Rare glazed red earthenware bear and tree stump Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1835-1880

Joe Kindig Jr., York, Pennsylvania, 1967

American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Museum, p. 153, fig. 116E

Bear with tree stump appears to be in very good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The presenting of gifts as tokens of affection—as rewards for honest work and accomplishment and to mark births, baptisms, marriages, birthdays, and seasonal holidays—was an honored tradition among various immigrant German communities throughout North America. These gifts took numerous forms, and in Pennsylvania might be a savory cooked dish or special pie, a colorful, hand-drawn reward of merit, an ornament for household decoration, or a special, fanciful toy for a lucky child. Small animal figures—molded from clay and colorfully glazed or carved from wood and brightly painted—were produced by traditional Pennsylvania craftsmen during the nineteenth century and survive today in numbers that suggest their widespread popularity among the cherished possessions of households of the region.¹  Many of their forms may have been inspired by imported ceramic figures such as those produced by some Staffordshire-area English potteries or by the molded chalkware figures also popular among the Pennsylvania Germans.

Several Pennsylvania potteries, as well as operations in western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, are known to have produced a variety of these figures. The similar sculpting and molding techniques, decorative surface modeling, and glazes seen across surviving examples make any firm attribution to a particular pottery difficult.² Many have regularly been assigned to the potteries of John Bell in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania (act. 1833-1880), and to several of his sons who continued the pottery there, as well as to his brothers Solomon and Samuel (act. 1839-1882), who operated a successful pottery in Strasburg, Virginia. The three brothers had all earlier apprenticed with their father, Peter, who ran potteries in both Hagerstown, Maryland, and Winchester, Virginia. Any specific attributions to the various Bell productions must remain tentative at best; there remain few signed examples, and there is documentation that this prolific pottery family migrated from shop to shop, exchanged workmen, sent clays, glaze materials, and finished forms back and forth, and influenced and copied one another's productions.³ Their works most likely also influenced the output of other contemporary potters in each region, such as Simon Singer of Haycock Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania (act. C.1850), or Anthony Baecher, who established a pottery near Winchester, Virginia, about 1860. -J.L.L. 

¹ For similar examples, see Garvan, Collection, pp. 219-24. A similar bear and tree stump figure, most likely intended to serve as a vase, is in the PMA collection, as is an unattributed pair of similar dog figures, with the number 8 incised on the undersides of the bases.
² While some differences in clay types, incising techniques, and decorative stamps used in these figures are present across known surviving examples, few consistent characteristics can be configured given the lack of signed or firmly documented examples. The opaque yellow slip, mottled glazes, deeply gouged surfaces depicting fur, and the stamped, chainlike decorations on cat. nos. 116a and b are found on several signed examples from the Bell potteries.
³ A.H. Rice and John Baer Stoudt, The Shenandoah Pottery (Strasburg, Va.: Shenandoah Publishing House, 1929), pp. 31-40, and William E. Wiltshire III, Folk Pottery of the Shenandoah Valley (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975).