle, sometimes a large print of a naval battle with this
+printed motto, “L’Insurgente French Frigate of 44 guns and
+411 Men striking her Colours to the American Frigate Constitution,
+Commodore Truxton, of 40 guns, after an action of an
+hour and a half in which the former had 75 Men killed &#38;
+wounded &#38; the latter one killed &#38; three wounded, Feb. 20th,
+1799.” A very good pitcher with the latter design may be
+seen at Washington’s Headquarters, at Morristown. See also
+No. 18, and pages <a href='#Page_141'>141</a> <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>102. American Flag.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is found on pitchers and mugs, sometimes colored
+over the print. It is found on pieces with various other Washington
+and Sailor prints.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>103. For America. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with the Farmers Arms, described on pages
+<a href='#Page_153'>153</a> <i>et seq.</i> Legend, “For America.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>104. Peace and Prosperity to America. No. 1.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Liverpool pitcher printed in red, with scrolls of pink lustre.
+The design is a shield supported by two female figures; the
+word “New York” on the top of the shield in large letters,
+and the names of twelve other States, including Boston, on a
+ribbon scroll. Legend, “Peace, Plenty and Independence.”
+On the other side a shield supported by an eagle and an
+Indian. Legend, “Success to the United States of America,
+E Pluribus Unum.” In front of pitcher the motto, “Peace
+and Prosperity to America.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>105. Peace and Prosperity to America. No. 2.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with a wreath of ribbons and stars bearing
+names of eleven States, two of them being “Boston” and
+“Tenassee.” In centre of wreath the words, “Peace, Plenty,
+and Independence.” This wreath forms a medallion or shield
+supported by two female figures, each with a cornucopia.
+Above the medallion an eagle and flag. On the front of the
+pitcher, the motto, “Peace and Prosperity to America.”
+This much resembles No. 104.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>106. United States Soldier.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Liverpool pitchers and bowls with black or red print of United
+States soldier standing with his foot on the head of a British
+Lion. Legend, “By Virtue and Valor we have freed our
+Country, extended our Commerce, and laid the foundation of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>a Great Empire.” In the background stand four Continental
+soldiers.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>107. Liberty. Naval Pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A black print of ribbon scroll with names of sixteen States, enclosing
+verses beginning,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Oh Liberty! thou goddess</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Heavenly bright,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Profuse of bliss,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And pregnant with delight.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>On the reverse, a print of a ship with American flag.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>108. People of America.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher with a print of three men holding hands and
+elevating a liberty cap on a pole. Underneath, “People of
+America” on a scroll, and the words, “Civil and Religious
+Liberty to All Mankind.” On the reverse, Liberty seated,
+and a soldier standing with a harp between the two figures.
+Beneath, the words “Tun’d to Freedom for our Country.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>109. Historical Pitcher of War of 1812.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Described on page <a href='#Page_299'>299</a> <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'>110. American Heroes.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pitcher printed in copper-lustre. On one side a full-rigged ship
+surrounded by a chain of elliptical links containing the names,
+Hull, Jones, Lawrence, Macdonough, Porter, Blakey, Beatry,
+Stuart, Washington, Perry, Rogers, Bainbridge, Decatur.
+Above are two clasped hands holding the chain. On the
+other side is the American eagle with “E Pluribus Unum,”
+and a similar enclosing chain with clasped hands and the
+names Brown, McComb, Ripley, Pike, Porter, Miller, Bainbridge,
+Izard, Van Rensallaer, Adair, Lewis, Gaines, Scott,
+Jardson. This pitcher is globose in shape, and of fine quality
+of ware.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>111. Naval Pitcher. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print of two men-of-war in a close engagement, appears
+with various names. A pitcher is here shown with the words
+Macedonian and
+the United States.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_325.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Naval Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>112. Perry. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A white pottery
+plate with a black
+print of the portrait
+of Commodore
+Perry, surrounded
+by a
+design of flags,
+cannon, and a
+frigate; above
+the name “Perry.”
+The edge is
+scalloped, with
+a black border.
+Impressed mark, “Davenport.” This design appears on
+pitcher described in No. 115.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>113. Perry. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A white pottery plate with a black print. In the centre, a full-length
+portrait of Commodore Perry surrounded by a design
+of flags, powder-kegs, cannon, and a full-rigged frigate.
+Above the name “Perry.” The plate has a scalloped edge
+with a black border.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>114. Perry. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A portrait of Commodore Perry with the name O. H. Perry, Esq.
+On a ribbon scroll, the legend, “We have met the enemy and
+they are ours,” the words of Perry’s famous despatch. Under
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>this, the words, “Hero of the Lake.” See page <a href='#Page_142'>142</a> for description
+of Perry at this battle.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>115. Jackson. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A large globose pitcher with a portrait of Jackson, and the
+words “Major General Andrew Jackson.” On the other side
+same portrait of Perry as No. 112. This print is also seen
+upon plates.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>116. Decatur. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A portrait of Decatur on a mug. Above, the words “Commodore
+Decatur;” below, on a ribbon, the famous war-motto,
+“Free Trade Sailors Rights.” The old ballad says,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Then quickly met our nation’s eyes</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>The noblest sight in Nature,</div>
+      <div class='line'>A first-class frigate as a prize</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Brought back by brave Decatur.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>117. Lawrence. Portrait. Newcastle.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A portrait of Lawrence in copper-lustre on cream-ware pitcher,
+with motto, “Don’t surrender the ship.” His dying words,
+“Don’t give up the ship,” have become a national watchword.
+On the other side of pitcher, a portrait of Decatur, with his
+name.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>118. Bainbridge. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A mug with a portrait of Bainbridge, with words, “Commodore
+Bainbridge,” and his characteristic words, “Avast, boys, she’s
+struck!” Commodore Bainbridge commanded the Constitution—Old
+Ironsides.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“On Brazil’s coast She ruled the roost</div>
+      <div class='line'>When Bainbridge was her Captain.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>119. Hull. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher bearing portrait of Captain Hull, and the words,
+“Captain Hull, of the Constitution.” On the other side, a
+portrait with the words, “Captain Jones, of the Macedonian.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>120. Pike. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher with the portrait of General Z. M. Pike; above it the
+word “Pike;” below, his noble words, “Be always ready to
+die for your country.” On the other side, a portrait and
+name, “Captain Jones, of the Macedonian.” A specimen can
+be seen in the collection of the Bostonian Society in the old
+State-House in Boston.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>121. Pike. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Same portrait of Pike and same legend as No. 120. On the
+other side, portrait of Hull and legend, “Captain Hull, of the
+Constitution.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>122. Jones. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate with a portrait of Captain Jones printed in blue in the
+centre, with a ship on the left and flags on the right. Black
+shell border. Impressed mark, “Davenport.” This description
+was given me by Mr. Prime.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jones. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 120.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>123. Preble. Portrait.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher with a good portrait of Preble, signed “D,” with a
+figure of Fame on one side and the American flag on the
+other, and the name “Commodore Preble.” On the other
+side of the pitcher, a well-drawn oval print of ships attacking
+fortifications. Above, the inscription “Commodore Preble’s
+Squadron Attacking the City of Tripoli Aug 3. 1804. The
+American Squadron under Commodore Preble consisting of
+the Constitution 44 guns 2 Brigs &#38; 3 Schooners 2 bombs &#38; 4
+Gunboats Attacking the City and Harbour of Tripoli Aug 3,
+1804. the city was defended by Batteries Mounting 115
+Pieces of heavy Cannon &#38; the Harbour was defended by 19
+Gunboats 2 Brigs 2 Schooners 2 Gallies and a Zebeck. the
+city Received Great Damage Several of the Tripolitan Vessels
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>were sunk 3 of their Gunboats taken &#38; a Great Number
+of Men Killed.” On the front of the pitcher is the American
+spread eagle and the words, “Herculaneum Pottery, Liverpool.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>124. Trophy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pitchers printed in lustre and purple with a trophy of arms and
+the verses,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“United &#38; Steady in Liberties Cause,</div>
+      <div class='line'>We’ll ever defend our Countries Laws.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Under the nose the legend,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“May the tree of Liberty ever flourish.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>125. Macdonough. Bombardment of Stonington.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pitcher of cream ware with a black print entitled “The Gallant
+Defense of Stonington Aug 9th 1814.” It represents that
+famous defence when the inhabitants of the town, with one
+gun successfully resisted the attack of the British force of several
+vessels, sinking one ship and driving off the others.
+Underneath, the legend, “Stonington is free whilst her heroes
+have one gun left.” On the other side is the print of a ship
+with the words, “United States Frigate Guerriere, Com.
+MacDonough bound to Russia July 1818.” Mr. Prime says
+that a citizen of Stonington who went to Russia on public service
+in the Guerriere ordered these pitchers in Liverpool. He
+may have made the drawing of the battle for the engraver.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Macdonough. Victory on Lake Champlain.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue print on Staffordshire ware. See No. 188.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>126. Naval Battle.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A globose pitcher printed in vermillion with a design of a naval
+battle. Underneath, the words “The Wasp and The Reindeer.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>127. Militia. Liverpool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A Liverpool pitcher, twelve inches in height, bearing an oval
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>medallion with design of cannon, flags, etc., with a man in full
+militia uniform. Above, this legend, “America! whose Militia
+is better than Standing Armies.” At base, within the
+medallion, “May its Citizens emulate Soldiers, its Soldiers
+Heroes.” Below all, the lines:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“While Justice is the throne to which we are bound to bend</div>
+      <div class='line'>Our Countries Rights and Laws we ever will defend.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Under the nose of the pitcher is the spread eagle, with this
+legend, “Peace Commerce and honest Friendship with All
+Nations Entangling Alliances with None; Jefferson.” This
+pitcher is printed in black and is painted in colors. It was
+made in 1808, in Liverpool, for a Narragansett sea-captain.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>DeWitt Clinton. Portrait. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 166.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>DeWitt Clinton. Monogram.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 172.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>DeWitt Clinton. Eulogy.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 168.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>128. Steamship.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Printed in red on a cream-ware tea-service. On the large
+pieces are two views, one a steamship at sea, with land and
+a fort in distance. The ship floats American flag, and has
+the smoke-stack nearly as tall as the mast. The other view, a
+ship flying American flag over the British, approaching a shore
+upon which lies an anchor. An American eagle on the shore
+holds a laurel branch among the stars. The scroll border is
+in purple lustre. This is apparently Newcastle ware. Specimens
+can be seen at the rooms of the Essex Institute, in Salem.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>129. Liberty Medallion. Head.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Embossed head of Liberty on Castleford teapots. The same
+head used on gold coins of United States of 1795.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>130. Liberty Medallion. Figure.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Embossed figure of Liberty seated. Found on Castleford wares.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>131. American Eagle. Medallion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Embossed eagle and shield on Castleford wares. Same as die
+on United States gold coin of 1797.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>132. Harrison. Pitcher. American Pottery Co.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This pitcher is the most interesting piece of American pottery
+bearing an historical design that I have ever seen. The
+dealer who offered it to me asserted that only six were ever
+manufactured. He also said that he could easily procure
+dozens of Washington pitchers that were <i>two hundred years
+old</i>, but that I would find it hard to get a <i>colonial</i> pitcher
+with a picture of Harrison on it. To this latter assertion I
+warmly agreed. It was six-sided, bulging in the middle to a
+diameter of about nine inches, about eleven inches in height,
+and with a foliated handle and scalloped lip. It was of
+coarse-grained brownish pottery, darker in shade than Liverpool
+ware. On four of its sides the pitcher bore a view of a
+small log-cabin above a good portrait of Harrison, with the
+words, “The Ohio Farmer W. H. Harrison.” Below all, a
+spread eagle. On the bottom of the pitcher was printed in
+black, “Am. Pottery Manf<sup>y</sup> Co., Jersey City.” It is the
+only piece of American ware with printed decorations similar
+to Liverpool ware that I have ever seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>133. Columbian Star. Jno. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate, which is printed in light blue, is popularly known as
+the “Log-cabin” plate. In the centre is a domestic scene
+of a log-cabin with open door, and a woman and child are
+seated outside watching a man who is ploughing a field in
+the foreground. A “lean-to” joins the house, beneath which
+stands the cider barrel of “hard cider.” A man in the background
+is chopping stumps. A small river bears a canoe
+with a single figure. Across the stream is a flagstaff with an
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>American flag. Pine-trees are grouped near the cabin, and
+abundant smoke rises from the chimney. The border is
+composed of large stars set in a firmament of small ones.
+The inscription is, “Columbian Star. Oct. 20, 1840. Jno.
+Ridgway.” It will be remembered that William Henry Harrison
+was elected President in the fall of 1840. This plate is
+owned by Mrs. Nealy, of Washington, D. C.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XVII.<br> STAFFORDSHIRE WARES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>No ceramic specimens are of more interest to the
+American china collector than the pieces of
+dark blue Staffordshire crockery that were manufactured
+in such vast variety of design, and were imported
+in such great numbers to America in the early years
+of this century. Their beauty of color—the color called
+by the Chinese “the light of heaven,” a blue like the
+lapis the Bishop wished for his tomb at St. Praxed’s, a
+tint unexcelled and hardly equalled in modern wares—makes
+them a never-ceasing delight to the eye; and the
+historical character of the decoration frequently adds to
+their interest and value. Mr. Prime wrote in 1876 of
+these pieces of crockery, “they have ceased to be common,
+are indeed becoming rare, and collectors will do
+well to secure good specimens.” Since that year specimens
+have become rarer and more valuable still. The
+Staffordshire pieces that date from the year 1830 to
+1850, though still printed with American views, are lighter
+and duller in tint of blue, and are more frequently
+stamped in green, pink, sepia, chocolate, black, or plum
+color. The designs, as well as the colors, are weaker, as
+if fading gradually and dying into the vast expanse of
+dead-white crockery and china which spread its uninteresting
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>level over the tables of country folk for the quarter
+of a century that elapsed before the Centennial Exhibition
+of 1876, that turning-point in household art
+decoration in America.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_333.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Pickle Leaf.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>The shapes of the pieces of table-ware also became degraded,
+and were not so graceful as the Staffordshire tea
+and dinner sets of the first quarter of this century. One
+specially pretty piece that came with many dark blue
+dinner sets of the latter-named
+date was the low fruit-dish with
+its tray, both with pierced basket-work
+borders. The pickle leaves
+also were gracefully shaped. The
+pitchers, both of the table and toilet
+sets, were graceful, and “poured”
+well, that most important, and ofttimes
+lacking, attribute of pitchers.
+Both basins and pitchers of toilet sets were, however, inconveniently
+small. There was also not the monotony of
+design which we find nowadays on sets of china. I mean
+that all the pieces of a set were not stamped with the same
+design. I am convinced that the tea-sets, such as the
+familiar Tomb of Washington and Tomb of Franklin design,
+seldom were furnished with a set of plates bearing
+the same decoration, but consisted only of teapot, water-pot,
+creamer, slop-bowl, sugar-bowl, and occasionally two
+cake-plates. The copper-lustre china tea-sets of the
+early part of the century seldom had tea-plates like the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>rest of the sets.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>
+<img src='images/i_335.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Philadelphia Library Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>It was only the most popular and universally widespread
+designs, such as that of the Landing of Lafayette
+or the Pilgrim, or the Boston State-House, that were
+found on all the pieces of dinner services and sold together.
+Sets were formed, usually having the same border,
+with different designs on the different-sized plates.
+We found in the summer of 1891, under the eaves of an
+old farm-house in Worcester County, a painted blue sea-chest
+which contained a sight to make a china hunter
+both smile and weep. The dust of years covered the
+chest, the floor, the ladder-like stairs that led to the
+attic. Every step of the staircase had to be cleared for
+our climbing entrance of the accumulated and forgotten
+autumn stores of what had been ears of seed-corn, but
+were now only rat-nibbled cobs, bunches of cobwebbed
+herbs, broken chairs, dried and withered gourds and
+pumpkins. The house-mistress frankly acknowledged
+that she hadn’t “been up garret for years,” she had been
+“so poorly and tissicky.” We smiled when we opened
+the lid of the chest and saw the familiar and much-loved
+color, the color of our guiding star in our search, the
+rich, dark blue. But we grieved as we lifted the pieces
+out, for fully half of them were broken. There was an
+entire dinner service of the “Beauties of America,” set
+of J. &#38; W. Ridgway. All had the same medallion
+border that is here shown on the Philadelphia Library
+plate. As the chief beauties of America in those days
+were not fair maids, but almshouses, all the larger dishes
+and tureens bore monotonously ugly views of square and
+many-windowed almshouses. The views on the gravy
+tureens, with their little accompanying platters, were all
+of the Exchange at Charleston; the large platters were
+of the Capitol at Washington; the smaller, of the Boston
+Hospital.
+The twelve dinner plates
+bore a
+view of New York
+City Hall; the
+breakfast-plates
+were of the Philadelphia
+Library;
+the soup-plates all
+bore the view of
+the Boston Octagon
+Church; little
+plates six inches
+and a half in diameter
+had a view
+of the Boston Insane Hospital; the pickle leaves and
+handleless bowls of the ladles were still different, bearing
+a small, unnamed house with the same border. Tumbled
+in a crushed heap in the corner of the chest was the saddest
+sight of all, a superb old Worcester cream-pitcher,
+four pieces of Plymouth porcelain, an India china tea-set,
+three Pilgrim plates, all broken, surmounted by two
+heavy tankards which the owner thought were pewter,
+but which were solid silver. They are all there still, huddled
+in sad fragments in the old blue chest; and the Staffordshire
+dinner set also, for the owner, though ignorant
+of the value of the crockery and china, of their number
+even, and their condition, still “couldn’t spare them”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>when we asked to buy the whole pieces and thus rescue
+them from the sad fate of their brothers. The wife was
+deaf and poor and sick, and the husband looked sicker
+and poorer still, but both were stubborn, good-temperedly
+stubborn, in their assertion that they “couldn’t spare
+them.” We sat down in the dust of the floor and
+begged; we raised our offer to city prices; we offered to
+send another dinner set of French china to replace the
+Staffordshire one, but all in vain; we drove away and returned
+again to use fresh entreaties; the owner did not
+care for the “old crockery;” scorned the assertion that
+the tankards were silver, and threw them carelessly back
+into the chest; had no association with the pieces, no
+sentiment against selling them; but he “couldn’t spare
+them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is difficult to find a full dinner set of the old Staffordshire
+dark blue ware. The scattering of families and
+consequent division of property, the destruction through
+every-day careless use, have seldom left so full a set as
+the one just described. The Ridgways issued another set
+of views of the various colleges and buildings of English
+universities. The stamp on the back was in blue,
+a pointed oval, about three inches long, with words,
+“Opaque China, J. &#38; W. Ridgway;” in the centre of
+the mark was the individual name of the building in
+the design.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A great number of these pieces appeared in the antique shops
+in the winter of 1890, through the sale of the
+dining-room furnishings of an old hotel in Baltimore,
+which must have consisted largely of this set of college
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>views. The owners sold all the old blue and white
+table crockery, the old substantial and beautiful Sheffield
+plated trays and tea-sets, and bought nice new American
+“hotel ware” and shining electro-plated silver.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The name Cambridge on many of these University
+plates enabled some unscrupulous or ignorant dealers to
+palm off the college views of that University to a few
+thoughtless buyers, at high prices, as views of Harvard
+College, in Cambridge, Mass. Views of private residences
+in London are frequently found in America with
+the same border as the University pieces, a wreath of
+convolvulus broken by pretty cameo-like medallions of
+boys playing with goats.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>All these English views are exceedingly useful for wall
+decorations, especially for high shelves, or as a background
+for lighter-colored bits of china, where it is not necessary
+that the design of the decoration should be carefully distinguished;
+and their vast variety makes them a constantly
+interesting subject for investigation and purchase.
+I have seen one collection of over two hundred Staffordshire
+plates bearing each a different English view, and I
+have seen many scores—perhaps hundreds—still different.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Some of the richest pieces of color are the dark blue
+plates printed with the “Wilkie Designs,” such as the
+well-known Letter of Introduction, and the much sought
+after Valentine design. The Don Quixote series is also
+good. Equally glorious and resplendent in color are
+pieces bearing the Dr. Syntax designs. I have seen only
+plates and tureens with the latter. These Syntax plates
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>have an additional source of interest in the wit of the
+humorous scenes that they represent. “Dr. Syntax’s Noble
+Hunting Party,” “Dr. Syntax Upsets the Beehive,”
+“Dr. Syntax Painting the Portrait of his Landlady,”
+“Dr. Syntax Star-Gazing,” “Dr. Syntax Reading his
+Tour.” These I have seen, and there are doubtless many
+others. They were printed from a set of pictures drawn
+by Thomas Rowlandson, one of the most celebrated designers
+of his day of humorous and amusing subjects.
