Coffee pot

Description

During the 1760s in England, Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood was instrumental in introducing a new type of decorating tool into the ceramics industry. He modified the design of existing engine-turning (aka rose-and-crown) lathes, leading to an explosion of novel ceramic ornament featuring elegant wave patterns, geometricized motifs, ribbing, fluting, and more. Ultimately, the engine-turning lathe was used on a broad range of English ceramics, from earthenware to stoneware and porcelain. During the latter half of 1700s, engine-turned lead-glazed red earthenware and unglazed red stoneware, primarily from Staffordshire, was imported by American consumers on a fairly large scale. On both types of ware, turned patterns and shapes often resemble one another. Leslie Grigsby, discusses early documentary and archaeological evidence for engine-turned ware in “British Earthenware and Porcelain in Eighteenth Century America” (see References). She writes, “Fragments of engine-turned lead-glazed redware teapots were excavated at the Nims House in Deerfield, Massachusetts, at the Richard Shortridge House site in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and in Arlington, Virginia, at the McKnight's Tavern site. A rare documentary reference to this type of ornament is found in Alexander Bartram[‘s] April 1771 advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette, where he offers for sale 'Red Engine Lathe China' .” It is unclear if Bartram’s wares were in glazed earthenware or unglazed stoneware.