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March Issue 2006
Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC, Features Exhibition of Rockingham Pottery
The Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC, presents the exhibit, Fancy Rockingham Pottery: The Modeller and Ceramics in Nineteenth-Century America. The exhibition, on view through July 2, 2006, presents more than seventy examples of "Fancy Rockingham" pottery. Selected from several New York collections, the objects highlight the range and variety in styles, glazes and materials found in these decorative utilitarian ceramics from the nineteen the century.
Evolving from English roots, Rockingham ceramics became distinctly American through the design and creations of ornamental designers whose works crisscrossed the country. The Rockingham pottery in the exhibition, presented in thematic groups, is explored in terms of the designers and the modelers who created the forms and decorations, the methods used in their production and the commercial potteries that made them.
The term "Rockingham" originated in the late-eighteenth century to describe a dark brown glaze crated by potters in Yorkshire, England, working at the estate of the Marquis of Rockingham. American potters who emigrated from England in the early 1800s, adapted the glaze and its application techniques to the tastes of the new market, where it quickly became one of the most popular wares of the mid-nineteenth century.
Diana Stradling, and independent scholar and guest curator of the exhibition, states in her catalogue essay, "Rockingham, in the strict interpretation of the word as it is used today, is a brown glaze, but we are using it as a metaphor for the whole range of American ware which, when relief-molded with decorative or ornamental or narrative patterns, was called 'fancy goods' in its day, whatever the color."
Prominent modelers with works highlighted in the exhibition include Daniel Greatbatch (who worked in Bennington, VT, and Peoria, IL) and Charles Coxon (who worked in Baltimore, MD, and South Amboy, NJ), Josiah Jones and Stephen Theis. Thematic groupings within the exhibition include a selection of the very popular Rebekah-at-the-Well teapots featuring the Biblical character Rebekah; animal figures from loins to cows to poodles; utilitarian wares from warmers to chamber pots; and hound-handled pitchers that often depict a boar hunt on one side and a stag hunt on the other. The latter are so named for their dog-shaped handles in which the dog's head rests at the rim of the pitcher and the hind feet connect with the bowl below.
In addition to their skills and techniques, British-born potters also brought with them popular motifs. The "Toby" jugs and mug in the exhibition feature a popular English character, Toby Fillpot, the subject of an eighteenth-century English barroom ballad. The "Discovering the Maker" section of the exhibition places objects with shards that have recently been discovered at several archeological excavation in Trenton, NJ.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition is curated at the Mint by Dr. Barbara Perry. Published by the University of Richmond Museums, an illustrated catalogue with essays by Diana Stradling, who curated the exhibit, and William B. Liebeknecht, Principal Investigator, Hunter Research, Inc., Trenton, NJ, is available.
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
704/337-2000 or at (www.mintmuseum.org).
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