+They were drawn to illustrate a book published by William
+Combe, in 1812, called “Dr. Syntax’s Tour in Search
+of the Picturesque.” A second tour, “In Search of Consolation,”
+appeared in 1820. This was also illustrated
+by Rowlandson. A third tour, “In Search of a Wife,”
+was printed the following year. These books had an
+immense and deserved popularity. Not only did these
+Staffordshire plates appear, but a whole set of Derby
+figures were modelled—“Dr. Syntax Walking”—“In a
+Greenroom”—“At York”—“Going to Bed”—“Tied
+to a Tree”—“Scolding the Landlady”—“Playing the
+Violin”—“Attacked by a Bull”—“Mounted on Horseback”—and
+were sold in large numbers. The Staffordshire
+plates have survived in greater variety in this country.
+Doubtless they were imported in larger quantities
+than were the Derby figures.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Strangely enough, no Biblical scenes are represented
+on these Staffordshire plates, save one with a print of
+the Flight into Egypt.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Other interesting forms of ware manufactured in
+Staffordshire were the old drinking-mugs known as
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>“Tobys.” They were seated figures of rummy, old, red-nosed
+fellows with drinking-mugs in their hands. They
+wore usually cocked hats, the hat forming the lip of the
+mug. They were gayly dressed in high colors, and were
+sometimes twelve and even fourteen inches in height.
+A terrible damper has been put, within a few years, on
+the joy of collecting these “Tobys,” by the fact of their
+reproduction in vast numbers after precisely the old
+models, and in precisely the same colors. Of course, the
+modern Tobys are very shining and new, and upon examination
+are easily distinguished from the old ones; but
+when a closet-door in an antique shop suddenly and
+most unadvisedly swung open, the sight of a row of
+twenty or thirty Tobys, all precisely alike, did not seem
+to enhance the value of the asserted-to-be-unique specimen
+on the shop shelf, nor make me very warm about
+purchasing further specimens, were they old or new.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is impossible to obtain any information in England
+about this dark blue earthenware, or “semi-china,” which
+was made for so many years in such vast quantities for
+the American market. The Staffordshire pottery works
+have all changed owners; the plates from which these
+wares were printed have all been lost or destroyed; the
+present owners of the works are ignorant of the existence
+even of these printed American pieces. There are
+almost no specimens to be seen in English collections, not
+even of pieces bearing English views; none for sale in
+English shops; and even in so exhaustive, extended, and
+careful a treatise on the ceramic art of Great Britain as
+that of Mr. Jewitt, he does not speak of them, and evidently
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>is ignorant of the wares, the stamps, and marks.
+A careful search throughout the Staffordshire region developed
+absolutely not one fact about these “American
+historical pieces;” and I may add that a collection of
+Staffordshire ware bearing both American and English
+views is now being gathered in America for presentation
+to the Museum at Burslem, and consequent enlightenment
+of English collectors and manufacturers. Hence it
+is plain that each American collector must be a law to
+himself with regard to marks; or rather, American collectors
+must unite and form a new table of marks of
+“American pieces.” I will specify a few that I find on
+my Staffordshire pieces.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A circular impression about an inch in diameter, with
+an inclosed circle having in the centre the word “Warranted,”
+and a spread eagle bearing a thunderbolt and
+laurel leaf. In the quarter-inch ring inclosing this inner
+disk are the words, in capital letters, “T. Mayer. Stone.
+Staffordshire.” Accompanying this impressed stamp is
+always found (on my pieces) a very spirited rendering
+in dark blue of the American eagle, bearing a laurel
+branch in his right claw, and a bunch of arrow-like
+thunderbolts in his left. He measures two and three-quarters
+inches from tip to tip of wings, has an American
+shield on his breast, and a ribbon bearing the words
+“E Pluribus Unum” in his mouth. The lighter,
+clouded background has thirteen white stars. This
+mark is the richest in color and best in drawing of any
+that I have seen. This T. Mayer was, I judge, the
+Thomas Mayer who had the Dale Hall Staffordshire
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>works from 1829, and of whom Shaw speaks as having
+made the best specimen of solid earthenware ever produced
+at that time—a vast table. This stamp and mark
+are given by neither Chaffers nor Jewitt, nor Phillips
+and Hooper. The marks E. Mayer, and E. Mayer &#38;
+Son, are frequently seen. These firms were in existence
+from 1770 to 1830 in Hanley.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A distinct circular impression an inch in diameter; in
+the centre appears a spread eagle with shield on his
+breast, and below him the words “Semi China;” surrounding
+all the words “E. Wood &#38; Sons, Burslem.
+Warranted.” In conjunction with this impressed stamp
+appears often a dull blue mark, an oblong panel an inch
+and a half long and about three-eighths of an inch wide,
+inclosing the name of the view on the face of the plate.
+On this panel stands an eagle with laurel branch in his
+right claw, and in his beak a written scroll attached to
+a small United States shield, and bearing the words
+“E Pluribus Unum”—the whole on a clouded background.
+Many of the pieces bearing both of these
+marks are confused in outline, as if the dies or plates
+from which they were printed were worn out. And
+they also have the poorly drawn, ugly shell border.
+This stamp and mark are not given by Chaffers or Jewitt.
+The ware also varies greatly, the earlier plates
+being of much lighter weight. The impressed circular
+mark appears alone on some very richly colored, clearly
+printed, and beautifully drawn pieces decorated with
+spirited marine views and clear and graceful shell borders.
+These were evidently made for the American
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>market, for on all of them appears prominently a full-rigged
+ship bearing the American flag; yet they cannot
+be classed as “American views.” The names given
+to some of these views are “A Ship of the Line on
+the Downs,” “In a Full Breeze,” “Christianeburg,”
+“Danish Settlement on the Gold Coast, Africa,” “York
+Minster.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The name “Wood,” alone, appears impressed, and
+often accompanied by an impressed crescent. The date
+of this mark is apparently about 1818, when the firm was
+no longer Wood &#38; Caldwell, and Enoch Wood’s sons
+had not been taken into partnership. All the pieces
+with this stamp are rich in color and clear in outline, as
+if the dies or plates were fresh and new.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The mark “E. W. &#38; S.” on lighter-blue pieces I have
+also fancied stood for E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A circular stamp, impressed, of a crown, surrounded by
+words “A. Stevenson, Warranted Staffordshire.” This
+stamp appears with a mark printed in blue of an eagle
+holding a tablet, with the name of the view on the face
+of the plate; or sometimes with a blue printed mark
+of an urn festooned with drapery, on which is printed
+the name of the view, which is usually of an English
+scene. The Cobridge Works were erected in 1808, were
+owned for a few years by Bucknall &#38; Stevenson, and
+afterward by A. Stevenson alone. The works were
+closed in 1819, hence pieces bearing this mark can have
+the date quite definitely assigned. The circular mark is
+given by Chaffers as appearing once on a painted faïence
+plate. The impressed mark of name Stevenson in capital
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>letters is found on many “American historical pieces,”
+usually on plates with a beautiful vine-leaf border and
+white impressed edge.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A circular stamp of concentric rings, impressed, about
+one inch in diameter. In the centre a crown, and in
+surrounding ring the words “Clews Warranted Staffordshire.”
+After 1819 the Cobridge works passed into the
+hands of Mr. James Clews, who continued them until
+1829, when they were again closed and remained so until
+1836, when they were opened under another firm name.
+Mr. Clews came to America, and an account of his enterprise
+here is given on page <a href='#Page_97'>97</a> <i>et seq.</i> This mark is not
+given by Chaffers, who calls the firm J. &#38; R. Clews, and
+says they made “pale cream-colored ware.” During the
+ten years that Mr. Clews owned these Cobridge Works
+some of the richest pieces of dark blue color that were
+ever made by any potter took the form of pieces bearing
+American historical designs, and bear the last-mentioned
+stamp.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The mark of an open crown surmounting the words
+“Clews Warranted Staffordshire” appears on a set,
+“Picturesque Scenery.” Upon the back of each piece
+appears also the colored stamp which was placed by the
+manufacturers to designate this set, all of which were
+printed with American views. It is a little landscape of
+pines and a sheet of water with a sloop. This scene is
+crossed diagonally with an oblong stamp bearing the
+words “Picturesque Views,” and the name of the special
+view printed on the face of the piece; for instance,
+“Penitentiary in Allegheny nr Pittsburgh Pa.” This set
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>of views of “Picturesque Scenery” was of much later
+date than the rich dark blue pieces, being printed in
+sepia, green, chocolate, or plum color, thus showing the
+degraded taste of the second quarter of the century.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>An impressed mark of Rogers appears sometimes in
+conjunction with an eagle stamped in blue. Occasionally,
+also, the eagle is seen without the Rogers mark.
+Sometimes the chemical sign for iron is found with these
+marks. The firm of Rogers was in existence in Burslem
+until 1849.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A circular impressed mark, one inch in diameter, with
+a star in the centre, surrounded by words “Joseph
+Stubbs Longport.” This mark is not given by Chaffers,
+nor the name of the manufacturer or manufactory. Jewitt,
+who gives no marks, says that he was a successful
+potter at Dale Hall from 1790 to 1829, preceding T.
+Mayer at his pottery, and thus proving that pieces with
+the Stubbs mark are the earlier of the two. The circular
+mark of “Stubbs &#38; Kent, Longport,” also unknown
+in England, appears on many pieces; for instance, the
+dark blue basket and rose, and the milkmaid designs so
+common on toilet and dinner services. Still another impressed
+mark of “Stubbs” alone, in capital letters, appears
+on many American historical pieces, particularly
+on the ones with what is known as the eagle, rose, and
+scroll border.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A large number of pieces were printed, with views of
+public buildings in America, by the firm of J. &#38; W.
+Ridgway. These pieces bore on the back an oblong
+stamp inclosing the name of the building and its location,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>as, for instance, “City Hall, New York;” above
+this the words “Beauties of America,” below, J. &#38; W.
+Ridgway. One of the set is shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. The
+pieces bearing this stamp are only medium blue in tint,
+though the color is good and some of the shading is
+dark. These pieces are disfigured by the border, which
+has the effect of oval medallions inclosing alternately a
+single stiff rose and a six-petalled flower—a myrtle
+blossom, perhaps. This border is poorly shaded and
+far from graceful in designing. I cannot definitely assign
+the date of these pieces; the firm succeeded Job
+Ridgway &#38; Sons in 1814, and was in existence in 1829.
+This mark is not given by Chaffers. Another Ridgway
+mark is an oval medallion with the initials J. R. under
+a crown, and with the names of the pattern in a scroll.
+Still another has the initials J. W. R., another Jno.
+Ridgway, and another W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A large number of very beautiful English views, printed
+in dark blue, are found on dinner services of Staffordshire
+ware, bearing the mark in blue of a spray of rose-leaves
+with a double scroll and name “Riley,” and name also
+of the view—for instance, “Goggerdan, Cardiganshire.”
+The firm of John &#38; Richard Riley rebuilt in 1814 the
+Hill Works, that had formerly been owned by Ralph
+Wood, and ran them until 1839. The prints of this
+firm are clear and distinct, and really artistic in drawing,
+the borders being specially graceful. The only mark
+given by Chaffers is “Riley Semi-China” on blue willow-pattern
+ware. This I have also found, the words appearing
+within a circular belt. The impress Riley also is seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>R. Hall’s wares were imported to America in large
+quantities, especially his “Select Views.” I do not
+know whether this is R. Hall who ran the “Sytch Pottery”
+in Burslem until 1830, or whether he was Ralph
+Hall who owned the Swan Banks Works, Tunstall, during
+the first quarter of the century. Chaffers does not
+mention either Hall, and Jewitt gives no marks. The
+stamp most frequently seen is an oval ring in blue; at
+the top, “R. Hall’s Select Views;” below, a sprig of
+flowers and the words “Stone China.” The ring inclosed
+the name of the view, Biddulph Castle, Staffordshire,
+and Pains Hill, Surrey, being the most frequent.
+I have seen hundreds of Pains Hill plates in New England,
+fully half the country houses that I have entered
+had a few on cupboard or pantry shelves.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Still another Hall mark is a crown-shaped blue stamp
+with “Hall” and the name of the set—for instance,
+“Quadrupeds.” Another, a blue stamp in an irregular
+shield, at top and bottom “R. Halls Picturesque Scenery,”
+in the middle the name—for instance, “Fulham
+Church Middlesex.” Another is an irregular shield, with
+scrolls with words “Oriental Scenery, I. (or J.) Hall &#38;
+Sons;” and also “Italian Scenery, I. Hall &#38; Sons;”
+and “Indian Scenery, I. Hall &#38; Sons.” The views, of
+course, on these pieces are indicative, respectively, of the
+marks on the back.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The views of Oriental scenery were taken from the
+illustrations of Buckingham’s Travels in Mesopotamia,
+of the date 1828.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very interesting mark is a wreath of blue flowers
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>inclosing the words “Bristol Flowers,” and accompanied
+either by impressed initials in capitals, E. &#38; G. P., or
+an impressed cross like the Bristol stamp. This mark
+has been seen only on pure white “semi-china,” decorated
+in clear blue, with a design of fruit and flowers in
+which the passion-flower predominates.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Still another blue mark, on pieces a trifle lighter in
+tint, is a fine spread eagle; above, the word “Ironstone;”
+below, “Sydenham J. Clementson.” Chaffers
+does not mention this name or mark. Jewitt gives no
+marks, but says Clementson became proprietor of the
+Sydenham works about 1832, and manufactured for the
+American market.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The impressed mark of “Adams Warranted Staffordshire”
+appears in a circle around an American eagle.
+And the initials R. S. W., in a graceful scroll with a
+branch of leaves, appear on many beautiful American
+views. I have been told that this was the stamp of R.
+S. Warburton, but can give no proof nor further information.
+It may be the stamp of some member of the
+Wood family, so many of whom were potters.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>When we examine all these special American marks
+on English pottery, it seems odd to read Mr. Jewitt’s
+statement, that marks were frequently omitted on the
+English china sent to America, “on account of the jealous
+dislike of the Americans of that day to anything
+emanating from the mother country.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>With the pieces of Staffordshire wares bearing American
+designs, and a few pieces which cannot be classed
+elsewhere, I conclude my list.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>134. Albany.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of city of Albany printed in black on plate. Date of view
+apparently about 1840.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>135. Albany.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of Albany in bright dark blue. E. Wood &#38; Sons.
+Marked on back, “City of Albany State of New York,” and
+spread eagle with E Pluribus Unum. In centre the Capitol
+Hill with old Capitol. On the river a steamboat and sailing
+vessels. Cows grazing in foreground. Shell border.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Albany. Capitol.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 166.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Albany. Theatre.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 170.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Albany. Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 171.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Alleghany.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 241.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>136. Anti-Slavery Plate.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design is printed in a purplish and rather light blue on
+various pieces of dinner and tea-services. The plates are
+most frequently found. One is here shown. They have
+slightly scalloped edges and a scroll border dotted with stars.
+Four American eagles and shields are in the border, and four
+medallions. The upper one contains the figure of Liberty
+standing beside a printing-press, while a negro kneels at her
+feet. Around the design are the words, “The Tyrants Foe—The
+People’s Friend.” In the lower medallion is the design
+of the scales of Justice. In the medallion to the right are
+the words, “Of One Blood are All Nations of Men.” In the
+medallion to the left, “We hold that all men are created
+equal.” In the centre of the plate, against the background
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>of a sun-burst, are these words: “Congress shall make no
+law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
+free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
+of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble
+and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
+Constitution U. S.” On some of the pieces—pitchers and
+teapots, for example—there also is seen this inscription,
+“Lovejoy—the First Martyr to American Liberty. Alton,
+Nov. 7th, 1837.” It is asserted that the pieces bearing this
+design were the gift of the English Anti-Slavery Society to
+the American Abolitionists, shortly after the death of Lovejoy;
+that they were sold at auction in New York, and the proceeds
+devoted to the objects of the Society of Abolitionists.
+If this account is true, these plates are certainly among the
+most interesting relics of those interesting days.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<img src='images/i_349.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Anti-Slavery Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>Battery. New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 217.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>137. Baltimore. Battle Monument.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate printed in black, dark brown, or green, with border of
+flowers. In the centre a view of the city of Baltimore with a
+monument in the foreground. Name on the back, “Battle
+Monument Baltimore.” This monument, which stands in
+Battle Square at the intersection of Calvert and Fayette
+Streets, is commemorative of those who fell defending the
+city when it was attacked by the British in 1814. It has a
+square base twenty feet high, with a pedestal ornamented at
+the four corners with sculptured griffins. On each front is an
+Egyptian door with bas-reliefs and inscriptions. A column
+eighteen feet high rises above the base and is surrounded by
+bands inscribed with the names of those who fell in battle.
+The column is surmounted by a marble figure typical of the
+city of Baltimore.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>138. Baltimore. Exchange.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of Exchange building, in dark blue. This plate is very
+rare.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>139. Baltimore. Court-House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A dark blue plate with a rose and fruit border. In the exact
+centre of the plate is the Court-House in an open square.
+Pedestrians are walking to and fro. The design of this plate
+is very stiff and ugly. The mark on the back is a scroll of
+blue, with words “Baltimore Court-House;” also a circular
+impressed mark, smaller than the Clews mark, with words
+“Warranted Staffordshire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>140. Baltimore &#38; Ohio Railroad. Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plates printed in dark blue with rich shell border, with a train
+of little cars like stage-coaches, and the stumpy little locomotive
+which it is said was designed by Peter Cooper, and which
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>was originally intended to have sails like a boat to help propel
+it along. The corner-stone of this railroad was laid in
+Baltimore, July 4, 1828, by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the
+last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.
+This event was considered of so great importance that it was
+celebrated by a great trades-procession in Baltimore, during
+which the cordwainers made a fine pair of satin shoes which
+were at once sent to the idolized Lafayette, and were placed in
+the museum at La Grange.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In 1830 the first locomotive was placed on the road. Peter
+Cooper thus describes it:</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“The engine was a very small and insignificant affair. It was
+made at a time when I had become the owner of all the land
+now belonging to the Canton Company, the value of which, I
+believe, depended almost entirely upon the success of the
+Baltimore &#38; Ohio Railroad. When I had completed the
+engine I invited the directors to witness an experiment.
+Some thirty-six persons entered one of the passenger cars, and
+four rode on the locomotive, which carried its own fuel and
+water; and made the first passage of thirteen miles over an
+average ascending grade of eighteen feet to the mile, in one
+hour and twelve minutes. We made the return trip in fifty-seven
+minutes.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The locomotive on these blue plates is not like the Tom Thumb
+locomotive in an old print which I possess; it is more like
+the “Stourbridge Lion,” the first engine made in England
+for America, which arrived in New York in 1829. Marks on
+plate both E. Wood and Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>141. Baltimore &#38; Ohio Railroad. Down Hill.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate is in dark blue with a shell border. It has a stationary
+engine at the top of a hill, with a number of small freight
+cars running down a very steep grade, with the cars at a
+very singular angle. Both Baltimore &#38; Ohio plates are here
+shown.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>There were several of these down-hill tram-roads built at an
+early date in America. One on the western slope of Beacon
+Hill, in Boston, was constructed in the year 1807. It was used
+for transporting gravel from the top of the hill down to Charles
+Street, which was being graded and filled. The descent of
+the heavy gravel-loaded train drew up the empty cars—thus
+the machinery was worked without horse-power. In 1810 a
+similar one was built in Ridley, Pa., for transporting stone.
+In 1825 a third road was built, in Nashua, N. H., to carry
+down earth from a hill to fill up a factory location on a grade
+below. In 1826 a road three miles long at Quincy, Mass.,
+carried in the same manner granite to the Neponset River.
+In 1828 the coal-mines at Mauch Chunk, Pa., had a road nine
+miles long to the Lehigh River. The empty cars were drawn
+up by mules. In 1828 the Delaware &#38; Hudson Canal Company,
+and the Bunker Hill Monument Company, had similar
+tram-ways or roads.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_352.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Baltimore &#38; Ohio Railroad Plates.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Other views of early railroads and locomotives appear, and are
+often sold as of the Baltimore &#38; Ohio Railroad. They are
+probably views of English railways.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>142. Boston. Almshouse. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This view is upon the cover of an enormous soup-tureen, described
+in No. 178. The set medallion border is shown on
+page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, and is found on all pieces of this “American
+Beauties” set. Stamp on back in oblong disk, “Beauties
+of America. J. &#38; W. Ridgway. Almshouse, Boston.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>143. Boston. Common.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Comparatively modern print in black of a view on Boston Common.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>144. Boston. Hospital. Stevenson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dinner set printed in dark blue with view of the Hospital.
+Trees in foreground, and a smart chaise with man and woman
+driving. Border of vine leaves on dark blue. White impressed
+or fluted edge on some specimens. Mark in blue on
+back, “Hospital, Boston.” Impressed mark, “Stevenson.”
+There is said to be another view of this hospital with a canal
+in the foreground.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>145. Boston. Insane Hospital. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Printed in dark blue on various pieces of a dinner service.
