Teapot

Dateca. 1770

OriginEurope, Germany, Westerwald, Höhr-Grenzhausen

MediumStoneware, salt-glazed with blue

DimensionsOH: 5 1/2" Approximate diameter: 5 1/2"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase, Wesley and Elise H. Wright in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Clay Hofheimer II and in honor of John C. Austin

Object number2012-149

DescriptionGlobular stoneware teapot with pulled handle, plain spout and raised and cordoned neck. Detailed incised and stamped decoration on the body has been filled with cobalt blue and includes flowers, deer with antlers, a unicorn, and foliage. Cobalt was also painted onto the body in simple lines along the handle, spout and at the junction of the spout and body.
Label TextGerman stoneware was exported to the American colonies in vast quantities and much evidence exists linking Westerwald-made mugs, jugs, and chamber pots to specific eighteenth-century American sites. The evidence for Westerwald teapots in the colonies is more elusive. Fragments of one all-gray example were found at the Deer Tavern site in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This teapot with more elaborate decoration was acquired during the nineteenth century by well-known Connecticut collector, Henry Wood Erving (1851-1941). Erving traveled the Hartford region knocking on doors and asking if there was anything the owners wished to sell thereby accumulating an extensive collection of imported ceramics and American-made furniture. Therefore, it is likely that this teapot has a history of use and ownership in America, probably dating back to the eighteenth century.

German teapots with spouts of this distinctive shape are the ancestors of the gray stoneware teapots produced by potters in New York and New Jersey during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
ProvenancePurchased from Robert Hunter - came with a possible history of American ownership as it was once owned by the noted Connecticut collector, Henry Wood Erving (1851-1941). Erving was known for purchasing antiques directly out of people's homes in the region of Hartford, Connecticut.