Rare sgraffito glazed red earthenware plate or deep dish with three tulips Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1785-1800

Edwin Atlee Barber, Philadelphia
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection (1913-1952, no. 13.145-4)
Joe Kindig Jr., York, Pennsylvania, 1967

Cox, Warren E. The Book of Pottery and Porcelain, vol 2. New York: Crown Publishers, 1966, p. 986
American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, p. 143, fig. 105

Looks very good. Some wear to rim glaze.
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This early deep dish was collected by Edwin Atlee Barber, a pioneering scholar of American ceramics and the first curator of decorative arts at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art). It relates closely in form, decoration, and glaze type to two other examples by the same unidentified potter that Barber acquired for the museum.¹One of the first scholars to truly understand the technical properties of early clays, glazes, and kiln processes, Barber made extensive analytical notes on the group in 1906 and 1907.

Fascinated by the thinness of their slip and glaze and their friable, discolored, deteriorated surfaces, he felt these examples provided important insight into the experimentation and innovation required of early Pennsylvania potters as they sought to master and adapt local materials to produce their wares. He conjectured that the lighter orange clay, much lower in iron content than the average local red clays, may have resulted from the potter's experimentation with different clay sources, mixtures, or recipes. Barber further observed that the potter had misjudged the higher kiln temperature required to vitrify, or fully harden, the richer, finely grained kaolin content of the clay. Left underfired, this clay had caused the thicker, larger-grained yellow slip and the silica-lead glaze to remain porous and relatively unfused to the surface, which, over time, resulted in its discoloration, thinness, and marked wear.

Typical of the earlier deep-dish forms produced by immigrant potters working in Bucks and Montgomery Counties prior to 1800, this dish was fully wheel thrown and shaped with a number of wooden or leather tools called ribs.² Care had to be taken while throwing the form to ensure that its floor and outward flaring walls were free of air pockets or bubbles, which could cause the form to collapse or crack when fired. The straight-edged rib, pressed into the clay while it rotated on the wheel, helped maintain the form's uniform density. After the initial throwing, the potter could use different ribs and trimming tools to further refine the outer profile of the dish's wall foot and rim. The absence of visible finger marks in the body of this example indicates this use of ribs. -J.L.L.

¹ PMA, American Collections; Barber's notes are in the research files for these objects.
² For examples of these tools, see Garvan, Collection, p.77.