+Small building in centre with high fence in foreground. Same
+medallion border as shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Stamp on back
+in blue, “Beauties of America. Insane Hospital, Boston. J.
+&#38; W. Ridgway.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>146. Boston. Octagon Church. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate printed in dark blue, with view of the church and of
+other buildings. In the foreground a curious covered coach
+or carriage with two horses, one carrying a postilion. The
+same medallion border as shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Stamp on
+back, “Beauties of America. Octagon Church, Boston. J.
+&#38; W. Ridgway.” This Octagon Church was often known as
+the New North Church, and was built in 1815. A description
+of it is given in Drake’s “History of Boston,” page 552.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>
+<img src='images/i_354.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>State-House Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>147. Boston. State-House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in dark blue, on dinner and toilet services, of a view of the
+State-House and surrounding buildings, including the John
+Hancock house. Trees and the Common in foreground, and
+a group of grazing cattle. Three poplar-trees appear at the
+right; also a man with a wheelbarrow. The border is a
+pretty design of roses and forget-me-nots. The mark on
+the back is different
+from any stamp I
+have seen—simply the
+American “spatch-cock”
+eagle in blue.
+This State-House
+plate is popularly
+known as “the one
+with John Hancock’s
+cows.” One is here
+shown. The “New
+State-House” was
+built on a portion of
+John Hancock’s field,
+where not only his
+cows, but those of
+many of his fellow-townsmen,
+found pasturage. During the memorable visit of
+D’Estaing and his officers to Hancock, the latter’s servants
+milked all the cows on the Common to obtain milk enough to
+supply the visitors. This pasturing of cows on the Common
+in front of the State-House continued until the year 1830,
+when accidents from bovine assaults upon citizens became so
+frequent that the cows were exiled from their old feeding-ground.
+The pitchers printed with this view are very handsome,
+often having an extended view of Boston in the vicinity
+of the State-House encircling the body of the pitcher. I have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>seen one with the initials R. S. W. on the base, though I have
+always attributed this view to Rogers.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>148. Boston. State-House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in rather light blue of a view of the State-House. Surrounding
+buildings do not show in this design. In the foreground
+is a horse and chaise with driver. No maker’s stamp.
+Border of roses.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>149. Boston. State-House. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of State-House with group of persons in foreground.
+Printed in pink. Mark, “Jackson.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>150. Boston. St. Paul’s Church.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Blue and white plate with view of St. Paul’s Church.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>151. Boston. Athenæum. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This dark blue design is on plates of different sizes, and possibly
+on other pieces of dinner services. It has the set medallion
+border shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Mark on the back, “Boston
+Athenæum. Beauties of America. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.” In
+the present Athenæum building may be seen one of these
+plates with this note: “This building stood in Pearl St., and
+one-half was given by Mr. James Perkins, the other half
+bought of Mr. Cochran in 1822, and the whole occupied by
+the Athenæum until 1849.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>152. Boston Court-House. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design is on platters, plates, and dishes in dark blue. It
+has the set medallion border shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>, and in the
+centre a view of the Court-House. Mark on the back, “Boston
+Court-House. Beauties of America. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>153. Boston. Lawrence Mansion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Though all the plates, pitchers, and basins which bear this
+beautiful dark blue design are unstamped and unmarked, it
+is well known that it is a view of Mr. Lawrence’s handsome
+house, which stood on Winter Street, Boston. It is a view of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>a large three-storied double mansion, surmounted by a steeple
+which at first sight seems a part of the house, but which is
+intended for the steeple of the Park Street Church in the
+background. A garden is on one side of the house. It has a
+clear vine-leaf border.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>154. Boston. Warehouse. Adams.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a rich plate printed in clear dark blue, with a design
+showing Boston streets and buildings. A large warehouse
+stands at the right, on the left a block of buildings, and in the
+background the wharves and harbor with shipping. The
+beautiful border is formed on the top and sides by a design
+of trees with foliage. On the back is the stamp, in blue,
+“Mitchell &#38; Freemans China and Glass Warehouse Chatham
+St. Boston Mass.;” also the impressed mark, “Adams.”
+No doubt these plates were made at the order of the Boston
+firm whose name they bear. I have known of but four
+pieces with this design. A plate may be seen at the rooms
+of the Bostonian Society, in the old State-House in Boston.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>155. Boston. Almshouse.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view printed in dark blue of the old Almshouse on Leverett
+Street. The border is the beautiful design of vine leaves
+like that on No. 144, and the plates and platters have a
+white edge. Mark on back, “Almshouse Boston.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>156. Boston Mails.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate printed in brown or black. The border contains the figures
+of four steamships with these names severally printed
+under them—Acadia, Columbia, Caledonia, Britannia. In
+the centre is a view labelled “Gentlemen’s Cabin.” Mark on
+the back, “Boston Mails.” These plates were doubtless
+printed to commemorate the opening of the first line of steamships
+between Liverpool and Boston. I have seen the date of
+the first trip given as July, 1840, when the Britannia arrived
+in Boston.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>
+<img src='images/i_357.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>John Hancock’s House.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>157. Boston. John Hancock’s House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is seen in red, blue, or green on cups and saucers, or
+on slightly scalloped plates. One of the latter is here shown.
+This historic house is not now in existence. It was the intention
+of Governor Hancock to present the handsome and substantial
+mansion, with its elegant furniture, by bequest, to the
+Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to be preserved as a memorial
+of great historical events, and to be used, if necessary, by
+the Governor of the State during his residence in Boston
+through his term of office. Hancock died without signing this
+bequest, and his heirs then offered it to the Government for a
+modest purchase sum. After many years of indecision, half-acceptance,
+and final refusal on the part of the State, this fine
+old house was in 1863 pulled down. In it Washington, Lafayette,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>and scores of other distinguished men were visitors.
+There D’Estaing made his home in 1778, and with forty of his
+officers dined with hospitable welcome every day for many
+weeks. It was during this visit that the event occurred of
+which Madame Hancock complained—that D’Estaing went to
+bed overcome with Hancock’s good wine, and tore her best
+satin bedspread in pieces with his spurs, which he had been
+too drunk to remove.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>158. Brandywine Creek.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of Gilpin’s Mills on Brandywine Creek. Dark blue. Mark
+on back of scroll, eagle and E Pluribus Unum.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Brooklyn. View from.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 208.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Bunker Hill Monument.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 164.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>159. Burlington. Richard Jordan’s House. J. S. &#38;
+Co.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of a commonplace frame house and outbuildings, and an
+inclosed door-yard, with a broad-brimmed Quaker and a cow
+in foreground. Mark, “Richard Jordan’s House. J. S. &#38;
+Co.” This house was in Burlington, N. J. The design is
+printed in pink or black on tea-services, and appears to have
+been a popular one in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Cadmus.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 74.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Cambridge. Harvard College.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 179 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Capitol at Washington.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 259 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'>160. Catskills. Pine Orchard House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a pretty landscape in dark blue, with hotel in the distance,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>and a man on horseback in the foreground. Mark on
+back, “Pine Orchard House, Catskills.” It is doubtless
+made by E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>161. Catskills.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in rich dark blue of a mountain-scene with cliffs, peaks,
+and pines, and a solitary figure. A confused shell border.
+Mark on the back, of eagle with E Pluribus Unum, and an oblong
+stamp with the words, “In the Catskills;” also a confused
+impressed stamp, probably E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>162. Centennial.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Various pieces of ornamental and useful nature were made of a
+clear white china for the Centennial of 1876. The stamp on
+the bottom was, “Manufactured solely for J. H. Shaw &#38; Co.,
+New York. Trade Mark, Philadelphia, 1876.” Each piece
+bore the words, “A Memorial of the Centennial, 1876;” also
+in high colors a medallion with portrait of Washington and
+two United States flags surmounted by an eagle. These modern
+pieces deserve mention among the historical china, since
+a single piece is usually desired by collectors. Views also
+were made of the different buildings at the Centennial Exhibition
+of 1876, on porcelain plates, with ugly purple and brown
+border.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>163. Charleston. Exchange. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is one of the few Southern views. Dark blue print, with
+medallion border shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Stamp on back, “Exchange,
+Charleston. J. &#38; W. Ridgway. Beauties of America.”
+This historical building was erected in 1767, at a cost of
+£60,000. It was used as a “provost” during the occupation
+of Charleston by the British during the Revolution. Prisoners
+were confined in the cellars. Colonel Isaac Haynes, an
+American officer, spent, in 1781, the last few months of his life
+in confinement within its walls, and from thence he was taken
+to his execution amid the protests of the entire populace.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>His death so enraged the officers of the American army that
+they joined in a memorial to General Greene, proposing
+measures of retaliation on captive British soldiers and officers,
+thus subjecting themselves to a certainty of like death in case
+they were captured by the enemy. After the Revolution the
+Exchange was used as a Custom-House and Post-Office, and
+is now used in the latter capacity. It is still standing. The
+cupola has been removed.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>164. Charlestown, Mass.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view in black of Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, Mass.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Chief Justice Marshall. Steamboat.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 185.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>City Hall. New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 211 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c011'>City Hotel. New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 218.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Columbus. Landing of.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 186.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Constitution of United States.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 136.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>165. Conway. New Hampshire.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A pink or red print. In the centre a view of dwellings, including
+a log-cabin with sheds; mountains, highway, pine-trees,
+and people. Marked on the back “View near Conway N.
+Hampshire.” A plate bearing this design is usually considered
+to be worth about a dollar and a half.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Deaf and Dumb Asylum.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 178.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>166. Erie Canal. A. Stevenson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is in dark blue on plates. In the centre of the plate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>is a view of buildings, among them a church with a high fence.
+These are said to be intended to represent the Capitol grounds
+and surroundings at Albany. The border is of oak leaves
+and acorns, broken by five designs, four being the portraits
+of Jefferson, Washington, Lafayette, and Governor Clinton,
+with their respective legends, “Jefferson,” “President Washington,”
+“Welcome Lafayette The Nations Guest,” and
+“Governor Clinton.” The fifth design, at the bottom of the
+plate, is the picture of an aqueduct with the words, “View of
+the Aqueduct Bridge at Rochester.” Mark, impressed, “A.
+Stevenson warranted Staffordshire,” in circle, with crown in
+centre. Another mark printed in blue is of an urn, wreath,
+and the words “Faulkner Ware.” This plate is in the possession
+of A. G. Richmond, Esq., of Canajoharie.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>167. Erie Canal. Utica.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The plate bearing this design is usually known as the “Utica
+Plate.” In the centre is printed these words, “Utica, a village
+in the State of New York, thirty years since a wilderness,
+now (1824) inferior to none in the western section of the
+state in population, wealth, commercial enterprise, active industry,
+and civil improvement.” This inscription is inclosed
+in a laurel wreath. The border of this plate has two views of
+a canal lock and aqueduct, and two of a canal-boat. The
+print is also seen on pitchers.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>168. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Same border, with designs of canal-boats and locks as No.
+167. In the centre the words, “The Grand Erie Canal, a
+splendid monument of the enterprise and resources of the
+State of New York. Indebted for its early commencement
+and rapid completion to the active energies, pre-eminent talents,
+and enlightened policy of DeWitt Clinton, Late Governor
+of the State.” I have seen pitchers bearing this design
+and the design described in No. 167.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>169. Erie Canal at Buffalo, N. Y.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is in black upon a plate marked “R. S.” (Robert
+Stevenson.)</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This entry might properly come under the head of either No.
+166 or No. 167, since it describes a pitcher which had both of
+those decorations in blue, and also an American eagle with
+the words “E Pluribus Unum.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>170. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Black print upon a pitcher. On the right of the handle is a
+large view of an aqueduct, river, hills, and buildings, and the
+words, “View of the Aqueduct Bridge at Little Falls.” At
+the left of the handle a building, with the words “Albany
+Theatre 1824.” Below the spout a front view of the head of
+Washington, and words, “President Washington.” This
+piece is not marked with maker’s name.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>171. Erie Canal. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Entrance of the Erie Canal into the Hudson at Albany. Marked
+“Clews.” It is a pretty view of a canal lock with boats, and
+with high-wooded hill in the background. In foreground,
+groups of men fishing. This design is seen on dinner and toilet
+services. The border is of roses. The color is rich and
+dark.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>172. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Oval platter of Oriental china of greenish tint, decorated in gay
+colors, with a gold edge, and the monogram D. W. M. C.
+(DeWitt and Maria Clinton). In the centre a landscape with
+the Erie Canal. This odd and interesting piece sold at the
+Governor Lyon sale for $10.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Fairmount Park.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 227 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>173. Fishkill.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is one of the sets of Clews Picturesque Views. Marks are
+described on page <a href='#Page_327'>327</a>. Printed in red, green, black, and
+brown. The name on back, “Nr Fishkill Hudson River.”
+This is a pretty view of an old Dutch house and kitchen on a
+high bank. In the background, poplar-trees and a manor-house.
+By the side of the water fishermen are stretching
+nets.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Fort Gansevoort, New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 215.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Gilpin’s Mills.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 158.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Girard’s Bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 231.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>174. Harper’s Ferry. W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print of landscape view in black or sepia. Mark on back,
+“Harper’s Ferry from the Potomac side. W. Ridgway.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>175. Hartford, Conn. State-House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in dark blue of the old State-House, with two stiff poplar-trees
+on either side.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>176. Hartford, Conn. Mount Video.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in dark blue of Mount Video, now known as Wadsworth
+Tower.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>177. Hartford, Conn. Mount Video. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in black of view similar to No. 176. Mark, “Jackson
+Ware.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>178. Hartford, Conn. Asylum. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in dark blue on enormous soup-tureen and other pieces of
+a dinner service, of a view of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum at
+Hartford which was established by Dr. Gallaudet. Same
+medallion border as shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Mark on back,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>“Deaf and Dumb Asylum, Hartford. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.
+Beauties of America.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>179. Harvard College. R. S. W.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very finely printed plate in dark blue of the College buildings.
+Only three halls are shown. The trees in foreground are unusually
+well drawn. The clear border of oak leaves and
+acorns is on a stippled background. Mark on back, in scroll
+with rose branch, “Harvard College,” and some specimens
+also R. S. W. A plate is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_364.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Harvard College Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>180. Harvard College. E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Black print with flower border marked “E. Wood &#38; Sons.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>181. Harvard College. E. W. S.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A clear and beautiful print in medium shade of blue on white
+ground. The edge has a white beading. The border is a
+most artistic design of flowers and fruit, with a pretty spray of
+blackberries. In the centre a well-drawn view of four college
+buildings. A pond is in the foreground, with tree at right and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>left. By tradition this platter once formed part of the table-furnishing
+of the College dining-hall. Mark on back, “Harvard
+College. E. W. S.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>182. Hoboken. New Jersey.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of the old Stevens mansion, marked on the back “View
+at Hoboken New Jersey.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>183. Hudson, N. Y. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of the town of Hudson as it looked in 1823, printed in
+black, with rose and vine border. On the back or underside
+of this dish are views of Stockport, a few miles above Hudson.
+It is said that engravings were sent abroad by Hudson residents,
+from which these views were copied.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>184. Hudson River. Baker’s Falls.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Black print of view of Baker’s Falls.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Hudson River, near Fishkill.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 173.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Independence of Texas.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 254.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jordan, House of Richard.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 159.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>185. Hudson River. Steamboat. E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a view in dark blue of a steamboat on the Hudson River
+taking passengers from the shore in a small boat attached to
+a rope which is wound around the steamer’s wheel. Accidents
+became so frequent from this means of transfer that the
+method was quickly abandoned. There are two of these sets
+of plates, precisely alike, save that on one on the wheel-house
+of the boat is the name “Chief Justice Marshal Troy,” and
+on the other the words “Union Line.” On another flag, which
+is seen on both plates, are the words “Troy Line.” They
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>are marked “E. Wood &#38; Sons.” I have seen three sizes of
+plates bearing these designs. One is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_366.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Steamboat Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>186. Landing of Columbus.
+Adams.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate stamped in
+pink or black with a
+pretty design of the
+landing of Columbus.
+He stands
+with his two captains
+dressed in
+Spanish costume;
+Indians peer out
+from behind the
+trees; the three
+Spanish ships lie
+anchored off the
+shore. A scroll and
+flower border inclosing
+four medallions of quadrupeds. The stamp is “Adams.”
+The name “Columbus” is on an anchor.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Landing of the Fathers.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 240.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Landing of Mayflower.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 240.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>187. Lake George.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A beautiful view printed in dark blue on platters and plates,
+with shell border. Mark on back “Lake George, State of
+N. Y.” This is doubtless by E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>188. Lake Champlain. Macdonough’s Victory. Wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a rather confused view of a naval encounter representing
+the battle of Lake Champlain. It has the clear, beautiful
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>shell border, and the color is invariably rich and dark. It appears
+on all the pieces of tea and dinner services, and must
+have been sent to America in large numbers. On a rock in
+the foreground are the words “Commodore MacDonough’s
+Victory.” On the
+back, the impress
+mark “Wood.” A
+plate is here shown.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_367.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>MacDonough’s Victory Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Lawrence Mansion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 153.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>189. Lexington.
+Transylvania University.
+E. Wood
+&#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate with a view
+of Transylvania
+University in the
+centre. On either
+side are rows of stiff poplar-trees, and in the foreground a
+man and woman walking. The print is in a good shade of
+dark blue, and has the poor shell border. It is marked on
+the back with an eagle, shield, and “E Pluribus Unum,”
+and words “Transylvania University Lexington.” Also the
+impressed mark of E. Wood &#38; Sons. I have rarely seen this
+plate—one lot of three only, and all three were rather indistinctly
+and poorly printed; still they may be plentiful in the
+South or in the neighborhood of the University.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>190. Lexington. Transylvania University.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Transylvania University. A print in black or light blue of a
+smaller representation of the University and grounds. Apparently
+quite modern.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Little Falls. Erie Canal.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 170.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>191. Louisville. Marine Hospital.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A rich dark blue plate with shell border. Stamp on back,
+“Marine Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky.” This is doubtless
+by E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Macdonough Victory.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 188.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Marine Hospital. Louisville.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 191.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>192. Maryland. Arms of State. T. Mayer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A large oval soup-tureen and plates, printed in dark blue, with a
+handsome and spirited version of the arms of the State of
+Maryland. The stamp of T. Mayer and the blue mark of an
+eagle that appear on these pieces are fully described on page
+<a href='#Page_324'>324</a>. The border is a beautiful design of trumpet flowers and
+roses, while the extreme edge of the plates is ornamented with
+a conventionalized laurel wreath broken at intervals of about
+six inches with a star.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mayflower. Landing of The.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 240.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>193. Mendenhall Ferry. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A print in clear dark blue of a landscape with cattle in the foreground
+and a comfortable house, a story and a half high, a
+Lombardy poplar and an elm-tree, and a narrow river. In
+the background, on the opposite side of the river, hills with
+several dwelling-houses. The main point is the ferry—a
+cable stretching across the river, and by which boats were
+taken from side to side. The ferry-boat is shown. The border
+is a scroll, with eagles with half-spread wings and flowers,
+such as is shown on page <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>. Though these pieces have
+no maker’s stamp, the impressed mark on pieces bearing the
+same border is “Stubbs.” The only mark on this piece is
+the name Mendenhall Ferry in an oval medallion. Mendenhall
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>is an old Pennsylvania name, but I do not know where the
+ferry was located. Joseph Mendenhall owned a farm of a
+thousand acres on the Brandywine, below Shadd’s Ford, in
+Chester County, and it is very probable that the ferry was
+there.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Merchants’ Exchange. New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 204.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>194. Millennium.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate printed in blue, plum, green, black, and pink. In the
+centre a design of a lion led by a child, while lions and lambs
+lie peacefully at their feet. Above, the words, “Peace on
+Earth,” surmounted by a dove with olive branch. Below, the
+words, “Give us this day our daily Bread.” The border is a
+design of wheat sheaves and fruit, broken at the top of the
+plate by an eye and a Bible open at Isaiah. Mark on back,
+“Millennium.” One is shown on page <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mitchell &#38; Freeman’s Warehouse.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 154.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>195. Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This view of Mount Vernon is in black on a cup and saucer of
+white china. It is the front view of the house, and in the foreground
+a negro is leading a prancing white horse. At the top
+is this inscription, “Mount Vernon, Seat of the late Gen’l
+Washington.” Inside the cup is a dotted border. It has no
+stamp or mark of maker. I have also seen this print upon a
+cup and saucer of cream-colored Liverpool ware.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>196. Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Landscape in dark blue. Marked “Mount Vernon nr Washington.
