Bowl

Bowl

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Description
The creamware bowl is decorated with several transfer print designs. The interior of the bowl has a print that features a portrait of Benjamin Franklin wearing his famous beaver cap, with a scroll underneath that reads “Born at Boston in New England, 17 Jan. 1706/L.L.D.F.R.S.” The portrait of Franklin on this bowl is based on the 1777 drawing by French artist Charles Nicolas Cochin. The exterior of the bowl is decorated with four prints of “American Views”—featuring men and women together in a variety of pastoral settings.
This bowl is part of the McCauley collection of American themed transfer print pottery. There is no mark on the bowl to tell us who made it, but it is characteristic of wares made in large volume for the American market in both Staffordshire and Liverpool between 1790 and 1820. Pitchers of this shape, with a cream colored glaze over a pale earthenware clay, known as Liverpool type, were the most common vessels to feature transfer prints with subjects commemorating events and significant figures in the early decades of United States’ history. Notwithstanding the tense relationship between Britain and America, Liverpool and Staffordshire printers and potters seized the commercial opportunity offered them in the production of transfer printed earthenwares celebrating the heroes, the military victories, and the virtues of the young republic, and frequently all of these things at once.
Location
Currently not on view
Object Name
bowl
place made
United Kingdom: England, Burslem
Physical Description
monochrome, black (overall surface decoration color name)
ceramic, earthenware, refined (overall material)
transfer printed (overall production method/technique)
Measurements
overall: 4 1/4 in x 9 3/4 in; 10.795 cm x 24.765 cm
ID Number
CE.63.143
catalog number
63.143
accession number
248619
collector/donor number
44-343
Credit Line
Robert H. McCauley
See more items in
Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
Art
Domestic Furnishings
McCauley Liverpool Pottery
Data Source
National Museum of American History
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