+J. &#38; W. Ridgway.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>197. Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue plate with Mount Vernon in foreground and city of
+Washington in background. Mark, “View of Washington
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_354'>354</span>from Mt. Vernon.” Geographical and topographical laws
+were naught to English potters.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>198. Mount Vernon.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Stamped in pink. In the centre a group of visitors at a monument;
+the border a good floral design. On the back of plate
+the mark, “Virginia.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Mount Video.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 176 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'>199. Nahant. No. 1. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_370.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Nahant Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate is ten inches in diameter, of a rich dark blue color,
+and is very handsome—as are all the plates with its border, a
+scroll containing alternate
+eagles and
+roses. In the centre
+is a view of the Nahant
+Hotel, with the
+ocean and rocks in
+the foreground. On
+one rock are a dog,
+and a man firing a
+gun; on a second, two
+women fishing; on a
+third, a man and woman
+walking. On the
+right of the foreground
+is an old-fashioned
+curricle with two
+horses harnessed tandem.
+On the back
+of the plate is an oval blue stamp with the words, “Nahant
+Hotel near Boston.” One of these plates is here
+shown. This hotel was built of stone in the year 1818, by the
+Hon. Edward H. Robbins, at a cost of sixty thousand dollars.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>It was enlarged by a wooden addition until it contained three
+hundred rooms. It was burnt on September 12, 1861, and has
+never been rebuilt. The view on the plate shows only the old
+stone part of the hotel. It has been suggested that these
+plates were decorated for and used in the hotel. There is no
+evidence to prove this, nor is it probable. I have never seen
+any pieces save plates with this design.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>200. Nahant. No. 2. R. S. W.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Same view of the hotel at Nahant, with a large tree in the foreground
+at the left, and no curricle. The border is the oak
+leaf and acorn design, shown on page <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>; the stamp on the
+back, “Nahant Hotel nr Boston R. S. W.” The plates bearing
+this design are about an inch less in diameter than the
+ones described in No. 199.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>201. Natural Bridge. Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A poor and small view of the Natural Bridge, printed in light blue
+or pink in the centre of a white plate. Sometimes the
+plate has a weakly drawn flower border.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>202. Newburgh, on the Hudson River. W. R.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a black print on a white china plate twelve inches in
+diameter. On the back an impressed shield and eagle, and
+an oblong stamp surmounted by an eagle and having a pendent
+festoon of flowers. The name “View from Ruggles House in
+Newburgh Hudson River,” and the initials W. R., are on the
+stamp. There is no border. In the centre of the plate is a
+pretty view of the Hudson River with the familiar mountains
+in the background. The water is dotted with sloops and little
+boats, and a large tree is at the left of the foreground.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>203. Newburgh, on the Hudson River.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Black print on dinner set of a view of Washington’s Headquarters
+at Newburgh. Confused rose border.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>204. New York Fire, or Ruins of Merchants’ Exchange.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate is ten inches in diameter, in a brown or dull blue
+print. A view of the ruins of the Merchants’ Exchange, with
+the front still standing, is in the centre of the plate. A safe
+and books and papers, and a group of persons, are in the foreground,
+also a squad of four soldiers with an officer. Sentries
+patrol in front of the Exchange; groups of lookers-on are on
+either side; and flames and smoke in the background. The
+border is divided by eight scrolls bearing alternately the
+words “Great Fire” and “City of New York.” The spaces
+contain alternate subjects; one a group of old fire-implements,
+a fire-engine, fireman’s hat and trumpet, and underneath
+the date, 1833; the other space contains a phœnix with
+flames behind, against a background of old city buildings, and
+underneath the date, December 16th. On the back of the
+plate, the same phœnix over the stamp “Ruins Merchants
+Exchange,” and in fine letters the mark “Stone-Ware.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate was printed to commemorate the terrible fire which
+devastated the business portion of New York in 1833, burning
+over thirteen acres in extent and causing a loss of seventeen
+million dollars. The fire extended from Coffee House Slip
+along South Street to Coenties Slip, thence to Broad Street,
+along William Street to Wall Street, burning down the south
+side to the East River, with the exception of the buildings
+from Number 51 to 61. The Merchants’ Exchange was one of
+the last buildings to yield to the flames.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This beautiful marble building had a front of one hundred and
+fifteen feet on Wall Street, was three stories high above the
+basement, and was considered at the time the handsomest
+building in the United States except the New York City
+Hall. The Post-Office had been established in its basement
+in 1827. The letters and mails were removed to a place of
+safety, but the noble marble statue of Alexander Hamilton,
+which stood in the Rotunda, was crushed by the falling sidewalls.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>The Seventh Regiment (then called the National
+Guard) kept guard over the ruins, and the funny fur-capped
+sentries shown on the plate are doubtless of this regiment. A
+fine view of the front and rear of the ruins of the Merchants’
+Exchange is shown in William L. Stone’s “History of New
+York;” but the old stone-ware plates form an equally faithful,
+and much more curious and interesting, memorial of the
+great conflagration.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>205. New York. Arms of State. T. Mayer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The arms of New York with seated figures, instead of standing
+figures as in the present coat of arms; also the motto “Excelsior”
+and name New York. On the back is printed in blue
+the American eagle, with motto “E Pluribus Unum,” also the
+impressed mark of “T. Mayer, Stone, Staffordshire.” Both
+marks are described on page <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>. There were doubtless dinner services
+with the arms of all the existing States of the
+Union, but I have seen only the plates and platters with arms
+of New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina,
+and the soup-tureen with the arms of the State of Maryland.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>206. New York. Arms of State.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>I have seen in many collections, the Trumbull-Prime Collection
+being one of the number, pieces of Lowestoft china bearing a
+poor and crude rendering of the Arms of State of New York.
+These must have been decorated in China in large numbers,
+to be so widespread and numerous.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>207. New York Bay. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This view of the Bay is taken from Castle Garden. In the centre
+is the fort on Governor’s Island. A side-wheel steamer and
+frigate are among the shipping. The stamp on back is “View
+of New York Bay.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>208. New York. Stevenson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A dark blue print of a view of New York from Brooklyn
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span>Heights. In the foreground is a pretty old Dutch homestead
+view, low sheds, a well, and a man on horseback. On the river
+is some shipping and a small steamboat. In the background
+the lower portion of New York, showing Trinity Church spire.
+The border is a rose pattern. On the back is the mark
+“View of New York from Brooklyn Heights by (or for), Wm.
+C. Wall Esq.” Also the impressed mark of “Stevenson
+Warranted.” A plate with this print is in the rooms of the
+Long Island Historical Society, in Brooklyn.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>209. New York. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of Castle Garden, with a tree to the right, printed in
+brown. Marked “Jackson’s Ware.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>210. New York. Scudder’s Museum. Richard Stevenson
+(?).</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A dark blue plate with a design in the centre of the plate of a
+house with the sign “American Museum,” and a garden in
+front. The border is a pretty design of oak leaves. On the
+back, in a scroll, the mark “Scudder’s American Museum
+R. S.” This museum stood in a garden on the corner of
+Broadway, where now is the great <cite>New York Herald</cite> building.
+It was a famous place of amusement in its day, and afterward
+passed into the possession of P. T. Barnum; there he laid the
+foundation of his fame and fortune.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>211. New York. City Hall. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a black or brown print with a flower border. In the centre
+is the City Hall with flag flying from the staff on the roof;
+in the foreground a horse and wagon, men and boys. Stamped
+on the back “City Hall New York;” and “Jackson Warranted.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>212. New York. City Hall. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate printed in dark blue with a view of the New York City
+Hall. In the foreground are large trees and a wondrouslyattired
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>man, woman, and child standing facing the building, to
+which the man points with his cane. The border is the ugly
+set medallion border of flowers shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Mark in
+blue on the back, “City Hall New York. Beauties of America.
+J. &#38; W. Ridgway.” The corner-stone of this building
+was laid in 1803, and the edifice was completed in 1812. It
+stood with the bridewell on the west, the almshouse behind it,
+and the jail on the other side. It cost half a million dollars—a
+most reasonable expenditure when compared with the twelve
+million dollars for its neighbor the Court-House—and was at
+that time the handsomest structure in the United States. The
+“three fronts,” as they were called, are of Stockbridge marble.
+It is still standing, a good example of pure design and
+style. A very simple way of dating the various City Hall
+prints is found in the presence in the design of the clock in
+the cupola; this was placed in its position in 1830. Some
+prints show the dial very distinctly.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_375.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>City Hall Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>213. New York. City Hall. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Same view of City Hall as No. 212, but the park in the foreground
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_360'>360</span>is intersected with paths and the trees are different.
+The border is of scrolls, roses, and eagles, shown on page <a href='#Page_354'>354</a>.
+Color, dark blue. Mark on back, “City Hall New York.”
+This view is taken, I think, from a drawing by W. G. Wall,
+which was published December 20, 1826.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>214. New York. City Hall.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Same view of City Hall as No. 213, with no trees in the foreground.
+Oak leaf border with outer edge of white. Color
+dark blue. Probably by Stevenson. A pitcher bearing this
+view is here shown.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>215. New York. Fort Gansevoort.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Printed in dark blue on various pieces of a dinner service. A
+view of the fort with water and sloop in foreground. A confused
+leaf border. The pieces I have seen bore no maker’s
+mark.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>216. New York. Almshouse. J. &#38;</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view printed in dark blue of the ugly Almshouse on Blackwell’s
+Island. One of the Beauties of America set, with same
+marks and border as shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>217. New York. Battery.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of the Battery in common black print.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>218. New York. City Hotel. R. S. W.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate printed in dark blue, with a view looking down Broadway,
+and including Trinity Church. In the foreground, in the
+middle of Broadway, in front of a hotel, a man is sawing wood
+on an old-fashioned saw-buck. The clear oak leaf and acorn
+border, and scroll mark on back, with R. S. W., as in No. 219.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>219. New York. Park Theatre. R. S. W.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span>
+<img src='images/i_377.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Park Theatre Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of the Park Theatre, including the lower end of City Hall
+Park with its ancient brick posts, where now stands the Post-office.
+In the distance the spire of the Old Brick Church,
+where Dr. Spring preached. A clear oak leaf and acorn
+border, and scroll and leaf mark, with initials R. S. W. A
+plate is here shown. The first Park Theatre was built in
+1797. It stood in Park Row, about two hundred feet from
+Ann Street. It was opened on January 29, 1798, the first play
+being “As You Like It;” $1,232 were taken in at the first
+performance. In May, 1820, it was burned to the ground. In
+1821 it was rebuilt, and opened with “Wives as they Were
+and Maids as they Are.” It was burnt on December 16, 1848.
+An original water-color drawing of the interior is in the rooms
+of the New York Historical Society, with a key to the members
+of the audience, for the figures are portraits. Many of
+the men are sitting with their hats on. In this theatre
+appeared Thomas A. Cooper, Charles Mathews, the Keans,
+Charles and Fanny Kemble, Malibran, Celeste, Fanny Ellsler,
+Madame Vestris, Clara Fisher, Julia Wheatley, Master
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span>Burke, the Ravels, Mr. and Mrs. Wood, Charlotte Watson,
+Charlotte Cushman, Ellen Tree, Taglioni—what prettier
+memento of the old New York stage can there be than the old
+Park Theatre plate?</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>220. Niagara.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of Niagara Falls in a pink print on small plate.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>221. Niagara.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in medium shade of blue. A large house and trees in
+foreground and diminutive semi-circular waterfall in background.
+On back the stamp “Niagara.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>222. Niagara. Table Rock.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This beautiful dark blue plate has the rich shell border of Wood,
+though it does not bear his impressed mark, and has only the
+stamp with eagle and motto “E Pluribus Unum” and words
+“Table Rock Niagara.” The view is taken from the foot of
+Table Rock looking upward, and is very artistic. Entire dinner
+services bearing this design were exported to America.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Park Theatre. New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 219.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Passaic Falls. Trenton.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 256.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>223. Peace and Plenty. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A medium blue plate decorated with border of fruit and flowers.
+In centre, a Roman husbandman crowned with grain and
+surrounded by sheaves of wheat; in his right hand a sickle,
+and in his left a basket of fruit; by his side a shield with the
+American eagle and the motto “Peace and Plenty.” Made
+by Clews. Two plates bearing this design sold at the Governor
+Lyon sale for three dollars each.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Penn, Wm. Treaty with Indians.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 267.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>224. Pennsylvania. Arms of. T. Mayer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very spirited and beautiful rendering of the arms of this State,
+printed in dark blue on platters and plates, with border and
+marks like No. 190. Marks fully described on page.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>225. Pennsylvania Hospital. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In dark blue, marked “J. &#38; W. Ridgway. Beauties of America.”
+Border shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>226. Philadelphia. View.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This print is in dark blue upon a plate six inches in diameter.
+The border is a confused scroll with roses. The spires of two
+churches are seen, and in the foreground is a wharf with a
+derrick, and a sloop alongside. Some of the plates have upon
+the back the stamp “View of the city of Philadelphia.” Also
+the impressed stamp of a star like the Worcester mark.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>227. Philadelphia. Fairmount Park. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of Fairmount, with a large tree in the foreground, and a
+man and woman in the dress of the early part of the century.
+On the opposite and further shore of the lake are two of the
+handsome dwelling-houses which stood there at that time.
+The border is the handsome design of scroll, roses, and eagles.
+The medallion stamp on back “Fairmount near Philadelphia.”
+Impressed mark, Stubbs. A plate with this design is
+here shown.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>228. Philadelphia. Upper Bridge. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is one of the four Fairmount Park views. It bears on the
+back the impress and the oval blue stamp “Upper Bridge
+over River Schuylkill.” The border is the same as shown on
+page <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>. On the left of the foreground of the view is a
+large tree, and under it is a group of persons, one of whom is
+sketching. At the left is an old covered Pennsylvania wagon
+with six horses. The view of the ferry bridge is clear and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_364'>364</span>good, and the color is a good blue, though not rich and dark.
+Impressed stamp on some specimens, Stubbs.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<img src='images/i_380.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Fairmount Park Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>229. Philadelphia. Library. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate printed in dark blue with set medallion border. In the
+centre a view of the Library at Philadelphia. Mark on the
+back, “Philadelphia Library. Beauties of America. J. &#38;
+W. Ridgway.” One of these plates is shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>230. Philadelphia. Stoughton Church. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plate printed in dark blue with set medallion border shown on
+page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. In the centre a view of the old church which stood
+on Filbert Street above Eighth. The church looks like an
+old Grecian building. Mark on the back, “Stoughton Church.
+J. &#38; W. Ridgway, Beauties of America.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span>231. Philadelphia. Girard’s Bank. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view, printed in pink or black, of Girard’s Bank. Mark on
+back, “Jacksons Warranted.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>232. Philadelphia. United States Hotel.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of the hotel in rich dark blue, with a border composed
+chiefly of the foliage of two trees standing at the right and
+left and meeting overhead.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>233. Philadelphia. Woodlands. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of a low building like a lodge and landscape in dark blue.
+Scroll, eagle, and rose border shown on page <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>. Stamp
+on back, “Woodlands near Philadelphia.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>234. Philadelphia. Washington Church.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>235. Philadelphia. Race Street Bridge. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in black, brown, or pink, marked on back with name of
+view and “Jacksons Warranted.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>236. Philadelphia. Race Street Bridge. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Eagle, rose, and scroll border like No. 225. Impressed mark,
+“Stubbs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>237. Philadelphia. Waterworks. R. S. W.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Low building with dome in centre of the plate, fountain at
+right, and trees, fence, and an old-time covered emigrant
+wagon in foreground. Distinct oak leaf and acorn border,
+like No. 180. Clear dark blue in color. Mark on back in
+scroll with leaves, “Philadelphia Waterworks. R. S. W.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>238. Philadelphia. Waterworks. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Same view as No. 237, but smaller, and printed in black.
+Mark on back, “Jacksons Warranted.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>239. Philadelphia. Bank of the United States. Stubbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate in dark blue with street and buildings in the centre.
+Eagle, rose, and scroll border shown on page <a href='#Page_364'>364</a>. This is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span>the bank which was in 1833 forced into bankruptcy by President
+Andrew Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>240. Pilgrims. Enoch Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_382.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Pilgrim Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>This Plymouth Rock decoration is found on plates and pitchers,
+and the pieces are perhaps more highly prized than any other
+historical Staffordshire wares, especially by all descendants
+from and lovers of the Pilgrims. The print is clear and good,
+though the blue color is not very dark. In the centre of the
+plate is a print representing
+a “rock-bound
+coast” with
+the Mayflower and a
+small boat overfilled
+with Pilgrim Fathers
+landing on Plymouth
+Rock, upon which are
+inscribed the names
+Carver, Bradford,
+Winslow, Brewster,
+Standish. Two
+Indians are also
+perched on the rock.
+Above this print is
+the small-lettered inscription “The Landing of the Fathers at
+Plymouth, Dec. 22, 1620.” The border consists of a handsome
+design of eagles and scrolls, broken by four medallions
+or shields. The upper one contains the words “America
+Independent, July 4, 1776;” the lower the words,
+“Washington born 1732, died 1799;” on the right a little
+view of two full-rigged ships with names Enterprise and
+Boxer (?); on the left a part of the print on No. 128—a
+steamer, rock, and eagle. On the back is the blue stamp
+“Enoch Wood &#38; Sons Burslem.” One of these plates is here
+shown. In spite of the presence of the steamship, the name
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span>of Washington, and the date 1799, I have been gravely informed
+by country owners that these plates were two hundred
+years old, and once even that they “came over in the Mayflower.”
+We have often been told that the plates were “made
+for the dinner at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill
+Monument, in 1824, when Daniel Webster spoke.” This account
+was obviously improbable, since nothing in the design
+on the plate bore reference to that occasion, and the
+probability seemed equally clear that the celebration was instead
+the bicentennial celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims,
+which was held in Plymouth in 1820, and at which
+Webster, clad in silk gown and satin small-clothes, made the
+address which laid the foundation of his reputation as an orator.
+I was glad to receive confirmation of my belief from Mr.
+T. B. Drew, Librarian of Plymouth Hall, at Plymouth. He
+says, “The Pilgrim plates you refer to were made in England
+by order of John Blaney Bates, a well-known contractor
+and builder of his day, who in 1820 was building the Plymouth
+County Court-House. He had it so nearly completed that the
+dinner of the celebration was provided in that building. It
+was, as you say, the bicentennial of the Landing of the Pilgrims,
+but often termed by us the Webster celebration, on
+account of Daniel Webster being the orator of the day.
+There were two sizes of pitchers and two of plates, and one of
+the plates has on the rock the names as you describe. After
+the dinner the wares were sold either at auction or private
+sale, and the different pieces became distributed quite widely
+through New England. I know of no publication that gives
+any account of what I have been telling you, but the facts
+were well known and have been told by aged people who remember
+the circumstances.” To this information I can add
+in one respect. There are six sizes of plates, one being deep
+like a soup-plate. An old lady still living in Plymouth, asserts
+that while the plates were furnished by Mr. Bates, her
+husband, seeing their popularity and ready sale, ordered the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>pitchers, as she remembers, from Holland. As the print on
+the pitchers varies from that on the plates, being encircled
+also by a narrow ribbon scroll with the words “The Landing
+of the Fathers,” and as the former do not bear the stamp of
+Enoch Wood of Burslem, this reminiscence is probably correct,
+except possibly the point that the pitchers came from
+Holland. These plates are usually found one in a family, but
+from one household, near Worcester, Mass., were purchased
+by a china hunter eight tea-plates, and from another family
+two soup-plates, four tea-plates, seven saucers, and ten “cup-plates.”
+By cup-plates I mean the little flat saucers in which
+our grandmothers set their teacups when they poured the tea
+in the deep saucers to cool.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pine Orchard House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 160.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>241. Pittsburg Penitentiary.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is upon large and small platters and plates in purplish pink,
+blue, brown, and black prints. The ware is stone-ware
+of good quality. The border is a pretty scroll-work design
+with roses and other flowers and eagles. The edges are
+slightly scalloped. This Pittsburg plate has a clear unperspectived
+drawing of the Penitentiary, with high hills at
+the background. Stiff little houses and trees are scattered
+around. In the foreground a man in knee-breeches is holding
+a horse which is harnessed to a chaise. The building in this
+print is the Western Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, at Alleghany
+City. It is an enormous stone building of ancient
+Norman style of architecture, that was built in 1827.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>242. Pittsburg.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in pale blue, brown, or black of a view of Pittsburg, with
+the Iron Mountain in the background and two large steamers,
+named respectively “Home” and “Pennsylvania” in the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>foreground. Mark on the back, “Picturesque Views, Pittsburg.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>243. Pittsfield. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A winter view of the town common at Pittsfield, Mass., with the
+church and other public buildings. In the foreground an
+elliptical enclosure with a skeleton elm-tree, intended to represent
+the famous great Pittsfield Elm. The author of “The
+China Hunters’ Club” quotes from a newspaper of 1864, that
+the trunk of this tree was made into bowls and other relics, and
+that “about 1825 Mr. Allen, a merchant of Pittsfield, had a
+view of the elm and park, as they then appeared, taken and
+sent to England, where it was reproduced on blue crockery
+ware.” As the fence which appears in the view on the plate
+was not placed around the elm until 1825, this date is
+probably correct. Before that the tree had been entirely unprotected;
+it was sadly nibbled by the farm horses that were
+frequently hitched to the iron staples that were driven into
+its trunk. When the elm fell in 1861, a great number of these
+staples were found imbedded in the wood. The design of the
+church appears in four medallions in the border of the plate.
+It is marked “Clews” and the name “Winter View of
+Pittsfield Mass.” I have also seen this same view with a
+vine-leaf border.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plymouth Landing.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 240.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>244. Quebec.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue print of view of the heights at Quebec. Mark on
+back in blue scroll “Quebec,” also the impressed stamp of a
+Greek cross.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>245. Quebec. Falls of Montmorency.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue view of the Falls, with a shell border. Stamp on the
+back “Falls of Montmorenci near Quebec.” This and the
+previous number are the only views of Canadian scenery that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span>I have ever seen on old Staffordshire plates. Persons who
+have gathered china in Canada tell me that they have found
+no other views there.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>246. Rhode Island. Arms of State. T. Mayer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue print marked “T. Mayer Stone Staffordshire.” Same
+border as No. 192. Marks fully described on page <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>247. Richmond, Va. College.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of college printed in light blue.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>248. Savannah. Bank. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of the Bank at Savannah. It has the same set medallion
+border shown on page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Mark on back “Bank, Savannah,
+Beauties of America. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Scudder’s Museum. New York.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 210.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>249. South Carolina.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A plate with a palmetto-tree in the centre, and a ship in the distance,
+on either side a flag. A shield with the date July 4th
+and the motto of the State of South Carolina. Flower border
+like plates of E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>250. South Carolina. Arms of State. T. Mayer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue plate. Marked “Stone Staffordshire T. Mayer.”
+Same marks and border as No. 192, and a very clear rendering
+of the State arms.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>251. States. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This design is the larger plate shown on page <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>. It is found on
+all the pieces of a dinner service, but I have never seen a
+tea-set. The dinner plates are exceptionally large. The print
+is in a rich shade of dark blue. In the centre is a medallion
+of what is said to be the White House, at Washington, with
+sheep or cattle grazing in foreground. It is supported on one
+side by a kneeling figure with plumed helmet and bearing a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>liberty cap—labelled Independence. On the other side the
+figure of a woman kneeling on her ankles with the bandage of
+justice on her eyes, and Masonic emblem on her apron. She
+holds a portrait medallion labelled Washington. On the pedestal
+at her ankles, the word “America.” The border is of
+flowers and a scroll with names of fifteen States, and with fifteen
+stars. On some pieces these stars are simply crosses.
+Impressed stamp “Clews Warranted Staffordshire.” On the
+larger pieces, such as tureens, the centre view is often of an
+English castle—the White House view not being large enough,
+apparently, to fill the space. Some of the platters have in the
+centre a view of a two-story house, while in the foreground are
+two men and a sheet of water with a sloop. This is sometimes
+called the Washington Masonic Plate.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>252. Steamship.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A dark blue print of a side-wheel steamship, bark rigged, under
+full sail, and flying the American flag. Impressed mark of
+“E. Woods &#38; Sons.” This may commemorate the Savannah,
+the first steamer to cross the Atlantic, in 1819.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Stevens Mansion.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 182.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Stoughton Church.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 228.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Table Rock. Niagara.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 222.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>253. Temperance Plate.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This curious and finely printed plate is very rare. It is made
+of a soft yellowish paste, and the decoration is printed in
+black. The edges are slightly scalloped and have a little line
+of black. In the centre of the plate is a shield supported by
+the figures of a man and woman; the man bearing a banner
+inscribed with the word “Sobriety,” and the woman a similar
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span>banner with the words “Domestic Comfort.” By the side of
+the man is a small figure of a boy seated reading; on the opposite
+side that of a girl sewing. The shield is surmounted
+by a crest—an oak-tree—and above that a scroll containing
+the motto “Firm as an Oak.” Below the shield are clouds and
+two shelves of vases and jars of antique shapes; and beneath
+all a scroll with the motto “Temperance, Sobriety.” The
+shield is divided by perpendicular lines and transverse bars.
+In the spaces thus formed are designs. That of a beehive
+has on the bar beneath it the word “Industry;” that of a
+farmer working in a field, the word “Health;” that of a
+sailor, the word “Freedom;” that of a pile of money, the
+word “Wealth;” that of a cornucopia, the word “Plenty;”
+that of a snake, the word “Wisdom;” in the lower space are
+an open Bible and the letters I.H.S. There is no stamp or
+mark on the back. It is probably a Masonic design, but is
+called the “Temperance Plate.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>254. Texas. J. B.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>English stone-ware with blue or pink prints. Trophies of war
+in the corners, and on the sides symbolical figures of Peace
+and Plenty. In the centre, a fight between Texans and Mexicans,
+marked “Gen. Taylor in Texas.” It was doubtless
+printed to commemorate the Independence of Texas.
+Marked on the back with initials J. B. A large platter bearing
+this design sold in the Governor Lyon sale, in 1876, for
+$7.50.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>255. Texan Campaign.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Plates with a small, poor print in sepia green, red, or black, of a
+scene with troop of soldiers with mounted commander. Border,
+a scroll with trophies of arms and flags. Stamp on the
+back “Texan Campaign.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Transylvania University.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 189 <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span>256. Trenton Falls.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This plate is eight inches in diameter, of a rich dark blue. The
+handsome shell border indicates it to be one of Clews manufacture
+(as Mr. Prime asserts); the impressed stamp on the
+back cannot be deciphered. The view in the centre of the
+plate is a pretty group of pine-trees with the Passaic Falls in
+the middle. On the back is a blue stamp of an eagle with the
+scroll and the words “E Pluribus Unum,” and the name
+“View of Trenton Falls.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>257. Troy. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of Troy, N. Y., from Mount Ida, marked Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Union Line. Steamboat.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 184.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>United States Bank.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 239.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>United States Hotel.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 232.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Utica.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 167.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Virginia. Natural Bridge.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 201.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Virginia.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 198.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>258. Virginia. J. W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in black or brown with floral border. In centre a landscape
+view. Mark on back “Virginia. J. W. Ridgway.”
+The house bears a close resemblance to Arlington House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Wadsworth Tower.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 176.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Washington’s Headquarters.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 203.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span>Washington, D. C. View of.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 197.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>259. Washington, D. C. Capitol. J. &#38; W. Ridgway.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A view of the Capitol in dark blue with man and woman on
+horseback in the foreground. Medallion border shown on
+page <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>. Marked “J. &#38; W. Ridgway. Beauties of America.
+Capitol Washington.” This appears usually on large platters.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>260. Washington, D. C. Capitol. R. S. &#38; W.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/i_390.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Capitol Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A very beautiful dark blue plate with slightly scalloped edge,
+with view of the Capitol, large tree in foreground. A vine-leaf
+border. Mark on back in shield “Capitol Washington.
+R. S. &#38;. W.” One is shown here.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>261. Washington, D. C. Capitol. Stevenson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue print of same view. Vine-leaf border and white
+fluted edge. Impressed mark, Stevenson.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>262. Washington, D. C. Capitol. E. Wood &#38; Sons.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Dark blue plate with view of the Capitol. Confused shell border.
+Mark “E. Wood Warranted Staffordshire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'><span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span>263. Washington, D. C. White House. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This is a view of the Executive Mansion at Washington, with
+garden to the left and a group of figures to the right. It is
+printed in black and marked “Jackson.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>264. Washington, D. C. White House.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another view printed in black of the White House. Scalloped
+edges and wide ornate border. Marked on the back “White
+House Washington.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>265. Washington, D. C. White House. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Pink and white printed plate marked on the back “Presidents
+House Washington,” and mark “Jacksons Warranted.”
+Same border as No. &#8196;&#8196;&#8196;.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>White House. Washington. States.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 251.</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>266. West Point. Clews.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>View of West Point, with river and steamboat and row-boat.
+Mark on back “Picturesque Views. West Point Hudson
+River,” also impressed mark “Warranted Clews Staffordshire.”</p>
+
+<p class='c013'>267. William Penn. Treaty with Indians. Jackson.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Print in black or brown on dinner service of a view with
+William Penn, in Quaker garb, talking with an Indian chief.
+At their feet a box of treasure, including a string of beads
+which an Indian woman is examining. Border a stencil
+design.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Woodlands.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>See No. 233.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XVIII.<br> CHINA MEMORIES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>What fancies we weave, what dreams we dream
+over a piece of homely old china! Every cup,
+every jar in our china ingatherings, has the
+charm of fantasy, visions of past life and beauty, though
+only imagined. I like to think that the china I love
+has been warmly loved before—has been made a cherished
+companion, been tenderly handled ere I took it to be my
+companion and to care for it. It is much the same
+friendly affection that I feel for an old well-read, half-worn
+book; the unknown hands through which it has
+passed, the unseen eyes that have gazed on it, have
+endeared it to me. This imagined charm exists in china
+if it be old, though we know not a word of its past, save
+that it has a past and is not fresh from the potter’s wheel
+and the kiln. The very haze of uncertainty is favorable
+to the fancies of a dreamer; I summon past owners from
+that shadowy hiding-place; weave romances out of that
+cloud; build past dwelling-houses more quaint, more romantic
+than any in whose windows I have gazed, whose
+threshold I have trodden in my real china hunting.
+Victor Cousin says: “If beauty absent and dreamed of
+does not affect you more than beauty present, you may
+have a thousand other gifts, but not that of imagination.”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span>If you have no imagination you may have none of these
+china dreams—these “children of an idle brain,” but you
+still may have china memories. Fair country sights
+does my old china bring to my eyes; soft country sounds
+does it bring to my ears, the sound of buzzing bees, of
+rustling branches, “the liquid lapse of murmuring
+streams,” of rippling brooks where we dipped the old
+blue crockery mugs and cups the day we found them,
+and drank the pure but sun-warmed water. When I
+look at this queen’s-ware creamer, I hear the sweet, clear,
+ear-thrilling notes of the meadow-lark, “in notes by
+distance made more sweet”—who sang outside of the
+farm-house where I first saw the dainty shell of china.
+Sweet scents, too, does the old china bear. When I
+found that old yellow Wedgwood dish in the country
+tavern, it was filled with tiny fragrant wild strawberries—I
+smell, nay, I taste them still. That flaring-topped
+vase was full of sweet white honeysuckle when I espied
+it in a farm-house window—I carried away the scent
+of the honeysuckle when I bought the vase. This old
+mottled stone-ware jug, with the hound handle, stood
+in the deep shade of a stone wall by the side of a sunny
+hay-field when first it met my view. It was filled with
+honest home-brewed beer for the hay-makers. We sat
+fuming and sizzling in the hot sun, watching them
+spread and turn the fragrant hay until the beer had all
+been drunk (and we did not have to wait long), and we
+bore the jug off in triumph, breathing to us forever the
+scent of new-mown hay with, to speak truthfully, a
+slight tinge of stale beer.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>A halo of “sweet Sabean odors” fairly envelops all
+family china. In those blue and white Canton sugar-bowls,
+and in that great jar with the red lacquered cover,
+my grandmother kept her fragrant spiced rose-leaves—there
+are rose-leaves in them now. In that tall pitcher
+she always placed the first lilac and cherry blooms—and
+lo! as I look at the poor cracked thing, “sweet is the air
+with budding haws and white with blossoming cherry-trees.”
+More prosaic and homely, but equally memory-sweet,
+what a penetrating aroma of strong green tea rises
+out of that copper-lustre teapot! What a burnt and bitter,
+but wholly good-smelling steam arises from that old
+flip-mug, the steam from many a quart of flip brewed
+from New England rum, and home-made beer, stirred
+with the red-hot iron loggerhead.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>
+<img src='images/i_395.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Crown Derby Plate.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Like Charles Lamb, I was born china-loving. “I am
+not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were
+introduced into my imagination.” When I was a little
+child the dearest treasures of my doll’s house were a
+small cup-plate of purest porcelain, delicately bordered
+with a diagonal design of tiny berries and spike-shaped
+bachelor’s buttons and fine lines of gold, and a nicked
+India china tea-caddy, cork-stoppered, and filled with
+precious rose-water—rose-water of my grandmother’s
+own make, distilled in the old rose-water still that
+stood, when unused, a cumbrous and mysterious machine
+under the dusty eaves of the garret. I suspect
+that still had been employed in early colonial days
+to manufacture a less innocuous liquid than rose-water,
+but now only the petals of the Queen of the Prairie, the
+sweet-brier, the cinnamon roses, went into its innocent
+limbec; and its sweet-scented product was intensified by
+the contents of one of the long, thin, gilt glass bottles
+of ottar of roses that my great-uncle, Captain Royal, who
+“followed the sea,” brought home in such vast numbers
+from China. One day there poured out from the door
+of my doll’s house a penetrating fragrance of roses; I
+peered within—the keen anguish of that moment fills
+me even now; the tea-caddy had fallen—nay, had been
+knocked on my precious little plate, and both were
+broken. There on her back, drenched with my cherished
+rose-water, lay the iconoclast, my miserable maltese kitten,
+in mischief still, pulling down with her sharp,
+wicked claws my proudest masterpiece, a miniature
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_380'>380</span>chandelier of wire and glass beads over which I had
+spent many a weary hour. I burst into a loud wail of
+hopeless despair; the bedraggled kitten rushed frightened
+from my side, shedding odors of Araby as she
+bounded away,</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“An amber scent of odorous perfume</div>
+      <div class='line'>Her harbinger.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Ah! never again, even at sight of housemaids’ broken
+spoils, have I felt such heart-breaking grief. To this
+day, when I look back at the plate here shown and the
+little coffee-cans of the blue Tournay sprigged set which
+I now know to be Crown Derby, and to have been
+bought by Uncle Royal in a sudden streak of extravagance
+(perhaps he, too, was china-mad); to this day I
+grieve for their companion, the little broken cup-plate,
+and again I smell the sweet, cloying fragrance of rose-water.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These old dark blue plates also tell a tale. They
+are known to us as “the doctor’s pie-plates,” not from
+the comical figure of Dr. Syntax with which they are
+decorated, but so called in derision. An old New
+England physician, a pie-hater, stole, one Thanksgiving
+eve, twenty-eight carefully made pies that his patient
+wife and daughters had provided for his Thanksgiving
+guests. He rose stealthily in the dead of night, threw
+lemon and apple, quince and cranberry, mince and
+“Marlborough” pies to the pigs, and hid the blue pie-plates
+in an old rat-nibbled, cobweb-filled, musty, dusty
+coach that had stood for half a century in his carriagehouse,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span>and in which his English grandmother had journeyed
+in state throughout New England. Thirty years
+later, after his death, at the destruction of the old coach,
+these hidden pie-plates were found by his descendants.
+They are therefore not simply “good pieces of blue,”
+they are ceramic monuments of the household tyranny
+of man.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Shall I ever forget my first view of my largest and
+choicest Washington pitcher? It stood filled with dried
+grasses and pressed and varnished autumn leaves, and
+painfully covered with an ignominious shell of decalcomanie
+and scrap-book pictures, on a table in a lonely
+lighthouse. Only by its shape did we know it, the old
+watermelon shape of Liverpool ware. Not a vestige of
+its early decoration could be seen, but we bought it as a
+hazard of fortune. Oh, the delight I felt when I reached
+home and scraped off Pauline Hall’s smirking and high-colored
+countenance, and saw with a thrill of friendly
+recognition the black-lined face of my own solemn and
+immaculate Washington surmounting her full-blown,
+rosy shoulders and scarlet and gold bodice. Never do I
+look at my fully restored pitcher but I see him again, as
+then, with his dignified head turned very much aside,
+as if sadly shocked at the position and dress he found
+himself in.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The clear blue letters on these old Delft apothecary
+jars speak not to me of the drugs and syrups, of the lohocks
+and electuaries that were contained within them
+in olden times; they are abbreviations of various Biblical
+proverbs, such as “Every fool will be meddling,”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_382'>382</span>and “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
+he fall.” The little, ill-drawn blue cherubs that decorate
+these jars seem always to wink
+and smirk maliciously at me,
+and to hold their fat sides as
+though they were thinking of the
+first time they gazed at me and
+jeered at me out of the window
+of the gray old farm-house in
+Narragansett, as I stood entrapped
+by the sudden crushing
+in of a peaked-roofed hen-house
+upon which I had climbed to
+peer within a window at the
+hidden Delft treasures. There I
+stood on broken eggs and piercing
+splinters for one hour, with
+only distracted hens and scarcely
+less distracted thoughts for
+company, until the owner of hen-house
+and Delft jars returned
+and kindly chopped me out of
+my absurd and well-deserved
+stocks. Severe and unceasing
+monitors are my old apothecary
+jars.</p>
+
+<div  class='figleft id004'>
+<img src='images/i_398a.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<img src='images/i_398b.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Delft Apothecary Jars.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>When I stick gillyflowers and
+clove-pinks in the pierced tops
+of these three-legged India china “posy-holders,” I
+am, like Marjorie Fleming, “all primmed up with Majestick
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span>Pride”—the honest pride of a successful china-finder
+who has snatched her prize from before the
+very face of a dozen other collectors. These “posy-holders”
+stood for forty years on the high-towering mantel-tree
+of a country parlor, a parlor that was viewed
+yearly by scores of inquisitive and curiosity-seeking summer
+visitors, visitors too dull-visioned to recognize these
+china treasures. Perhaps the high-shelved station of the
+china, a foot only from the ceiling, helped to hide them.
+Perhaps the gruesome row of oval silvered disks that
+stood in their company, tarnished coffin-plates bearing
+the names of past and dead dwellers in that home, may
+have chilled and repelled investigation. Perhaps the
+scarlet, blue, and gold dragons and shrimps on the posy-holders
+were dulled by the greater glories of their surroundings,
+for this parlor shone resplendent with glowing
+color. The walls had been painted by a travelling
+artist in the early part of this century, and lavish was his
+fancy and his sense of color. Above the high black
+mantel-shelf a yellow ochre sun threw his rays over vermillion
+and purple clouds. These rays of light were
+gilded and curved in various directions, and gave Phœbus
+the appearance of a good-tempered, smiling octopus,
+withal somewhat intoxicated. At either side of the fireplace
+sprung a great palm-tree that bore at the base of a
+spreading cluster of leaves luscious bunches of great
+hanging pineapples. Around one tree a frightful serpent
+coiled, his striped folds most beautifully diversified with
+gilded spots. Behind the other tree lurked a crouching
+tiger. On the plastered wall were painted two portraits
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_384'>384</span>with fine simulated gold frames, apparently held in place
+by heavy cord and tassels; one was of George Washington,
+the other the past owner of all these glories. It
+was curious to see the marked and comic likeness a fair
+young daughter of the house, the village school-mistress,
+bore to the hard-faced, non-perspectived old daub of a
+grandfather on the wall; had you dressed her in a brass-buttoned
+blue coat and a high stock, she would have
+been far more like the portrait than most portraits are
+like their originals. One large space was decorated with
+a full-passengered coach with four prancing horses; the
+other bore a marine view—fierce waves, and a strangely
+rigged brig, with gilded cannon, and fine flags and pennants
+all blowing stiffly against the wind that filled the
+sails. A steamboat, too, sailed these waters blue—the
+greatest triumph of the painter’s art. Robert Fulton’s
+invention was in its infancy when this steamboat was
+evolved, and it was plainly constructed from the artist’s
+imagination. The cranky hull bore two brick chimneys;
+it rested on crossbars like a wagon, and had four great
+wheels that sat well up out of the water. The floor of
+this room was painted a dull drab color, and in brilliant
+yellow was displayed a diagram of the solar system,
+planets, moons, and orbits, sadly worn and defaced, however,
+by the footsteps of three generations of New Englanders.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Do you wonder that the china posy-holders were
+overlooked in all this blaze of glory? I recount the
+gaudy decorations with grateful praise. Through them
+my treasures stood, ever “eye-sweet and fair,” but unnoticed,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span>for years, humbly awaiting my china-loving and
+china-spying vision.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>These dainty egg-shell cups and saucers have also
+their memory, their lesson—a word softly spoken but
+clear; they were once owned by two silver-haired “antient
+maides” of Chippendale elegance and Pilgrim
+blood, who lived under the moss-covered, decaying rooftree
+of a pallid, gaunt, old colonial home in New England.
+These “last leaves on the tree” kept their dainty,
+shallow, apse-shaped china closets in a state of snowy
+purity, of precise and unvarying order, of unspotted contamination,
+which might be taken as an emblem of their
+narrow, pure, and monotonous lives. No thick, substantial
+modern wares, no gayly painted crockery, no vessels
+of common clay, stood on their well-ordered and softly
+shining shelves, just as no modern notions, no knowledge
+of the common, the evil things of life, had ever entered
+their simple minds, had ever shocked their fair souls.
+Fragile, graceful, antiquated, pale in decoration, were
+their weakly sprigged, lavender-bordered, delicately fluted
+cups; looking like their own softly wrinkled faces,
+their meagre, bent figures, their slender hands. Worn
+was the gilt on the china, faded was the furniture of
+their rooms, as ill-health had worn their gentle spirits.
+Rather scantily filled were their china shelves, as were
+thin and few their garments, as was sparsely filled their
+larder. Deep green shadows fell on the glass doors and
+white shelves of their china closets from the thick-branched
+old lilacs that close-screened each small-paned
+window, from the dark century-old cedars that overhung
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span>their home; death and loneliness and scanty means had
+shadowed their lives. My pure, dignified, and silent old
+cousins, no sweetly-perfumed, softly-tinted, strong-growing
+blossoms of New England life were you, but rather
+the sad, white, scentless “life everlasting” that waved
+like summer snow-drifts over your own sterile, rock-filled
+fields. These fragile porcelain emblems of your colorless
+life shall not be carelessly handled and rudely gazed at
+in their new home, but, close-hidden away in an old apple-wood
+beaufet which once stood beside your virginal
+china closets, shall forever teach to me the lesson of contentment,
+simplicity, and resignation which you showed
+in your gentle lives, the lesson which through your old
+china still lives—the lesson of peace and rest.</p>
+
+<div  class='figright id004'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span>
+<img src='images/i_403.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>Copper-Lustre Pitcher.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A halo of mysterious ghost-seeing, an eternal radiance
+of poesy, surrounds this copper-lustre pitcher. We found
+this irradiated pitcher when we went a-spinet-hunting.
+We found the ghost also, a tall, pale, terrifying apparition,
+who stealthily entered our room at midnight as we slept
+in the old Pardon tavern, who mysteriously and quietly
+carried off our gowns, but who proved in the cold disillusionizing
+daylight to be our landlady’s daughter, an
+amateur dressmaker of unbounded ambition and few resources.
+And our poet! we found him also, a unique
+and untutored son of the gods, a rare product of New
+England soil. We prosaically hired this Yankee Walt
+Whitman to drive us to the Maybee farm—the house
+which we had been assured held both china and spinet.
+Our dearly-remembered poet was a tall, wiry New Englander,
+whose only visible attire was a moth-eaten fur
+hat, a woollen shirt, a pair of heavy boots, and faded
+overalls, held in place by a single suspender. He looked
+too thinly clad for the raw spring weather, but seemed
+perfectly comfortable
+and contented in his
+light clothing. Poet-like,
+his hair was long.
+Four little wintry
+curls blew out from
+under the old hat.
+We had been warned
+that he did not call
+himself a farmer, but
+proudly avowed and
+named himself a poet;
+and it was hinted that
+he was a little “luny.”
+He had begun his
+rhyming career with the composition of epitaphs for all
+the village inhabitants, both living and dead; and from
+thence had advanced to the constant use of rhymes in
+every-day life and hence had acquired the name of
+“Rhyming Darius.” He “lisped in numbers for the
+numbers came;” and proudly did he display his God-given
+talent to us prosy city folks. He also combined
+with his vocation as poet the additional talent of employing
+intensely legal forms of speech; for he had at
+an early period of his life been a witness in some country
+trespass case, and had since then always spent a day “in
+court,” whenever the rare days of idleness of a New
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_388'>388</span>England farmer would permit. As a result, he always
+cross-questioned everyone with whom he had any conversation,
+and adopted, as far as he could remember, a
+lawyer’s phraseology and legal terms. He had a wily
+manner of evading questions, and seldom gave a direct
+answer; so between questions and answers we held “open
+court” all the way to the Maybee farm.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Our poet also made a strange introduction of the letter
+“u” into words—which use he evidently regarded as
+something extremely eloquent and scholarly, but which
+produced some very astonishing variations in our vernacular
+speech. He was much excited at the nocturnal
+abstraction of our gowns and he poured forth a perfect
+volley of rhymed questions upon the subject to us as he
+drove, seated sidewise, fixing us “with his glittering
+eye:”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Why didn’t she apply to ye purs-u-nal</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>An’ ask ye fur the garment?</div>
+      <div class='line'>Did she retain the artucle</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Long enough to bring a warrant?</div>
+      <div class='line'>Did she take it with malice of forethought</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Or unpre-med-ure-tated?</div>
+      <div class='line'>Did she terrure-fy ye very bad</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>A-purloinin’ as ye stated?</div>
+      <div class='line'>What air ye goin’ to do?</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Did her mother know it too?</div>
+      <div class='line'>Why didn’t ye holler out?</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>An’ ask her what’s she’s about?”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>At last, to stop his flood of inquiry, we began to question
+him, to draw him out about the spinet and china.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Do you know the Maybees well?”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>“Wall—I may perhaps assert</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And assure-vure-rate I do;</div>
+      <div class='line'>At any rate I know him</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And I s’pose I know her too.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Is it an old farm, and an old house?”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“It ain’t so old as some,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And it’s a little older ’n others.</div>
+      <div class='line'>The farm ’s older ’n the house;</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>It used to be my brother’s.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>“How long have you known them?”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Oh—quite an in-ture-val,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>But I ain’t known ’m all my life;</div>
+      <div class='line'>I’ve known him sence I was two year old,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>And a leetle longer his wife.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Do you know whether they have an old spinet?”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“I’ll tell you in a minute</div>
+      <div class='line'>If you’ll tell me what’s a spinet?”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>“It is like a little old-fashioned piano. Have they
+got such a one? Is it old? Is it small? Describe it
+to us.”</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“They ‘ve the funniest thing you ever see;</div>
+      <div class='line'>It’s just as cur-u-ous as it can be;</div>
+      <div class='line'>How to dure-scribe it just beats me;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Spinet’s the name for it down to a T.</div>
+      <div class='line'>It ain’t so big as some pianures,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And it ain’t so small as othures;</div>
+      <div class='line'>’Tain’t so old as some you’d see,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And ’tain’t so new as it might be;</div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span>That is all that I can say.</div>
+      <div class='line'>I heard old Maybee tell one day</div>
+      <div class='line'>He’d a mus-ure-cal com-bure-nation</div>
+      <div class='line'>He’d be glad to sell for a very small sum;</div>
+      <div class='line'>’Twas as old and mean</div>
+      <div class='line'>As any he’d seen,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And he’d like to sell it, he says,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Before it drops to pieces.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>We looked at each other in amazement at this strange
+specimen of Yankee humanity—that is, we did it whenever
+his gaze was averted long enough to give us any
+chance to look at each other. We sank back in despair
+of ever receiving a definite description of the spinet, and
+above all of any china—that most indescribable of country
+possessions. We feebly tried to parry him with some
+of the skill which he himself displayed, but failed ignominiously
+under the scathing sharpness of this “lawyer”
+of thirty years’ experience. We finally answered his
+rhyming questions with as much directness and truth as
+the chief witness in a murder trial. As we alighted
+from the wagon and were about to enter the Maybee
+door, Darius pulled me back by the sleeve and whispered:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Ye mustn’t mind Miss Maybee</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>If ye find her a leetle cross;</div>
+      <div class='line'>She ain’t at all e-lab-ure-ate,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Any more than my old horse.</div>
+      <div class='line'>She won’t show any man-ures</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>When you ask to see her pianure.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A sharp-featured young woman advanced to meet us.
+Her hair bore two partings, an inch apart, and the middle
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_391'>391</span>lock was strained painfully back. Her face was
+curiously mottled with yellow patches which showed
+plainly that dyspepsia and biliousness had marked her
+for their own. She looked so sour, so sharp, so devoid of
+“man-ures” that we quailed visibly before her keen black
+eye. What new specimen of humanity had we here?
+Into what world was our China and spinet-hunting carrying
+us?</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We began the conversation very mildly by saying that
+we had heard that Mrs. Maybee had some china that
+she wished to sell.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Then you’ve heard a lie,” the acrid voice broke in.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“But surely we have heard that you have a piano to
+sell?”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>“Well, I ain’t. I’ve got a musical combination, but
+I ain’t so awful anxious to sell it.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>For minutes we stood there, facing this resentful
+being, who showed no desire to have us seat ourselves,
+while we pleaded, we praised, we cajoled, we apologized,
+and we questioned, until, at last, she allowed us to see
+her precious spinet. We entered the gloomy “best
+room” where it stood, gave one glance at it, and sank on
+the haircloth sofa. It was a <i>melodeon</i>—a forlorn, broken-down,
+old <i>melodeon</i>—to which some farm-tinker had
+added an oblong frame strung with catgut and wire
+strings, in the apparent hope of forming some instrument
+of the nature of an Æolian-harp.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Tears of disappointment fairly sprang to our eyes;
+but the contrast, the revulsion of feeling, the sense of
+the ludicrous, was so keen, that we gave way to hysterical
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_392'>392</span>laughter; we could not suppress it. Where, alas!
+were our “manners?” I was the first to recover my
+self-possession. I turned to Mrs. Maybee, who stood
+before us speechless with angry astonishment, and said
+pacifically: “You were very good to let us see it. It is
+not quite what we expected to find. It is so much
+newer than an old spinet! I fear my sister could not
+afford to buy it, as she has one piano already. It is very
+curious and very ingenious, and no doubt you will sell it
+to someone.” We were walking slowly toward the open
+door in the hope of immediate escape; but we were not
+to escape so easily, not without punishment for our adventurous
+raid. As we drew back, Mrs. Maybee advanced;
+and it seemed for a while that we should be
+obliged to buy the old melodeon and take it off with us.
+But I seized upon a diversion, a godsend, in the shape
+of a row of window-plants in the kitchen. One fine geranium
+flourished in this “copper-lustre” pitcher, which
+had had a hole knocked in the bottom, to permit the
+water to drain out. I immediately began to admire that
+geranium, and offered Mrs. Maybee a dollar for the
+pitcher and plant. This diverted her mind from the unfortunate
+“spinet;” and after much sharp talk and bargaining
+we paid her one dollar and seventy-five cents for
+the geranium and pitcher, rushed from her inhospitable
+door, and drove away with our poet. “The True Story
+of the Life, Temper, and Adventures of Orvilla Maybee,”
+related to us in legal verse by “Rhyming Darius”
+on our homeward drive, made us wonder that we escaped
+unharmed from that New England vixen.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_393'>393</span>So our broken lustre pitcher was all that we had to
+carry home with us from our “spinet hunt.” And I will
+close this little tale of New England experience with a
+simple statement of the cost of the pitcher and the geranium
+(which died when transplanted).</p>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>Two fares to Pardon and return</td>
+    <td class='c008'>$4 00</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>Bill for supper, bed, and breakfast for two</td>
+    <td class='c008'>1 50</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>Wagon, poetry, and legal advice</td>
+    <td class='c008'>1 00</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>Paid Mrs. Maybee for pitcher</td>
+    <td class='c008'>1 75</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c007'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c008'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c018'>Total cost of pitcher</td>
+    <td class='c008'>$8 25</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class='c011'>As I have since seen a fac-simile of our pitcher (only
+whole and unbroken) in a bric-a-brac shop, ticketed
+$2, we cannot consider the trip financially successful;
+though, truth to tell, it was far more so than many another
+expedition we have made. But a golden lustre,
+the memory of our legal poet, englamours forever in our
+eyes our copper pitcher. When we look at it we hear
+again the strident voice, the bizarre pronunciation, the
+voluble rhymes of our poet of the soil, our Darius, as
+he exclaimed in amazement:</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Ye don’t hang ’em on the wall,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Them cracked old kitchen dishes!</div>
+      <div class='line'>An’ keep a frac-tured pitcher</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>As if ’t was act-ure-ly precious!</div>
+      <div class='line'>They say that city folks</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Is mighty extrav-ure-gant,</div>
+      <div class='line'>But with such test-ure-mony</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>I’m willin’ to swear they ain’t.</div>
+      <div class='line'>There ain’t a party in this town</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>So stingy an’ such a non-com</div>
+      <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_394'>394</span>As to hang that pitcher on the wall,</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Lookin’ ’s if ’t was jest goin’ ter fall,</div>
+      <div class='line'>An’ the hole showin’ in the botturm.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many ghosts has our china hunting revealed to us;
+the ghosts of the past, the visions and dreams that never
+become realities, the inexorable fate, the sad kismet of
+New England life. Such was the story of the house of
+Hartington, a story sadly typical of many New England
+homes; a story which the sight of these little lettered
+and escutcheoned cups always retells to us.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A description had been given to us of an old town
+with old houses and old people and old china, and after
+a gloomy night in a hideous country hotel we started out
+to find some townsman of whom we could hire a horse
+and carriage of some or any sort to carry us to Rindge
+and Anthony Hartington’s house—the oldest house
+of all.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A thin, auburn-haired, freckle-faced Yankee, about
+twenty-one years old, answered our questions with the
+greatest interest, and finally offered us the use of his own
+horse and open wagon for the whole day for two dollars.
+“And I’ll drive fer ye, too,” he added, with enthusiasm.
+“Ye’d never find old Hartington’s if ye took the hoss
+yerself, an’ I do’ ‘now as I can neither, without some
+pretty tall huntin’ and questionin’.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>So off we started on the back seat of an open country
+“express wagon” to find “old Hartington’s farm.”
+The warm October sun streamed down upon us, the
+great red and russet rock-broken fields stretched off into
+the beautiful lonely purple mountain, “heeding his sky
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_395'>395</span>affairs,” the dying brakes and weeds sent forth their
+sweet nutty autumn fragrance, the soft yellow and
+brown leaves fluttered down on us, and the ripe chestnutburrs
+fell rustling by our side as we rode through the
+narrow wood-roads. The hard New England landscape
+was softened and Orientalized by the yellow autumn
+tints. The half-sad stillness of dying nature and the
+warmth of the Indian summer inclined us to ride quietly
+and thoughtfully along the country roads, but that
+neither Mr. Simmons, nor his new wagon, nor Jenny, his
+steed, would for a moment permit. She had the unpleasant
+habit, so common among country horses, of “slacking-up”
+suddenly at the foot of every hill. The wagon
+was a “jump-seat,” so the back seat was not fastened in
+securely. At every hill (and the New England hills are
+countless) we and the seat were pitched forward on Mr.
+Simmons’s back. He seemed to expect this assault and
+rather enjoy it. To quite counterbalance this sudden
+stoppage of progression, Jenny would spring forward
+with much and instantaneous speed whenever she caught
+sight of Mr. Simmons’s short whip. This whip he used
+as a pointer in his many and diffuse explanations, so
+whenever our attention was called to an old house, or a
+poor “run-out” farm, or “the barn old White hung
+himself in,” Jenny emphasized the explanation with a
+twitch of our necks that brought into active play muscles
+little used before.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At last the long hill leading to the Hartington house
+was reached, the longest and steepest yet seen. The
+road was almost unused, a mere track, and spoke to our
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_396'>396</span>china hunting instincts most favorably of the little intercourse
+held by the Hartingtons with the rest of the
+world. Slowly plodded Jenny over the fringed gentians,
+for here the road was full of them, as open and blue as
+the October sky over our heads. We had never seen this
+lovely delicate flower growing elsewhere than sparsely
+by a brookside or in damp ground, but here, on this
+rocky hill-side, in this poor soil, it opened its blue eyes in
+such luxuriance that the road was as full of its azure
+bloom as in September the fields are yellow with goldenrod,
+or in June white with daisies. As we turned in
+from the main country road we passed an elderly man
+with bowed head, ragged clothes, slouching gait, and a
+general appearance of extreme depression and sadness
+more marked even than is usual in the carriage of the
+New England farmer. As he did not lift his head to
+look at us, nor nod with the cordial common country
+form of recognition, we did not speak to him, and he
+slowly followed us up the hill.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Hartington house was a mansion, a brick manor-house.
+We were met at the great door by a young untidy
+woman, whose clear pink-and-white complexion
+and curly hair could not, however, compensate for her
+lack of good teeth, several front teeth being missing and
+the others discolored. This poor care and poor condition
+of the teeth is most common among New England
+women in the country. Nearly every woman over
+thirty years of age will show when speaking two rows
+of blue-white porcelain disks so evidently false that they
+hardly seem like teeth, but look like a “card” of cheap
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_397'>397</span>buttons. We thought her the daughter of the house;
+she proved to be its mistress, the wife of Anthony Hartington.
+A more desolate, unhappy, hopeless home I
+have never seen. The elderly gloomy man, who now
+entered, proved to be Anthony himself. He spoke but
+little, and from the young wife, who seemed in a feverish
+state of excitement at our visit, we learned the forlorn
+and desolate story of the household.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Anthony had married early in life and had had nine
+children, all of whom, with his wife, had died of that fell
+curse of New England—consumption. The last child,
+a daughter, Luriella, had died in June. This young
+wife had been her school friend and had married the
+forlorn old man two years ago, in order to come to live
+there and nurse her friend through her last illness, thus
+giving a touching example of the life-sacrifices and self-abnegations
+so sadly frequent in New England country
+homes. “We didn’t think she’d live through the
+winter,” she said, “but she did, and died in June. I
+was glad she lived till it was warm. It is so cold here
+in winter,” she added apologetically.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A heavy gloom settled on us as we walked from room
+to room, and I was additionally overwhelmed by the uncanny,
+unreasoning sense that I had been there before,
+had lived there. It was all so familiar to me, so
+strangely well known, that I could scarcely speak, but
+walked bewildered and frightened through the rooms I
+had known a hundred years ago. I have never felt at
+any other time that sense of pre-existence, but I know
+that nothing about that old house was new to me.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_398'>398</span>The upper part of the windows were of small panes of
+greenish “bull’s-eye” glass, rarely found in the country
+now; the lower panes of cheap, modern glass, some being
+broken and pasted over with dirty bits of calico and
+paper, and all as opaque with dirt as the ancient upper
+panes. Outside the windows lay an unkempt tangle of
+lilac bushes, shrubs, weeds, straggling withered flowers,
+box borders, and thistles, that once had been a lovely,
+well-kept garden, but had evidently been unentered and
+unheeded for years. It stretched down the hill-side to
+the well-tenanted family graveyard with its moss-grown
+and chipped slate headstones with their winged cherubs’
+heads and crossbones. I had often gathered flowers in
+that garden; I remembered it well, and had walked and
+played among the gravestones.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Inside the four great parlors hung cobwebs and dust—and
+wasps! the floors were sprinkled with them;
+thousands lay dead in the two-feet-wide window-seats,
+while swarms of live ones buzzed loudly at the dingy
+windows. “They won’t touch you,” she said, as we
+drew back. “He thinks there must be a nest somewhere.”
+A nest! A colony of nests rather—a hundred
+nests, the accumulated nests of years.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The parlors had few pieces of furniture, and all were
+broken except a modern marble-topped table and a
+“what-not.” “I bought these,” she said, “when I was
+married, to please Luriella; I didn’t want to spend
+much, for fear she would need medicine. But she didn’t
+take much at last; she thought it didn’t do any good.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A set of painted book-shelves in a corner held a few
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_399'>399</span>books, two or three china dogs, some common seashells,
+a large ginger-jar, and a number of really beautiful
+pewter porringers with handles. My companion
+had already conveyed to “him” our wish “to buy any
+old pieces of furniture or china you may wish to part
+with,” and though we had not heard a word nor seen a
+gesture of assent, the wife told us that “he” was willing
+to sell. Yet, when we said we would like to buy the
+little handled porringers, he walked out of the room
+without a word.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>All the wood-work in these parlors—the wainscoting,
+the high mantels, the panels of the doors, the heavy
+window-frames—were ornamented with a curious design,
+a row of half-pillars joined at the top in a series of
+pointed arches, with carved sunbursts in the spandrels.
+It was most graceful and odd—I have never seen it elsewhere—yet
+it was perfectly familiar to me; I could almost
+remember, yes, I could remember, counting the
+number of pillars in the room.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The two kitchens were enormous rooms. One, entirely
+closed away and disused, disclosed a horror of
+dirt and rubbish, old pots and pans, and tubs, and
+wheels, thrown, a shapeless mass, into the fireplace, and
+scattered over the floor. In the smaller kitchen the
+chimney-nook, the great fireplace, had been boarded
+over, and a small rusty kitchen stove placed for daily
+use. I seemed to remember when I sat by this ingleside,
+and great logs lay on this broad hearth, and the
+roaring flames surged up the great chimney and threw
+their cheerful light into the now desolate room.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_400'>400</span>Through this kitchen there wailed a moaning noise
+from the empty chimney, which made even my cheerful
+companion look solemn and depressed. She “didn’t
+like to hear it, either,” our guide said, quietly.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Two bedrooms and a “living-room” completed the
+number of apartments on the ground floor. But the
+living-room was not lived in; the two bedrooms were
+the only apartments that bore signs of occupation.
+There was not a carpeted floor in the house, but to
+these two rooms, braided rag rugs and strips of homespun
+carpet gave an appearance of comparative comfort.
+The “rising-sun” and “twin-sister” patchwork quilts on
+the untidy beds added to the effect.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The most incongruous, most inadequate apartment on
+this floor was the pantry, a little dark box of a closet, to
+which one small greenish glass window dispensed a
+dingy light. We had intended to ask for our dinner,
+since it was then “high noon,” but a sight of this
+cooking sanctum dispelled all thought or wish for dinner.
+It was so cobwebby, so dusty, so poor-looking,
+that we could not wish to eat any dinner that could issue
+from its dark shadows. We found afterward, beyond
+the disused kitchen, a large square room which, in
+the early days of the prosperity and good cheer of this
+house, had doubtless been a pantry, but was now filled
+with broken grindstones, crushed Dutch ovens, fragments
+of crockery, pails and pans, “peels” and “slices,”
+yarn-winders, and part of an old rose still. Indeed,
+through this entire house, nothing could ever have been
+wholly destroyed or carried away, but was thrown, in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_401'>401</span>its broken, grimy desuetude, into some neglected closet
+or room to gather years of dust and dirt, as if the owner,
+too poor to buy new furniture, still clung to the shattered
+remnants of past plenty.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>We rescued from the dingy little pantry, from among
+the litter of broken cups and plates and knives, bunches
+of dried herbs, empty spice-boxes, cracked woodenware,
+and greasy pans, a few treasures which we spread
+out on the kitchen table—half a dozen “Pain’s Hill”
+plates (a favorite pattern throughout New England),
+two open-work bordered Leeds platters, a dear little
+boat-shaped queen’s-ware creamer with dainty twisted
+handles, two helmet pitchers, two teacups, and half a
+dozen plates of a set of old Lowestoft china bearing
+a pretty armorial device and initials. We hardly dared
+ask to buy the latter pieces until we saw the evident
+contempt the farm-wife had for them. Nothing so
+American as a Lafayette or Pilgrim plate was to be
+seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>One large dresser in the kitchen was found to be
+literally filled with battered and broken brass and pewter
+candlesticks, glass whale-oil lamps, snuffers, pewter
+savealls, extinguishers, and trays, and brass chimney
+hooks for shovel and tongs. We rescued from this
+medley several candlesticks, two curious Dutch hanging-lamps,
+and a really beautiful but broken candelabra
+of Sheffield plate. These we placed with the china on
+the kitchen table. I wished to add the pewter porringers
+found in the parlor, but the wife softly drawled
+in her nasal voice: “He won’t sell ’em—they were hers—she
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_402'>402</span>used to make mud-pies in ’em when she was little.”
+And pretty playthings they must have been—fifteen
+dear little shallow pewter posnets and porringers with
+flat pierced handles, varying in size from one large
+enough to hold a pint to a true doll’s or a “’prentice”
+porringer an inch and a half in diameter. They were
+full of little, common, colored pebbles and shells, dried
+seeds, and old purple glass beads, perhaps just as “she”
+had last played with them. Other and more distant
+memories, too, may have clung to the old porringers—of
+days when the old man was a boy and took his “little
+porringer” and ate his supper of bread and milk from it;
+and perhaps, in the far years when the old man was a
+baby, his mother had had served to her in one of these
+old porringers her “dish of caudle,” that rich mixture
+of eggs, spices, bread, milk, and wine which was thought
+years ago to be the proper diet for a sick person.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Then we mounted the spiral staircase to the second
+floor, the chambers. Through this dreary expanse we
+walked slowly—the dusty half-furnishings growing
+shabbier and shabbier—still stumbling over broken furniture
+on the uneven floors, until we entered a south
+room that was such a blaze of cheerful, yellow, tropical
+light that we exclaimed with delight. Walls and ceilings
+were hung solid with long yellow ears of corn, left
+to dry for use in the winter. Even the old cherry fourpost
+bedstead was draped with them. Such a color!
+Such a glory! “She used to like to see them too,” the
+low voice murmured.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A third story, a gambrel-roofed attic, was too dusty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_403'>403</span>and repelling to enter, but in one of the deserted bedrooms
+we found, whole, though black with dust, a dressing-table
+which had been the lower portion of a high
+chest of drawers. As is common now in New England
+farm-houses, the top drawers had been lifted from this
+table portion and set upon the floor to use as a bureau;
+not half so tidy and cleanly a fashion of furniture as
+when it stood on its high legs and let a broom or brush
+sweep freely every portion of the floor under it. The
+upper portion of this high chest was seen afterward in
+the outer wood-shed full of strips of leather, broken
+harness, nails, and pieces of iron. It had been gnawed
+by rats and whittled by knives till it was valueless.
+The lower or table portion was whole. It had three
+shallow “jewel drawers,” three deep drawers with brass
+handles and carved “sunbursts.” It proved, when dusted,
+to be of curled maple; and after long discussion
+with Mr. Simmons we decided to take it with us. Its
+bowed legs ended in claw-and-ball feet that would just
+set within the carriage sides. “If one on ye don’t mind
+settin’ in front with me, the other can set in the back
+seat with the table in front of her,” he said.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>This young wife had not once shown the usual country
+curiosity about us, but as she turned away to find
+some newspapers to wrap around the plates, I said to
+her, “There is much here we should like to buy and take
+away with us, but it would cost so much to move the
+pieces so far, and they are so out of repair.” Then we
+told her who we were, whence we came, what we should
+do with the china, and that we should often think and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_404'>404</span>speak of her when we looked at the plates this coming
+winter. “I can’t bear to think of the winter without
+her,” she answered, softly.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Jenny had been fed and watered and “hitched up,”
+and we prepared to start. I clambered into the back
+seat of the wagon, then the dressing-table was lifted in
+and placed in front of me. Luckily its legs were long
+enough, so the weight did not rest on my legs, else I
+could never have taken it. Our laps were filled with the
+frail china; the candlesticks, lamps, and two warming-pans
+were placed on the floor of the wagon, and we
+started, leaving the two dreary figures and the dreary
+house behind us. All the way down the steep hills I
+had to hold the table to keep it off the occupants of the
+front seat, and all the way up the steep hills it lay heavily
+in my lap; but at last we reached the country station
+and packed our china and brass in two market-baskets
+which Mr. Simmons brought us from his “store.” We
+could hear the sallies of country wit from the loafers at
+the station at Mr. Simmons and his strange load, and
+his indignant and most offensively personal and profane
+answers in return. Then we received a baggage-check
+for the dressing-table, and finally entered the train rather
+conscious that two warming-pans and two newspaper-covered
+market-baskets are hardly ordinary or desirable
+travelling luggage.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A few days later, when cleaning the inside of the
+dressing-table, the following letter was found. It had
+been caught and held by a splinter of wood under the
+top of the table, and had evidently lain untouched for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_405'>405</span>years. It was folded in the old-fashioned way, dated
+May 12, 1810, and addressed to Madam Janet Hartington.
+It read thus:</p>
+
+<p class='c015'><span class='sc'>D<sup>r</sup> and Respect<sup>ed</sup> Mother</span> The letter which I wrote you
+some three months ago on the s’bj’ct of my proposed marriage
+was answered by you, and the answer duly rec<sup>d</sup> by me.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>The two letters I wrote you since on the same s’bj’ct have rec<sup>d</sup>
+no answer.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>And now it is too late to receive any further advice on the matter,
+for I wish to most Respectfully inform you that I married the
+object of my choice a week past to-day in Kings Chapel in Boston.
+There were but few present, as was Oriana’s wish.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>The plans you wrote me, most Respect<sup>ed</sup> Mother, for the advancement
+and future prospects of our family, interested me much,
+and I quite concur in them all.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>And no one could be more fully fitted to assist me in my career
+than my Oriana. Her graceful and ladylike deportment fit her to
+adorn any circle no matter how exalted.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>She is quite ready to become a most dutifull and obedient daughter
+to you and I trust, my D<sup>r</sup> Mother, the fact of her being an orphan
+will open your heart to her; and then the wish you have always
+had, viz, to have a daughter, may thus find its fullfillment.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>I know not from what source you obtained the strange advice
+that her Father did amass his fortune in the African Slave Trade.
+I have never wounded her tender heart by inquiry as to the source
+of her Fathers wealth (tho’ ’tis a calling &#38; trade has been followed
+by many citizens apparently much respect<sup>ed</sup>). But the thought of
+his “ill-gotten gold” need no further trouble you. Thro’ ill advice
+and knavery, her fortune has dwindled to a thousand dollars,
+and now her wealth is only in her beauty and her amiable disposition.
+She has however much good furniture and china which will
+grace well our home.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>I regret much to hear that my bills and debts in College have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_406'>406</span>cost you so much, and that the Farm is so run behindhand. This,
+with the debts my Father left behind him, make it most advisable
+for me to give up my intention to practice as a lawyer, and have
+decided me to return to manage your Farm.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>It is quite opportune and most Providential that your Farmer is
+dead, since he managed so ill.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>With your wise instructions and counsels, we can no doubt retrieve
+the money that has been lost, and carry out my Grandfathers
+plans to make our house and name one of the most powerful
+in the State.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>Thus shall I assume the position in town and county that you
+always wished me to take.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>We shall leave by coach for Ringe in a week, our household
+goods and furnishings to follow us in waggons.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>I know, D<sup>r</sup> Mother, that you will admire and praise my Oriana,
+as who could do otherwise?</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>I have talked much to her of your aspirations and ambitions, and
+she hopes most Respectfully to help to carry out any plans you
+may have.</p>
+
+<p class='c015'>With most affectionate greeting from Oriana and myself, I am</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r c016'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>Your Loving and Honour<sup>ed</sup> Son</div>
+      <div class='line in16'><span class='sc'>George Hartington</span>.</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>In due time the table was scraped, cleaned, and polished,
+and with its cheerful mottled golden color and
+shining brass handles, was most thoroughly attractive
+and satisfying. The pretty Lowestoft china cups were
+set on it and used for petty toilet purposes. An old canopied
+mirror was hung over it, and every night after I
+had lighted the candles in the repaired and resilvered
+candelabra, I sat there looking at the china, thinking of
+the blue-fringed gentians, the old house, of the lonely
+empty rooms, the poverty, the dreariness; then of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_407'>407</span>high hopes and ideas of George Hartington, and ambitions
+of his mother, and, above all, the strange familiarity
+I had had with my old home.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>At last I wrote to the wife at the farm, telling her of
+the old letter; asking of the career of George Hartington,
+his success, his life, his fate. I thought he must
+be Anthony’s grandfather or granduncle. The answer
+came, written in a stiff, uneven hand, but showing more
+intelligence than her conversation: “George and Oriana
+Hartington were my husband’s father and mother. My
+husband is seventy-five years old, and was their only
+child. George Hartington died three years after he was
+married. My husband remembers his mother as a feeble,
+sickly woman who didn’t have much to say on the
+farm, and seemed always afraid of Madam Hartington.
+She died of consumption when he was twelve years old.
+That was her china you bought with the O on it. His
+grandmother lived to be ninety-two years old. He is
+not very well this winter, he has a bad cough. If you
+know of any good cough medicine, I could buy it with
+the money you gave us for the table and china,” etc.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>And this is the end of all Madam Hartington’s ambitions—a
+broken-down, broken-hearted, childless old
+man. It is the New England kismet.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Sad often are many of the memories, sad are the pictures,
+brought to my mind by my old china. It speaks
+to me too often of deserted farms, of unthrifty farmers;
+of shabby homes, the homes of drunken fathers and
+sickly mothers; of rasping young Philistines, haters of
+old things and old ways; of miserly old women and extravagant
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_408'>408</span>young ones; of gloomy widowers and miserable
+bachelors; of the hopeless round of toil of New
+England farm-wives, those human beasts of burden,
+bending grievously under the heavy load of loneliness
+and labor; it speaks sadly to me of the pinched ways
+and poor living, the <i>res angusta domi</i> too frequently to
+be seen, alas! in my beloved New England. All these
+shadows, however, are softened and lessened by the lapse
+of time, just as in my memory the days of my china hunts
+have all been sunshiny and bright; it never
+rained, nor was it cold nor windy, nor was it ever sultry
+or dusty when I have been a china hunting; all china
+days were Emerson’s</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line in14'>“... charmed days</div>
+      <div class='line'>When the genius of God doth flow.</div>
+      <div class='line'>The wind may alter twenty ways,</div>
+      <div class='line'>A tempest cannot blow;</div>
+      <div class='line'>It may blow north, it still is warm;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Or south, it still is clear;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Or east, it smells like a clover-farm;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Or west, no thunder fear.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_409'>409</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>XIX.<br> CHINA COLLECTIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_6 c014'>In past years any stray china-lover who wished to see
+and to learn had to search well to find any public
+collections, or even specimens of old china, in America.
+In town-halls, in the curiosity shops of eccentric
+old women, or in the “museums” of land-stranded old
+sailors, a few pieces might be seen—not saved nor shown
+because they were china, but because “Parson Boardman,
+who preached forty-nine years in this town, owned
+this tea-set;” or “this china was taken out of the cabin
+of an English frigate in 1813;” or “these mugs were
+used when George Washington passed through the
+town.” In this class of discursive and disjointed collections,
+though of course in a superior and highly honored
+way, might be placed the china of the Museum of the East
+India Marine Company in Salem, of whose arrangement
+Eleanor Putnam wrote, “it was as if each sea-captain
+had lounged in and hustled down his contribution in any
+convenient vacant space.” In that old museum, as I remember
+it a decade ago, elaborate models of Chinese
+junks and American merchant vessels bore on their miniature
+bowsprits strange additions to their rigging, and
+shadowed by their dusty hulls queer and varied trophies,
+queerer then than now—sharks’ teeth, Turkish pipes,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_410'>410</span>sandal-wood beads, Italian crucifixes, Peruvian pottery,
+and South Sea shells and savage weapons. Teak-wood
+furniture and miniature palanquins and pagodas sheltered
+many curious china treasures which I vaguely recall,
+queer in name and shape—nests of egg-shell saki-cups
+and saki-bowls galore; ink-stones of green celadon
+with their accompanying water-bottles and little cakes
+of gilded India-ink; perfume flasks of painted Japanese
+wares; bottles of purest porcelain for Oriental hair-oil,
+or, rather, hair-glue; pottery jars full of unpleasant-looking
+mouldy mysteries, which might be preserved fruit or
+might be mummies; “plaster boxes” lettered in Chinese;
+strange triangular bits of blue and white Persian porcelain
+“to clean out shoes with;” old Liverpool mugs taken
+from a wreck and wildly labelled “from Ceylon;” and,
+chief of all, two vast soup-tureens of purest white Canton
+porcelain, duck-shaped, six feet in length from beak to
+tail by <i>memory’s</i> measurement. In the cold light of recent
+and more mature inspection these two great East
+India birds of good cheer, like many another remembered
+object of the good old times, shrank to about half their
+ancient size; but are still impressive relics of the great
+days and great dinners of the old East India Marine
+Company, the dinners where, filled to the wings with
+some hot, well-peppered Indian broth, the twin tureens
+graced the board around which gathered all these old
+treasure-bringing and treasure-giving Salem mariners.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>A recent visit to my dearly loved and warmly-remembered
+old museum grieved my heart; its charm was gone.
+Great, light, airy rooms have been added to the old
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_411'>411</span>building; an arranger, a labeller, and a model cataloguer
+have ruthlessly invaded the dusty cases and weeded out
+the boxes of dried-up and shrivelled fruits, the skins of
+moth-eaten birds, and of seedy and disreputable fishes.
+The Chinese paper-fans and woven baskets, once rare
+enough to be carefully treasured in a museum, now seen
+in every dry-goods shop in the land, seem wholly to have
+disappeared. The iconoclasts have prosaically separated
+each old sea-captain’s relics into parcels and placed them
+in wonderfully well-arranged and classified cases, labelled
+Madagascar, Alaska, Sumatra, or whatever the land of
+their early home may be. I suppose the shoe-cleaners
+and hair-oil bottles are there somewhere in their properly
+assigned places, but I did not search for them. I glanced
+at my old friends, the punch-bowls, and the great duck-tureens,
+but the old-time glamour, the “unstudied grace”
+of the museum was gone.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In many public buildings at the present day, among
+treasured colonial relics, may be seen fine specimens of
+old china. A neighbor of the East India Marine Company,
+the Essex Institute, has a small but interesting
+and well-labelled collection of old Salem china.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The Bostonian Society displays in its rooms in the old
+State-House in Boston a number of old Liverpool pitchers
+and about twenty Staffordshire plates and platters with
+American designs, as well as some pieces of the china of
+John Hancock and a few other good Boston citizens.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the rooms of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
+in Locust Street, Philadelphia, may be seen a
+number of interesting pieces, including a set of Dresden
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_412'>412</span>cups and saucers, presented to Benjamin Franklin by
+Madame Helvétius, of Auteuil, that extraordinary friend
+of Franklin’s whose behavior so shocked Mrs. Adams.
+By the side of this Dresden set are the beautiful coffee-cups,
+teacups, saucers, teapot, creamer, bowl, and chocolate-pot
+presented to Mrs. Robert Morris, wife of the
+United States Minister of Finance, by Luzerne, the
+French Minister; a cup and saucer said to have been
+used at the wedding of George Washington; a punch-bowl
+made for the Society of the Cincinnati by order
+of Colonel Hampden; several Washington pitchers; a
+Perry pitcher, and an Erie Canal pitcher.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>In the Deerfield Memorial Hall, in the rooms of the
+Connecticut Historical Society, of the various societies
+of antiquity, and local associations throughout New
+England, may be seen good pieces of old pottery and
+porcelain, often with an interesting and doubtless authentic
+story attached, but too frequently wildly and
+amazingly labelled as to place of manufacture and date.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>Many rich private collections exist. Vast stores of old
+colonial treasures are preserved in private houses in our
+Eastern States. The Washington pieces of pottery and
+porcelain in the Huntington Collection are far outdone
+in beauty and in rarity by many private collections,
+such, for instance, as that of Miss Powel, in Newport; of
+Mrs. Russell, in Cambridge; while the varied collection
+of old china at the house of the Washington Association
+of New Jersey, with the exception of the historical interest
+which attaches to it through the story of various
+past owners of renown, and excepting, of course, the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_413'>413</span>rare and beautiful punch-bowls, is equalled and excelled
+in many a New England home. In Hartford the collections
+of Mr. Trumbull, of Dr. Lyon, would make envious
+any English china-buyer. In Albany, in Philadelphia,
+in Worcester and Providence, in New Haven and Washington,
+in New York and Brooklyn, many a closet and
+room full of well-preserved colonial china show the
+good taste and careful judgment of loving owners. In
+Boston the collection of Mr. Wales is of unbounded interest
+and value.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>There is but one public collection in America which I
+have seen that is of positive and unfailing worth to the
+American china collector—the Trumbull-Prime Collection.
+I mean for the china collector for whom these
+pages are written, the gatherer of household wares of
+colonial times and of the early part of this century. It
+is much deplored by residents of New York that this
+beautiful and instructive collection has not found a
+home on shelves neighboring the Avery Collection of
+Oriental porcelains in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
+But it has been placed where it will serve a nobler purpose
+than contributing to the pleasure or profit even of
+china-lover or china collector—where it will instruct the
+china-maker. In the spacious cabinets of the beautiful
+art building of Princeton College, it is near the great
+china factories of Trenton; and may the owners of
+those factories soon learn the lesson of beauty and variety
+of form, color, and paste, that is so plainly shown in
+the china treasures gathered by Mr. and Mrs. Prime.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It has been easy for anyone, for everyone, who had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_414'>414</span>any idea or knowledge of old china, to form a collection
+of china in America. Of course, the value of the accretion
+was variable, not so much resulting from the length
+of the purse of the gatherer as from his judgment and
+care in buying. It is still possible to obtain such a collection.
+The old china is not yet all discovered and
+culled from country towns. One china hunter found in
+Northampton, that besearched city, in a summer week
+in 1891—found and bought and bore away in triumph—a
+large States pitcher, a Boston State-House pitcher, a
+Trenton Falls plate, a Capitol plate, two State-House
+plates, several pieces bearing the design of McDonough’s
+victory, a dozen or more plates with English views, two
+helmet-pitchers, several pepper-pots, and, in addition to
+the “treasures of clay,” a tall clock and four harp-backed
+chairs that once were Jonathan Edwards’s, a Chippendale
+table, and various trophies of pewter and brass. Dealers
+might have visited these Northampton folk in vain,
+but this beguiling china hunter bore away his cart-load
+of old furniture and crockery for a sum total as small as
+in days of yore.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>It is for such slow and careful collectors that these
+pages are written, for the collectors who having read and
+studied all the foreign text-books and histories and manuals
+of pottery and porcelain still know very little of
+the china within their gates, the china to be gathered
+in America. The number of such china hunters is steadily
+crescent. In Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, china
+collections are being formed; and many of the finest
+specimens of American historical china that have been
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_415'>415</span>offered for sale in New York and Boston “antique shops”
+during the past year have been purchased and sent to
+California.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<img src='images/i_431.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>A Beaufet.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_417'>417</span>It is a matter of course that this old china should
+show to its best advantage in an old-fashioned house, or
+in a new house built in “American colonial” style of
+architecture. But whatever the house may be in which
+all these loved china waifs are assembled and cherished,
+it should not conceal them, as in Charles Lamb’s “great
+house,” in a china-closet. A suitable resting-place for
+the old pieces is in the sheltering home in which it
+passed its early days—in a corner cupboard. This was
+in olden times called a “beaufatt,” or “bofet,” or
+“beaufet,” or “bofate,” or as Cowper wrote of it—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“This china that decks the alcove</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Which here people call a buffet,</div>
+      <div class='line'>But what the gods call it above</div>
+      <div class='line in2'>Has ne’er been revealed to us yet.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>A corner cupboard seems to be, like all old-fashioned
+furniture, well adapted for the express purpose for
+which it was made. It is not a modern pattern combination
+china-closet, washstand, and refrigerator all in one,
+but for the simple purpose of china-holding and china-showing
+it is perfect. The old china never looks prettier
+(except when on the table) than in its wonted home—a
+corner cupboard or beaufet. The narrow scalloped
+or crenated shelves with their wider rounded projections
+at the extreme back seem expressly shaped to show each
+piece to its best advantage. Even the Gothic small-paned
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_418'>418</span>glass door, when present, does not hide the dainty
+pieces. The apse-shaped, shell-fluted top with its pillared
+frame and carved sunbursts, and its surmounting brass
+eagles or balls, seems a fitting roof to shelter the fragile
+ingatherings.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The old china seems always to look better and more
+at home in an old-time setting. On page <a href='#Page_44'>44</a> is shown
+a shallow dresser, an adaptation of an old kitchen fashion,
+with narrow ledges of shelves hung with old pewter
+porringers, which proves also a delightful way to
+show to plain view the rows of blue and white plates,
+especially the dainty gems of “cup-plates,” which are so
+treasured and loved by the china hunter that there
+never seems to be any spot altogether worthy to hold
+and display them quite as they ought to be shown. Of
+course, large articles—what were called in olden times
+“hollow-ware”—cannot be placed on a dresser; tiny
+pepper-pots, salt-cellars, tea-caddies, very small creamers,
+and plates and platters set on edge must form the dresser’s
+only burden.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id006'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_419'>419</span>
+<img src='images/i_435.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic003'>
+<p>China Steps.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c011'>Another old-fashioned resting-place for china may be
+adopted in modern times for the sustentation of any
+broken-nosed, handleless, nicked, cracked, or scorched
+treasure, “the broken teacups wisely kept for show,”
+which no true china hunter will despise, but which
+will not bear the too close examination of scoffers, and
+to which distance lends a haze of enchantment and veil
+of perfection. I mean a “crown of steps,” or “shelf of
+steps,” or “china steps,” as they were variously called.
+One is here shown, but as they are so rare nowadays
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_421'>421</span>perhaps the term needs some explanation. On top
+of a high chest of drawers, a “high-boy,” was placed
+in olden times a three-tiered, graduated platform of
+“steps” to hold and display china. The lower tier of
+the platform was about eight or ten inches shorter and
+five inches shallower than the top of the “high-boy.”
+This left free a shelf of about five inches wide upon the
+sides and front of the top; the tier was four or five
+inches high. The second tier, or step, was made shorter
+and narrower in the same proportion, thus leaving a
+second ridge or shelf. The top tier, or platform, was
+smaller still. Thus when the china was arranged around
+the three sides of the “crown of steps” it made a pretty
+pyramid of pitchers and teapots and jars, and each piece
+could be plainly seen. Rather high up in the air they
+were, perhaps, for purposes of close examination or for
+freeing from dust, but safe from danger of breaking.
+Very rarely an old “high-boy” will now be seen with a
+fixed or permanent “crown of steps,” but usually this
+set of china shelves was separate, and frequently was
+only made of stained wood. Such were probably the
+“Steps for China Ware” of Abraham Blish, of Boston,
+in 1735, which were worth only two shillings. Such
+also were “the steps &#38; some small China thereon” of
+John Proctor in 1756, since they were worth only five
+shillings and fourpence. Another inventory has this
+item: “1 Japan Chest Draws and Steps for China.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>On such a “shelf of steps” the china is “out of the
+way;” and for the same virtue I like to hang china on
+the wall—pitcher, jugs, cups, as well as plates—they are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_422'>422</span>so safe and yet so plainly visible in that position. Then
+you can do away with “the dozen little teetery tables”
+that litter and obstruct our rooms and make man’s life
+a burden. There is a certain restfulness in the spacious
+parlors of some old houses that I know, a sense of room
+in which to move, of liberal elegance, of substantial good
+taste, that is owing largely to the absence of small littering
+chairs and tables. Everything is upon the walls that
+can be hung or placed there; decoration is profuse, but
+not in the way. I would rather keep china anywhere
+than upon a table. Perhaps the upsetting of a tea-table,
+with its burden of eighteen teapots, and the utter annihilation
+of teapots and depression of spirits that resulted,
+may have conduced to this feeling. For the purpose of
+hanging plates upon the wall come various little wire
+frames or holders; but when you have fifty or one hundred
+plates in your dining-room, even these cheap holders
+are quite an expense. Mr. Prime gives in his book
+an illustration and the details of the manner of making a
+wire frame or holder by which to hang plates on the
+wall. This invention of his is very ingenious and very
+good; many a one have I in my home; but it requires
+for its manufacture a wire-workman or a tinker, either
+amateur or professional, and tools of various kinds, and a
+neatly made spiral cylinder of wire. This places the
+possibility of manufacturing Mr. Prime’s holder quite
+out of the reach of the average woman. I, too, have
+invented a holder, and it can be made by any woman,
+since she need employ but one tool—her own distinctive
+instrument—a pair of scissors. The materials, too, are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_423'>423</span>peculiarly feminine—picture-wire or strong twine, and
+dress-hooks. I will say for the benefit of the masculine
+china hunter who may read these pages that both white
+and black dress-hooks can be purchased for a few cents a
+dozen, and of various sizes, from the heavy cloak hooks,
+which are strong enough to hold a thick Delft plaque, to
+the tiny hooks that are sufficient to sustain a fragile
+saucer. And the process of manufacture of my plate-holder
+is so simple! You use your tool but once—to
+cut off the length of wire. Then place four of the dress-hooks
+at equal distances around the rim of the plate,
+slipping them firmly over the edge. String your wire on
+the back of the plate through the two loops at the end
+of each of the four hooks and draw it tight. Twist the
+ends of the wire firmly and neatly together, make a little
+wire loop by which to hang it, and your plate-holder is
+done. A man may use a pair of “cut-nippers” to cut
+the wire, and a pair of pincers to twist it if he so will;
+but a pair of scissors is all that is really necessary, and
+will answer every purpose, though the usage is not thoroughly
+conducive to the welfare of the scissors. I will
+not say that this holder is better than Mr. Prime’s, though
+I point with pride to the facility and simplicity of its
+construction; but I think I can boast that it is cheaper.</p>
+
+<p class='c011'>The dark blue Staffordshire plates especially should
+be thus hung on the wall, where they form so rich a point
+of color that they put to shame all the thin water-colors
+and pale French china in their vicinity, and make us
+fully appreciate Oscar Wilde’s sigh of “trying to live up
+to his blue and white china.”</p>
+
+<p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_424'>424</span>But let me no longer dwell on the charms of our
+widely gathered possessions, lest it be said of me as was
+of Horace Walpole—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c012'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“China’s the passion of his soul,</div>
+      <div class='line'>A cup, a plate, a dish, a bowl</div>
+      <div class='line'>Can kindle wishes in his breast,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Inflame with joy or break his rest;”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c013'>but end with the assurance that I fully concur in the
+words of a well-known English collector: “China-collecting
+is not a mere fancy—it is a complete education.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_425'>425</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>INDEX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<ul class='index c002'>
+  <li class='c023'>Acrelius, Parson, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Adams, President, china of, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a>, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Alchymy spoons, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Annely, Edward, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Anti-slavery plate, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Apotheosis of Washington, pitcher, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Arnold, Governor Benedict, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Auction, country, in New England, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>“Baby,” Milliner’s, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bache, Mrs., <a href='#Page_65'>65</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bainbridge portrait on mug, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><cite>Baltimore Advertiser</cite>, announcement in, of sale of china, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Baltimore plate, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Baltimore and Ohio plates, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Barlow, S. L. M., sale of china of, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bat-printing, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Beach ware, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bennington ware, <a href='#Page_97'>97</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Binney &#38; Ronaldson, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bonaparte, Lucien, cup and saucer of, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bonaparte mugs, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bonnin, Gousse, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Boston plates, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bostonian Society, the, <a href='#Page_305'>305</a>, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bow china, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a>, <a href='#Page_119'>119</a>, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bowen, Samuel, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bradford, Governor, china of, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bristol porcelain, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>teapot, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Broseley blue dragon pieces, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Buchanan, President, china of, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Bugbee, Thomas, <a href='#Page_83'>83</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Burlington, old pottery at, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Burnet, Governor, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Cadogan teapot, <a href='#Page_204'>204</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Calumet, the, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>of the Cherokees, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Cambridge plates, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Canton china, blue, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>sale of, direct from the vessel, <a href='#Page_186'>186</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Castleford pottery, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Centennial china, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Champion, Richard, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>China collector, a professional, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>a Yankee, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>China in America, earliest mentions of, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>advertisements of, in the early Boston papers, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>;</li>
+      <li>old American, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>;</li>
+      <li>inexhaustible materials for manufacture of, in America, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>;</li>
+      <li>with American scenes, etc., <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>China steps, <a href='#Page_418'>418</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Chinese ewer, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Cincinnati punch-bowl, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>of General Washington, <a href='#Page_230'>230</a> <i>et seq.</i>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>City Hall pitcher, <a href='#Page_360'>360</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Clews, Mr. James, <a href='#Page_327'>327</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Congressional punch-bowl, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Cookworthy, William, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Copper-lustre pitcher, <a href='#Page_387'>387</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Crouch-ware, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Crown Derby plate, <a href='#Page_380'>380</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Danvers pottery, song of, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Davis, Mrs. James M., Bristol porcelain urn of, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><span class='pageno' id='Page_426'>426</span>Decatur portrait, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Deerfield Memorial Hall, <a href='#Page_412'>412</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Delft ware, early, <a href='#Page_53'>53</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>early sale of, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>;</li>
+      <li>in New York, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>;</li>
+      <li>on Long Island, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>;</li>
+      <li>price of, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a>;</li>
+      <li>tea-caddies, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>;</li>
+      <li>apothecary jars of, <a href='#Page_105'>105</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>;</li>
+      <li>in the Trumbull-Prime collection, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>;</li>
+      <li>tiles, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Derby, Elias Haskett, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>De Witt Clinton, portrait of, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Dextra, Zachary, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Drinks, colonial American, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Dwight, John, <a href='#Page_197'>197</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>East India Marine Company’s Museum, <a href='#Page_409'>409</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Elder Brewster teapot, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Erie Canal plates, <a href='#Page_345'>345</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Essex Institute, the, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Faneuil, Andrew, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Faneuil, Peter, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Farmer pitchers, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Franklin, Benjamin, sends china to his wife, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_157'>157</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Franklin pottery, list of, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Franklin, William, medallion, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Frog mugs, <a href='#Page_144'>144</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Fulham jugs, <a href='#Page_107'>107</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Funeral-punches, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>“Guglet,” <a href='#Page_237'>237</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Ginger-jars of Canton china, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Glazing, Indian method of, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Glider, to, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Goat cream jugs, <a href='#Page_120'>120</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Grant, General, china of, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Gray, Billy, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Haig, Thomas, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hall’s, R., wares, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, china of, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hancock, John, portrait, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><span class='pageno' id='Page_427'>427</span>Hanover, First Church of, pewter service of, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Harrison pitcher, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hartington house, the, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hayes, President, china of, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Henrietta Maria, Queen, recipe book of, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hews, A. H., &#38; Co., <a href='#Page_81'>81</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Historical Society of Pennsylvania, collection, <a href='#Page_411'>411</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hodges, Dr. Caspar Wister, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hound-handled pitcher, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Holder for hanging china, <a href='#Page_422'>422</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hull pitchers, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hull portrait, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Huntington collection, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>Franklin pottery in, <a href='#Page_287'>287</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Hylton pottery, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Indian bowls, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Indiana Pottery Co., <a href='#Page_98'>98</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Inscriptions on pitchers, <a href='#Page_143'>143</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Jackfield teapots, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Jackson, President, china of, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Japanese teapots, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Jefferson, Thomas, Wedgwood cameos of, <a href='#Page_115'>115</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>hospitality of, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>;</li>
+      <li>china of, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>;</li>
+      <li>portraits, <a href='#Page_303'>303</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Jones, Cadwallader, vases given to, by Lafayette, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Johnson. Dr., teapot of, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Jug, hot water, of pewter, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Keen, Joseph, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Lafayette, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lafayette pottery, <a href='#Page_288'>288</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>list of, <a href='#Page_289'>289</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lafayette Landing platter, <a href='#Page_294'>294</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lamb, Charles, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lawrence portrait, <a href='#Page_310'>310</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lay, Benjamin, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lefferts, John, <a href='#Page_103'>103</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lincoln, President, china of, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><span class='pageno' id='Page_428'>428</span>Liverpool ware, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Liverpool pitchers, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lowestoft ware, <a href='#Page_165'>165</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>vase, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>;</li>
+      <li>value of, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>;</li>
+      <li>in New England seaport towns, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>;</li>
+      <li>in the south, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>;</li>
+      <li>of John Hancock, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>;</li>
+      <li>teapot, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lowestoft town, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lustre sets, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lyman &#38; Fenton, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lyon, Dr. Irving, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lyon, Miss Henrietta D., <a href='#Page_129'>129</a>, <a href='#Page_254'>254</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Lyon, Governor, sale of china of, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Macdonough’s victory plate, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Macdonough portrait, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Madison, china of, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Map” pitcher, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Mayer, Thomas, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Metropolitan Museum, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>, <a href='#Page_173'>173</a>, <a href='#Page_245'>245</a>, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>, <a href='#Page_271'>271</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_283'>283</a>, <a href='#Page_284'>284</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>, <a href='#Page_297'>297</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Millennium plate, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a> 353</li>
+  <li class='c023'>Milliners, Boston, sell “chayney,” <a href='#Page_58'>58</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Miranda, General, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Mirror-knobs, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Monroe, President, china of, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Montgomery pitcher, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Morris, George Anthony, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Morristown, pewter utensils in the Washington House at, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Morse collection, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Mottoes on teapots, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Mount Vernon plates, <a href='#Page_353'>353</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Museum of Practical Geology, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_112'>112</a>, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Nahant plate, <a href='#Page_354'>354</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Naval pitchers, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Neptune, the, voyage of, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Newbery’s “Dives Pragmaticus,” <a href='#Page_38'>38</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>New Jersey, early china not plentiful in, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><span class='pageno' id='Page_429'>429</span>New York plates 356</li>
+  <li class='c023'>Niederweiler china of Washington, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Noggins,” wooden, <a href='#Page_39'>39</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Norton, John and William, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Osborne, William, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>“Packing Penny,” the, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pain’s Hill plates, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Park Theatre plate, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Patch-boxes, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pepys’ tea-drinking, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Perry pitchers, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Perry portraits, <a href='#Page_309'>309</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Persian vase, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Peters, Miss, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pewter plates and platters, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pewterers, English, <a href='#Page_41'>41</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Philadelphia, colonial drinks of, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Philadelphia, early china in, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>plates, <a href='#Page_363'>363</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Philadelphia Library plate, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pierce, President, china of, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pike portrait, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pilgrim plate, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pitcher, historical, of the war of 1812, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pitcher portrait of Washington, <a href='#Page_260'>260</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pitchers, patriotic, etc., list of, <a href='#Page_301'>301</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Plymouth coffee-pot, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Poore, Ben Perley, collection of pewter of, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Porcelain ware, early in America, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Porringers, pewter, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Posset-pot, the, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Posnets, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Posy-holders,” <a href='#Page_191'>191</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pottery of the North American Indians, <a href='#Page_70'>70</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>in burial mounds, <a href='#Page_73'>73</a>;</li>
+      <li>in Louisiana, <a href='#Page_74'>74</a>;</li>
+      <li>of the Iroquois, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Preble, portrait of, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Prentiss, A. M., presentation pitcher of, <a href='#Page_158'>158</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><span class='pageno' id='Page_430'>430</span>Presidential china, auction sales of, <a href='#Page_255'>255</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Pride, John, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Province House pitcher, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Punch, <a href='#Page_213'>213</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>varieties of, <a href='#Page_217'>217</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
+      <li>bare-legged, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Punch-bowl, the, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>of lustre ware, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>;</li>
+      <li>of Liverpool Delft, <a href='#Page_215'>215</a>;</li>
+      <li>Henry Weatherbourne’s, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>;</li>
+      <li>of Washington, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
+      <li>of the good old times, <a href='#Page_226'>226</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Puzzle jugs, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Quilted china plates, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Randolph, Edmund, punch-bowl of, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Reed, Joseph, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Remmey, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Richards, Horace Jones, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Richmond, A. G., his collection of Indian pottery, <a href='#Page_75'>75</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Ridgway, J. &#38; W., china, <a href='#Page_318'>318</a>, <a href='#Page_328'>328</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Rose, Thomas, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Sadler, John, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Sadler’s ware, <a href='#Page_137'>137</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Sailor pitchers, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Salt-glazed ware, <a href='#Page_108'>108</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Savealls,” <a href='#Page_43'>43</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Sewall, Judge, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Seixas, David G., <a href='#Page_93'>93</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Shrewsbury, old house in, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Slaw bank,” a, <a href='#Page_46'>46</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Smith, James R., <a href='#Page_258'>258</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Sneaker,” <a href='#Page_237'>237</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Sack-posset, recipe for, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Sourings,” <a href='#Page_225'>225</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>South Amboy, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Staffordshire crockery, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>marks on, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Standish, Miles, <a href='#Page_45'>45</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Steamboat plate, <a href='#Page_350'>350</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Stienwerck, Cornelius, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Syntax, Dr., designs on china, <a href='#Page_321'>321</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'><span class='pageno' id='Page_431'>431</span>Tea, in Boston, <a href='#Page_200'>200</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>price of, <a href='#Page_201'>201</a>;</li>
+      <li>drinking of, <a href='#Page_199'>199</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Tea-sets, Staffordshire, not uniform. 317</li>
+  <li class='c023'>Teapot friezes, <a href='#Page_206'>206</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Teapots, mottoes on, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>Lowestoft, <a href='#Page_208'>208</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Temperance plate, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Thomas, Gabriel, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Timberlake, Lieutenant, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>, <a href='#Page_76'>76</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>“Tobys,” <a href='#Page_323'>323</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Toddy strainer, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Transfer-printing, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Trenchers, wooden, <a href='#Page_40'>40</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Trumbull-Prime collection, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>, <a href='#Page_268'>268</a>, <a href='#Page_279'>279</a>, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Truxton, Commodore, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Tucker, William Ellis, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Van Braam, Mr., china given by, to Martha Washington, <a href='#Page_233'>233</a>, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Voiders, china, <a href='#Page_69'>69</a></li>
+  <li class='c002'>Wales, George M., <a href='#Page_145'>145</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Ward, J., poem of, on the Potter’s art, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Warren pitcher, <a href='#Page_304'>304</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington, George, china, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>, <a href='#Page_229'>229</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>value of, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>;</li>
+      <li>letter of, to Colonel Tilghman, <a href='#Page_234'>234</a>;</li>
+      <li>portraits of, on china, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington, Martha, plate, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>china, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington pitchers, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington Association, <a href='#Page_174'>174</a>, <a href='#Page_203'>203</a>, <a href='#Page_216'>216</a>, <a href='#Page_223'>223</a>, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington pottery, list of, <a href='#Page_262'>262</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington toddy-jugs, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Washington, D. C., plates, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Wedgwood, Josiah, his alarm at the progress of china manufacture in America, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Wedgwood, Thomas, pewter plates of, <a href='#Page_42'>42</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'><span class='pageno' id='Page_432'>432</span>Wedgwood ware, in America, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_116'>116</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>teapots, <a href='#Page_209'>209</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c023'>Welsteed, William, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Willow-pattern ware, <a href='#Page_130'>130</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Winthrop jug, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a></li>
+  <li class='c023'>Worcester ware in “Japan taste,” <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>porcelain, old, in America, <a href='#Page_133'>133</a></li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c002'>Yendell, S., presentation pitcher of 155</li>
+</ul>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c003'>
+</div>
+<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c004'>
+    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+ <ul class='ul_1 c002'>
+    <li>Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77000 ***</div>
+  </body>
+  <!-- created with ppgen.py 3.57e (with regex) on 2025-09-11 21:18:01 GMT -->
+</html>
+
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diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
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+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for book #77000
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77000)